Staging lo Andino: the Scissors Dance, Spectacle, and Indigenous
Citizenship in the New Peru
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Jason Alton Bush, MA
Graduate Program in Theatre
The Ohio State University
2011
Dissertation Committee:
Lesley Ferris, Co-Advisor
Katherine Borland, Co-Advisor
Ana Puga
Copyright by
Jason Bush
2011
Abstract
“Staging Lo Andino: Danza de las Tijeras, Spectacle, and Indigenous Citizenship
in the New Peru,” draws on more than sixteen months of fieldwork in Peru, financed by
Ohio State‟s competitive Presidential Fellowship for dissertation research and writing. I
investigate a historical ethnography of the Peruvian scissors dance, an acrobatic
indigenous ritual dance historically associated with the stigma of indigeneity, poverty,
and devil worship. After the interventions of Peruvian public intellectual José María
Arguedas (1911-1969), the scissors dance became an emblem of indigenous Andean
identity and valued as cultural patrimony of the nation. Once repudiated by dominant
elites because it embodied the survival of indigenous spiritual practices, the scissors
dance is now a celebrated emblem of Peru‟s cultural diversity and the perseverance of
Andean traditions in the modern world.
I examine the complex processes whereby anthropologists, cultural entrepreneurs,
cosmopolitan artists, and indigenous performers themselves have staged the scissors
dance as a symbolic resource in the construction of the emergent imaginary of a “New
Peru.” I use the term “New Peru” to designate a flexible repertoire of utopian images and
discourses designed to imagine the belated overcoming of colonial structures of power
and the formation of a modern nation with foundations in the Pre-Columbian past. I ask
what does the staging of the dance as national and transnational spectacle do to and for
marginalized Andean subjects. And what forms of indigenous citizenship do highlyii
skilled Andean performers engender and enact when they inhabit the role of the
“millennial” Andean Other on cosmopolitan public stages? To address these questions, I
draw on interdisciplinary research from anthropology, folklore studies, visual culture
studies, and theatre and performance studies about the ways that indigenous cultural
forms acquire value as icons of particular nationalities in transnational public culture. I
argue indigenous cultural performances, such as the scissors dance, often gain visibility
and public recognition as they become commodities in a world market that increasingly
values spectacles of cultural difference. Yet, the emergence of new forms of neoliberal
governmenance circumscribe the articulation of cosmopolitan indigenous subjectivities as
scissors dancers have become highly visible participants in the remaking of Peruvian
national identity within a performative economy of spectacle in a globalizing world.
iii
Dedication
This document is dedicated to my wife Gladys Aragon Ccorahua, my amazing parents,
and all those who have helped me along this long journey.
iv
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the generous support of the Graduate School and Office of
International Affairs of The Ohio State University that financed the fieldwork for this
project. I was able to spend so much time in Peru with support from the US Department
of Education‟s FLAS Fellowship, Ohio State‟s AGGRS Grant, International Affairs
Research Grant, and Presidential Fellowship. I would also like to thank Carol Robison,
Lesley Ferris, and Thomas Postlewait for their painstaking assistance in the search and
application process for these various grants and funding opportunities.
This project would not have been possible without my felicitous discovery of the
existence of The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in their course in Peru
in 2005. I am sincerely grateful to Gisela Cánepa Koch for always agreeing to meet with
me to discuss my progress during my fieldwork. Her rigorous attention to the
complexities of contemporary Peru has inspired me as an emerging scholar. Professor
Jill Lane was also an invaluable interlocutor during the ebbs and flows of my research.
Most of all, I had the opportunity to get to know the amazing theatre professionals of
Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani. Augusto Casafranca, Teresa Ralli, and Amiel Cayo were
sources of encouragement, ideas, and inspiration during the research for this project.
My first few years as a doctoral student at The Ohio State University greatly
impacted my intellectual development, primarily because of two sources of guidance and
v
inspiration. First, the generosity, thoughtfulness, and care Professor Thomas Postlewait
shows to each one of his students are amongst the most important reasons this California
boy decided to go to the mid-west for graduate education. I can only hope in the future I
can impact young scholars‟ lives in the way he impacted mine. Through his
encouragement, intellectual inspiration, and sometimes toughness I began to see that the
study of history was so much more than facts but required empathy for the people of the
past and the circumstances in which they lived. During my first quarter at Ohio State, I
adventured outside of my discipline and took a folklore course taught by Dr. Dorothy
Noyes. Through the work of the Center for Folklore Studies I found a second intellectual
home that stimulated my research interests and introduced me to caring people.
I am also greatly indebted to the generous guidance of my co-advisors, Lesley
Ferris and Katherine Borland. The genuine interest Dr. Ferris, then the chair of the
Department of Theatre, showed in my potential as a scholar was another reason I arrived
at Ohio State. Over the years she has provided me with a great deal of enthusiastic
encouragement and most of all patience. This project was in part born in Dr. Borland‟s
course on “Latin American Folklore,” where I wrote a short paper on the scissors dance
based on my memory of a single performance the previous year in Peru. Through her
guidance I began to see that I could write a dissertation that captured my fledgling
interests in Peruvian culture using this fascinating cultural form as a case-study. Katey
has been always willing to hear my half-formed thoughts, and has filled some tough
shoes in helping me with my writing issues after Dr. Postlewait left Ohio State. Although
she came on board relatively late in the process, Dr. Ana Puga more than fulfilled her
vi
duties as my third committee member. I wish her a great deal of success in her relatively
new position at Ohio State and hope she will continue to help me refine my project.
Two other faculty members at Ohio State deserve my gratitude for opening doors
for me in my naïve desires to belatedly become a specialist in Latin American Studies.
Dr. Abril Trigo and Ulises Juan Zevallos Aguilar from the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese have shown a great deal of interest in my work. In various courses and
private conversations Dr. Trigo has inspired my interests in the cultural log of
globalization and neoliberalism. Dr. Zevallos Aguilar has been a generous interlocutor
and friend in my quest to have a better understanding of Peruvian culture.
I could not have completed the fieldwork for this project without the assistance of
a number of collaborators in Peru. I would like to thank all of the scissors dance
performers, fusion artists, and intellectuals I interacted with during my time in Peru. I am
inspired by their tremendous energy working under often adverse conditions. My special
gratitude goes out to Angel Rubio Cataño, Romulo Huamaní Janampa, Damián de la
Cruz Ccanto, Oswaldo Machuqa Ichpas, Andres Lares, Pachak Chaki, Walter Velille,
Carlos Sayre, Julio Perez, Amiel Cayo, Luis Millones, Alvaro Zavala, and Jorge Febrero
Navarro. Without the contributions of all of these people I would not have achieved all
that I have been able to over the past several years.
I am eternally grateful to all of my amazing friends and colleagues who have live
throughout the world. I have known Donna Breitzer and Danny Chung since high school,
but they continue to bring both laughter and tears to my life. To the amazing people I
met in Ohio, especially Gibson Cima, Gina Di Salvo, and Lizzie Nixon, thanks for
vii
helping me to adjust and thrive in a new situation and providing me with both intellectual
and emotional support. I have never lived in the same city as Kathy Nigh, but our unique
world-trotting friendship has sustained me over the past six years. Kathy‟s humor and
fun-loving spirit, and relentless drive are the qualities that make her an amazing person to
be close to, even across long distances.
My parents are wonderful people who have always supported me in whatever
endeavor I choose. I cannot express in words my indebtedness to the infinite wisdom,
generosity, and care they have shown me ever since I was a shy and sensitive young boy.
I only hope I can raise my own children with a small portion of the loving atmosphere I
grew up with. To Tricia, Adam and Cameron, I hope I can spend more time with my
siblings and new nephew. I am so proud of the young woman and mother my wonderful
sister has grown up to become.
Most of all, I would not be who I am today without my beautiful and spirited
wife, Gladys Aragon Ccorahua. I know it has not been easy to confront our various
differences, of culture, language, and background, but I would not trade these past five
years for anything in the world. In terms of this project her emotional support and
knowledge of Quechua were invaluable to me. We travelled together to small villages
17,000 feet high in the Andes, with no electricity and running water, and I am not quite
sure how I would have done it without her. Beyond that I thank her for putting up with
all of my craziness over the past year trying to finish. The energetic spirit visible in her
smile has always given me hope even in the most desperate of times.
viii
Vita
June 1997 .......................................................Lynbrook High School, San Jose, CA
June 2001 .......................................................B.A Theater, UCLA
June 2004 .......................................................M.A. Theater, California State University,
Northridge
2005-2008 .....................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department
of Theatre, The Ohio State University
2010-present ...................................................Lecturer, Department of Spanish and
Portuguese, The Ohio State University
Publications
“El Gran Reto: Celebrity, Cultural Commodification, and Andean Citizenship,” Journal
of American Drama and Theater. 21.2 (Spring 2009): 91-113.
“Who‟s Thuh Man?: Historical Melodrama and the Performance of Masculinity in Suzan-Lori
Parks‟s Topdog/Underdog,” Suzan-Lori Parks: a Casebook. Eds. Kevin J. Wetmore and
Alycia Smith Howard. London: Routledge, 2007: 73-88.
Fields of Study
Major Field: Theatre
ix
Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii
Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...iv
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..v
Vita……………………………………………………………………………………….ix
List of Ilustrations……………………………………………………………………….xiii
Chapters
1.
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..1
1.1 Statement of the Problem…………...…………………………………………1
1.2 Conquest as Ritualized Social Drama…………………………………………3
1.3 Constructing an Andean Icon…………………………………………………8
1.4 Ritual/Spectacle…………….………………………………………………..14
1.5 Between Anthropology and Theatre and Back………...………...…………..19
1.6 Performativity/Theatricality………………………………………………….21
1.7 Towards a Critical Genealogy of The Society of Spectacle…………………28
1.8 Chapter Overview……………………………………………………………34
2.
The Dance from Another Hell………………………………………………………39
2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………….39
2.2 Idols Behind Altars…………………………………………………………..42
2.3 The Dance of the House of the Devil………………………………………..45
2.4 Andean Ritual Specialists and the Performance of Memory………………...49
2.5 Taki Onqoy…………………………………………………………………..52
2.6 The Marginalization of the Andean Sorceror………………………………..56
2.7 The Andean-Catholic Interculture…………………………………………...62
2.8 Andean Utopias……………………………………………………………...71
x
3.
The Long Nineteenth Century………………………………………………………76
3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………….76
3.2 The Tensions of Postcolonial Nation-making……………………………….78
3.3 Prohibitions and Stigmatizing Discourses…………………………………...83
3.4 Travel Narratives…………………………………………………………….88
3.5 Costumbrista Visual Culture………………………………………………...96
3.6 The War of the Pacific……………………………………………………...107
3.7 The Staging of the Inca Past………………………………………………..111
3.8 La Patria Nueva…………………………………………………………….117
3.9 The Folklorization of Andean Performance………………………………..124
4.
The Agony of José María Arguedas……………………………………………….129
4.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………129
4.2 (Auto)Biography and the Performance of Self……………………………..132
4.3 Creating the Authorial Persona……………………………………………..136
4.4 Ethnographic Self-Fashioning……………………………………………...143
4.5 Rivers of Passage…………………………………………………………...149
4.6 Andean Cosmopolitanism…………………………………………………..154
4.7 La Agonia de Rasu Niti…………………………………………………….160
4.8 El Zorro-Danzaq……………………………………………………………167
4.9 A Culture Hero of the New Peru…………………………………………...175
5.
The Rise and Fall of a New National Popular……………………………………..177
5.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………...177
5.2 State Folklore and the Refashioning of the National-Popular……………...179
5.3 Maximo Damian y sus Danzantes de Tijeras……………………………….186
5.4 The Urban Andean Public Sphere………………………………………….189
5.5 Urban Communities of Practice……………………………………………196
5.6 The New Limeños………………………………………………………….201
5.7 Sasachakuy Tiempo………………………………………………………...208
5.8 The ADTMP………………………….…………………………………….213
5.9 Violence, Economic Collapse………………………………………………216
5.10 Conclusion…..…………………………………………………………….219
6.
The Peformative Economy of a New Peru………………………………………...221
6.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………...221
6.2 The Hypermasculine Indigenous Warrior…………………………………..224
6.3 Local Development with Identity…………………………………………..228
xi
6.4 The Pedagogy of Cultural Identity…………………………………………233
6.5 Hyperreal Indigenous Identity……………………………………………...237
6.6 An Andean President for a New Peru…………………………..…………..243
6.7 The Nation as a Brand………………………….…………………………..248
6.8 El Gran Reto………………………………………………………………..253
7. The Double-Agency of Contemporary Scissors Dancers…………………………....266
7.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………...266
7.2 The Maximum Exponents of the Scissors Dance…………………………..269
7.3 Los Hermanos Chavez……………………………………………………...289
7.4 La Nueva Generación………………………………………………………298
8.
Conclusion……………………..…………………………………………………..310
Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………..315
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………350
xii
List of Illustrations
Illustration
1.1
Map of Southern Peru…………………………………………………………….8
1.2
Paqcha Chapari at Rural Festival………………………………………………..10
1.3
Kusi Kusi Performing Pruebas de Valor……………………………………… 12
3.1
Painting by Paul Marcoy…………………………………………………………95
3.2
“Danza de los Chunchos” by Pancho Fierro……………………………………..100
3.3
“Danse des Ciseaux” by Pancho Fierro……………………………………….....102
3.4
Mate Burilado, Ayacucho, 1848……………………………………………...…103
3.5
Pilar Alberto in Chaupi, Puquio…………………………………………………105
3.6
Folklore Performance Group of Moises Vivanco……………………………..127
4.1
Máximo Dámian Huamaní at Arguedas‟s Funeral…………………………….174
5.1
Map of the Conos of Metropolitan Lima……………………………………...191
6.1
Advertisement for El Gran Reto………………………………………………254
xiii
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1. Statement of the Problem
The state promotion agency PROMPERU recently distributed the sleek television
advertisement, “Peru: Live the Legend,” to select international markets. The commercial
presents an enticing iconography of Peru‟s impressive cultural and biological diversity.
PROMPERU reimagines the nation as a brand image packaged as commodified spectacle
for transnational consumers. This brand depicts Peru as a mystical wonderland outside of
history and devoid of conflict, erasing all signs of the colonial past. The only signs of a
Western presence are a couple of strategically placed tourists able to discover the
mysterious landscape and culture of Peru as if for the first time (PROMPERU 2008).
Thus, “Peru: Live the Legend” re-stages the theatricality of the “scenario of discovery,”
enacting the aura of the Other of Western modernity for globalization (Taylor 2003). The
commercial draws heavily on the overdetermined imagery Orin Starn calls Andeanism,
“a way of seeing in which the Andean highlands appear as an alien fascinating land
untouched by the West and modernity” (Starn 1999: 19). He claims that Andeanist
ethnography has produced a “stock imagery” of the Andes that “evokes an island of
otherness removed from the world” (Ibid.).
The third segment of “Peru: Live the Legend” features the virtuosic Andean ritual
dance that is the subject of this dissertation, danza de las tijeras (scissors dance). We see
a raindrop falling in slow motion cut into multiple fragments by a pair of steel scissors.
1
Three costumed male dancers appear to be suspended in mid-air, performing acrobatic
pirouettes in unison through the rain. The narrator dramatically intones, “Where scissorshanded mortals dance for days on end.” The dancers seem almost inhuman, or perhaps
superhuman. The cinematic spectacle transforms a “real” cultural practice into fantasy,
giving the uninformed spectator a sense of the layers of mystique this performance genre
has acquired in the Peruvian imagination. The advertisement captures something
fundamental about the relationship between the particular cultural form I study and the
broader transformations of the Peruvian imaginary over the past half century. It clearly
has a global audience in mind. Nevertheless, it is within such transnational arenas that
contemporary Andean subjects constitute themselves and are constituted as citizens in an
age of neoliberal globalization.
This dissertation draws on sixteen months of fieldwork and archival research in
Peru to produce a historical ethnography of the scissors dance. After the interventions of
Peruvian intellectual José María Arguedas (1911-1969), the scissors dance increasingly
became an icon of Andean identity and valued as cultural patrimony of the nation. Once
repudiated by colonial and national elites precisely because it embodied the irrationality
of indigenous ritual practices, this cultural form is now a celebrated emblem of Peru‟s
cultural diversity and the perseverance of Andean spiritual values in the modern world. I
examine the efforts of anthropologists, cultural entrepreneurs, cosmopolitan artists, and
scissors dance performers themselves to stage the scissors dance as part of the emergent
national imaginary of a “new Peru.” I use the term new Peru in order to gloss a flexible
repertoire of utopian images and discourses that imagine the overcoming of colonial
2
values and structures of power and seek to construct a modern Peruvian nation rooted in
an authentic Pre-Columbian past.
I argue that the new Peru emerged as a counter-hegemonic discourse that sought
to fashion a new national-popular in opposition to the national project of dominant Creole
elites. Over the course of the past few decades, a depoliticized vision of the new Peru has
achieved a fragile hegemony in an exemplary case of what Charles Hale calls “neoliberal
multiculturalism” (2002, 2006). The scissors dance has become one of the most visible
icons of a performative economy that constitutes multicultural subjects as citizens
through the elaboration of spectacles of cultural difference staged in both national and
transnational arenas. This study asks what the staging of the dance as national and
transnational spectacle does to and for formerly marginalized Andean subjects. And
what forms of cosmopolitan indigenous citizenship do highly-skilled Andean performers
engender, enact, and model as they inhabit the role of the “hyperreal” Andean Other on
the global stage? (Ramos 1998). I argue that indigenous cultural performances, such as
the scissors dance, often gain visibility as they become commodities in a world market
that increasingly values cultural difference. Yet, these new articulations of cosmopolitan
indigenous citizenship are circumscribed by neoliberal multiculturalism at the same time
that they have enabled the performers to become cultural agents in the remaking of
Peruvian identity through a performative economy of spectacle.
1.2. Conquest as Ritualized Social Drama
In 1925, the pioneering Peruvian socialist thinker José Carlos Mariátegui
theorized one of the earliest evocations of a “New Peru.” He wrote:
3
The dualism of the Peruvian soul and of Peruvian history is defined by a
conflict between the historical form elaborated on the coast, and the
indigenous sentiment that survives in the sierra, deeply rooted in nature.
Peru today is a coastal formation. The new Peru has sedimented
underground. Neither the Spaniard nor the Creole knew how to nor was
able to conquer the Andes. In the Andes, the Spaniard never was more
than a pioneer or a missionary. The Creole is what the Andes extinguish
in the Conquistador, creating little by little an Indian. This is the drama of
contemporary Peru. A drama that was born [. . .] of the sin of the
Conquest. From the original sin that was transmitted to the Republic, a
Peruvian society and economy was constructed without and against the
Indian. (Mariátegui 1972, cited and translated by Thurner 1997: 204-205)
The founder of the Peruvian Socialist Party uses the theatrical metaphor of a national
drama to rehearse a familiar trope of Peruvian historiography. He represents Peru as
tragically divided in an epic struggle between the colonizing coastal region and the
colonized indigenous highlands. The dominant coastal Creoles perform their power by
excluding Andeans from participating in the political, economic, and social life of the
nation. He locates the origins of this ethnic and geographic antagonism in the events of
the Conquest as Spanish colonial power transmitted total authority directly to the coastal
Creole aristocracy. (Cadena 2000, Baptista 2006, Kokotovic 2006). Yet, Mariátegui also
evokes the utopian possibility of a more just and perhaps authentically Peruvian national
community. The “new Peru” called for by Mariátegui was a socialist utopia founded on
the communitarian values of Tawantinsuyo, the Quechua name for the Inca Empire.
Mariátegui was perhaps the most eloquent figure of the early twentieth century
intellectual movement known as indigenismo. As the eminent historian Jorge Basadre
famously declared, “the most important event in twentieth century Peruvian culture is the
increasing awareness among writers, artists, men of science, and politicians of the
existence of the Indian‟ (Basadre 1978: 326). Indigenismo was an ideologically diverse
4
artistic, political, and scientific movement, “whose stated goals were to defend the Indian
masses and to construct regionalist and nationalist cultures on the basis of what mestizo,
and largely urban intellectuals understood to be autochthonous or indigenous cultural
forms” (Poole 1997: 182). These non-indigenous intellectuals constituted Andean culture
as a legitimate object of knowledge and nationalist representation, articulating
“Andeanism” as an emergent “structure of feeling” (Williams 1977). Only rarely did
indigenous Andean subjects play more than a highly subordinate role in these alternative
nationalist regimes of representation. Nevertheless, indigenismo began to erode the
dominance of the Creole nationalist project, which conceived of the nation according to
the logic that Angel Rama called The Lettered City (1984). Rama‟s well-known text
traces a genealogy of the role of intellectuals and writing in the construction of Latin
American nations. He argues that since the colonial period, writing has been an
instrument of power in which lettered intellectuals have assumed the power to represent
the internal “other,” who by definition does not possess the ability to read and write.
The Conquest was a recurring trope in indigenista discourse, perceived as a
founding event that fractured the potential national community (Baptista 2006, Kokotovic
2006). More recent historical studies have significantly nuanced the narrative of
unbroken transmission from Spanish imperial regime to Creole republic. They argue that
the Creole nationalist project was not a colonial holdover, but rather a phenomenon of the
second half of the nineteenth century when the combination of new developments in
global capitalism and scientific racism enabled the expulsion of the “Indian” from
historical time (Kristal 1987, Mallon 1996, Mendez 1996, Poole 1997, Thurner 1997,
5
Starn 1999, Larson 2004, Earle 2007). Rather than historicizing the role of so-called
Indians in the formation and development of the nation, the indigenistas uncritically
accepted an ahistorical imagery of the Andes and its native inhabitants from earlier
Creole nation-builders. Instead of questioning oppositions between Andean indigeneity
and the modern nation they merely reversed the binary, imbuing the figure of the
“Indian” with a positive value as the embodiment of authentic cultural resistance (Starn
1992, 1999, Thurner 1997, Abercrombie 1998). The Conquest took on an aura that
approximated Victor Turner‟s notion of “social drama,” constituting a “breach” in the
primordial national community that required “redressive action” before the potential for a
final “integration,” that would heal the fragmented national body (Turner 1974).
At the very moment that a less threatening articulation of the indigenista
imaginary, mediated by scientific anthropology, began to creep into the public sphere,
historian Jorge Basadre made the famous distinction between “Official Peru,” and “Deep
Peru” (Basadre 1947, Mayer 1992). In its original formulation, “Deep Peru” had little to
do with indigeneity, but rather theorized an irreparable division between the state and
national society made up of “the profound spirit of the people” (Mayer 1992: 192).
Nevertheless, as Andeanism gradually acquired a hegemonic status as a nationalist
discourse, Basadre‟s concepts were reinterpreted as “the historical roots of Indianness as
a component of Peru‟s nationhood” (Ibid.). The concept of “Deep Peru” now embodies
an “authentic” nation buried underneath centuries of colonial and postcolonial
imposition, and a repertoire enacted by repeated acts of self-discovery. Particularly under
its recent reinvention through “neoliberal multiculturalism,” the new Peru incorporates
6
both Basadre‟s original concept of a cleavage between nation and state, and the value of
authenticity bestowed upon the subject-position of the indigenous Andean Other. The
new Peru comes into being through a repetitively re-enacted scenario of discovery that
stages the speech-acts of multicultural recognition.
In earlier articulations of an indigenista imaginary, indigenous subjects rarely
participated in regimes of representation that included them as their object. However,
with the dramatic expansion of global capitalism over the past few decades, these
representations became available as roles to inhabit in the construction of modern
indigenous selves. As Starn asserts, the stock imagery of Andeanism has “conditioned
not only how the world perceives the Andes but also how Andean people understand
themselves” (Starn 1992: 175). This study traces a genealogy of “the subtle channels of
representation and self-imagination that have shaped the identities of Andean subjects
both prior to and during the era of neoliberal multiculturalism (Ibid.). I show that that the
scissors dance has become an emblematic model for the process by which Andean
subjects repeatedly discover the "other" within themselves, constructing their newfound
status and visibility as Peruvian citizens in a rapidly globalizing world.
7
1.3. Constructing an Andean Icon: Ethnographic Narratives on the Scissors Dance
Illustration 1.1
Map of Southern Peru
Courtesy of http://www.Go2Peru.com
8
According to various ethnographic studies, the scissors dance is a masculine
Andean ritual dance that originated in Pre-Columbian rituals of the Chanka region in the
south-central Andes of Peru (Vivanco 1976, Barrionuevo 1988, Nuñez Rebaza 1990,
Bigenho 1991, Yaranga 1997, Millones and Tomoeda 1998, Cavero Carrasco 1998, 2001,
Casco Arias and Rojas de la Cruz 1999, Arce Sotelo 2006). This region encompasses the
present-day departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac, one of the poorest
and most marginalized areas of Peru. The region acquired recognition as a culture-area
in 1958 in a now classic study by José María Arguedas, who included the scissors dance
as one of the signs of a supposed cultural unity (Arguedas 1975 [1958]). Andeanist
ethnographers have viewed this otherwise stigmatized culture-area as an important
reserve of authenticity. Moreover, the region has acquired a unique stature as the home
of the canonized forbearers of Andeanism, the Andean-identified intellectuals Felipe
Guaman Poma de Ayala (1535-1616) and the aforementioned Arguedas (1911-1969).
Both of these figures are associated with the present-day province of Lucanas in the
southern region of Ayacucho. Primarily due to the interventions of Arguedas, the
scissors dance style from this particular region is largely perceived as the most
indigenous variant of the dance, emblematic of the authenticity of the genre as a whole.
More recently, this region was at the center of the horrific internal war waged between
Shining Path insurgents and the military between 1980 and 1992. In the aftermath of the
conflict, state and civilian reconstruction and development projects valued the scissors
dance as the most recognizable symbol of a revived Chanka identity in order to promote
self-esteem and healing amongst its victimized residents (PROANDE 2000).
9
Illustration 1.2
Scissors Dancer Paqcha Chapari Performing at Festival of Water in Cabana Sur, Lucanas
Photo by Author
The scissors dance gets its name from the two independent steel blades the dancers hold
in their right hands in the style of scissors. These “scissors” act as percussion instruments
that mark the rhythm of the dance with a distinct metallic sound. In accordance with
Andean conceptions of the complementarity of gender roles, the dancers refer to the
smaller blade as female and the larger as male, creating a harmonic complementarity
between higher and lower pitched sounds produced by the female and male blades
10
respectively. A musical ensemble of harp and violin accompany each individual dancer.
Colonial priests introduced these instruments into the Andes as part of their evangelizing
efforts. Since the nineteenth century, harp and violin is paired exclusively in indigenous
communities, while the more sensual guitar is associated with mestizo musical forms
(Romero 2000, Tucker 2005). The scissors dancers, as well as their musicians, are paid
specialists contracted by the cargontes (sponsors) of local festivities related to the
agricultural cycle and the Catholic liturgical calendar. In Huancavelica, these dancers
perform mostly during the Christmas season. In southern Ayacucho they most often
perform during the Festival of Water, the ritual cleaning of agricultural aqueducts
performed since Pre-Columbian times, but now associated with a specific patron saint.
These festivals typically last five to seven days, during which the dancers perform with
very little rest. They compete against each other in one-on-one battles known as
atipanakuy, where they try to outdo their opponents through the elaboration of a rigorous
and complex musical and choreographic repertoire of various tonadas (melodic
sequences). These sequences imitate animals, scenes from local life, comic outsider
figures, and the death and resurrection of a legendary scissors dancer from the past. At
the end of the complete choreographic sequence, the atipanakuy terminates in pruebas de
valor (tests of valor), where the dancers demonstrate their extraordinary abilities to
withstand pain as they perform grotesque stunts. They pierce their skin with cactus,
knives, and broken glass, swallow swords, and fire, and eat frogs, and snakes.
11
Illustration 1.3
Scissors Dancer Kusi Kusi performing Pruebas de Valor
Photo by Author
Many commentators have noted that the costumes of the scissors dancers have a
medieval Spanish quality similar to the trajes de luces worn by bullfighters.
Ethnographers typically note such evidence of colonial hybridity before glossing over it
through assertions of a pre-colonial essence, based on a supposed inheritance from
shamanic ritual practices. A corpus of myths, even today, claims that the scissors dancers
enter into pacts with the devil in order to gain mysterious powers and demonstrate
12
superhuman physical abilities. The older generations also speak about an intimate
relationship between the dancer and the sirena, a beautiful blonde woman, representing
the spirit of a mountain waterfall, who enchants male onlookers with her beautiful
singing. According to ethnographic narratives, these hybrid figures, related to Andean
interpretations of the Catholic notion of hell, are nothing more than Europeanized masks
for a Pre-Columbian Andean spiritual pantheon. They reiterate the discourse Thomas
Abercrombie calls “the idols behind altars resistance paradigm” (Abercrombie 1998).
The evidence that legitimates this narrative is the ritual offerings the scissors dancers
make to the apu-wamanis, the deified spirits of the mountains that protect each highland
community. Ethnographers conflate these mountain-gods with the Pre-Columbian
concept of the huacas; sacred shrines that recent evidence suggests are not embodiments
of the landscape itself but rather the burial sites of founding ancestors (Gose 2008).
The conflation of the huacas with the mountain-gods has enabled the now
conventional narrative, popular since the 1990s, which proposes that the scissors dancer
represents a direct inheritance from the sixteenth century native spiritualist revival
movement known as the Taki Onqoy (dancing sickness). During the Taki Onqoy, already
converted indigenous Andeans in Ayacucho rebelled against Catholicism in a large-scale
revival of the cult of the huacas. Specific oracular mediums possessed by the huacas
performed ecstatic dances and preached the expulsion of all Spanish and Catholic objects
and practices from the Andean community. The Taki Onqoy has since become
emblematic of Andean cultural resistance within a postcolonial intellectual framework
(Mumford 1998). The genealogical link between the sixteenth century nativist movement
13
and the contemporary scissors dance, tentatively theorized by anthropologists in the
1990s, has since become an unquestioned myth of origins in both academic and popular
narratives (Millones 2007). By the turn of the millennium, the scissors dance had
consolidated its status as a global icon of Andean cultural resistance that embodied
authentic Andean spirituality. As one article claims, it has travelled, “from the
communities of the Chanka nation to the largest cities in Peru and the world [. . .] to
become little by little for almost half a century, one of the most distinguished and visible
symbols of Andean art and culture” (Tincopa Calle 2008: 48).
1.4. Ritual/Spectacle
As anthropologists, cultural entrepreneurs, artists, and urbanizing performers have
gradually transferred the scissors dance from rural festivities to more cosmopolitan
spaces and cultural productions, these same agents have expressed a certain uneasiness
about the relationship between ritual and spectacle. Ethnographic narratives in particular
construct a reified dichotomy between an originary ritual and various forms of theatrical
presentation and spectacle that contaminate the dance‟s authenticity. Consider for
instance, the opening statement of an article by Alejandro Vivanco: “Since the 1950s the
scissors dance has been presented with certain frequency in theatres in Lima. It is
considered by people of scant information as a simple manifestation of grotesque
movements, tremendous acrobatic abilities, that seems to have no other function but the
entertainment of the spectator” (1976: 39). Citing respected anthropological authorities
on shamanism and magico-religious practices, such as Mircea Eliade and Luís Valcárcel,
he argues that the dance contains elements of ancient ritual origins. Vivanco promises
14
that in the remainder of the article he will “show the intimate relationship that exists
between the scissors dance and the magico-religious conception of the world of ancient
Peruvians” (Ibid.). Thus, he constructs his ethnographic authority through his supposed
direct knowledge of the “real” thing in contrast to the trivial versions staged in urban
popular entertainments. Yet, he never goes so far to suggest that these theatrical
spectacles present a legitimate threat to the survival of the authentic original.
As Ayacucho and Huancavelica were under siege by horrific political violence
during the 1980s, ethnographic writers began to express more urgency about the need to
preserve the authenticity of the original ritual in opposition to potentially contaminating
commercial spectacles. The work of Lucy Nuñez Rebaza chronicles the transformations
of the practice during this very trying historical moment (1985, 1990). The extensive
direct quotes of her informants, which she strategically places in her text, express the
anxieties, conflicts, and celebrations of newfound triumphs in the public sphere
experienced by the performers in a moment of intense urbanization, and forced relocation
due to the internal conflict. Yet, she reproduced a reified binary between ritual and
spectacle. Arguing that the reproductions of rural festivals in Lima allowed for a
semblance of authentic transmission of the dance‟s ritual significance, she depicts staged
presentations in live and mediated entertainments as an imposition of the values of the
dominant culture upon Andean mental structures. Although she celebrates the dance as a
successful form of cultural resistance, apparently urbanization and global capitalism
present a greater threat to authenticity than centuries of colonial domination. The overarching framework of Nuñez Rebaza‟s study constructs the anthropologist rather than the
15
practitioners as the ultimate arbiter of authenticity and positions her as a “good” outsider
solely concerned with the protection of traditional Andean culture (Starn 1992, Buckland
1999). Thus, she denies the agency of the performers, depicting them as the exploited
victims of Westernized capitalism and individualism. However, this rigid dichotomy is
difficult for her to sustain. For as she admits, constant traffic flows between urban and
rural festival performances and various forms of commercial spectacle. Furthermore, her
informants articulate various pragmatic positions that view these different performance
forms not as oppositional but as achieving different sets of aims.
After the conflict subsided in the mid-1990s, ethnographers returned to the
highlands to observe the scissors dance in its so-called “natural” performance context
(Uriarte 1998). They tended to portray these events in an ahistorical manner, as if the
supposed authentic integrity were hardly affected by rapid urbanization and the ruptures
of political violence. Yet, nearly all the performers continued to reside in Lima, and the
dance had become, for the most part, an urban popular performance that tended to flow
from the capital city back to the provinces (Raymundo 2008, Zevallos Aguilar 2009).
Nevertheless, most of these studies insist on representing the dance as an essentially rural
form of ritual performance. After focusing his entire article on an analysis of a particular
highland festivity, Carlos Prudencia Mendoza concludes by lamenting that in Lima the
dance is often presented “in completely inadequate environments (stadiums, cinemas,
theatres, radios, music halls). The problem is that presented in this grotesque manner, the
dance loses its virtues, degenerates, and degrades its authenticity” (1993: 18). The author
depicts the dance‟s virtue and authenticity as if they existed prior to its distinct
16
performative iterations, constructing the situation where any historical change could be
considered contamination or degradation.
Even nuanced examinations fall into the trap of essentialization. Rodrigo
Montoya uncritically affirms the nostalgic perspective of the older practitioners who
claim that young urban performers reproduce “pure acrobatics” with “little soul” (2004:
70). Yet, he also acknowledges that cosmopolitan forms of dissemination have earned
recognition for Andean culture in “the late revenge of a strong culture that has resisted
centuries of anti-indigenous colonial politics from 1532 until the moment I write this
chapter” (Ibid.). Similarly, ethnomusicologist Manuel Arce Sotelo suggests that the
visibility the scissors dance has acquired in broader public spheres has contributed to a
revival of Andean ethnic identity amongst urban young people of provincial heritage
(2006: 21). Nevertheless, he asserts that in the process the dance “runs the risk of passing
from a ritual and regional musical form to a national manifestation linked to commercial
spectacle” (Ibid.). He never explains his presupposition that assumes that these
transformations in themselves constitute a “risk.” Ironically, a journalist highly involved
in the publicity of specific contemporary scissors dancers goes the furthest in reclaiming
urban reiterations as a “new style” of the scissors dance produced by specific historical
transformations in the experiences, identities, and lifestyles of new generations of
Andean youth formed in urban space. Jesús Raymundo contends that this new urban
style “could represent a risk to its essence, but at the same time an opportunity to
transcend” (2008: 2). While he portrays these historical transformations as more positive
17
than most commentators, he retains the notion that the dance possesses a prior authentic
essence threatened by urbanization.
This assumed dichotomy between ritual and spectacle, underwritten by an
essentialist framework, parallels long-standing anti-theatrical discourses central to
Western thought (Barish 1981, Puchner 2002, Postlewait and Davis 2003). Postlewait
and Davis suggest:
Since antiquity, the critique of theatre has focused on both its tendency to
excess and its emptiness, its surplus as well as its lack. In this critique,
performance is characterized as illusory, deceptive, exaggerated, artificial,
or affected. The theatre, often associated with the acts and practices of
role-playing, illusion, false appearance, masquerade, façade, and
impersonation, has been condemned by various commentators, from Plato
to Allan Bloom. This negative attitude, whether engaged or merely
dismissive, has often placed theatre and performers at the margin of
Western society. (2003: 5)
While conventional wisdom has tended to perceive all forms of mimetic representation as
suspect, the theatre has a special place in the critique of representation because its
expressive medium is the human body. The actor‟s body possesses an ontological reality
at the same time as it becomes a vehicle for semiosis, potentially confusing distinctions
between truth and illusion, as well as appearance and essence. In conventional
ethnographic narratives, the classification of the scissors dance as ritual redeems it from
theatrical suspicion. Yet, these assertions of ritual authenticity bestow the form with
symbolic capital and exhibition value enabling the very theatrical representations that
they condemn in a mournful fashion.
18
1.5. Between Theatre and Anthropology and Back
As I have suggested, discourses of ritual origins fuel the decline into spectacle that
ethnographic authors critique. This narrative of corruption has deep roots in a modernist
form of the antitheatrical prejudice, constitutive of the anthropological notion of ritual
itself. As Catherine Bell argues:
The study of ritual has gone through several historical perspectives that, in
hindsight, seem to have had less to do with how people ritualize and more
with how Western culture has sorted out relationships between science and
religion on the one hand, and relationships between more technologically
developed cultures and more localized tribal cultures, on the other. (Bell
1997: 253)
A series of ongoing encounters between anthropology and theatre going back to the
nineteenth century have produced what Bell calls the “reification” and “romance” of
ritual in the twentieth century (Ibid). Theatre historian Julie Stone Peters has traced the
relationship between theatre and anthropology in nineteenth and twentieth century
ethnography and travel literature (2009). She suggests, “the twentieth century ritualist
idea is merely a late revision of a set of much older ideas about primitive performance
produced by the conjunction of modern (imperial, commercial, anthropological) travel
and the Enlightenment human sciences” (Ibid: 69). Through a series of shifts in classics,
aesthetics, and nascent ethnography, nineteenth century scholars gradually
reconceptualized the pantomimes and mimetic dances of so-called primitive cultures as
rudimentary forms of drama. In this manner, they paved the way for the Cambridge
School who defined ritual through, and later against, the theatre (Ibid.).
By using the fashionable “comparative method,” the Cambridge School searched
for the origins of Greek drama in “primitive” ritual dances and purification rites.
19
According to these scholars, drama and ritual shared the quality of embodied mimesis.
However, Jane Ellen Harrison in particular, argues that “ritual mimesis seemed to
transcend mimesis” since it contained “an element of real embodiment” (Stone Peters
2009: 80). She suggested that ritual was less mimesis than methexis, connoting “not
imitation but participation in an undivided sacred sphere” (ibid.). The Cambridge School
began to depict the transformation of ritual to theatre through a narrative of
contamination and decline that became an allegory for the alienating aspects of Western
modernity and capitalism. This narrative resonated with romantic accounts of
disappearing “folk” cultures that circulated in Europe after the Industrial Revolution
(Burke 1978, Rowe and Schelling 1991, Bendix 2002). Early anthropologists fashioned
ritual as a totemic object of study. From its very beginnings, the discipline of
anthropology, “came, in a sense, to take seriously the trope of the performing savage,”
bestowed with the positive value of authenticity (Stone Peters 2009: 81).
By the early decades of the twentieth century, anthropologists began to view not
only theatre in terms of ritual but also ritual in terms of theatre, “reading” ritual
enactments as deriving from a pre-existing script (Ibid.). This textual analogy became
one of the principal assumptions behind functionalism and later structuralism within
anthropology (Cánepa Koch 2002: 23). Until recently, conventional anthropological
practice decontextualized ritual, perceived as “fixed by immutable repetition which only
allowed limited variation” and therefore “the text in which a culture‟s historical memory
was written” (Stone Peters 2009: 82). This abstraction reduces the significance of
cultural forms to a singular essence, discounting the agency of both performers and
20
spectators who may refashion or reinterpret ritual enactments in quite different ways
(Cánepa Koch 2002, 2006). In the case of the scissors dance, the reification of an
authentic ritual essence has constructed the dance as a decontextualized commodity that
circulates in ethnographic texts as well as theatrical spectacles. By concealing their
participation in the logic of commodified spectacle, ethnographic authors create a doublebind. They construct the desired authentic original that commodified forms of
reproduction can never truly embody. As they protest against the degradation of the
authentic original, they merely intensify the circulation of surrogate commodities.
1.6 Performativity/Theatricality
I suggest that in order to get beyond this double-bind the adoption of a
Performance Studies perspective is necessary. Performance Studies provides an avenue
to contest objectified notions of culture as an expression of a prior and stable essence
(Cánepa Koch 2002). However, as a new disciplinary formation, Performance Studies
has failed to self-reflexively critique the reification of ritual and the residual antitheatrical prejudice central to its own formation. In the 1960s and 1970s, established
humanistic disciplines began to take the notion of performance seriously as a challenge to
the dominance of the text. In large part conditioned by the thriving countercultures of the
time, this shift consisted of the articulation of more dynamic models that focused on the
agency of human performers. Folklorists focused less on the collection of oral “texts”
and began to pay attention to the contingencies of storytelling and folk dances as
performative acts (Bauman 1977). Linguists focused less on language as an abstract
system and more on the use of language as social practice. Sociologists, such as Erving
21
Goffman, began to examine social interactions as the performance of a series of theatrical
roles (Carlson 1996). Within this broader “performance turn,” anthropologist Victor
Turner and experimental theatre director Richard Schechner revived the stalled
conversation between anthropology and theatre, laying the groundwork for the formation
of the new discipline of Performance Studies.
Like the Cambridge School, Turner and Schechner found redemption from the
alienating aspects of modern society in ritual. Yet, they located ritual‟s redemptive
qualities in its capacity for transformation rather its return to primordial origins. The
theoretical basis for this revision is founded in Turner‟s extension of Van Gennep‟s
notion of “liminality,” as central to the efficacy of rites of passage. Turner argued that
the “liminal phase” of ritual is a state of being “betwixt and between” conventional social
categories, creating collective and individual feelings of “comunitas,” instrumental to
communal solidarity and bonding (Turner 1977, 1982). He further suggested that in
technologically complex societies, the experience of liminality has retained its affective
power within specific leisure activities, such as religion, sports, and the arts, activities he
referred to as “liminoid.” Turner claimed that while liminality within traditional rituals
often reconfirms social hierarchies, liminoid activities produced the possibility of
transgressing restrictive social norms, providing the basis for social change (Ibid.).
In the 1970s, Turner encountered a like-minded interlocutor in Richard
Schechner. In collaboration with Turner, Schechner formulated “liminality” as the
conceptual paradigm for his general theory of performance. He advocated for a “broadspectrum approach” to investigate the commonalities between theatre, dance, ritual,
22
spectacle, festival, games, sports, and the social roles of everyday life. In placing all of
these activities into the same framework, Schechner theorized the concept of “restored
behavior,” defining performance as a series of behaviors based on prior conventions or
models, but “always subject to revision” (Schechner 2003: 36). From this theoretical
basis, Schechner established the model for the emerging discipline of Performance
Studies. He suggested that cultural performances were not only the central object of
study for the new discipline but also a lens through which the researcher can analyze the
performative dimensions of all social behaviors (Schechner 2006).
The notion of “restored behavior” has important implications for my examination
of the scissors dance. Instead of locating its cultural significance in an unchanging
essence, a Performance Studies perspective allows us to reconceive of this and other
ritual genres as performative practices. Like all performative practices, rituals enact prior
conventions through repetition. Yet, each individual re-iteration is never quite the same
as the others. Thus, on one level, by using the term “staging” in the title of this study, I
recognize that ritual dances “are not timeless relics of prehistoric performances in cultural
deep freeze” (Conquergood 2007: 454). The heightened repetition of rituals makes them
appear to approach the fixed nature of the archive, yet their status as embodied practices
causes them to seem uniquely vulnerable to contamination and even death. However,
from a Performance Studies perspective, continuity and change are always intertwined
within the same enactment. Moreover, this framework allows for the agency of
individual and collective performers, evoking “the constitutive power of cultural
expression that is precisely what grants it political efficacy” (Cánepa Koch 2010). I seek
23
to examine the agency of the performers of the scissors dance instead of reproducing the
fetishized role of the ethnographer as “the keeper of the truth” (Buckland 1999).
Yet, I do not want to suggest that interpretive power of the scissors dance belongs
to the performers alone. I argue that ethnographic narratives, including my own, as well
as other textual and visual representations of the scissors dance can also be viewed as
performative iterations, implying their “capacity to constitute and transform what [they]
enunciate and express” (Cánepa Koch 2010). This study seeks to examine the ways in
that the scissors dancer operates as a stock figure who moves between embodied, textual,
and visual cultural productions where meaning flows in multiple directions. The
historical layering of these distinct representations has imbued the figure of the scissors
dancer with a significant amount of what Stephen Greenblatt calls “mimetic capital”:
A set of images, and image-making devices that are accumulated,
„banked,‟ as it were in books archives, collections, cultural storehouses,
until such time as these representations are called on to create other
representations. The images that matter, that merit the term capital, are
those that achieve reproductive power, maintaining and multiplying
themselves by transforming cultural contacts into novel and often
unexpected forms. (Greenblatt 1991: 6)
This mimetic capital has accumulated through an ongoing series of intercultural
encounters and scenarios of discovery that have positioned and repositioned “Western”
and “Andean” subject positions. I argue that through the accumulation of
representations, and the interaction between them, the scissors dance has gradually
acquired a mystical aura as an embodiment of the conventional ethnographic “trope of
the performing other” (Conquergood 2007: 501, Stone Peters 2009).
24
In one of the founding concepts of Performance Studies, Richard Schechner offers
a slightly more complex version of the ritual/spectacle dichotomy through what he calls
“the efficacy and entertainment braid” (Schechner 2003, 2006). He argues that all
performances combine elements of efficacy, promising “results,” whereas entertainment
offers only “fun.” According to Schechner, these categories operate as poles on a
continuum rather than a strict dichotomy. While he does not stigmatize entertainment
entirely, Schechner clearly privileges efficacy, replacing the binary with a categorical
opposition. Through its emphasis on “efficacy,” Performance Studies has sought to
overcome the suspect nature of theatre as it is associated with entertainment and
spectacle. The new discipline offered the possibility that theatre was not inherently a
fallen form, but could redeem itself as performance by drawing on the supposedly “real”
efficacy of ritual. In order to construct a space to theorize and create efficacious and
transgressive performance practices ritual became the redemptive conceptual paradigm
within Performance Studies, further stigmatizing “theatre” perceived as mere impotent
and inconsequential entertainment (Bottoms 2002). Despite the fact that its roots were
largely in theatrical practice and scholarship, Performance Studies increasingly
constructed theatre and theatre studies as its Other.
Performance Studies claims to study the universal phenomenon of performance,
but in actuality privileges a rather limited number of performances it considers liminal
and transgressive. Jon Mckenzie argues that the discipline‟s privileging of transgressive
liminality and efficacy has constructed a “liminal-norm” that “operates in any situation
where the value of liminal transgression or resistance itself becomes normative”
25
(Mckenzie 2001: 50). He further claims, “By focusing on liminal activities and
transgressive and resistant practices, or, more generally, upon socially efficacious
performance, we have overlooked the importance of other performances” (52). Mckenzie
formulates a broader genealogy of the concept of performance that links cultural
performance to notions of efficiency in organizational management, and effectiveness in
the production of new technologies (Ibid.). Drawing on Foucault and Lyotard, he argues
that performance constitutes “a new onto-historical formation of power and knowledge: a
fundamental change in our understanding of knowledge, agency, and history” (113). In a
similar vein, George Yudice (2002) posits performativity as a “new episteme” accounting
for the various crises we normally refer to as postmodernity with their foundations in the
recognition of “the constitutive force of signs” in a globalizing world. He argues
neoliberal globalization has redefined the notion of culture as a resource, mobilizing
difference for the purposes of economic development and the management of subjects,
including the self. In a critique of Judith Butler (199), Yudice suggests that “the failure
to repeat normative behavior as the constitutive force of subversive performativity may
actually enhance the system rather than threaten it” (Ibid. 33). As Yudice and Mckenzie
suggest, late capitalism has produced a “cosmopolitan alterity industry” that commodifies
performances of cultural resistance and difference for a global marketplace dominated by
spectacle (Huggans 2001: 30). According to Baz Kershaw, the triumph of neoliberalism
at the end of Cold War has created “performative societies” in which spectacles of
difference constitute the very notion of what it means to be human (1999, 2007).
26
I argue that it is imperative for theatre and performance studies to pay more
attention to how cultural performances, such as the scissors dance, circulate as
commodified signs in a global cultural economy that increasingly values difference. This
new role would entail a shift away from the celebration of the “efficacy” of transgressive
performance and the condemnation of normative entertainments, and towards the politics
of culture. As David Savran argues:
though it arose in part as a reaction against theater history, performance
studies similarly and too frequently isolates its objects of study without
considering how radically embedded they are in historical and social
process. Much work in both performance studies and theatre studies has a
curiously impoverished notion of the social. (2001: 93)
Savran recommends that theatre and performance studies adopt Raymond Williams‟s
classic definition of cultural studies as “a historical sociology of culture” implying
engagement with fields of cultural production, and forms of capital (2001, 2009).1
The notion of “staging” I employ in this study goes beyond the conceptualization
of the scissors dance as a performative practice in the sense of “restored behavior.” I
invoke the distinct yet related dimension of theatricality. As Postlewait and Davis note,
“the idea of theatricality is quite evocative in its descriptive power yet often open-ended
and even contradictory in its associative implications” (2003: 4). Nevertheless,
theatricality, as I use it, is quite specific in denoting the double-identity of the theatrical
performer who enacts an embodied mimesis as well as the complex interrelationships of
identification and erotic desire created between the presence of the virtuosic actor and the
spectators. These aspects of theatricality contribute to the suspicions expressed by the
anti-theatrical prejudice, particularly in its modernist iterations. Consider for instance,
27
the critiques of mass culture elaborated by the Frankfurt School that see the modern actor
as the root of a problematic relationship between theatrical spectacle and its audience
rooted in its links to ritual (Benjamin 2008: 24-27, Puchner 2002: 5).. This apparent
common sense betrays “ritual‟s identity as a back formation of the rise of the mass media
(with its overdose of theatricality) and generally, of the hyperreal and hypermaterialist
modern” (Stone Peters 2009: 67). Both theatre studies and performance studies have
reimagined themselves through innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship. Much of the
best work in both theatre studies and performance studies now orients itself toward a
critical historiography of “the global mass culture entertainment industry,” which
includes the most highbrow theatre and transgressive performance art (Stone Peters
2009). Rather than seeing entertainment as the opposite of efficacy, we can focus on how
all performances are efficacious as sites of negotiation between different forms of value
and agency, as well as the constitution of identity within global modernity.
1.7. Towards a Critical Genealogy of The Society of Spectacle
Already in 1967, Guy Debord argued that the (post)modern world, “presents itself
as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once directly lived has become
mere representation” (Debord 1994: 1). Like a number of postmodern theorists after him,
the founder of the Situationist International positioned postmodernity as a crisis of both
representation and authentic experience. Central to this narrative of decline is the
construction of a prior epoch in which experience was still unmediated, not yet colonized
by signification. In other words, the real was not yet the hyperreal, and images still
represented objects and products, before the age of simulation and simulacra, when the
28
image has become the original for which the product or practice stands (Baudrillard 1984,
Zizek 1991). However, I contend that this more authentic period is not outside of The
Society of Spectacle but constitutive of its historical formation.
Historians, anthropologists, and folklorists have realized for decades that the
longing for authenticity is fundamental to the experience of modernity (Hobsbawm
Ranger 1983, Handler 1988, Kirshenblatt Gimblett 1998, Bendix 1997). In a moment of
scholarly reflexivity, interdisciplinary studies have resulted in a number of useful
concepts in relation to the modernist longing for authenticity. From history, Hobsbawm
and Ranger famously argued that “tradition” is an invented construct useful for nationbuilding and the constitution of modern identities (1983). Benedict Anderson suggested
that the nation is an “imagined community” articulated through the rituals and symbols of
print capitalism that bind people with no face-to-face contact together as part of the same
community (1991). From anthropology, Trouillot argues that the “savage” is a “slot” that
the bodies of the other willfully or unwillfully inhabit (1994). From Folklore Studies,
Kirshenblatt Gimblett has characterized the notion of heritage as “a second life” and “a
value-added industry” circulating in a national or global marketplace (1998). Other
folklorists have elaborated on this process by conceptualizing “folklorization,” in which
cultural practices and people classified as “folk” have acquired value as reserves of
authenticity, enabling marginalized groups to represent themselves strategically in
broader public spheres (Rowe and Schelling 1991, Guss 2000, Mendoza 2000, 2007,
Borland 2006). These studies suggest that all evocations of authenticity contain a
29
paradoxical theatricality that is not only constructed and staged, but also constitutive of
real effects and affective identifications in the modern world.2
Thus, I argue that the notion of authenticity enacts a double-performative, “an
illocution that effaces itself as a rhetorical act” (Shepard and Wallis 2003: 106). As
Jonathan Culler argues:
To be truly satisfying the sight needs to be certified, marked as authentic.
[. . .] The paradox, the dilemma of authenticity is that to be experienced as
authentic it must be marked as authentic, but when it is marked as
authentic it is mediated, a sign of itself, and hence lacks the authenticity of
what is truly unspoiled, untouched by mediating cultural codes. (Culler
1988: 164)
The desire for authenticity creates demand for what Joseph Roach calls “synthetic
experience,” defined by “the human need to not only experience life directly but also
vicariously” (Roach 2007: 24). The marking of a particular site or cultural practice as
authentic is the first stage in the process of commodification, which leads to a renewal of
the desire for authenticity. During the era of late capitalism, “tradition,” “heritage,”
“folklore,” as the most common purveyors of authenticity, are no longer mediated by the
nation-state but increasingly circulate as commodified products in the global mass culture
entertainment industry. Historicizing these processes provides an avenue for
reconceptualizing the mutually constitutive relationships between modernity and
postmodernity, classic capitalism and late capitalism, and finally nationalism and postnationalism, not as ruptures but gradual and uneven processes that produce and are
produced by the reconfiguration of global capitalism.
Despite his nostalgic and apocalyptic perspective, Debord offers a basic
suggestion for a methodological framework, perhaps unwittingly, for the historicization
30
of the society of spectacle through his very definition of spectacle. He argues, “spectacle
is not a collection of images [. . .] rather, it is a social relationship between people that is
mediated by images” (1994: 4). Thus, the task for the research is to examine the various
social relationships produced through the elaboration of spectacle. Theatre scholar SukYoung Kim recently redefined performance as “a way of situating commodities in a
particular moment of exchange,” suggesting that performance studies could focus its
attention on analyzing the cultural biographies of specific performed commodities (Kim
2009, Appadurai 1986). My study performs a cultural biography of the scissors dance,
which I view as a commodified stock character operating in a wide variety of forms of
cultural production. However, neither the spectacular nature of the dance nor its
commodification are entirely new. Even in rural festivities of the past, the dancers were
contracted professionals who enacted a highly theatrical stock character for the
entertainment of clearly defined spectators. I am less interested in delimiting a definitive
before and after when authentic ritual gave way to commodified spectacle. Rather I trace
the more subtle shifts in the cultural significance of this particular cultural form.
The aura of the scissors dance in both traditional and modern performance
contexts, invites an imaginary identification between the performers and spectators, one
of the hallmarks of theatrical spectacle. Debord suggests that spectacle is an “instrument
of unification” (1994: 3):
The agent of the spectacle placed on stage as the star is the opposite of the
individual, the enemy of the individual in himself as well as in others.
Passing into the spectacle as a model for identification, the agent
renounces all autonomous qualities in order to identify himself with the
general law of obedience to the course of things. (1994: 61)
31
Despite Debord‟s anti-theatricalism, he points to the power of spectacle to create models
for identification. Joseph Roach refers to this unique power of performers as a particular
form of surrogation created through what he calls “performed effigies- those fabricated
by human bodies and the associations they evoke” that “provide communities with a
method of perpetuating themselves through specially nominated mediums or surrogates:
among them actors, dancers, priests, street maskers, statesman, celebrities, freaks,
children, and especially by virtue of an intense but unsurprising paradox, corpses” (Roach
1996: 36). I suggest that the scissors dance has always been emblematic surrogate effigy
for the specific Andean communities that practiced it. However, the relationship between
the figure of the scissors dance and Andean notions of the self has transformed
considerably in recent decades from an “auratic” and highly seductive embodiment of an
infernal Other to a model for the articulation of the modern indigenous self within the
performative economy of a new Peru.
This process began with “folklorization” as mid-twentieth century Andeanist
ethnographers, particularly José María Arguedas, identified the dance as an emblem of
authentic Andean identity. Christopher Balme notes, that “metonymic theatricality”
arises in “the situation where performances become almost synonymous with indigenous
people, where a particular dance or ritual comes to have the metonymic gesture of
standing in for the whole of their respective cultures” (2009: 96-97). However, these
reinventions of indigenous cultural practices did not occur through the impositions of
outside intellectuals alone. Contemporary scissors dance performers have gradually
incorporated themselves into Andeanist imaginaries through urban migration and staged
32
folklore presentations, and they now perceive the stock character they inhabit as an
external embodiment of a core indigenous self. For this reason, I argue that the new Peru
is not entirely instrumental to nationalist hegemony, or later the governmentality of
neoliberal multiculturalism. Urbanizing migrants have fashioned an alternative public
sphere that increasingly contests exclusive articulations of the nation by the Creole
aristocracy. As the imaginary of a new Peru has shifted from an oppositional vision of
the national popular to the “performative society” of neoliberal globalization, it has
acquired a fragile hegemony that constitutes Andean subjects as citizens in ways they
rarely experienced before (Kershaw 1999, 2007).
However, the neoliberal governmentality produced through multicultural
spectacles of recognition regulates the experience and enactment of new forms of
participation in the national community. The complexities and contradictions of this still
emerging situation can best be characterized by the notion of “public culture,” as defined
by Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge. They suggest that contemporary public
culture is “a zone of debate” and a “conflicted cosmopolitanism” that positions formerly
excluded actors as they become protagonists in the remaking of national formations
(1995: 5). Appadurai later added that this process is “neither purely emancipatory nor
entirely disciplined but is a space of contestation in which individuals and groups seek to
annex the global into their own practices of the modern” (1996: 4). In the new Peru, a
dynamic performative economy of spectacle increasingly defines the contours of an
emerging public culture rooted in the fragile hegemony produced by neoliberal
multiculturalism. This performative economy enables marginalized actors, such as
33
scissors dance practitioners, to participate as performers on national and international
stages. Scissors dance performers constitute and model new forms of citizenship through
their relationship to their audiences. These new cosmopolitan forms of indigenous
identity and citizenship articulate themselves within hegemonic formations, but cannot be
entirely contained or regulated by dominant elites, whether traditional or emergent.
1.9 Chapter Overview
In Chapter two, I critically examine conventional ethnographic narratives about
the origins, meaning, and function of the scissors dance. These narratives construct the
dance as emblematic of what Thomas Abercrombie calls “the idols behind altars
resistance paradigm” (1998: 22). I contend that suggestions of Pre-Columbian shamanic
origins misconstrue complex forms of surrogation by which Andean communities
reconfigured their religious and performance cultures during the seventeenth century in
the aftermath of forced resettlement into townships (reducción), and the repressive
extirpations of idolatry. This form of popular performance emerged along with a
dynamic eighteenth century Andean-Catholic interculture, whereby Andean communities
refashioned European festive practices for their own cultural expressions. Far from
passively retained memories of shamanic rituals, scissors dancers were specialists
delegated by Andean communities as surrogates in order to externalize elements of their
own past cultural repertoires. Rather than representing an indigenous self, these
performance specialists embodied an infernal Other, temporarily allowing Andean
communities to overcome their ambivalence towards and appropriate the powers of, dark
magical forces associated with their stigmatized religious past. The theatricality of the
34
dance was never oppositional to the dance‟s ritual efficacy, but rather always constitutive
of it in dynamic ways.
In chapter three, I analyze and contextualize the early archival sources of the
scissors dance produced during the “long nineteenth century” (1780-1930). In this
period, an already hybrid colonial Andean culture encountered new forms of cultural
contact at a time of postcolonial nationmaking and the rapid expansion of transatlantic
capitalism. I situate the stock character of the scissors dancer, already an Andeanized
version of the trope of the performing Other, within the emerging popular ethnographic
imagination of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Western observers inscribed
the dance into an archive of prohibitions and stigmatizing discourses, travel narratives,
costumbrista visual culture, and early ethnographic surveys which contributed to
indigenista knowledge production. Although these sources tend to frame the dance using
“trope of the performing primitive,” they also demonstrate that the repertoires of this still
emerging performance practice were heterogeneous, mobile, multi-valent, historically
contingent, and already circulating in commodified forms of cultural production (Stone
Peters 2009). In contrast to later Andeanist narratives, they reveal the rich and
contradictory hybridity and intercultural exchange that characterized the “contact zones”
of late colonial and postcolonial Andean Peru (Pratt 1992).
In chapter four, I interrogate the staging of the scissors dance by mid-twentieth
century Peruvian intellectual José María Arguedas, as a constitutive element of his public
persona as a “culture hero” of the redemption of Quechua culture. Throughout his career,
Arguedas constantly evoked the dance in his literary and anthropological texts, staged
35
folklore performances, and in a highly symbolic performance at his own funeral. The
figure of the scissors dance was central to Arguedas‟s highly-calibrated performance of
self, which called forth a counterhegemonic and hybrid modern Quechua subjectivity. In
his early work, the scissors dance embodied a magical and auratic Other, just outside of
the grasp of Arguedas‟s intellectual understanding. Thus, it represented the tensions
between intimacy with, desire for, and distance to Quechua knowledge that characterized
his early public persona. By the 1960s, the author increasingly viewed the scissors dance
as a model for his own changing formation of self, and a metaphor for his own
intellectual, artistic, and cultural project. Through the complex interactions between his
literary work and his death by suicide in 1969, the dance became forever tied to the
celebrated author‟s heroic persona as canonized martyr of the “new Peru.” At his funeral,
scissors dance practitioners selected by Arguedas himself performed the “agonia,” the
dance sequence that enacts the death of a legendary scissors dancer and his resurrection
through the body of his surrogate pupil. Arguedas unforgettably dramatized this
sequence as a felicitous transfer of ancestral knowledge from old to young and traditional
to modern in “La Agonia de Rasu Niti” (1962), his most famous short story. He
refashioned the scissors dance as a primary figure of a new national dramaturgy in a
symbolic performance of ritual purification that enacted a “utopian performative,”
temporarily actualizing his vision for a “new Peru” (Dolan 2005).
In chapter five, I analyze the dramatic deterritorialization of the scissors dance
from the death of Arguedas until the end of the internal war (1980-1992) that devastated
the highland region. First, the populist military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado
36
(1968-1975) followed Arguedas‟s lead in fashioning the dance as a charismatic emblem
of a renovated national-popular repertoire. During his government, a second even more
massive wave of urban Andean migration relocated many scissors dance performers and
their audiences from the highlands to Lima. Second wave migrants established urban
communities of scissors dance performance in the newly-emergent conos that surrounded
the traditional districts of metropolitan Lima. By the mid-1970s, a new generation of
performers formed in the urban space began to radically reinvent the musical and
choreographic repertoires of the scissors dance according to cosmopolitan aesthetics
borrowed from a wide variety of sources, especially urban and global popular youth
cultures. This first generation of genuinely urbanized performers became particularly
important during the 1980s when massive political violence in the highlands forced a
near total deterritorialization of the populations who practiced the scissors dance from the
highlands to Lima and other urban areas. However, the practitioners of the dance and
their migrant Andean publics did not remain passive victims of the ruptures produced by
violence and rapid urbanization. Rather, they sought new spaces of recognition in urban
spectacles and the folkloric stage and refashioned the dance as a cultural form that
expressed the experiences of urban poverty and violent dislocation in which they lived.
In chapter six, I interrogate the urban and transnational renaissance of the scissors
dance in what Terence Turner calls “the contemporary global culturalist conjuncture”
(1999). After the political violence in the highlands subsided in 1992 and 1993, local
development projects promoted the scissors dance as an emblem of the ethnic cultures of
the effected regions. Cosmopolitan performers increasingly became valued commodities
37
on the global folkloric stage as an embodiment of idealized indigeneity. With the
election of Andean-born economist Alejandro Toledo to the presidency, Peru became an
exemplary case of what Charles Hale calls “neoliberal multiculturalism” (2002, 2006).
The Toledo administration empowered state promotion agencies to use sophisticated
media to reconstruct Peru as a brand-identity, selecting the scissors dance as one of the
most visible icons of Peru‟s “millennial” cultural diversity.
In chapter seven I argue that contemporary scissors dance performers have
developed sophisticated strategies that utilize the “double-agency” of the theatrical
performer to achieve recognition for cosmopolitan indigenous identities and forms of
citizenship within the performative economy of a new Peru. In quite different ways, the
leading performers exchange their highly visible roles as theatrical performers who enact
idealized indigeneity on the global stage for domestic cultural capital in order to achieve
“the myth of the triumphant cholo or provinciano” (Alfaro 2005). Yet, this theatrical role
is not merely an instrumental fiction, but rather an idealized model that they embody
through repetitive enactment, constituting a millennial “essence” dwelling inside the
cosmopolitan indigenous self.
38
Chapter 2
The Dancer from an Other Hell:
A Genealogy of the Scissors Dance as Andean Sorcerer (1532-1780)
2.1.
Introduction
The scissors-danzak‟ came from hell, according to the pious women and
the Indians themselves; he came to dazzle us with his leaps and his
costume full of mirrors. Clicking his steel shears, he would walk across a
rope stretched between the church tower and the trees in the plaza. He
came as a messenger from another hell, one different from that described
by the priests when they were impassioned and angry. – José María
Arguedas, Deep Rivers (1978 [1958])1
This passage from canonical Peruvian author José María Arguedas is one of the
most concise and powerful descriptions of the mystique of the figure of the Peruvian
scissors dancer. Arguedas portrays this character as not quite human. He possesses an
extraordinary theatrical virtuosity with the power to transfix both indigenous and nonindigenous spectators with the display of extraordinary physical and magical abilities.
Most fascinating of all is the ambiguity of the provenance of this mysterious performer.
What and where is this other hell the dancer comes from? What kind of message does he
transmit from this other world and to whom? What is the relationship between this other
hell and the one described by the priests?
Recent Andeanist ethnographers writing about the scissors dance have primarily
attempted to explain away the magnetic ambiguity of the figure he describes. They have
progressively developed theories of how the dance originated in Pre-Columbian shamanic
rituals. They assert that charismatic shamanic preachers performed either the scissors
39
dance or an earlier related form during the Taki Onqoy (dancing sickness). Perhaps the
“other” hell of which Arguedas speaks is not hell at all but the very essence of precolonial Andean spirituality, stigmatized by Catholic missionaries. These ethnographers
celebrate the scissors dance as an icon of Andean cultural resistance according to the
theory Thomas Abercrombie calls “the idols behind alters resistance paradigm”
(Abercrombie 1998: 23).2 Such perspectives unwittingly reinscribe the dominance of
Western epistemologies by privileging the interpretation of the researcher over that of the
native informant, whose testimony becomes the raw material for the examination of
“deep structure.” Ethnographers locate a reified notion of resistance not in the actions of
particular cultural agents but in the persistence of culture as an essence.
These studies have discovered important resemblances between the scissors dance
and Pre-Columbian ritual practices. Nevertheless, they tend to gloss over a number of
fascinating contradictions and ambiguities that Arguedas highlights rather than explains.
They fail to account for the fact that according to Arguedas, not only pious Christian
women but also indigenous Andeans themselves perceive the scissors dancer as a
diabolic outsider figure. Recent research on Andean dance has revealed that nearly all
forms of Andean performance embedded within Catholic festivities feature the mimetic
enactment of an often dangerous and threatening “other” (Poole 1990; Cánepa Koch
1998, Mendoza 2000). Such scholars argue that Andean dancers mimetically embody the
“other” in order to appropriate its power for use by the community at large. Andean
performers become “surrogate effigies,” reenacting of the cultural memory of the
community‟s relationship with external forces. As Joseph Roach argues, “performers are
40
routinely pressed into service as effigies, their bodies alternatively adored and despised
but always offered upon the altar of surrogacy” (1996: 40). In the case of the scissors
dancer, the specialized virtuosity of the performers heightens this effect. Even if we
accept that the dance originated in Pre-Columbian rituals, we might pause before glossing
over diabolic pacts in search of pure Andean spirituality.
Arguedas and other contemporaneous commentators noted that the costumes,
music, and choreography of the scissors dance are of European origin, later creatively
combined into indigenous performances for mostly indigenous audiences (Castro Pozo
1924, Bustamante 1943, Jimenez Borja 1951, Arguedas 1978 [1953, 1958], Holzmann
1966, Cruz Fierro 1981). Only after the peak of Andeanism in the 1970s did
ethnographers began to theorize that the scissors dance originated in Pre-Columbian
rituals as an intimate relationship developed between Andeanist ethnohistory and
ethnographic field studies. Andean ethnohistorians developed a missionary zeal,
searching colonial documents for traces of authentic pre-colonial Andean religion and
culture and field ethnographers looked for resistant mentalities within contemporary
Andean culture. Both repeatedly neglected the interim period of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, privileging a vision of lo andino as a pure ahistorical essence
outside of historical transformation (Thurner 1997, Cahill 2002). More recent historical
studies reveal that Andean communities actively participated in the imagining of a
postcolonial nation and transformed their culture through complex intercultural dialogue
with outside forces. I suggest that the embodied practices that formed the scissors dance
began to emerge in the dynamic Andean-Catholic interculture of the eighteenth century
41
through the creative bricolage of mostly European performance practices.
I also argue that the parallels between the figure of the scissors dancer and
precolonial Andean ritual specialists are far from insignificant. Specialized Andean
performers creatively combined the hybrid cultural forms as a means to reenact a
historical memory of a highly ambivalent stock character of the Andean past. They
became surrogates who enabled Andean communities to access the power of
subterranean infernal forces. In this chapter, I perform what Roach calls a “performance
genealogy” of this stock figure theatrically embodied by the scissors dancer. That is, I
examine the “historical transmission and dissemination of cultural practices through
collective representations” paying particular attention to how “discontinuities interrupt
the succession of surrogates” (1996: 25). The figure of the scissors dancer was far from a
passively retained memory of pre-colonial rituals, but rather embodied an imaginative
engagement with the ambivalence of Andean colonial memory. The theatrical virtuosity,
liminality, and otherness of the scissors dance were necessary to its ritual efficacy.
2.2. Idols Behind Altars
In a recent article, Peruvian anthropologist Ranulfo Cavero Carrasco (2008)
describes a theatrical reenactment of the Taki Onqoy staged in the community of
Huancaray in Apurimac. Over 400 professors and students of a local school participated
in the performance as a celebration of a heroic event of regional history in front of
thousands of mostly local spectators. The performance reimagined the Taki Onqoy in a
utopian fashion as a successful anticolonial resistance movement, in which the enactment
of “the millenary and apocalyptic scissors dance [. . .] symbolized the end of Spanish
42
military aggression and religious imposition” (Ibid. 2). To the author of the brief article,
this reenactment of the Taki Onqoy “was an intense bath of nationalism and
Peruvianness” that “condensed [. . .] many years of the tragic and bloody but also hopeful
history of Peru” (Ibid.). In this construction, the cultural resistance of Andean
indigeneity stands in for the potential for national liberation. Local schoolteachers based
the libretto partially on Cavero Carrasco‟s own book Los Dioses Vencidos (2001),
creating a mutually constitutive relationship between the work of the anthropologist and
the cultural object upon which he fixes his gaze. However, Cavero Carrasco interprets
the event as an example of the “millenary consciousness” of the people of the southern
Andes. The protagonism of anthropology and educational institutions in the reenactment
would seem to belie such primordialist interpretations. I suggest that such essentialist
discourses fail to explain the complexities of the Andean past from a historical
perspective. In order for the stock character of the scissors dancer to theatrically
represent a resistant authenticity, however, it must refer back to a pure origin that
conceals the hybridity of the object itself. Romantic discourses tend to “repeat the idols
behind altars, or baptized but not evangelized rhetoric of colonial administrators and
extirpators” and imagine colonized Andeans and the colonizing Spanish as homogenous
blocs diametrically opposed to each other in an epic struggle (Abercrombie 1998: xx).
The adaptation of the “idols behind altars” paradigm, to the scissors dance
occurred gradually within the discourses of Andeanist ethnographers between the 1970s
and 1990s. For example, the work of Lucy Nuñez Rebaza (1985, 1990), argues that after
the conquest “the population clandestinely venerated the same gods, but with the
43
dominion of the devil the schema changed. The evangelization had been such that in
some places it achieved favorable results, but in other places of the Andean region the
populace continued to unconsciously invert the schema” (Nuñez Rebaza 1990: 36). She
suggests that the pact with the devil is in reality a continuation of the worship of native
ancestral deities, sidestepping the interpretations of her own informants by arguing that
resistance is an unconscious mental process accessible only to the anthropologist. This
author was one of the first to theorize an inheritance between the Taki Onqoy and the
contemporary scissors dance, drawing on Arguedas‟s notion of the Chanka region as a
particular culture-area with a certain cultural unity going back to the Pre-Inca Wari
Empire and the later Chanka Confederacy (Arguedas 1978 [1958]). Later ethnographers
have uncritically accepted these notions and in the process have in many cases
contributed to transformations in how the performers think about their own practice.
The aforementioned Ranulfo Cavero Carrasco wrote the most assertions that the
scissors dance originated in Pre-Columbian shamanic rituals, inheriting the ideology of
the Taki Onqoy (2001).3 He hypothesizes that “these dancers probably originated in the
Pre-Inca epoch, within the ethnicities of the Hatun Soras, Rukanas, and Angaraes,
fulfilling the role of priests and shamans” (Ibid. 271). He asserts that despite historical
transformations the dance maintains its “Andean essence linked to the traditional
cosmovision and religion” (Ibid). Cavero Carrasco classifies scissors dancers as itinerant
religious specialists comparable to Andean curanderos (healers), who interpret the
“millenary consciousness” of the contemporary Andean people from the Chanka region
(Ibid. 286). He notes that the scissors dancer appears to synthesize the powers of diverse
44
contemporary and ancient Andean religious specialists. However, one of the dancers he
interviewed responded, “We know a lot about the earth in order to heal, but we are not
healers. The healers are others” (289). Cavero Carrasco never examines the distinction
the dancer makes between Andean healers and scissors dancers, who at times appear to
borrow some of the healer‟s powers. I suggest that these ambiguities allude to the
mimetic faculties of the figure of the scissors dancer, embodied by theatrical performers
who appropriate the powers of Andean ritual specialists.
2.3. The Dance of the House of the Devil
Many ethnographic studies have made it clear that the scissors dance is a name
imposed on Andean performance practices by outside observers. The term scissor dance
derives from a particular aesthetic element, a musical instrument, which the performers
utilize in the practice of the dance. In contrast, all of the names previously used by local
communities refer to a particular character type the dance embodies within a larger
festival dramaturgy. These include: Tusuq Laiqa (Dance of the Sorcerer), Tusuy Supay
(Dance of the Devil), pacha-angeles (earth-angels), Danza del Brujo Huamanguino
(Dance of the Witch from Huamanga), Villanos (Villains), Saqra (Feline Devil), Machay
Wasipi Tusuq (Dance of the Cave House), and most commonly Supaypa Wasin Tusuq
(Dance of the House of the Devil) (Blanco [1834] 1974, Mac-lean 1942, Cruz Fierro
1982, Barrionuevo 1988, Nuñez Rebaza 1990, Arce Sotelo 2004). This character type
bears some relation to Andean-Catholic conceptions of the devil, hell and sorcerers who
engage in diabolic pacts. The conceptions are genealogically linked to ancient Andean
mortuary rituals, and the religious specialists who conducted them. Nevertheless,
45
previous Andean ethnographers have leapt too quickly from notions of the diabolic to
assertions of pre-colonial survivals.4 I argue only by taking these infernal concepts
seriously can we begin to see the intercultural richness of the genealogical relationships
between the figure of the scissors dancer and pre-colonial Andean ritual specialists.
The most common Quechua name for the scissors dance is supaypa wasin tusuq
or the dance of the house of the devil. Supay Wasi (The Devil‟s house) refers to specific
mountain caves that act as entrances to uku pacha, the interior world of Andean
cosmology. While scholars debate whether the concepts of supay wasi and uku pacha
preexisted the Spanish invasion, it is clear that Andeans have assimilated them to
Christian notions of hell (Gose 2008, Millones 2010). Uku Pacha is a dark world
populated by malignant spirits associated with the devil and a number of repressed
human deeds such as abortion and incest. According to Gerald Taylor (1980), Catholic
missionaries identified the Andean notion of supay with the Christian devil during the
initial years of the Conquest and a purely Andean significance of the figure of supay is
notoriously difficult to identify.5 Colonial chroniclers asserted that supay referred to a
fallen angel who lives inside the earth, a reference that recalls not only the biblical story
of Lucifer but also Christian explanations of pagan earth deities among European peasant
cultures.6 Bartolome Alvarez he suggested that supay refers to the spiritual force that
emanated from revered ancestors whose bodies were mummified and buried with
material riches and human servants in specialized cave-tombs (Alvarez [1586] 1998:
155). A series of contemporary myths collected across the Andean region associate these
cave-tombs with a host of malignant gentiles, condemned people, and insatiable incest
46
demons from a prior epoch (Marzal 1985, Millones and Tomoeda 1998, Salazer Soler
1997, 2006, Gose 2008, Millones 2010).7 Inside these ancient cave-tombs, scissors
dancers legendarily engage in pacts with devils, sirens, and other spirits of the uku pacha.
The cave-tombs of mummified gentiles are intimately linked to the core elements
of Pre-Columbian Andean religion and politics (Isbell 1997, Abercrombie 1998, Gose
2008). Andean ayllus, localized ancestor-worshipping polities, defined themselves as
descending from a founding ancestor, embodied in the present by a hereditary Curaca, or
divine king. Every ayllu worshipped a series of huacas, physical objects that they
perceived as embodiments of the founding ancestor. When the Curaca died, particularly
their mummified remains became particularly vital huacas that linked the ancient past of
the founding ancestors to the contemporary life of the community. Andean communities
frequently engaged in ethnic rivalries and conquests of neighboring groups.8 The
conquered and conquerors typically assimilated each other in terms of hierarchical
frameworks of ancestry. The accommodationist strategies of the colonized to interpellate
invaders as ancestors were not entirely capitulative, as conventions of reciprocity
required colonizers to provide for the well-being of the colonized.9 Peter Gose (2008)
has recently argued convincingly that Andean communities perceived and experienced
the initial years of Spanish imperialism within these Andean frameworks. By looking to
Spanish invaders as ancestral authorities they recast Conquest as an inter-ethnic
alliance.10 Appropriating the imperial strategies of the Incas, the Spanish ruled most
Andean subjects indirectly, and Andean Curacas retained their power over their subjects
until well into the eighteenth century. The colonizers utilized the Curaca elite as
47
mediators in order to collect tribute taxes and mandatory labor from indigenous
commoners. Most Andeans probably experienced the initial decades of Conquest as
more continuous and less traumatic than is commonly assumed.11 Far more devastating
than the actions of the invaders were the outbreaks of diseases that immediately began to
reduce the demographic strength of Andean societies (Mumford 1998, Gose 2008).
Common Andean subjects had far less contact with Spanish political authorities
than they did with Catholic evangelizers in these early years of the Viceroyalty of Peru.
The mendicant orders, particularly Franciscans and Dominicans, undertook most of the
early missionary efforts in the Andes. Both of these orders took a relatively tolerant
approach to native religion, exemplified by the writings of Bartolome de las Casas,
viewing indigenous Andeans as ignorant rather than heretical (MacCormack 1991).
Many even saw parallels between native religion and Christianity that they exploited to
facilitate religious teaching. However, the accomodationist strategies of Andean subjects
created numerous contradictions in the evangelizing process. Missionaries found it
relatively easy to convert Andean subjects, but more difficult to convince them that
Catholicism was mutually exclusive to native religious cults. Baptized indigenous
converts perceived their relationship with Catholic evangelizers as similar to their
relationship with their own religious specialists, further challenging oppositions between
indigenous and Christian religious frameworks Spanish missionaries (Mills 1997, Gose
2008).12 These contradictions contributed to a more hard-line stance by lay Catholic
clerics in the late sixteenth century who contested the authority of the mendicant orders.13
48
2.4. Andean Religious Specialists and the Performance of Memory
Anthropologists are correct in pointing out significant parallels between
contemporary scissors dancers and Pre-Inca religious specialists. However, I argue the
relationship between ancient ritual specialists and contemporary scissors dancers
constitutes a complex genealogy of transformation rather than being a matter of direct
decent. Cavero Carrasco‟s assertion that scissors dancers are itinerant religious
specialists who synthesize the functions of diverse types of ancient healers is a useful
point of departure for an examination of this genealogy. It is also necessary to keep in
mind that the available sources on pre-colonial Andean religion are fragmentary and
inflected by the antagonistic interests of their producers. These sources recount religious
practices that may have undergone significant changes in between initial colonial
encounters and the time of their production. Nevertheless, we can provisionally examine
the recycling of certain elements from pre-colonial Andean religious framework in the
early to mid-colonial periods. In this section, I focus on the parallels between what the
sources are able to tell us about Andean priests and specialized mimetic.
Pre-Columbian priests and religious specialists were integral parts of highly
mobile networks of interconnected ritual obligations that mediated between the living and
the dead (Mills 1997: 95, 106).14 Local specialists often held a great deal of charismatic
authority within Andean communities. They communicated with ancestral forces using
diverse methods from spirit possession to mimetic reenactment. Many religious
specialists were also guardians of specialized techniques of collective memory, keeping
calendars and reenacting mythical genealogies that linked founding ancestors to the
49
current Curacas.15 The role of the huaca ministers changed greatly during the Inca
Empire. Inca rulers suppressed numerous rebellions and riots staged by localized
religious specialists in protest of the imposition of the imperial cult of the sun
(Rostworowski 1999: 157).16 In the initial decades of Spanish rule their power often
increased due to the removal of the Inca state, even though Catholic missionaries targeted
them for persecution from the start. As keepers of ancestral memory in societies without
writing, most priestly vocations utilized performance in order to mediate between the
living and the dead. Oracles entered ecstatic states of spirit possession, becoming
mediums for the embodiment of the huacas. Other priestly offices specialized in
performing taquis, a form of sung dance that praised ancestral deities and reenacted
complex genealogies that linked ancient mythic characters with the present ayllu
(Beyersdorff 2008, Estenssoro 2003, Gose 2008). Others excelled at mimetic dances and
entertainments that chroniclers routinely interpreted as rudimentary forms of native
theatre.17 Other masked dancers reenacted the huacas in ritual purification ceremonies
staying up all night and dancing for five days or more (Beyersdorff 2008, Taylor 2004).18
The most detailed source on Andean religious specialists is The Huarochiri
Manuscript compiled in 1608 by Francisco de Avila, an early extirpator of idolatries
(Salomon and Urioste 1991). This text recounts the mythic origins of several ayllus in
the vicinity of Huarochiri in the highlands immediately east of Lima as told by native
religious specialists to the colonial religious inspector.19 The manuscript describes two
types of religious specialists that observe the cult of the huaca Paria Caca in distinct
ways. The yanca priest was an inherited post with a great deal of local prestige and
50
power (Salomon and Urioste 1991: 18). Priests performed ocular possession rituals in
which Paria Caca spoke to them, were guardians of calendrical knowledge, and directed
when plantings and harvestings should be conducted. In addition to the high yanca
priest, Paria Caca ordained that specialized performers, known as huacsa or huacasa,
should dance in his honor three times a year. These performers impersonated important
huacas and reenacted their myths (Ibid). Both of these religious specialists demonstrate
certain parallels with the contemporary scissors dance. The yanca engaged in spirit
possession and was a hereditary office, while scissors dancer imitates the entrance of a
deity into the body of a shamanic medium. Like the yanca, the transmission of the
scissors dance is hereditary, passing mostly from father to son in particular families. The
huacsas were specially trained surrogates who performed purification rituals for five days
without interruption (Salomon and Urioste 1991, 70). Like the scissors dancer, their
choreographic repertoires included imitations of animals and common scenes of agrarian
life. Moreover, the huacsas sometimes performed to the point of extreme physical
exhaustion and even death, after which they were immediately replaced by small children
who trained as their apprentices. A corollary performance exists within the scissors
dance tradition: the agonia mimetically reenacts the death scene of Rasu Ñiti, a legendary
scissors dancer of the past. Huacsas performed certain rituals before dancing in
festivities and played a particularly important role in annual ceremonies celebrating the
ritual cleaning of agricultural aqueducts much like contemporary scissors dancers. These
parallels do not necessarily suggest that the scissors dance originated in Pre-Columbian
51
shamanic rituals, but does appear to reenact a memory of such religious specialists
filtered through the historical experience of the Taki Onqoy to which I now turn.
2.5.
Taki Onqoy
Prior to 1964, all that Peruvian/ist historians knew about the Taki Onqoy came
from a few paragraphs in a single colonial chronicle by Cristobal Molina. Molina wrote,
“It was ten years ago [. . .] that there was a disaffection amongst these Indians [. . .] Most
of them had fallen into the greatest apostasies separating themselves from the Catholic
faith that they had received and returning to the idolatry that they had committed in the
time of their infidelity” (Molina 2007: 129). A well-coordinated network of traveling
preachers associated with the rebel Inca state, which retained a fortress in Vilcabamba in
the jungle near Cuzco, spread a radical separatist ideology from the movement‟s center in
Huamanga all the way to Cuzco, La Paz, and even Lima. These itinerant religious
specialists preached that the regional huacas destroyed by Spanish missionaries had come
back to life. The Huacas were collecting two great armies preparing for an upcoming
battle with the Christian God. The Taki Onqoy preachers implored native Andeans to
reject hybridizing accomodations with Catholicism and Spanish colonial culture claiming
those who did not would suffer the vengeance of the huacas after their upcoming victory.
Molina claimed that the Taki Onqoy lasted seven years, from 1564 to 1571, ending with
the repressive efforts of colonial evangelizers (Molina 2007: 127-132, Mumford 1998).
Until the 1960s, historians gave only passing attention to the events described by
Molina. In 1964, anthropologist Luis Millones discovered new documents that recount
the Taki Onqoy in more detail in the Archivo de las Indias in Seville (Millones 2007).20
52
These documents were formal testimonies of the career of Cristobal de Albornoz, an
ambitious ecclestiastical inspector and early extirpator of idolatries.21 Albornoz claimed
his campaign arrested over 8,000 native adherents of the idolatrous movement. One of
the principal dogmatists was a Spanish-speaking Curaca named Juan Chocne. He
travelled in a group comprised of the movement‟s highest-ranking preachers, including
another man and a woman.22 In 1967, the French Andeanist scholar Pierre Duviols
discovered a later document in the Archivo de las Indias, also written by Cristobal
Albornoz.23 Albornoz claimed that the main instigators of the Taki Onqoy were
intimately linked to the sorcerers who surrounded the rebel Inca camp in Vilcabamba.
They travelled to distant parts of the former Inca Empire in co-opt local huaca priests.
From this perspective, the Taki Onqoy attempted to undo Spanish colonialism and to
reinstate the social controls the Inca state exercised over local religious specialists
(Urbano and Duviols 1990: 163-195, Mumford 1998: 154-155, Gose 2008: 114).
These three sources have stimulated an extraordinary amount of scholarly interest
in the Taki Onqoy over the past several decades. The earliest studies celebrated the
movement within a nationalist framework as an act of cultural resistance to Spanish
colonialism. They followed both Molina and Albornoz‟s “Instruccion” in linking the
religious cult with the military insurrections of the rebel Inca state in Vilcabamba
(Millones 1964, 1973, Zuidema 1965, Duviols 1971). In the 1970s a second group also
celebrated the movement as a protonationalist form of cultural resistance. However, they
disassociated it from the neo-Inca rebellion, asserting the Taki Onqoy aimed to revive an
older and more locally-based popular religious culture (Pease 1973, Curatola 1976, Cock
53
and Doyle 1979, MacCormack 1988, 1991, Burga 1988, Cavero Carrasco 2001).24 Both
of these first two groups perceived the Taki Onqoy within a celebratory nationalist
framework, suggesting that authentic Andean culture had survived the Spanish
conquest.25 A third group offered a less optimistic interpretation, suggesting the
movement was a symptom of the social pathology, trauma, and epidemic plagues
experienced by Andeans after the Spanish Conquest (Wachtel 1971, Stern 1982).26 In the
1990s, a group of younger historians suggested a fourth interpretation, locating the
significance of the Taki Onqoy primarily in colonial discourse itself (Varon 1990, Urbano
1990, Estenssoro 1992, 2003, Ramos 1992). These scholars questioned whether the
movement ever existed except as an invention of careerist lay clerics who competed for
authority with the mendicant orders (Ramos 1992, Estenssoro 1992, 2003).27
More recently, Peter Gose argues that the significance of the movement lies in the
complex interactions between different factions and interests in an analysis that
incorporates all four of the preceding interpretations to different degrees (2008). He
reads these sources against the grain for interpretations of the movement they suggest
from indigenous perspectives. Validating the third interpretation, Gose claims the
movement arose out of profound social crisis and trauma related to the destruction of
their huacas and the epidemic plagues that decimated indigenous populations (81-117).
Moreover, he suggests that the movement sought a renewed negotiation between Inca
state religion and local religious cults, evolving from a top-down Inca revival into a
legitimately popular cult (106).28 Surprisingly for a social movement that centered
largely on ecstatic dance, little of the extensive scholarship about the Taki Onqoy
54
provides much analysis of the embodied practices employed by the dancers.29 Gose
offers a rough sketch of some of the embodied practices of the Taki Onqoy and what they
contributed to the movement as a whole. The possessed priests danced in enclosed circles
vigorously raising and lowering their arms and legs. They painted their faces red and
often their bodies with multiple colors (Molina 2007: 129, Alvarez [1588] 1998: 124-127,
Gose 2008: 114). They made high-whistling sounds that Alvarez described as “u,u,u”
(126). The dancers fasted and abstained from sexual activity for up to a week before
participating in these great festivals of huaca possession. They ingested high quantities
of alcohol, coca, and perhaps even a psychotropic substance called maca. The festivals
lasted up to five days, and the combination of exhaustion, hunger, and intoxication was
enough to bring the dancers into a trance state (Alvarez 1998: 126).
Spirit possession is the strongest link recent ethnographers have made between
the Taki Onqoy and the scissors dance, arguing that scissors dancers go into trance-like
states while performing (Roel Pineda 1976, Vivanco 1976, Barrionuevo 1988, Nuñez
Rebaza 1990, Castro Klaren 1990, Cavero Carrasco 2001). According to Barrionuevo,
“In the heat of competition [. . .] the dancers stop being mere men to become the deities
that they say enter their bodies” (1988: 229). Nevertheless, contemporary dancers
attribute such a state to the heat of competition rather than possession by a deity,
simulating a true state of possession.30 In another parallel with the contemporary scissors
dance, Molina testified that native Andeans swept and tidied their homes before receiving
a visit from a Taki Onqoy priest (2007: 129). Gose interprets these gestures as evidence
that Andean commoners perceived Taki Onqoy preachers as agents of purification (2008:
55
99). A few early ethnographers of the scissors dance claim that contemporary festival
sponsors receive visiting scissors dancers in their homes in a contrasting manner. That is
instead of cleaning their homes before the dancers arrive, the sponsors and their families
rigorously clean their houses after the dancers leave the festival after fulfilling their
contract (Vivanco 1976, Cruz Fierro 1982). This suggests that contemporary Andean
communities view scissors dancers as potential agents of pollution rather than
purification. I do suggest that scissors dancers are completely stigmatized by the
communities in which they practice the dance. Rather the ambiguity of the character the
scissors dancer embodies makes up a significant part of its highly theatrical aura.
2.6. The Marginalization of the Andean Sorcerer: Resettlement and Extirpation
The campaign undertaken by Albornoz to suppress the Taki Onqoy reflected
centralizing transformations of the colonial state that began in the 1560s. Albornoz
became the ecclesiastical inspector of Huamanga in 1569 in the same year that Francisco
de Toledo ascended to the post of Viceregal of Peru. As Viceregal, Toledo undertook a
host of initiatives designed not only to civilize indigenous Andean subjects but also to
discipline the rampant greed and corruption exercised by Spanish landowners. His most
ambitious program was called reduccion, the consolidation of dispersed Andean
settlements into a single town centered on a main square anchored by a church (Gose
2008: 119). Although reduccion accomplished certain goals related to the political and
economic discipline of conquered subjects, Toledo clearly framed its major purpose as
evangelical. In a 1571 speech he clearly stated that the objective of reduccion “was to
extirpate idolatries, sorcerers, dogmatizers so that the Evangelical teaching would fall
56
well-disposed upon ground where it could bear fruit” (Toledo 1986: 36). The organized
spatial structure of urban life was thought to instill the early modern Spanish value of
“policia,” linking civilized public life to Christian piety.31 One of the central goals of
settlement consolidation was the reform of Andean burial practices. Ecclesiastical
authorities identified oracular consultations with the mummified dead as the most
incessant form of communion with the devil (Cieza 1984, Alvarez 1998, Gose 2008:
127). The imposition of church burial on indigenous subjects was important in shaping
the hybrid Andean-Catholic interculture that emerged in the eighteenth century. The
separation of Christianized Andean dead from their pagan predecessors also held major
implications for later innovations in Christianized Andean ancestor worship.
While the Taki Onqoy’s power as a widespread mass movement seems to have
effectively ended by the early 1570s, its separatist ideology survived underground for
several generations. More localized outbursts occurred in numerous localities through
the first two decades of the seventeenth century. The leading figures of these smallerscale movements were itinerant preacher-mediums who recycled the ideology and
practices of the Taki Onqoy. Most of these preachers were Spanish-speaking ladinos who
had partially internalized the Christianity they rejected so vehemently. These figures
developed complex networks of clandestine preaching and the training of apprentices.
As the seventeenth century wore on, Andean religious specialists hybridized Andean
ritual practices with European witchcraft, increasingly becoming separated from
Christianized Andean communities (Gose 2008: 116-118). It was the discovery of
idolatries related to mortuary practices amongst his parishioners in Huarochiri, which
57
prompted Francisco de Avila, the compiler of the aforementioned Huarochiri
Manuscript, to initiate the first major extirpation of idolatry campaign (Salomon and
Urioste 1991, Griffiths 1996, Mills 1997, Gose 2008).
Manuel Burga has written about the major anti-idolatry campaigns as cycles of
extirpation driven by the interaction between zealous priests and periods of the revival of
indigenous cults (1988: 195). The first cycle between 1609 and 1622 was the most
systematic and cruel designed to eradicate the evolving remnants of the Taki Onqoy
throughout the Andean region. The standard procedures of anti-idolatry campaigns
included the visitation of a particular community by an official party that included the
Visitador General, several assistants and scribes, and a few Jesuit priests (Duviols 1971:
202-203).32 This first cycle of extirpation produced a great deal of information about
Andean religious practices in order to aid in eradicating them.33 In addition to the earlier
texts of Albornoz, and Avila, the most consulted treatise on extirpation is Pablo Jose de
Arriaga‟s The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru (1621). The Jesuit priest wrote this text as
a compendium of knowledge for later anti-idolatry campaigns and dedicated the third
chapter to classifying the various specializations of “The Ministers of Idolatry.”34
Numerous records of anti-idolatry trials recount the continuing existence of separatist
Andean preachers who counterposed themselves against Christianity.35 In 1613, Jesuit
priests recorded a particular colorful case in Huancavelica. These particular sorcerers
built churches and organized clandestine diabolic confraternities. Evoking the devil, they
spit out flames from their mouths (Mujica 1994: 247).36 During the extirpation
campaigns, many religious specialists fled to the high plateau and formed their own anti58
Christian communities (Mills 1997: 113, 296; Silverblatt 1987, Gose 2008). Numerous
legends circulated about these extraordinary sorcerers and witches, who maintained a
certain respect and authority amongst Andean commoners. Nevertheless, the increasing
acceptance of Christian forms of worship by the latter created barriers between them
(Mills 1998, Gose 2008). In that sense, the extirpators accomplished one of their major
objectives, to cordon off idolatry from correctable superstition and error (Griffiths 1996).
However, the Andean residents of consolidated townships articulated hybridized forms of
Christianity as complementary rather than opposed to Andean ancestor worship.
Some of the earliest signs of hybridized Andean-Catholicism were the chronicles
of two early seventeenth century Andean elite intellectuals. El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
was a descendent of Inca royalty who glorified the Inca Empire as a civilizing force that
prepared Andeans for the full embrace of Christianity. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, a
Curaca from Lucanas in southern Ayacucho, wrote the most fully articulated
reconciliation between Christianity and Andean ancestor myths. His New Chronicle and
Good Government (1615) was a 1,000 page letter informing the King of Spain of
corruption amongst the governors of Peru. In a combination of Quechua and broken
Spanish with hundreds of illustrations, Guaman Poma represents the origins of the
Andean people as a tribe of original Christians present on Noah‟s ark. Unlike Garcilaso,
Guaman Poma portrays the Incas as agents of religious corruption, introducing idolatry to
the Andean people.37 By opposing idolatry and supporting the Spanish crown, Guaman
Poma was not merely capitulating to the whims of the colonizer, but he strategically
59
protested against corruption and demand that Spaniards recognize Andean people as
partners in the colonial regime (Gose 2008: 181-190).38
By the time of the second cycle of extirpation (1649-1671), most separatist
preachers had become cut off from consolidated Andean towns. Those that remained
yielded to repressive measures enough so their practices could be classified as
superstition rather than idolatry. Those who fled trafficked in hybridized black magic,
witchcraft, and Andean ancestral cults. According to chronicler Bernabe Cobo‟s
description in 1653, “Under the name of sorcerer are included all those who use
superstitions and illicit arts to achieve objects that surpass human faculties through the
invocation of and aid of the Devil, with whom an explicit or implicit pact is the basis of
such power and knowledge” (Cobo 1956: 14, 17). The fascinating character of the
sorcerer became a legendarily figure in mid-colonial Andean and colonial imaginaries.
Nevertheless, except in isolated cases the second extirpation campaign found mostly
idiosyncratic Andean Christianity, often setting itself to reform syncretism rather than
persecute outright idolatry (Mills 1997). Most studies of the extirpation of idolatry and
Andean religion follow George Kubler‟s assertion that the 1660s marked a watershed
decade in the transformation of Andean spirituality (Kubler 1946, Duviols 1967, 1971,
1986, G. Cock 1980, Marzal 1983, Burga 1988, MacCormack 1991).39 By the final
decades of the seventeenth century, the separatist Andean sorcerer figure appears to have
become extinct except in the memories of Andean commoners and Catholic authorities.
G. Coch (1982) has argued that the rhetoric of extirpators succeeded in marginalizing
Andean specialists from functioning Andean religion and society by the 1670s.40
60
This chronology remarkably parallels the cultural memory of contemporary
Andeans given in some ethnographies of the scissors dance. For example, in Michele
Bigenho‟s masters thesis (1991), she cites a local official who tells the story of the origins
of the town of Aucara. The official claims that the townspeople have always been
Catholic. However, he tells of a time when heretics appeared rebelling, terrorizing
faithful Christians and destroying images of the saints. The majority of the townspeople
fled Aucara to the high plateau. Their Catholic faith returned around 1660, and they
reestablished the abandoned town of Aucara (1991: 120). Bigenho also cites a parallel
narrative that suggests the scissors dancers came from colonial times when Catholic
priests persecuted them as heretics. They began to rebel, imitating warriors in order to
counter they abuses the suffered at the hands of Spanish priests (1991: 90). The first
account clearly repudiates the heretics, and the second demonstrates a kind of nostalgic
identification with these figures as heroes of cultural resistance. However, both refer to
the figure as located in a past era that ended around 1660 and related to the persecution of
Andean ritual specialists. In a classic study, George Kubler argued that “The sorcerers
played a role in the formation of Quechua Catholicism, while bringing support to
Quechua idolatry. In essence, their crafts were contrary to religion whether Quechua or
Christian in that their magic was illicit, infrasocial, and proliferant without relation to
doctrine” (1946: 398). He characterized the sorcerer not as a representative of a
generalized culture of resistance, but as a figure marginalized from mainstream Andean
society. Recent studies by Mills (1997) and Gose (2008) suggest that the militancy of
61
these figures was instrumental to the legitimacy of more accomodationist stances that
expanded the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy rather than rejecting it outright
2.7. The Andean-Catholic Interculture: The Eighteenth Century
Thus far I have established significant parallels between the contemporary
scissors dance and the figure of the Andean sorcerer that played such a significant role in
the colonial imagination. Now I turn to how this mostly extinct figure became the object
of Andean-Catholic theatrical representation during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, contributing to the gradual emergence of the scissors dance as a genre of
Andean festival performance. Contemporary accounts of the Tusuq Laiqa (Dance of the
Sorcerer) told by scissors dance performers from Huancavelica offers some provocative
clues to how this process may have occurred. The Tusuq Laiqa were originary ancestral
figures who suffered at the hands of evangelists and extirpators. They found refuge on
the high plateau and continued to practice idolatries in defiance of colonial authorities.
While working in the mercury mines of Huancavelica, they encountered Spanish dancers
with castanets, handkerchiefs, and embroidered costumes. The Tusuq Laiqa fabricated
musical instruments out of leftover ore from the mines in a creative imitation of the
Spanish castanets and fashioned embroidered costumes with the most elegant and
extravagant materials they could find or afford. They began to dance so impressively that
local Catholic priests requested they perform in competitions during Christmas festivities
(Barrionuevo 1988, Personal Interview “Ccarccaria” 2007, Personal Interview “Rey
Chicchi” 2007, Personal Interview “Mercurio” 2009).41
62
These origin stories appear to represent an outsider figure, which local dancers
adopted as a character for local theatrical enactments (Poole 1990, Cánepa Koch 1998,
Mendoza 1999). The shift from representation of an ancestral self to the masked mode of
representing the “other” in Andean cultural performances goes at least as far back as the
middle of the seventeenth century.42 Deborah Poole suggests this transformation in the
representative mode of Andean performance is tied to evangelical distinctions between
dance as a form of recreation and as a form of idolatry. Even the most zealous extirpators
encouraged the former in order to assist in eradicating the latter (Poole 1990: 107). In
order to reproduce their identities under unfavorable conditions, Andean communities
turned toward the ambiguity of mimicry and the embodiment of the “other.”43
Through
the embodiment of externalized characters, Andean performers enacted the transference
of power from the foreign elements to localized Andean individuals and communities
(Cánepa Koch 1998: 24). If the Andean strategy of incorporating the “other” through
embodied performance has a long genealogy, it gained a new legitimacy within the fertile
Andean-Catholic interculture of the eighteenth century. As the missionary zeal of
extirpation gradually subsided, accomodations between Church officials and Andean
popular religiosity produced a rich Andean performance culture. As David Cahill notes,
“Andean popular culture of this time belied illusory dichotomies between the sacred and
the profane, as well as engendered multi-dimensional exchanges between popular and
learned cultural forms and practices during this period (2002: 72).44 Catholic festivities
and pilgrimages in Andean parishes engendered multi-layered hybrid cultural forms. Far
63
from strictly localized sites of communal solidarity, these practices took part in both the
intensity of competition and forms of commercial and cultural exchange (Ibid. 71).
Parish priests introduced diverse European performance practices, including
Golden Age drama, Moors and Christian plays, matachines sword dances, as well as
more religious plays such as autos-sacramentales, into Andean festivities. Through these
forms, Andeans found new ways to represent competition, rivalry, and conflict, including
numerous theatrical representations of the Conquest (Burga 1988, Beyersdorff 2008).45
The myriad forms of battle between good and evil enacted by early modern Spanish
drama became fertile material for Andean creativity in representing the complicated
relationship between self and other central to the reproduction of Andean identities.
Religious plays such as, Pastorelas, Adoracion de los Reyes Magos, Easter Plays, Corpus
Christi plays, and Stations of the Cross plays became the foundations for most popular
forms of Andean festival performance. These religious plays included skits that
represented local life and customs in between the major scenes, which allowed for the
construction of local forms (Beyersdorff 1988, 2008: 410, Gisbert 2002). Many of these
festival enactments continue to this day long after the original scripts have been lost,
passed down orally from generation to generation. The scissors dance style from
Huancavelica appears to have emerged out of the creative combination of a number of
these hybridized performance traditions.46 The festivities in which the Huancavelica
practitioners most often perform are Christmas and Bajada de los Reyes, in which the
other characters of the festivities maintain a direct link to Pastorelas and Adoración de
los Reyes Magos plays.47 The scissors dancer‟s role in both of these festivities suggests
64
the combination of the devils who tempt the shepherds in the Pastorelas, and the reyes
magos, orientalized traveling kings or astrologers who come from afar to adore the baby
Jesus.48 The competition amongst the dancers substitutes for the battle between angels
and demons typically enacted during the pastorelas. The festival also domesticates the
potential “resistance” of the Andean sorcerer figure, as the scissors dancers willfully
submit to the demands of the copleros, satiric representations of Catholic priests.
However, in practice the triumph of Christianity over paganism is represented far more
playfully than earlier scripted versions of autos-sacramentales.
A further element of the origin narratives of the Huancavelica style of the scissors
dance associates it with one of the most fertile sites of intercultural exchange in
eighteenth century Peru and the home of subterranean diabolic elements from the Andean
ancestral past. The Tusuq Laiqa first encountered the Spanish dance they imitated while
working in the famed mercury mines of Huancavelica.49 During the eighteenth century,
mining activity and forced labor migration increased after the colonial state constructed
new roads linking Lima, Huancavelica, Huamanga, Cuzco, and finally Potosi. Workers
constantly travelled back and forth between provincial townships, urban commercial
centers, and the hard subterranean labor of the mines. Numerous scholars have suggested
that this ambivalent transition accounts for the prevalence of myths about miners who
engage in pacts with the devil (Taussig 1980, Salazar Soler 1999, 2006). In The Devil
and Commodity Fetishism, Michael Taussig argues that the devil contract represents a
veiled criticism of the evils of capitalism put forth by laborers peripheral to the world
economic system.50 Without going so far as Taussig, Salazar Soler offers a more
65
balanced ethnographic account, relating the intimacy between Andean miners and
diabolic figures to both ambivalence about their participation in capitalism, and the
miners frequent descent into the dangerous subterranean realm that Andeans call uku
pacha (1999). She associates the muki, the devil that Huancavelica miners believe is the
owner of the mines, to a number of other characters who reside in uku pacha.51 While
uku pacha is an infernal semantic universe shared by agrarian peasants and miners alike,
the culture of the miners exhibits greater intimacy with the underworld due to their
precarious and dangerous occupation and frequent entrance into the interior world of the
earth. The other figures of the uku pacha include the gentiles who are the former pagan
residents of the earth, supay who is the devil himself, condemned men who committed
certain social taboos such as abortion or incest, and Amaru the snake who resides in water
(Ibid.). Andean myths often conceive of this last figure as the female pair to the male
supay or muki, also associated with the serena.
In addition to the Amaru, a mysterious female apparition named Juana or Juanita
creates a bridge between the mythology related to the scissors dance in Huancavelica and
that of the southern region of Ayacucho. The female apparition from Huancavelica
resembles the diabolic female seductress associated with all musical expressions in the
latter region, La Serena.52 La Serena is the spirit of falling water typically described as a
beautiful blonde woman with an enchanting singing voice that she uses to seduce men,
sometimes killing them and sometimes making them crazy.53 Throughout the Andes, La
Serena is the muse who inspires the musicians who play stringed instruments, all of
which are of European derivation and only played by men. Contemporary Andean
66
mythology imagines the sirens as inhabiting freshwater lakes, rivers, and springs of the
highlands after they left the sea sometime near the time of the arrival of the Spaniards
(Turino 1983, Millones and Tomoeda 2004, Arce Sotelo 2007).54 Sirenas are ambivalent
figures associated with the devil and the dangers of seduction, but nevertheless are
guardians of water, a precious resource for agricultural production. Scissors dance
performers from this region engage in pacts with La Serena by making offerings of
Quinoa, coca, and chicha (corn beer) at the mouths of mountain caves (Nuñez Rebaza
1990, Personal Interview “Juan Cacpcha).” The relationship between the scissors dance
and La Serena reinforces the connection between the dance and water in this particular
region and gives them an ambivalent status within local Andean communities.55
Andeanist ethnographers tend to perceive the scissors dance style from the
southern region of Ayacucho as the most authentically indigenous variant of the scissors
dance.56 Significant evidence suggests that the scissors, costume, and some of the
mythology of the scissors dance developed first between Huamanga and Huancavelica.
Migrants brought these performance elements to Southern Ayacucho at the turn of the
nineteenth century (Personal Interview “Chuspicha” 2008, Personal Interview “Astro
Rey” 2009). Subsequently, the variant from the latter region developed a more
indigenous character as it interacted with local cultural practices in a more geographically
isolated and agrarian area. Mining in Huancavelica and its close relationship to the urban
capital of Ayacucho, Huamanga, gave the Huancavelica style a more hybrid and mestizo
character, even though the performers and their audiences belonged to indigenous
communities. I do not wish to contest the conventional origin narratives by creating an
67
alternative origin narrative. These performance practices emerged with the dynamic flow
of cultural materials and practices that characterized the Peruvian Andes at the end of the
eighteenth century, not from a single localized origin only later hybridized.57
The myths of origin of the scissors dance from the southern region of Ayacucho
lend themselves more readily to claims of Pre-Columbian origin than those from
Huancavelica. Local elders tell a number of variants of a story about a young boy who
encountered a mysterious boy his own age at a river while completing chores for his
family. The mysterious child wore a beautifully embroidered costume and held a pair of
steel scissors, teaching his new friend an enchanting dance and presented him with
scissors and a costume of his own. The young boy then returned to town and rehearsed
the new dance during his free time, eventually becoming a legendary local dancer in
Patron Saints festivals (Cruz Fierro 1982, Barrionuevo 1988). Spaniards, obvious
diabolic figures, or explicit hybridity are typically not found in these stories, and
ethnographers often suggest they refer to events that occurred in the Pre-Columbian past.
However, they include small details that suggest later surrogations of Pre-Columbian
beliefs and ritual practices.58 Although always represented as benign with few obvious
diabolic characteristics, the children of the caves inspire fear in the adult members of
Andean communities. The version recounted in Barrionuevo (1988) explicitly refers to
these cave children as gentiles, the former residents of this world condemned to live in
the underworld because they had not been baptized as Christians. Both Cruz Fierro
(1982) and Villegas Falcon (1998) identify these young people as demons known to local
populations as Juanico or Juaniquillo.59 As Millones (2010) has suggested, Andean
68
cosmologies contain the belief that children are particularly susceptible to the allure of
the devil and those who die without being baptized are buried in the same way as adults
who engaged in pacts with the devil. The relationship between the scissors dance and
these small denizens of the caves of uku pacha appears to suggest that the dancers are
mediators between the underworld of uku pacha and Christianized Andean communities.
The identification of scissors dancers with cave-tombs and the mummified
remains of Pre-Columbian Andean people suggest a primordial relationship between the
dance and ancient Andean ritual specialists. Nevertheless, these cave-tombs have clearly
become marginalized elements of Andean culture as the most visible embodiments of the
infernal uku pacha analogous to the Christian notion of hell. Peter Gose (2008) has
recently written a fascinating study of the long-term transformations of Andean ancestor
worship into multidimensional hybrid forms of Andean Catholicism by the end of the
colonial period. He locates the end of the eighteenth century as the period when these
transformations became clearly articulated after Andean communities had digested and
absorbed the historical experiences of settlement consolidation and extirpation. He
further suggests the “internalization of the Extirpation occurred in fundamentally Andean
terms, through the retention of the past as a subordinate lower moiety” (Ibid. 286).
Catholic Andeans articulated Christian oppositions between heaven and hell within the
traditional Andean framework of complementary dualism and mapped this spatial
distinction onto the temporal differentiation between a pre-Christian era associated with
God the Father, and a Christian era associated with God the son.
69
Gentiles, devils, and other malevolent beings that reside in the uku pacha are thus
the denizens of a past pagan epoch. Numerous myths collected by twentieth century
ethnographers register this epochal differentiation, with some variation, cultural groups
across the Andes speak of the gentiles as the primordial residents of the Earth. They
were covetous and jealous, as well as idolatrous witches. They were unrepentant sinners
who committed incest, abortion, and adultery. Either God or Christ became angry with
the gentiles and wiped them out with a great flood or burned them with a tremendously
hot sun. Some remained protected in deep caves, yet Andean peasants typically do not
recognize the gentiles as their ancestors. They claim that the Incas created their
ancestors, and introduced Christianity to Peru before the arrival of the Spanish.60 Gose
argues that these narratives demonstrate that “people did not forget the mummified past [.
. .] but conserved it as a malignant subterranean force, largely (though not entirely)
stripped of its Andean ancestral functions. This dis-identification built on earlier Andean
recognitions that ancestral power is ambivalent, and early Andean moiety strategies of
conserving vanquished ancestral orders under new regimes” (Ibid. 314). Consistent with
the framework of complementary dualism and moiety strategies, Andean communities
did not entirely stigmatize the subterranean infernal forces. They reconfigured the uku
pacha as a subordinate realm, which nonetheless is the source of uncontrollable
reproductive powers necessary for fertility and the procurement of mineral wealth.
Gose‟s argument brings us toward a richer and more complex interpretation of
Arguedas‟s characterization of the scissors dancer as a messenger from another hell than
simply asserting Pre-Columbian origins covered by diabolic masks. As the distinction
70
between pagan ancestor worship and Andean Christianity became intimately tied to
Andean interpretations of heaven and hell, and distinctions between Angels and Demons,
the scissors dancer emerged as a surrogate performer who revived the repudiated figure
of the Andean sorcerer as a character for theatrical enactment. While the Andean
communities where the dance is performed viewed this character as a threatening
“outsider” figure, the specialized theatrical performers who embodied it became a vehicle
of pleasure that expressed ambivalence towards the pre-Christian Andean past. The
surrogate scissors dance performer became a partially contained conduit allowing
agrarian communities a point of access to the mysterious earthly forces found in the uku
pacha. That the scissors dance is such a hybrid pastiche of elements from mostly
European performance genres does not necessarily contradict the indigeneity of the dance
and dancer. Rather this hybridity has enabled Andean communities to express
ambivalence toward their pagan past even as they appropriate the reproductive powers of
externalized pagan forces.61
2.8. Andean Utopias
In much of the ethnographic literature on the scissors dance, Andeanist authors
avoid the diabolic aspects of the dance by emphasizing the intimacy between the scissors
dancer and the apu wamanis, the mountain spirits who guard and protect particular
Andean communities. Most ethnographers have assumed that mountain spirits are a
primordial aspect of Andean religion and culture. However, contemporary
ethnohistorians have argued that they emerged out of the reconfiguration of Andean
ancestor worship and its rapprochement with Christianity in the eighteenth century (Isbell
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1997, Gose 2008). While earlier articulations of Andean religion perceived mountains as
sacred sites, yet they worshipped the founding ancestors who remain in cave-tombs
located in particular sites on the side of mountains. In contrast, apu wamanis are direct
personifications of the mountains landscape. Gose argues that contemporary Andean
communities typically conceive of wamanis as Christian forces opposed to the repudiated
figures that dwell in the uku pacha (2008: 185). Numerous Andean myths suggest that
Jesus Christ himself created the wamanis, as they appear as localized manifestations of
Christ, and the saints, who are also associated with the Incaic figures of the sun and
Inkarri, the decapitated body of the last Inca King (Dean 1999).
The dynamic Andean-Catholic intercultural of the late eighteenth century both
contributed to and was conditioned by the emergence of an anti-colonial national project
that imagined the restoration of the Inca Empire, commonly referred to as the “Andean
utopia.”62 By the eighteenth century the boundary between Spaniards and Indians was
increasingly porous. Interstitial categories like the cholo, mestizo, and criollo were a
growing presence on the colonial scene unsettling old distinctions between a Republic of
Spaniards and a Republic of Indians (Thurner 1997: 18). An indigenous elite had always
served as mediators between indigenous commoners and the colonial state, having access
to Western education and often participating in Spanish and Creole intellectual circles.
During the eighteenth century, a group of indigenous elites in Cuzco who traced their
lineage to Inca nobility began to circulate the idea of reviving the old Inca monarchy. As
this group had some exposure to Enlightenment ideas, it is not hard to imagine they had
encountered the central place of the Incas in the cultural production of French
72
Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire (Poole 1997).63 The porous boundaries of
eighteenth century Andean popular culture enabled idealized representations of Inca rule
to spread rapidly from a specialized class of neo-Inca elites to mestizo and indigenous
commoners throughout the Andean region. Theatre, painting, and other artistic
representations exalted the Inca state as a utopian community, often using European
artistic forms to represent Inca history (Flores Galindo 1986, Mendez 1996: 121).
These artistic representations also contributed to the popular myth of Inkarri, where the
decapitated body of a mythical Inca King is recomposing itself underground until the day
he returns to liberate the Andean people and restore the Inca empire.64 The resurrection
of the Inca, grafted onto the figure of Christ‟s body, is a particularly Andean way of
conceptualizing the coming third age of man, the epoch of the Holy Spirit (Mujica Pinilla
1996, Gose 2008). Eighteenth century Andean-Catholicism engendered an anti-colonial
revival of the figure of the Inca, mediated by the close intimacy between Jesuit religious
teachers and Christianizing Andean communities. This myth shaped an emergent
Andean imaginary that transcended local and regional affiliations.
The role of the Inca King as liberator became embodied by the charismatic
persona of Tupac Amaru II, who led a massive popular rebellion in 1780-1781 that nearly
crippled the Spanish colonial state, and contributed to later independence movements that
finally put an end to nearly three centuries of Spanish rule in 1821 (Walker 1999, Cahill
2002). The Tupac Amaru rebellion emerged within context of the modernizing reforms
of the Bourbon Spanish Empire, particularly during the reign of Carlos III (1759-1788).65
Inspired by the French Enlightenment, the Bourbon rulers sought to create a more
73
efficient and centralized colonial bureaucracy. By reducing the complex network of
mediators fostered by the indirect rule of their Hapsburg predecessors, they attempted to
redirect the flow of resources and capital directly to the Spanish crown. While in the
short-term they succeeded in reasserting the authority of the Spanish empire, these
reforms created tensions that contributed to indigenous rebellions.66 Furthermore,
colonial authorities attempted to reduce the privileges of the indigenous nobility. Many
indigenous elites, such as Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui who later became known as Tupac
Amaru II, spent much of the 1770s involved in protracted battles defending their titles in
colonial courts.67 Tupac Amaru II was a charismatic and imposing figure.68 His
rebellion was composed of a diverse group of indigenous commoners, highland mestizos,
and even a few disaffected Creoles. They rose up against the corrupt colonial
government in the name of the King. The rebellion was highly successful during a oneyear period, threatening the stability of colonial rule. In 1781, colonial armed forces
captured Tupac Amaru II. He was publicly drawn and quartered in the main plaza of
Cuzco, the same place that colonial authorities beheaded Tupac Amaru I in 1582.
After the suppression of the Tupac Amaru rebellion, the colonial state banned all
titles of indigenous nobility, effectively ending the indirect rule that characterized
Hapsburg colonialism (Cahill 2002, Gose 2008).69 The colonial government also
outlawed all displays of Inca symbolism and identity as well as tightly controlled mass
spectacles and festivals. Nevertheless, It was in the aftermath of the Tupac Amaru
rebellion when the first archival documents that represented the scissors dance appeared.
However, it is not until the 1830s, in the first decades of the Republic that a number of
74
archival documents register a theatrical figure who bears a close resemblance to the
contemporary scissors dancer in terms of the representation of a diabolic Andean
sorcerer. I suggest that it is no coincidence that archival traces of the scissors dance
began to appear in the aftermath of the Tupac Amaru rebellion until the first decades of
the Republic. The dance emerged as a performance practice at a major transitional
moment in the history of Andean culture and its relationship to the ancestral Andean past.
Gose suggests that “Andean Christianity revised the subject position from which
ancestral notions were formulated, replacing Curacas and their mummified predecessors
with peasants and their agrarian life activities” (2008: 319).70 Within this
transformational moment, the scissors dance became an ambivalent and externalized
reenactment of ancestral figures of the Andean cultural past. I argue that the dance is a
more recent invention than Andeanist ethnographers have claimed, but that does not take
away from the dance‟s power as an active vehicle of Andean cultural memory, and an
expression of the multiple ways Andeans conceptualize their own cultural past in relation
to external “others.” The ambivalence and theatrical aura of Arguedas‟s description of
the scissors dancer as a messenger from another hell is far more evocative of the dance‟s
complex relationship to the Pre-Columbian past than ahistorical claims of Pre-Columbian
shamanic origins.
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Chapter 3
The Long Nineteenth Century (1780-1930): A Genealogy of theScissors
Dance in the Postcolonial (Trans)National Imaginary
3.1. Introduction
The Andean utopia provided a powerful subaltern challenge to the exclusionary
politics of the Creole state, and ensured that Andean peasants played a more active role in
the formation of postcolonial Peru than previously acknowledged by historians (Flores
Galindo 1986, Burga 1988, Mallon 1995, Thurner 1997, Walker 1999, Gose 2008). Only
in the second half of the nineteenth century were urban Creole elites in collaboration with
large highland landowners able to wed positivist discourses of scientific racism to their
privileged position in the global economy in order to cast “the Indian” as a backward and
inferior race destined to disappear under the onslaught of modernity (Jacobsen 1993,
Cadena 2000, Larson 2004). Contemporary historiography has not only revised
conventional narratives about the formation of Latin American nations, but also situated
them within broader transnational processes related to North Atlantic capitalist
expansion. Latin American historiography now uses the period concept of “the long
nineteenth century,” in order to examine the contentious period between the Tupac
Amaru rebellion and the consolidation of populist politics in the 1930s (Pratt 1992,
Jacobsen 1993, Mallon 1995, Mendez 1996, Poole 1997, Thurner 1997, Larson 2004,
Earle 2007).1 The ethnographic imagination, which romanticized European peasants and
non-Western people, became a powerful force within Western intellectual circles (Burke
76
1978, Fass Emery 1996, Bendix 1999, Stone Peters 2009).2 A multi-directional flow of
people, ideas, and capital played a decisive role in how nations imagined themselves
leading to the emergence of new representational economies whereby Western subjects
represented the popular customs of the Andes (Pratt 1992, Poole 1997).3
In this chapter, I examine how these new forms of representation produced many
the earliest archival traces of the scissors dance. These sources include: prohibition
documents and stigmatizing discourses, travel narratives, visual culture, and early
twentieth century ethnographic surveys of Andean cultural practices. Although a number
of ethnographic studies have cited at least a partial list of these sources, they tend to
interpret them as transparent reflections of the dance‟s continuity over time and ignoring
the circumstances in which these documents were produced, circulated, and exchanged as
complex intercultural productions in themselves (Nuñez Rebaza 1985, 1990, Vega 1995,
Millones and Tomoeda 1998, Villegas Falcon 1998, Arce Sotelo 2006). I situate these
sources within the broader national and transnational processes produced within the
“contact zones” of Peru in the long nineteenth century (Pratt 1992: 7). I ask what they
can tell us about the emergence and transformation of the scissors dance. Moreover, I
use them to interrogate the ways in which Andean popular performance intervened in the
articulation of competing national imaginaries, representational economies, and
productive transatlantic relations of knowledge and power.
I argue that these sources offer subtle glimpses of indigenous agency through the
medium of popular performance during a period in which cosmopolitan national
discourse excluded indigenous culture from national hegemony. Rather than a ritual
77
frozen in time and fixed to strictly local cultures, these sources collectively portray a
robustly hybrid, heterogenous, mobile, and historically contingent performance practice.
I argue that these sources progressively enact what Taylor calls “the scenario of
discovery,” participating in the modern invention of the “primitive,” which authorized the
subjectivity of “civilized” producers of knowledge (Taylor 2002, Stone Peters 2009). .
Nevertheless, the ethnographic imagination elided indigenous agency by containing the
figure of the “Indian” as an objectified icon within the exclusionary confines of lettered
cultural production. Such representations played a formative role in the construction of
Andeanist paradigms, valuing indigenous culture as both a picturesque object and a
disruptive presence with the potential to slow the inevitable march of Western modernity
3.2. The Tensions of Postcolonial Nation-Making
The period concept of “the long nineteenth century” has provided recent
historians with a critical lens in order to demystify two opposing, yet equally totalizing
narratives of conventional Peruvian historiography. First, a triumphalist national
teleology asserts that independence was a liberating event for all Peruvians, concealing
the continuation of colonial structures of power. A later Marxist counter-narrative argues
that the first century of the republic merely refashioned colonial structures of power
under a liberal veneer (Mariátegui 1971, Baptista 2006). Both deny agency to individual
and collective indigenous subjects, either by positing their assimilation into a
homogenous national culture or declaring unambiguously their subjugation under
neocolonial rule. Recent studies influenced by the notion of “history from below,” have
uncovered the hidden strategies indigenous groups wielded to protect their political and
78
cultural autonomy and fashion themselves as citizens of an emerging national community
(Mallon 1995, Thurner 1997, Walker 1999). The frame of “the long nineteenth century”
organizes the earliest documentary evidence of the scissors dance, prior to its
construction as an icon of regional and national culture. The trajectory of this
fragmentary archival record parallels the changing status of “the Indian” within the
emerging hegemonic national culture.
The earliest archival sources arose out of the aftermath of the Tupac Amaru
rebellion, when the Bourbon colonial state took extreme repressive measures to reestablish their authority. Colonial officials banned all titles of indigenous nobility,
suppressed public displays of Inca identity and iconography, and censored a good portion
of the works of indigenous chroniclers such as el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Walker
1999: 54-61).4 They much less successfully attempted to discipline and control Andean
festive culture (Cahill 2002: 73, 2007). Despite these efforts to contain the Andean
utopia, ethnic revival continued to thrive in the southern Andes. The continuing specter
of Inca revivalism constructed broad multi-ethnic coalitions against the colonial
government. Peasant guerilla brigades known as the Indian montoneras played a major
role in all of these rebellions, which imagined the restoration of the Inca monarchy. In
1815, a rebellion centered in Cuzco represented the largest threat to the colonial regime
since the Tupac Amaru uprisings. The figure most associated with the 1815 rebellion
was an indigenous Curaca known as Pumacahua, a 70 year old patriarch with pretensions
of installing himself as the new Inca emperor (Flores Galindo 1986, Walker 1999, Klaren
79
2000: 129). However, the brutal repression after the Pumacahua rebellion left highland
rebels depleted and disillusioned.5
After 1815, the struggle for Peruvian independence shifted from the highlands to
the Creole-dominated coast. Creole independence movements were slower in Peru than
other parts of Latin America, finally taking hold only after the outside interventions of
José de San Martín and Simón Bolivar.6 Inca revivalism did play a limited role in the
ideology of San Martín, whose mother came from the indigenous nobility of what later
became Argentina. He imagined a modern republic unified by the installation of a new
Inca monarchy, which would rule over much of South America. The transfer of
leadership from San Martín to Bolivar signaled a shift away from Inca nationalism to
liberal republicanism (Thurner 1997: 10). As the first president of Peru in 1825, Bolivar
eschewed the use of the Inca past in the construction of the nation (Thurner 1997: 10).7
He introduced liberal legislation designed to remake Indians into small farmers in
preparation for the acquisition of full citizenship in the modern republic (Larson 2004:
144). When Bolivar left the country in 1826, conservative forces re-established Indian
tribute as a means to finance the growing national debt. The military leadership of the
independence wars fought amongst each other for political control, establishing the
caudillo (military strongman) as a recurrent figure of Peruvian politics (Walker 1999).8
The contradictions of a weak centralized state‟s policies towards indigenous
tribute and general political instability opened a space for indigenous political claims that
they were corporate citizens of the nascent nation.9 Mark Thurner argues, “The useful
slippage between tributary subject and propertied citizen generated a subaltern form of
80
indigenous citizenship wrapped up in the hybrid notion of republican” (Thurner 1997:
35). These indigenous political strategies included the radical refashioning of indigenous
political culture from a hereditary kinship group descended from a founding ancestor to a
territorially defined and egalitarian community led by an elected staff-holding varayoq
(mayor) (Gose 2008).10 A resurgent indigenous identity contributed to a thriving Andean
trade economy based on a new export market for Peruvian wool. Andean trade fairs
became dynamic intercultural spaces where European travelers came into direct contact
with indigenous Andean culture (Klaren 2000 138, Larson 2004). This combination of
ethnic revival and new forms of intercultural contact with European travelers produced
the most fertile period for the documentation of the scissors dance during the first twentyfive years of the republic. The initial phase of North Atlantic capitalist expansion
brought European traveler-reporter-artists to South America in droves, following in the
pioneering footsteps of Alexander von Humboldt (Catlin 1989, Pratt 1992, Poole 1997).
These romantic figures combined commercial and scientific exploration with the artistic
representation of picturesque and exotic landscapes and social types.
The relative autonomy and prosperity of many Andean peasant communities
ended abruptly with the rise of an urban Creole export elite during the second half of the
nineteenth century (Walker 1999, Klaren 2000, Larson 2004). The discovery of the
fertilizing properties of guano (bird dung) created a booming export economy in the mid1840s, when coastal merchants began to sell raw materials to British industrial firms.
The government of liberal caudillo Ramón Castilla collaborated with the export elite in
order to strengthen the central state, construct modern financial institutions, and systems
81
of transportation (Kristal 1987, Klaren 2000). In 1854, Castilla eliminated the Indian
tribute tax, effectively taking away the state‟s financial interest in protecting indigenous
collective land rights. Self-made mestizo sheep herders rapidly appropriated ayllu lands,
consolidating small farms into large hacienda estates.11 The coastal export elite and large
highland landowners formed a fragile coalition drastically reducing the abilities of
indigenous groups to retain their cultural, economic, and political autonomy (Walker
1999: 223). Creole nation-builders utilized liberal discourses in order to justify the
“redefinition of indigenous peasants with codified tributary obligations and rights into an
inferior „race‟ sentenced to the margins of the nation” (Larson 2004: 246). Creole
nationalism, commonly known as criollismo, did incorporate a very limited aspect of the
Andean utopia into its exclusive ideology. Cecilia Mendez argues that Creole elite
intellectuals articulated a persistent aspect of Peruvian nationalism by “invoking the
memory of the Incas in order to spurn and segregate the Indian” (165). National
historiography imagined Creole elites rather than the degraded Andean peasants as the
true heirs of the glorious Inca past (Thurner 1997: 10-11).12
In contrast to Benedict Anderson‟s well-known thesis, the advent of print
capitalism did not produce the imagination of an expansive and inclusive national
community in late nineteenth century Peru (Anderson 1994). Cadena argues that
“criollismo produced a picture of Peru in which Indians were anchored to the Sierra and
rhetorically absent from the coast, populated by mestizos and Creoles” (2000: 45).
Creole elites constructed a delimited public sphere of lettered culture and effectively
erased the Andean majority from the national script (Rama 1984, Larson 2004: 245).
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Indigenous people virtually disappear from historical records in the second half of the
nineteenth century and after a period of rich documentary sources in the 1830s and
1840s, there are virtually no records of the scissors dance from 1850-1882. After the
disastrous War of the Pacific (1879-1884), the Creole elite made the Indian into a
scapegoat, hardening the racial and geographic schism between the progressive coast and
the retrograde mancha india (Indian stain) of the southern highlands (Cadena 2000: 46).13
Out of an emerging provincial intellectual culture arose indigenismo, a radical opposition
that evoked the romantic primitivism of a picturesque and ahistorical Andean essence in
order to contest the dominance of the coastal oligarchy. The romantic idealization of “the
indio” has shaped utopian longings for the making of a “New Peru” ever since.
Nevertheless, these representational practices conjured “the Indian” as merely an object
of lettered cultural production (Coronado 2008).
3.3. Prohibitions and Stigmatizing Discourses
Ethnographic studies have failed to distinguish between actual Andean ritual
specialists and the contemporary scissors dance. These authors construct the colonial
period as a melodramatic narrative that denies contingency and heterogeneity to both the
colonizer and colonized. They overstate the case that the scissors dancer embodies a
heroic figure that has resisted centuries of continuous colonial repression. While
recognizing that some of the earliest archival sources are prohibitions and stigmatizing
discourses towards Andean popular performance, I argue that we should not conflate
these sources with the texts produced by earlier extirpations of idolatry. A closer
examination of these texts reveals that early republican prohibitions and efforts to control
83
Andean popular culture were historically contingent, contradictory, representative of
particular interests, and often ineffectual. In addition, these sources often show
extraordinary ambivalence, betraying curiosity and fascination, as well as horror, towards
Andean popular performance.
Historian David Cahill recently discovered a complaint written in 1784 against
“the pernicious custom of exhibiting dances in religious festivals” in the town of San
Juan Bautista de Cerca in the province of Aimaraes (Cahill 2007: 106). Cahill claims that
the dance in question was the scissors dance.14 The Visitor General of Cuzco, José
Gallegos, issued a prohibition against the dance, defining it as “a seminary of evil and
abomination against God” (Ibid). In a related document from 1800, the local priest
complained that the enforcement of the prohibition had failed. He asserted that such
licentious dancing was “synonymous with mortal sin” (Ibid. 107). However, he did not
have the necessary authority to eradicate a practice deeply rooted in community life due
to the “relative weakness of the political and ecclesiastical jurisdictions in remote areas”
(Ibid.). Due to its early date and harsh religious rhetoric, this particular source is the
most likely candidate to represent continuity with the Extirpation of Idolatry campaigns.
Nevertheless, Cahill rightly situates the document within the fraught historical context of
the aftermath of the Tupac Amaru rebellion.15 Colonial authorities attempted to
discipline popular festivity by relocating the celebration of popular religiosity from the
streets to the interior of the church. However, popular festivity was central to the
religious cultures of the highlands and proved quite difficult to eradicate or control.
Cahill argues that festive dances “were converted into a space of dispute between top
84
ecclesiastical authorities and the lay clergy, whose income often depended on the
observation of fiestas” (109). Rather than embodying a totalizing narrative about
Catholic persecution of Andean religious practices, this prohibition text came out of a
particularly tense moment in the history of Andean popular festivity where various
interests clashed, including popular celebrants, local elites, lay clergy, and top
ecclesiastical authorities.
The first of two letters addressed to the Subprefect of the province of Lucanas in
Ayacucho written in 1899 notes the prohibition of the ritual cleansing of local aqueducts
due to “the scandalous acts publicly committed by Indians” (Montoya 1990: 17). The
author complains that indigenous residents repeatedly ignored these edicts and continued
to engage in uncivilized behaviors during such celebrations. The second letter, probably
written by the same author, contains the passage, “You should not ignore the prohibition
[. . .] of the scissors dance [. . .] and other spectacles of that nature that struggle against
moral civilization and good customs, resolutions that were passed in order to inhibit the
great demoralizing acts committed during said spectacles” (Ibid.). Montoya and other
ethnographers interpret these texts as evidence of the continuity of colonial and religious
persecution of Andean popular culture during the nineteenth century.16 However, the
language of the document is not religious, but rather turns on liberal oppositions between
civilization and savagery. During the 1880 and 1890s, local elites in the southern
highlands attempted to discipline indigenous festivities as they found the invasion of
public space by the unwashed masses offensive (Larson 2004: 177). This document
betrays local struggles for power amongst local elites and indigenous communities
85
specific to the period after the War of the Pacific. Furthermore, the pleading tone of the
letter suggests that in this case such prohibitions laws were not enforced. No matter how
repressive the actions rising local elites took to discipline the indigenous masses, they
could not control popular culture, which found strength in communal organization.
The most intriguing example of stigmatizing discourses against the scissors dance
is an account of marvelous events published in a treatise on the history of the region of
Huamanga compiled by the Bishop of Ayacucho in 1924.17 The account describes the
mysterious disappearance of Atanasio Miranda, a scissors dancer from the town of
Corculla.18 The events described occurred in 1834, but the previous Bishop wrote the
account in 1871 as the result of an official investigation supported by the direct testimony
of Atanasio‟s widow, Tomasa (Olivas Escudero 1924: 424). The brief account describes
Atanasio‟s friendship with a strange young man who mysteriously appeared underneath
the dancer‟s harp during a festival competition with a more skilled opponent. The
mysterious figure helped Atanasio learn more impressive pruebas de valor in order to
defeat his rival. Upon their triumphant return to Corculla, Atanasio and the young man
became close friends and Atanasio‟s reputation grew as the best scissors dancer in the
region. Atanasio‟s wife became suspicious when she witnessed her husband‟s friend flee
from the church laughing, and descend from the church tower onto the plaza with cat-like
agility on a very thin cord. When she brought Atanasio to the local priest, he confessed
his sins and agreed to submit himself to an exorcism. His soul cleaned, Atanasio quit
dancing and took a job in the mines of Huaillara. Three years later, he encountered Don
Angelino Torre, a wealthy local gentleman, who requested that Atanasio dance in the
86
local festival under his sponsorship. When Atanasio refused, Don Angelino conspired to
get him drunk. Emboldened by alcohol, Atanasio accepted the proposal. During the
festival his scissors sounded with a surprising force and he performed acrobatic pirouettes
with his feet almost never touching the ground. After Atanasio won the competition, he
disappeared. His wife led a search party through the mines. Four days later they
encountered his mutilated body at the bottom of a deep cave (Ibid. 424-427).
Clearly the primary motivation for this account is pedagogical. The author
assures the reader that countless reputable townspeople witnessed these events. The
Bishop warns the theological community that the devil is still active in the Andes and
scissors dancers like Atanasio are particularly vulnerable to his enchantments. However,
the account also betrays a certain fascination with the aura of the diabolic scissors dancer.
Like many myths and legends that surround the dance, this account draws on a common
repertoire of folkloric tale-types of magicians, artists, and musicians who engaged in
pacts with the devil in order to achieve extraordinary powers.19 In these stories, a
powerful theatrical aura penetrates the stigma of the devil, who is perceived to be the
seductive agent behind the charisma and virtuosity of extraordinary people. The
narrative voice projects both fascination and horror at the prospect of diabolically
inspired Andean dancers active in the parish.20 This account both draws on and extends
the boundaries of the stock character portrayed by the scissors dancer, unsettling the
distinctions between theatrical representation and reality. In aggregate, these sources
show that far from representing the continuity of colonial stigma against Andean
religious culture actually respond to nineteenth century realities and tensions.
87
3.4. Travel Narratives (1824-1875)
The production of scientific knowledge about Andean cultures greatly expanded
over the course of the nineteenth century. In 1778, the Bourbon colonial state opened up
the Spanish-American colonies to free trade and the expeditions of Alexander von
Humboldt (1799-1804) initiated the exploratory period of the traveler-reporter-artist
(Catlin 2008).21 These romantic figures contributed to the increasingly popular literary
genre of the travel narrative, depicting South American landscapes, social types, and
popular customs with a combination of scientific detachment and fascination for the
picturesque (Catlin 1989, Pratt 1992). Pratt argues that European travel writing in the
first half of the nineteenth century constituted “a new Eurocentric form of planetary
consciousness” closely tied to “the consolidation of bourgeois forms of subjectivity and
power” (9). Scientific exploration went hand in hand with North Atlantic capitalist
expansion, providing valuable knowledge for the extraction of resources and acquisition
of inexpensive sources of labor. European traveler-reporter-artists contributed
significantly to the imagining of new Latin American nation-states by constructing
catalogues of recognized social types and popular customs and providing models for
Creole subjects who sought to transcend the national frame and participate in global
modernity represented by science. Following in the footsteps of famed European
explorers, especially Humboldt, Peruvian intellectuals produced their own travel accounts
in which they surveyed the newly independent national territory and “manufactured their
own landscapes, racial types, and historical icons” (Larson 2004: 292).
Travel writing became a valuable contributor to the development of the
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ethnographic imagination. As the nineteenth century wore on, the production of
spectacular images of Andean nature by Humboldt became displaced onto the bodily
practices of Andean subjects. Travel accounts engaged with the new scientific discipline
of ethnology by producing what Pratt has called “manners and customs descriptions,”
which classified the racial types and popular customs of so-called “primitive” societies
(Pratt 1992: 34). According to Deborah Poole, this change in focus contributed to the
emergence of new typological systems of classification central to the objectifying
scientific concepts of race and culture (Poole 1997: 100).22 Julie Stone Peters argues that
nineteenth century travel literature first articulated “the trope of the performing savage”
prior to a series of public displays of the exotic in world‟s fairs and other large-scale
global spectacles. She suggests that “scenes of savage performance- particularly mimetic
dances and pantomimes were everywhere in nineteenth century literature on exotic travel.
Indeed, performance [. . .] largely overtook cannibalism as the ur-trope of savagery in the
popular ethnographic imagination” (Stone Peters 2009: 68-69). While betraying
fascination for the cultural purity and physical talents of performing primitives, most
travel writers maintained reified oppositions between the civilized Western subject of
knowledge and the primitive as the object of the ethnographic gaze. A few travelers
observed the scissors dance during the first half of the nineteenth century. These
accounts perceive the dance as an ancient practice, but also acknowledge its hybridity
making frequent comparisons between the dance and European popular entertainments.
The earliest European traveler to describe an encounter with the scissors dance
was the German merchant Heinrich Witt.23 He embarked from Liverpool to Peru in 1824
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and observed the first years of the newly-independent republic. On his first trip to the
Andes in 1826, he attended the Fiesta de la Concepción in the village of Huancañe in
Puno. During the festival, Witt observed “amongst the parading Indians, the principal
dancers distinguished themselves by wearing masks, ankle-bells attached to their
costumes, and they carried a pair of large scissors in their hands in order to keep the
rhythm” (Witt 1992: 114).24 His description suggests a performance practice with a
genealogical relationship to the contemporary scissors dance, although performed in a
different region, with some distinct aesthetic elements, and by members of a distinct
ethnic group.25 Unlike later travelers, Witt perceived the performance from the utilitarian
perspective of a merchant.26 Little interested in engaging in lengthy ethnographic
descriptions of popular customs, he focuses his narrative on potential business
transactions. Moreover, he narrates the account from an assumed position of superiority
over local residents, ridiculing the audacious displays of the local elites. He shows
slightly more generosity in his depictions of the festive indigenous commoners, but is still
unimpressed by the spectacle of Andean dancers who “paraded on the streets of Puno,
continuously dancing to the sound of their horrible instruments” (Ibid.)
During the tumultuous early years of the republic, Peruvian political and military
leaders traveled to the countryside to survey the national territory, connect with their
regional base, and fight in civil wars against competing factions (Walker 1999: 148).
Associates of these political expeditions wrote travel accounts where they described
Andean cultural practices they encountered on their travels. The most well-known is El
Diario del Presidente Orbegoso al Sur del Perú (1974), written by José María Blanco.
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Blanco was a learned Franciscan priest from Quito who served as the personal chaplain to
liberal caudillo General Luis José Orbegoso. He accompanied Orbegoso on his travels
throughout the southern regions of Peru in 1834 and 1835, when the General was acting
as interim president of the republic. Blanco was a liberal romantic quite familiar with
contemporaneous scientific discourses in Europe and took particular interest in highland
culture.27 According to Blanco, President Orbegoso‟s party encountered scissors dancer
on several occasions during their stay in the vicinity of Huamanga (Blanco 1974: 45, 53,
58, 75). He refers to the dance as pacha-angeles, which literally translates to „earth
angels.‟ While this name references the ritual significances of the dance, Blanco
experienced it purely as entertainment.28 Local authorities of the towns of Huanta,
Paicasana, Quinua, and Huamanga each organized festive greeting parties to welcome
distinguished guests. The welcoming parties consisted of jugglers, acrobats, archers, and
local festive dancers such as the impressive pacha-angeles. The staged nature of these
encounters suggests that local authorities did not always stigmatize the dance as a
diabolic indigenous practice, but sometimes offered it as a gift to highly distinguished
guests as a valued element of local culture. The account suggests that the staging of the
dance as theatrical entertainment outside of local festivals long predates the second half
of the twentieth century when the dance became a global icon of Andean culture.
Blanco offers his most complete description of the pacha-angeles at the end of the
chapter on Huamanga in a short section where he classifies local customs. He describes
the pacha-angeles as “indigenous dancers who wear red pants and large round hats with
great wings full of feathers, a sailor‟s jacket with silk and muslin ruffles covered with
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bands of many colors and shoes of the same class. They dance with scissors in their
hands to keep the rhythm of the music” (Blanco 1974: 70). He clearly categorized the
dancers as indigenous, yet the costume recalls eighteenth century European fashions and
costumed dancers. When Orbegoso and his party were the guests of honor at a festive
meal in Paicasana, they had the privilege to witness, “the skill and barbarity of a pachaangel make an incision in his tongue and cheeks with the scissors” (Ibid. 48). Blanco
described an extraordinary act quite similar to the pruebas de valor performed by
contemporary dancers making this the earliest direct observation of a performance
practice in which the basic repertoire and mythology of the scissors dance were already in
place. Blanco‟s admiration for the dancer‟s skill is complicated by his use of the
descriptive term „barbarity.‟ The Diario is the earliest source that explicitly contributes to
the invention of the ethnographic primitive.
One of the most flamboyant adventurers to reach Peru was Paul Marcoy, the pen
name of French gentleman Laurent Saint Cricq. Marcoy fashioned himself as a romantic
traveler-reporter-artist in the mold of Humboldt.29 Marcoy‟s travels to Peru from 1840 to
1846 coincided with a period of rapid social change, economic modernization, and
international exploration incited by the guano boom and the presidency of Ramón
Castilla. His masterwork, Voyage à Travers l’Amerique du Sud did not appear in book
form until 1869, and later was rapidly translated into English and published in London
and New York in 1873.30 Marcoy‟s accessible literary style and talents for evoking the
picturesque made his narrative a popular best-seller in both the French and Englishspeaking worlds. However, the scientific community, to which he desperately wanted to
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contribute, severely criticized the work as pseudo-science.31 In the span of time between
Marcoy‟s travels and the publication of his narrative, the sciences of naturalism and
ethnology were in the midst of transition from the era of the romantic traveler-reporterartist to a more positivist and detached mode of inquiry (Catlin 1989).
However, the favorable reception the work garnered with the broader public
reveals that a combination of scientific discourse and picturesque romanticism continued
to engage the popular ethnographic imagination. A highly positive book review of the
English edition praised Marcoy‟s “acquaintance with ethnology and several of the natural
scientists” (New York Times 1874). The reviewer constructs Marcoy as an idealized
masculine figure, defined by “sympathy with the harmless savagery of Indian life and
character that shows his true manliness” (Ibid.). Another passage furthers a similar
construction of masculinity, “As M. Marcoy penetrates into the interior his notes become
even more interesting for they relate to the customs and peculiarities of tribes with which
few if any white men, and none who have cared to take the trouble to describe what they
had seen, have ever come into contact” (Ibid.). He positions Marcoy‟s narrative within
the terrain of the “scenario of discovery,” juxtaposing Marcoy‟s sympathetic masculinity
against the femininity of South American nature and the primitive “other.” Rhetorically
the review conceals the imperialist and misogynist force of the metaphor of penetration
by portraying the civility and empathy projected by Marcoy‟s ethnographic gaze. 32
Marcoy devotes the majority of the first volume of Travels in South America to
describing the various ethnic types and cultural practices of indigenous highlanders of the
Cuzco region, where he resided between 1841 and 1845. Historian Pablo Macera has
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suggested, “There have been few that could give an image as direct and personal of Peru
as Marcoy [. . .] His narrative continues to be, as it was for France in the 19th century a
rich deposit of information about highland reality [. . .] For the first time he mentions
popular folk dances [. . .] Throughout he captures the vibrations of the living” (Macera
1999: 101). Marcoy described the scissors dance, which he referred to as the
Huamanguino, amongst the many other dances of the Cuzco region that combined the
sacred and the profane. He wrote the dance represented the:
Inhabitants of ancient Huamanga. From the time of the Incas that
province had the privilege of providing Cuzco with dwarves, buffoons,
actors, and mountebanks destined for the entertainment of the court. Now
that the Incas have disappeared, the Huamanguinos, fallen from their
estate, follow the fairs as common clowns, and figure in the annual
processions. Their customary performance is a kind of military dance,
which they perform to the clinking noise made by the blades of a pair of
scissors, one suspended from their thumb, the other from their forefinger,
which they use as castanets. Some of them play juggling tricks with their
daggers and balls, pierce their tongue with needles, or like Mutius Scevola
hold their hands over a brazier to the astonishment of the gaping crowd.
(Marcoy 1875: 264)
Marcoy recounts a story of origins of a glorious past linked to the court of the Incas, later
devolving into a kind of itinerant circus performance. Like Blanco, he emphasizes the
spectacular nature of the performance, with little mention of any religious or ritual
significance. While he suggests indigenous origins of the dance, he relies heavily on
European references, juggling, clowns, making facile comparisons between Andean and
European popular entertainments.33 The pruebas de valor captured his attention as
displays of physical skill comparable to ancient European performances.
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Illustration 3.1
Dancer “El Huamanguino” Painted by Paul Marcoy, 1873
Reprinted in Juan José Vega. “Antecedentes Historicos de la Danza de las Tijeras”
95
Marcoy was also an accomplished visual artist.34 Along with his description of the
Huamanguino, he includes a small sketch of an individual male dancer playing a scissorslike musical instrument. The dancer wears a blindfold, probably illustrating that he is
performing a prueba de valor. His costume includes pants that fall just below his knees,
stockings, a white ruffled shirt, and darker long coat. On his head he wears a triangular
black hat, adorned with a single feather. This costume clearly bears similarities to
eighteenth century European clothing and costumed dancers. It appears to represent
finery; however, the pants of this particular dancer are torn and his stockings contain
several holes. The dancer probably is of indigenous and peasant status, performing a
dance that partially imitates European performance practices and character types.
Marcoy‟s drawing demonstrates remarkable similarities to the contemporary dance,
showing the particular affective power of visual culture sources.
3.5. Costumbrista Visual Culture
Marcoy‟s work best exemplifies the complex and multi-faceted intersections
between the narrative and visual codes of European travel literature and emergent modes
of national literature and visual culture in Latin America. Marcoy‟s travels in South
America coincided with the formative period of Latin American costumbrismo (Catlin
1989: 63). According to performance studies scholar Jill Lane, “Costumbrista arts in
literature, theatre, and lithography paid keen attention to documenting and elaborating
scenes of local life and creating catalogues of so-called typical figures and social types
that made up the special character of a given locale” (Lane 2005: 20). The roots of this
genre go back to the late eighteenth century when Enlightenment-inspired empiricism
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entered the visual arts and literature, transforming their traditional function in relation to
religion (Catlin 1989: 41, Lane 2005: 20, Ziter 2003). After independence, the influx of
European travelers, merchants, and diplomats as well as an emergent market for
European books made transatlantic aesthetic techniques available to Latin American
artists (Majluf 2008: 24). Lane suggests that costumbrismo “engaged the representational
economy of what would later coalesce into the new discipline of ethnography” (Lane
2005: 20). By participating in the transnational circulation of aesthetic techniques,
costumbrista writers and artists produced national typologies that had an enormous
influence on the construction of emergent national imaginaries (Majluf 2008: 80).
Paul Marcoy shared a visual and narrative vocabulary with numerous Peruvian
artists and writers at the time of his travels in South America. However, by the time he
published his popular travel narrative not only the international scientific community but
also the contours of Peruvian costumbrismo had shifted. Costumbrismo became the
privileged mode of representation for Creole intellectual elites who limited their
imagination of the national space to the coastal urban region. Marcoy‟s work became the
principal target for Manuel Anastasio Fuentes‟s Lima (1866), a beautifully illustrated
satire of European travel writers who fixated on the exotic landscapes and “primitive”
cultures of the Andean region.35 During the second half of the nineteenth century, Creole
writers used the techniques of costumbrismo as principle vehicles for the construction of
the exclusive nationalist ideology of criollismo. Authors such as Fuentes and Ricardo
Palma manufactured a Creole essence that glossed over the stark power relations of Lima.
For example, they represented coastal Afro-Peruvians, descended from slaves, as the
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subservient but happy bearers of the colorful musical and culinary traditions of the
coastal region. This visible inclusion of Afro-Peruvians, however stereotypical and
subservient, was instrumental to the ways in which elite Creole intellectuals constructed a
national-popular imagery that excluded the Andean majorities as remnants of the past and
the primitive “other” to the modern national self (Poole 1997, Thurner 1997, Larson
2004, Kokotovic 2005, Feldman 2005).
While the scissors dance and other forms of Andean popular culture were largely
invisible to the most recognizable Peruvian costumbrista writers of the late nineteenth
century, earlier visual artists incorporated such cultural practices into their repertoires of
national types. The first Peruvian visual artist to depict the scissors dance was Pancho
Fierro (1807-1879). Fierro was a mulatto watercolor and sketch artist from a working
class background. After taking some free classes at La Escuela Nacional de Dibujo
(National School of Drawing) in 1830, he made a comfortable living selling his
watercolors of the social types and popular customs of Lima to a clientele of foreign
travelers and diplomats on urban street corners. After 1853, he largely worked under the
patronage of Peruvian art collectors, including such major Creole literary figures as
Ricardo Palma (Majluf 2008: 18).36 Creole intellectuals mythologized Fierro as the
privileged illustrator of Peruvian criollismo. Majluf argues that the paradoxical
construction of Fierro‟s persona as simultaneously an original and individual genius and a
spontaneous, irrational, and untrained artist, allowed Creole nation builders to forget the
historical formation of criollismo and to incorporate a vision of the popular within an
elite national imaginary (Majluf 2008: 20). The production of the myth of Pancho Fierro
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has selectively edited the immense repertoire of images the artist produced over a nearly
50 year career into a few serially reproduced icons of coastal popular culture. These
icons include: Afro-Peruvian dances such as the zamacueca and Son de los Diablos, street
vendors, bull-fighters, various clerical and professional types, and Lima‟s famous
covered women known as tapadas.37 During his early career, Fierro painted numerous
depictions of Andean types and popular dances that were quite visible in Lima during the
early years of the republic. Included in these lesser-known works are two visual
depictions of the scissors dance, suggesting that it is quite possible that the dance might
have become a national icon within costumbrista visual repertoires much earlier if it had
not been for the exclusionary tactics of nineteenth century Creole intellectuals.
One of Fierro‟ depictions of the scissors dance is a sketch dated to the early 1830s
currently on display as part of the Ricardo Palma collection at the Pinoteca of the
Municipality of Lima. The bottom of the sketch bears an engraving with the title “Danza
de los Chunchos,” most likely made later by Palma. Chuncho is a derogatory term
referring to lowland rainforest tribes, roughly translating to „savage.‟ Ethnographic
studies of the scissors dance have tended to dismiss this title as an effect of Palma‟s
infamous racism (Nuñez Rebaza 1990, Villegas Falcon 1998).38 That may be the case,
however, Fierro‟s also appears to draw on emerging stereotypes of “the performing
savage” (Stone Peters 2009). The sketch figures four male indigenous dancers, who hold
large scissors in their right hands, wear skirts or loincloths around their waists, and
crowns of feathers on their heads. Two musicians, a violinist and another whose
instrument is not visible, accompany the dancers. Each dancer performs a different step.
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Illustration 3.2
Danza de los Chunchos
Reprinted in Juan José Vega. “Antecedentes Historicos de la Danza de las Tijeras”
The costuming portrayed in this sketch is quite distinct from the hybrid European
costumes worn by scissors dancers in contemporaneous visual and narrative
representations of the dance. The primitivism of the image may be a reflection of the
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exotic taste of Fierro‟s European audience, or may suggest that Fierro perceived these
figures as largely outside the urban landscape.
Fierro‟s other visual representation of the scissors dance is a watercolor currently
held in the unedited collection of Leonce Angrand in the Cabinet de Estampes at the
National Library of Paris (Rivera Martínez 1969, Nuñez Rebaza 1990).39 It shares in the
exoticism of the earlier sketch. Instead of depicting “primitive” indigenous dancers, the
watercolor figures four male dancers wearing orientalized costumes and conical headpiece with veil-like feathers on top. The bottom of the painting bears the inscription in
French “Danse des Ciseaux (Scissors Dance), which he explained “is executed in
processions in some of the villages of the coast of Lima- Purely Indian Festivals, 1835”
(Rivera Martínez 1969: 181). In 1969, art historian Edgar Rivera Martínez wrote that it:
Represents the celebrated scissors dance [. . ]. The artist depicts the
musicians in a vibrant and picturesque style. It represents the
choreographic sensibilities and the emotions which move the artist,
suggesting the strong primitivist rhythms of the dance [. . .] The
anatomical and perspectival defects of the painting do not diminish the
artistic quality of the image, qualities based on other values than the
learned, and that in this case are accompanied by an exceptional
documentary interest. (Rivera Martínez 1969: 182).
This statement inadvertently reveals the many layers of representation that constitute
Fierro‟s work and persona. From the historian‟s perspective in 1969, the scissors dance
was already an icon of national culture, but to Fierro and his audience it was far more
exotic. Angrand, a French diplomat, collected the watercolor and kept it in a collection
with his own visual depictions of exotic Andean types. The canonization of Fierro as the
embodiment of Criollo sensibilities has marginalized his earlier representations of
Andean popular culture. While Andeanist ethnographers and some art historians have
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Illustration 3.3
Danse des Ciseaux by Pancho Fierro, 1835
Reprinted on http://www.hermanoschavez.com
recovered some of the artist‟s depictions of Andean types, they have accepted Creole
attributions of ahistorical documentary value, authenticity, and even the exotic to both
Fierro‟s work and Fierro himself. These layers of mystification conceal the commercial
sensibilities of Fierro‟s work and the degree to which Andean popular culture was once
not as marginal to the national imaginary as later narratives suggest (Majluf 2008).
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Illustration 3.4
Mate Burilado, Ayacucho, 1848
Reprinted in Lucy Nuñez Rebaza Los Dansaq
Other vernacular artists produced visual depictions of the scissors dance during
the 1830s and 1840s. In 1848, an anonymous artisan from the city of Huamanga
included the image of a scissors dancer on a mate burilado (engraved gourd) adorned
with costumbrista designs. The art of painting gourds is one of the oldest in the Andean
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region, going back to 4000 BC (Sabogal 1946, Wood 2002: 61). Indigenista artists
collected this mate in the 1930s and it is currently on display at the Museo de la Cultura
Peruana.40 This particular work prominently displays the image of a tall, lanky, and
elegantly dressed scissors dancer. He wears a European-derived costume with a widebrimmed hat adorned with a single feather, and holds a pair of large scissors in his right
hand and a handkerchief in his left hand. From the hat to the dancer‟s thigh hangs a long
tail, clearly evoking the dance‟s association with the devil.41 He is barefoot with oneknee raised in mid-step. A harpist and a violinist accompany the dancer. They wear
clearly westernized clothing styles. A number of early ethnographic observers refer to
this particular source as evidence that the dance is a practice brought to Peru by the
Spanish and incorporated into indigenous culture and indigenized afterwards (Arguedas
1958, Holzmann 1966, Roel Pineda 1976). Mates have primarily acquired value within
the ahistorical category of traditional art. Rather than being an example of primordial
artistic techniques, the 1848 mate was the earliest example of a piece commissioned by
an emergent self-made mestizo middle-class for use as a decorative object (Wood 2002:
62). Distinguished mestizo craftsman assimilated the representational strategies of
costumbrismo, adorning these boutique objects with designs that evoked local cultural
traditions. Local provincial elites distinguished themselves from both the coastal
oligarchy and Indians through the display of indigenous culture as picturesque objects.
Another nineteenth century visual depiction of the scissors dance is a fountain
sculpture that adorns the plaza of the neighborhood of Chaupi in the city of Puquio.42
Below the seated figure of an individual scissors dancer appears an engraved inscription
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Illustration 3.5
Pilar Alberto in the Barrio of Chaupi in Puquio
Reprinted in Alfonsina Barrionuevo Ayacucho: La Comarca del Puka Amaru
with the date July 12, 1846. The sculpture is known locally as Pilar Alberto.
Contemporary scissors dance performers from Puquio remember Alberto as a legendary
scissors dancer from the 1830s and 1840s. According to reputation, he could perform
extraordinary pruebas de valor, including the magical ability to move objects with his
mind (Barrionuevo 1988: 214, Personal Interview “Encanto,” 2009). The figured dancer
wears a multi-colored costume remarkably similar to the regional costume from southern
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Ayacucho still worn today, including the tall headdress called a montera. The fixed statue
cannot circulate except in the form of photographed images. Yet, as the scissors dance
has become a national emblem, the statue itself has acquired the status of an icon of the
local culture of Puquio and its proud long-standing tradition, being home to some of the
best scissors dancers, both past and present.43
These visual sources, along with the nineteenth century travel narratives,
demonstrate that the scissors dance was not simply a timeless Andean indigenous
practice. These documents do not merely reflect a pre-existing performance genre, but
are circulating cultural practices in themselves that contributed to the complex visual and
textual economies that determined the way both transnational interests and Peruvians
themselves imagined the Peruvian nation and national types in the early republican
period. The 1830s and 1840s saw the largest concentration of these representations
during a period when Andean peasants had a relatively high degree of participation in the
national economy. If the presence, however marginal, of the scissors dance in the
emerging repertoire of national types and emblematic cultural practices during this period
was later obscured by the exclusive national project of Creole elites, we should not
mistake this marginality and exclusion for simplified romantic notions of cultural
resistance. After a period of absence of nearly thirty years, the scissors dance only
intermittently re-entered the repertoires of national representation during the crisis
brought on by the disastrous War of the Pacific (1879-1883) and the emergence of the
cultural nationalist movement known as indigenismo in the early twentieth century.
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3.6. The War of the Pacific: A Crisis of National Identity
The guano boom enabled urban Creole elites to forget that the Peruvian nation
was populated by a majority of indigenous highlanders. Peru‟s disastrous defeat to Chile
in the War of the Pacific briefly brought indigenous soldiers into the national spotlight as
patriotic heroes (Larson 2004: 178). This conflict left a traumatic scar in the national
collective memory that has yet to completely heal. The events that led to the War of the
Pacific revolved around the competition between Peru, Bolivia, and Chile for British
export capital as the supply of guano deposits dried up.44 Chile‟s superior naval strength
financed by British corporations allowed the smaller southern neighbor to enter easily
into Peruvian territory. Political squabbling against the political elite further weakened
Peru‟s position. By 1881, Chile established an occupying government in Lima. Only a
small pocket of resistance by peasant guerilla fighters in the highlands, led by General
Andres Avelino Caceres held out until the signing of the Treaty of Ancón in 1883 (Klaren
2000: 188, Larson 2004: 183). Caceres was a Quechua-speaking former landowner from
Ayacucho, who succeeded in channeling the anger of indigenous peasants at the racism of
invading Chilean army. He became one of the few heroes to emerge from the Peruvian
side of the War of the Pacific.45 For the indigenous soldiers who fought under his
command, Caceres came to embody their hopes and dreams for greater participation in
the national community, which they expressed through Inca revivalism.46 The mutual
respect between Caceres and his soldiers opened a space for an alternative vision of
national identity to re-emerge from the ruins of the Creole nationalist project (Mallon
1995, Thurner 1997, Larson 2004). The peasant soldiers took the opportunity to pay
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retribution to the large highland landowners who exploited them, many of whom
opportunistically collaborated with the Chilean soldiers (Mallon 1983).
The figures of Caceres and his soldiers loom large over Andean festivities even
today. Numerous localities enact ritual battles between Chilean troops and Caceres‟s
montoneras. El Niño Lachoq, the Baby Jesus figure who serves as the patron of one of
the most important scissors dance festivities in Huancavelica, appeared as a miraculous
apparition to Caceres‟s troops warning them of the coming onslaught of Chilean forces as
they passed through Huancavelica near the Christmas holiday. During the annual
festivity, mayordomos contract scissors dancers who offer their competition as a gift in
honor of El Niño Lachoq. These festivities commemorate a period in which Andean
communities forced themselves into the national picture and articulated an inclusive
vision of national citizenship through a multi-ethnic alliance with Caceres (Mallon 1995,
Thurner 1997, Larson 2004).
Out of the intimacy between Caceres and his troops came the documentary source
that re-entered the scissors dance into the archival record. Caceres‟s wife, Antonia
Moreno de Caceres, accompanied her husband to the central highlands, as he took
command of the Compaña de la Breña. She played an important, if gender defined, role
in the military campaign, leading the indigenous women in taking care of the soldiers‟
wounds, and cooking and washing their clothes for them. Along the journey she kept a
detailed diary of what she observed on their travels and the harrowing experiences of war
(Moreno de Caceres 1974).47 The narrative portrays empathy and intimacy, which both
General Caceres and Antonia showed to the indigenous peasants they led into battle, and
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the peasants reciprocated to an even greater degree.48 Although not without a certain
paternalism, Moreno de Caceres‟s narrative enacts the potential for a more equal
partnership between Creole elites and indigenous peasants that would once again only
find a marginal place in the national discourse after the war‟s end.
Remembering the stay of Caceres and his peasant brigades in Huamanga in 1882,
Moreno de Caceres described in her diary a surprise encounter with a group of scissors
dancers:
One day we had the surprise to encounter a group of cheerful dancers,
reminiscent of Inca times and of the Viceroyalty. One was dressed like
Louis XIV, in a beautiful costume of crimson silk with frills of pretty lace
in the back of the jacket, in the elbows of the sleeves, and in the pants that
fell above the knees; on his head he wore an elegant hat of white feathers.
This character held enormous scissors in one hand, in order to keep the
rhythm of the dance, like one can see in Inca ceramics representing a
dancer that celebrates the harvest. (Moreno de Caceres 1974: 65).
She further mentions two musicians, a harpist who “wore modern dress,” and another
whose instrument she did not remember who wore a poncho. Like other nineteenth
century observers, Moreno de Caceres depicts the dancer‟s costume as reminiscent of
eighteenth century European fashions and costumed dancers. She clearly identified the
dancers as indigenous peasants, and associated the dance with the time of the Incas as
well as Louis XIV. Moreno de Caceres closed the description by asserting that her party
attentively watched the performance, “content to see they had the good taste to guard the
lovely traditions of the past” (Ibid. 65). The account is lodged within a larger narrative
that sentimentalizes the national territory and its traditions. Moreno de Caceres perceived
highland indigenous culture as an integral part of a larger national culture and identity.
This empathy for and intimacy with indigenous peasant cultures foreshadowed the
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emergence of indigenista literature, and the central place of women authors in that genre,
in the decades that followed the War of the Pacific (Kristal 1987).
The War of the Pacific offered peasant-soldiers an opportunity to construct
themselves as political subjects and voice alternative notions of citizenship. Using
similar strategies as indigenous groups in the early decades of the republic, they staked
their political hopes on their intimate relationship with Caceres, who assumed the role of
the paternalistic caudillo (Klaren 2000: 193, Larson 2004: 185). However, shortly after
the conflict ended, Caceres‟s political ambitions forced him to abandon his former
peasant brigades. In June 1884, he led a military campaign to repress peasant groups in
the central highlands who occupied hacienda estates. As President, between 1885 and
1895, he turned the full force of the Peruvian military against the indigenous movements
(Larson 2004: 185). Peasant resistance to these campaigns muted an emergent narrative
that honored the montoneros as patriotic citizens and war heroes. With reconstruction
underway, elite intellectuals created a hardened image of the savage “Indian” as the
scapegoat blamed for the epic defeat (Klaren 2000: 193, Larson 2004: 196). During the
final decade of the nineteenth century, “The Indian Problem” became a key question of
national identity hotly debated well into the twentieth century. Conservative voices of
export elite asserted that the indigenous majority was a backwards race who lacked
national sentiment.49 Positivist discourses of scientific racism widened the gulf between
a modern and “white” coastal region and the primitive and “Indian” highlands. After
Caceres served two terms, the Civilista Party associated with the aristocratic oligarchy
gained power from 1895 to 1919 in a period that most historians refer to as the
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Aristocratic Republic (Kristal 1987, Klaren 2000, Larson 2004).
3.7. The Staging of the Inca Past: The Emergence of Indigenismo
However, neither the rule of the Civilista Party nor dominant images of apathetic
and savage Indians went uncontested. If scientific positivist discourses of race and space
fueled these dominant visions of nationhood, positivism also enabled alternative national
visions that evoked “the romantic primitivism of an ahistorical culture” (Larson 2004:
199). Critical voices, such as those of Manuel Gonzalez Prada and Clorinda Matto de
Turner, accepted the oligarchy‟s assertions that Peru had lost the war because the Indians‟
lacked nationalism. However, they blamed this situation not on the innate backwardness
of the Indians themselves, but on the exploitative practices of highland landlords and the
negligence of aristocratic urban elites (Kristal 1987, Klaren 2000). The emergence of
dissident discourses in the 1890s paved the way for the indigenista movement of the early
twentieth century. Yet, while romantic images of “the Indian” race and culture were
central to these desires for a “New Peru” to emerge out of the ruins of colonial and neocolonial structures of power, these discourses often denied historical agency to the
indigenous subjects they claimed to redeem.
The emblematic figure of late nineteenth century dissident views on “the Indian:
was the poet and orator Manuel Gonzalez Prada. He modeled his position on
enlightenment values, scientific positivism, and artistic realism.50 Gonzalez Prada
proposed that education and science were the only solutions to the stark national
divisions that plagued the country. In numerous public appearances, including his
famous speech at the Politeama theatre in 1888, Gonzalez Prada argued that the
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indigenous masses were the most authentic embodiments of the nation with the capacity
to progress through education and the modernization of the countryside (Gonzalez Prada
2003). He claimed:
The real Peru isn‟t made up of the groups of American-born Spaniards
living on the strip of land situated between the Pacific and the Andes; the
nation is made up of the masses of Indians living on the Eastern slope of
the mountains. For three hundred years the Indian has been relegated to
the lowest strata of civilization, a hybrid with all of the vices of the savage
and none of the virtues of the European. Just teach him to read and write
and in a quarter of a century you will see if he is capable of achieving
dignity or not. It is up to you schoolteachers, to galvanize a race fallen to
sleep under the tyranny of the justice of the peace, the governor and the
priest, that unholy trinity responsible for brutalizing the Indian. (Gonzalez
Prada 2003: 49).
Although he had no first-hand knowledge of Andean life, Gonzalez Prada became the
most important influence on provincial indigenista writers. His Circulo Literario became
the intellectual home of Clorinda Matto de Turner, the author of Aves Sin Nido (1891),
which many consider the first Peruvian indigenista novel. Matto de Turner adopted
Gonzalez Prada‟s positivism and realist lens on the social problems of highland life,
offering a liberal enlightened heroine as the savior of the victimized indigenous race
(Kristal 1987). Later indigenistas of the 1910s and 1920s, like Gonzalez Prada and Matto
de Turner, imagined the indigenous masses as an authentic and pure race that required an
enlightened vanguard to liberate itself from its degraded social condition. After a period
of exile in Europe in the 1890s exposed him to anarcho-syndicalism, Gonzalez Prada
returned to Peru and became an inspirational leader of the still nascent labor movement
and a precursor for the socialist thinkers of the 1920s (ibid.).
The emergence of dissident politics and indigenismo during the 1890s intersected
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with an influx of foreign archaeologists, anthropologists, and linguists who applied new
positivist theories of race and culture to Peru‟s glorious Inca heritage. The German
medical doctor, linguist, and archaeologist Ernst Middendorf observed the scissors dance
on the outskirts of Cuzco in the early 1890s.51 According to his own account Middendorf
was a medical doctor by profession, but his greatest passion was scientific research on
ancient AmerIndian languages, archaeology, and cultures. Although technically an
amateur scientist, Middendorf embodied the new more specialized models of European
exploration in South America. His three-volume travel account, entitled Perú (18931895), was widely read by both the scientific community and a general readership. He
made acknowledged contributions to both Andean archaeology and linguistics.52 In the
third volume of Peru, Middendorf described a small chapel he came upon in the village of
Pocoy, just outside of Cuzco.53 He witnessed, “An Indian wearing the picturesque
costume of a dancer, with a crown of feathers on his head [. . .] who danced in front of
the altar. He executed strange jumps while another was seated in a pew making the
rhythm with a violin made of old boards” (Middendorf 1973: 410). His guide told him
that the dance was an act of devotion performed during the Festival of Holy Cross.
Middendorf was the first and only nineteenth century commentator to explicitly
note a religious significance to the scissors dance. He was quite familiar with the
developments in comparative religion and other disciplines that contributed to the
Cambridge School and the later emergence of anthropology as a scientific discipline
(Stone Peters 2009). Middendorf suggests that the dance was a survival of the Inca Cult
of the Sun later admitted into Catholic festivities by colonial priests. Middendorf
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universalized the notion of performance as a sacred offering by comparing the dance to
familiar ancient Western practices from the bible. Stone Peters argues that the decade of
the 1890s represented a major shift in ethnological discourses about “primitive”
performance. Cultural practices ethnographic observers had previously perceived as
merely strange entertainments suddenly came to the forefront of the ethnographic
sciences. Ethnographers came to perceive the performance of ancient civilizations,
including classical Greek drama, as derived from primitive ritual needs and urges. The
equation Middendorf makes between the religious performances of European antiquity
and Andean peasants can be seen as part of this larger schema. He argued that, “offering
dances to the gods has been common amongst the most diverse groups of people such as
King David dancing in front of the Arc of Alliance upon entering Jerusalem” (Ibid.).
The late nineteenth century dissident movements, the growing interest in the
Andean region by European archaeologists, anthropologists, and linguists, and the
modernization of the countryside conditioned an important early twentieth century
cultural nationalist movement known as indigenismo. This movement challenged the
centralism, elitism, and Eurocentrism of the Lima-based oligarchy‟s vision of nation by
rooting an alternative vision of the nation in Peru‟s Inca heritage and to a lesser extent,
the authentic Indian race (Poole 1997, Mendoza 2000, Cadena 2000). As the former
capital of the Inca Empire and the home of a well-developed colonial tradition of
Quechua literature, poetry, and theatre, Cuzco became the center of early indigenista
activity. The Cuzco school of indigenismo has its roots in the increasing study of the
Quechua language and Inca archaeology in the 1880s and 1890s by both foreign scholars
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and Peruvian intellectuals. During this same period, a new educated middle-class that
benefited from the burgeoning wool export industry turned towards a romantic view of
Andean peasants in order to claim Cuzco as a regional center of Peruvian culture.54 The
years between 1910 and 1930 represented the climax of Cuzco indigenismo and its
influence in the larger national culture (Poole 1997: 182). Modern Inca drama became a
national phenomenon that articulated a strengthening provincial nationalism against the
coastal oligarchy. One major impetus for this large-scale Inca revival was the
reformation of the Universidad de San Antonio Abad de Cusco in 1909, brought about by
the first student strike in Peruvian history against the conservatism and traditionalism of
the curriculum (Tamayo Herrera 1980: 122).55
While most studies of indigenismo have focused on literature, the development of
Inca theatre became a primary way Cuzco intellectuals gained influence in the larger
national culture (Itier 1995, 2000, Cadena 2000, Mendoza 2007).56 Through the
enactment of Inca history provincial intellectual elites claimed Inca heritage as their own,
distinguishing themselves from both exploitative gamonales and common Andean
peasants (Itier 2000).57 Between 1912 and 1919, Inca theatre companies travelled the
country, becoming a voice of expression of the oppositional movement that led to the
election of labor-friendly and populist presidential candidate Guillermo Billinghurst in
1912 (Itier 2000, Klaren 2000: 222-223). While the principal artists behind Inca theatre
companies were intellectual elites, the productions had wide appeal for a mass, mostly
Quechua-speaking audience, and sometimes included artists from popular backgrounds as
musicians and dancers (Itier 2000: 37, Mendoza 2007). Cesar Itier argues, “A large
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public, probably mostly monolingual, attended the performances. Quechua dramatic
performances were probably the only space in Cuzco at the time where people from
different social strata could share the same cultural and intellectual experience, and they
therefore represented one of the few venues in which the presence of a national
community, over and above the ethnic and cultural differences separating the different
groups in everyday life was evident” (2000: 37). Music and dance performance
embedded within Inca drama formed a great part of its popular appeal. Inca drama
intersected with an art music scene that drew on Inca themes. Classically-trained erudite
composers collected indigenous melodies and used them to construct harmonized
symphonic composition, which very often became incorporated into theatrical
productions (Mendoza 2007). The most important composer of Incaic music of the 1910s
was Huanuco-born Daniel Alomía Robles. Robles composed the legendary zarzuela El
Condor Pasa, which premiered at the Teatro Mazzi in Lima in 1912.58 Robles and other
composers of Incaic music drew on the music of contemporary peasants in order to
reconstruct the lost national traditions from the Inca past. At the time it was common
“for contemporary Andean culture to be considered a direct extension of Inca culture,
devoid of any changes or transformations, as well as for Andean music to be deemed as a
homogenous entity, with no local or regional variation” (Romero 1985: 223).
The revival of Inca music inspired the first systematic ethnographic investigation
of Andean music, by French husband and wife team Raoul and Marguerite D‟Harcourt.59
In 1924, they published their immense monograph Les Musique de los Incas y Sus
Supervivances (The Music of the Incas and its Survivals) (D‟Harcourt 1990). They
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argued that the peasant‟s illiteracy and rich oral tradition enabled the preservation of
musical elements that reached back to the time of the Incas.60 In the chapter about
Festivals and Dances the D‟Harcourt‟s briefly mention the scissors dance as a seasonal
ritual linked to the annual harvest of alpaca wool. Situating the dance within their larger
argument about the continuity of Andean culture overtime, they argue that such festivities
and the dance itself were survivals of a rich Inca culture that revolved around communal
agricultural work (Ibid. 117). At the end of the text, they included the earliest available
photographic evidence of the scissors dance. The photograph, taken by a Dr. Vergne in
1914, portrays eight dancers from the city of Ayacucho. They wear simple costumes,
suggestive of peasant dress of the time period. Several harpists stand behind the dancers,
their instruments towering above the dancers‟ heads and dominating the frame. Although
the D‟Harcourt‟s account emphasizes cultural purity and continuity, the photograph
depicts contradictory evidence of hybridity and change (Ibid. 547).
3.8. La Patria Nueva (1919-1930)
The final years of the D‟harcourt‟s research (1919-1921) corresponded to the
triumph of this heterogenous coalition with the defeat of the Civilista Party by Augusto
B. Leguia in 1919 (Klaren 2000: 256).61 As a former Civilista President himself with
strong ties to North American capital, Leguia‟s artful use of populist rhetoric had always
been fraught with contradictions (Klaren 2000: 241). Nevertheless, Leguia appropriated
the Inca revivalism that had unified the opposition and baptized his regime as a new era
in Peruvian politics “La Patria Nueva” (new nation) (Itier 2000: 58). He sought to
modernize and industrialize the national economy and strengthen the centralized state.
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Although contradictory, Leguia‟s evocation of a “New Peru” invited a vigorous debate
over the future of the nation that reverberated for the entirety of the twentieth century.
While Leguia‟s Patria Nueva brought about remarkable social, political, and economic
transformations in Peru, his populist rhetoric contrasted sharply with his reliance on
foreign capital and his increasingly autocratic style of governance (Klaren 2000: 241-247,
Cadena 2000: 86-88). As part of his populist platform, Leguia adopted a liberal
indigenista ideology that he called “official indigenismo” (Cadena 2000: 87). A new
constitution in 1919 recognized the collective property rights of indigenous communities
for the first time. In 1920, Leguia created the Office of Indigenous Affairs, headed by
radical indigenista sociologist and lawyer Hildebrando Castro Pozo, as part of the
Ministry of the Interior (Klaren 2000: 247). Leguia threw his support behind the Comite
Pro-Indigena Tawantinsuyu, was a coalition between Lima-based Pro-Indian activists,
radical provincial indigenistas, and self-identified indigenous leaders from Puno, Cuzco,
and Ayacucho. They proposed a quite radical platform of “indigenous citizenship
empowered by literacy” (Cadena 2000: 88). Contesting the dominant definition of
indigeneity limited to illiterate agriculturalists, they showcased literate indigenous leaders
as political actors on the national stage (Cadena 2000: 89-96). Leguia‟s need to foster
alliances amongst the popular classes opened a space for the articulation of indigenous
citizenship within a renovated national community.
Leguia‟s self-anointed title as the protector of the Indian race had always coexisted uneasily with his aggressive program of capitalist modernization largely financed
by foreign loans. His Ley de Conscripción Vial, which allocated forced unpaid labor on
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state road-building projects, was presumably extended to all able-bodied adult males but
in practice was limited to only indigenous peasants (Cadena 2000: 88). Although the law
had existed since 1920, the massive acceleration of road-building in 1923 caused a
vigorous debate within the Comite Pro-Indigena Tawantinsuyo, splintering the
organization into liberal and radical factions. During the same year, Leguia‟s
increasingly autocratic style of governance and violent repressive actions against the
peasant movements he once supported caused widespread disenchantment with the
modernizing President from the left. After consolidating his support amongst liberal
modernizers and forcing most of his strongest Civilista enemies into exile, Leguia no
longer needed the radical dissident elements whose support he once courted (Cadena
2000: 96-97). According to Itier, this fragmentation meant the decline of Inca theatre as a
popular expression of a unified and utopian national identity (Itier 2000: 81). After 1923,
Leguia‟s “official indigenismo” became largely symbolic, endorsing the valuation of a
romantic, and unthreatening indigenous culture as the iconic face of the Peruvian nation.
The leftist opposition that came to represent new possibilities for imagining a
more inclusive Peruvian nation from the mid-1920s onward arose out of the social
movements that brought Leguia to power. The paradigmatic figures of the Peruvian left,
Victor Haya Raul de la Torre and José Carlos Mariátegui, both rose to prominence with
the student and labor movements of 1918-1919 (Klaren 2000: 258). Haya de la Torre
was the leader of the student movement who initially supported Leguia but turned against
him in 1923. That year, Leguia forced him into exile where he founded the Alianza
Popular Revolucionario de America (APRA) from Mexico in 1928. APRA was largely
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based on the populist nationalism and anti-colonial myth of mestizaje that fueled the
Mexican Revolution and became one of the most important forces in twentieth century
Peruvian politics (Klaren 2000: 254). Just as important to the emergence of a strong
Peruvian left despite his early death at just thirty-six years of age, was José Carlos
Mariátegui. Mariátegui was an independent journalist with a developing socialist
ideology who became an early critic of the Leguia administration from the left (Liss
1984: 129). In late 1919, Leguia offered him the choice between exile in the form of a
government stipend to study in Europe or a jail term. Mariátegui‟s exile in Italy
solidified his socialist convictions and education in the nuances of Marxist theory.62 He
returned to the Peru in 1923 with a renewed identification the popular classes.63 He took
over the leadership of the Peruvian left after the recent exile of Haya de la Torre, who
remained an ally until after a highly publicized split in 1928 (Klaren 2000: 258-259).
Upon his return to Lima, Mariátegui‟s house on Jirón Washington, nicknamed “el
rincón rojo” (red corner), became the most important meeting place for an emerging
leftist intelligentsia (Klaren 2000: 256, Coronado 2008: 26-27).64 From 1926-1930,
Mariátegui edited the journal Amauta, which became the most important indigenista and
socialist intellectual forum of the period (Wise 1980). Most of the most important
indigenista works in literature, poetry, visual arts, sociological essays, and political
theory first appeared on the pages of Amauta (Becker 1993, Escajadillo 1999). One of
the most important works published in the early issues of Amauta was La Tempestad en
los Andes, by Cuzco-based historian, archaeologist, educator, and activist Luis E.
Valcárcel. Valcárcel‟s romanticized view of the Inca Empire as a socialist utopia
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profoundly impacted Mariátegui‟s own thinking about the potential for creating a “New
Peru” through the figure of the Revolutionary Indian.65 In his messianic manifesto,
Valcárcel called for the rebirth and resurrection of Tawantinsuyo through the uprising of
the oppressed indigenous commoners with the aid of sympathetic intellectuals like
himself (Leibner 1999: 150-157, Escajadillo 1999). The language of the survival and
rebirth of the spiritual purity of the Indian race adopted by both Valcárcel and Mariátegui,
and disseminated through Amauta, animated later ethnographic characterizations of the
scissors dance. Although neither Mariátegui nor Valcárcel directly mentioned the
scissors dance, one short section of La Tempestad en los Andes, “La Danza Heroica”
depicts warrior dancers from Cuzco who defend themselves from a military attack with a
“magical” ritual dance in remarkably similar terms as later ethnographic comparisons
between the scissors dance and the Taki Onqoy (Escajadillo 1999: 185).
In his own masterwork, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality,
Mariátegui appropriated the messianic utopianism of Valcárcel into his own historicalmaterialist account of Peruvian history.66 He recast “the Indian Problem” as a
socioeconomic issue tied to land tenure and the latifundia system. He argued that despite
their subjection to semi-feudal domination, the Indians retained the cultural and spiritual
values which animated Tawantinsuyo and suggested that the ayllu was an archaic form of
communism. Thus, through the interventions of a committed Marxist vanguard, the two
conflicting strands of Peruvian society and history would finally converge, creating a new
society founded on the marriage between indigenous and modern forms of socialism
(Liss 1984: 138, Leibner 1999, Klaren 2000: 256, Coronado 2008: 28-29). For an
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intellectual who wrote passionately about the intersections of history and culture,
Mariátegui painted a decidedly ahistorical portrait of indigenous culture. He valued
indigeneity primarily for its disruptive qualities; it‟s very alterity made it the natural
enemy of Western capitalism and imperialism. Mariátegui evoked the objectified figure
of “the revolutionary indio,” available to him only through lettered indigenista cultural
production, such as the messianic manifesto of Valcárcel, the poetry of Cesar Vallejo, and
the paintings of José Sabogal (Coronado 2008: 21-51). If Mariátegui became the most
articulate early voice of the “New Peru,” he valued indigenous culture as a timeless
repository of tradition, nature, and communal ethos, yet denied the possibility of a
modern indigenous subjectivity and agency until the coming of a distant and utopian
future (Ibid.).67 While Mariátegui never wrote about the scissors dance, and was
probably not aware of its existence, he sounded the major notes central to its recognition
and canonization by later Andeanist intellectuals as a representative icon of the authentic
and disruptive presence of Andean indigeneity.68
Besides Valcárcel, one of the most important sources for Mariátegui‟s utopian
view of the ayllu as a precursor to modern socialism was the work of sociologist
Hildebrando Castro Pozo.69 In 1920, President Leguia appointed Castro Pozo as the first
Head of the Office of Indigenous Affairs. He instituted the research and infrastructure
necessary to implement the official registry of indigenous communities mandated by the
new constitution and presided over the national congress meetings of the Comité ProIndigena Tawantinsuyu between 1921 and 1923. In 1923, he split with Leguia over the
president‟s repressive actions against peasant rebellions in Puno. After a short exile in
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Panama, he returned to Peru illegally and published Nuestra Comunidad Indigena in
1924 (Leibner 1999: 121-123). This massive monograph was one of the earliest protoethnographic studies of the lifeways and institutions of Andean indigenous communities.
Although Castro Pozo had conducted the research as an official representative of a
decidedly capitalist administration, his newfound independence allowed him to
unambiguously interpret his findings through a Marxist lens. He mystified the ayllu as a
vital and surviving form of ancient indigenous communism with revolutionary potential
in the present. Mariátegui himself acknowledged that Castro Pozo‟s work provided the
empirical basis for his own theories of indigenous socialism (Montoya 1979: XIV-XV,
Wise 1980: 76, Liss 1984: 138, Franco 1989, Leibner 1999: 121-122).70
The ninth chapter of Nuestra Comunidad Indigena provides a broad overview of
popular customs, myths, poetry, musical forms, and dances of Andean communities.
Castro Pozo defined these practices as collective representations that encourage the
communal solidarity binding the ayllu together. He pays particular attention to Andean
folkloric dances as important sites of the production of communal solidarity. He argues
that these dance forms “not only represent the aesthetic emotion of the movement that is
generated by the voluptuousness or happiness of triumph, but also the state of civilization
in which they exist” (Castro Pozo 1924: 225). The variety and inventiveness of Andean
indigenous dances reflects the survival of the highly civilized Inca race. The scissors
dance is amongst the many dances he describes. He classified the dance as a hybrid
practice closely resembling European mummers, jugglers, and acrobats performed for the
purposes of recreation and entertainment. Castro Pozo appreciated the “admirable tests
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of agility, balance, and skill, such as rolling up like a snake, dancing on their hands or one
dancer over another without losing the rhythm or abandoning the scissors
accompaniment” that the dancers realize in competition (Ibid. 232). While he
emphasized the entertainment value of the dance rather than ritual efficacy, he placed his
description of the dance within the larger framework of dance as an engine of collective
solidarity. This work anticipates later Andeanist ethnographic depictions of the dance by
attempting the first systematic classification with a general description across regional
varieties, rather than an observation of a single performance in a particular locality.
3.9. The Folklorization of Andean Performance
Although he seldom used the term, Castro Pozo‟s perspective on the popular
customs of Andean indigenous communities signals the broader shift in indigenismo from
Inca revival to the discovery of Andean “folklore.” By the time the Misión Peruana de
Arte Incaica embarked on their international tour of 1923, they only performed short
segments of well-known Incaic dramas such as Ollantay, filling the rest of the program
with folkloric music and dance scenes (Mendoza 2007).71 In 1924, members of the
Misión founded the Centro Qosqo de Arte Nativo, the first cultural institution dedicated
to the investigation and staging of folkloric music and dance in Peru (Mendoza 2007).
That same year, the publication of the studies of the D‟Harcourt and Castro Pozo helped
solidify interest in idealized representations of peasant customs as a strategy to construct
provincial and regional identities. Such provincial intellectuals and artists initiated the
process that recent scholars call “folklorization,” in Peru (Rowe and Schelling 1991, Guss
2000, Mendoza 2000, 2007, Borland 2006).72 Mendoza defines “folklorization” as the
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“process whereby public forms of expression are selected as being representative of a
whole region or nation and are staged and promoted as such” (Mendoza 2007: 6). Others
have also located the related phenomenon of the golden age of ethnographic research on
Andean folkloric practices in the 1930s and 1940s, contributing to the formalization of
Peruvian anthropology (Degregori 2000, Mendizibal 2000).
One of Leguía‟s gestures towards “official indigenismo” was the staging of the
first Concurso de Música y Bailes Nacionales (Contest of National Music and Dance) in
1927 at Pampa de Amancaes in the district of Rimac near central Lima. After 1923, after
his tumultuous split with Haya de la Torre, Castro Pozo, and the Comité Pro-Indigena
“Tawantinsuyo,” Leguía‟s “official indigenismo” was limited to a series of symbolic
gestures (Mendoza 2007). The event was held on June 24, which in 1921 Leguía had
declared “Día del Indio” (Day of the Indian), showcasing Andean musical and dance
groups amongst the expanding masses of migrants in the city of Lima. This first contest
was such a success, drawing nearly 50,000 spectators. The next year it expanded to
include qualifying contests in all of the departmental capitals of Peru. By the mid-1930s
migrant performers from the popular classes participated in the event in large numbers
contributing to the opening of new venues for commercial Andean folkloric performance
(Vivanco 1973: 34-37). To open the second contest in 1928, Leguía offered a speech that
illustrates the nationalistic value placed on folkloric performance:
Nothing expresses better the collective psychology of the people than its
music. The race, the imperial power, the catastrophe of the conquest, the
pain of more than three centuries of domination, and the richness of a
glorious dawn after this unfortunate event exist in our Incaic music. The
vernacular artists that have come from all corners of the country to take
part in this occasion attest to the marvels of our folklore, the riches of our
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musical sources and original choreographic art. This is not a product of
study or a maneuver. This is born spontaneously, because it exists in the
nature of our passionate people. (qtd. in Vivanco 1973: 37).
The president evoked the notion of the collective psychology of the people, represented
by the disembodied and homogenous essence of the figure of the “Indian.” He portrayed
the colonial age as degenerative of the national spirit and celebrated the revival of Incaic
and Andean culture as embodying the emergence of a new nation.73
The scissors dance was largely outside of the Cuzco-centered cultural production
of the national symbols during the classic period of indigenismo of the 1910s and 1920s.
However, the major economic, political, economic, and cultural transformations initiated
by Leguía‟s modernizing administration, had a major impact on the scissors dance‟s
development as a national icon. The folkloric activities of middle-class Ayacuchano
intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s were closely tied to major transformations in the
economic and cultural influence of the Ayacucho region as a result of Leguía‟s
modernizing projects of the 1920s (Bustamante 1943, Arguedas 1975 [1958], Vivanco
1976, 1988). Prior to the construction of two major highways in the 1920s, one that
connected the city of Ayacucho to the rising provincial metropolis of Huancayo, and
another that connected Puquio to Nazca, Huamanga was the center of a prosperous
economy of artisanal production (Arguedas 1975 [1958], Tucker 2006, Ulfe 2006).74
After the construction of these two highways, the prosperity of this regional
economy dried up and the single circuit of performance split into two, creating two
highly distinct regional styles. The style from Huancavelica remained connected to the
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Illustration 3.6
Folklore Performance Group of Moises Vivanco, c. 1940
From the Collection of Martin Chambi
Reprinted in Thomas Turino Music in the Andes
mestizo city of Huamanga and developed further connections to Huancayo. As
indigenous musicians from this region often worked under contract with indigenista
composers in Huamanga and Huancayo, the dance acquired a more Westernized look and
sound in the early twentieth century. incorporating classical harmonies, elements of
ballet, the French minuet, and the Spanish and coastal zamacueca (Villegas Falcon 1998:
61). It was this particular style that intellectuals such as Manuel Bustamante, linked to
the Centro Cultural Ayacucho, began to value as part of the regional folkloric repertoire
in the 1940s (Bustamante 1943, Tucker 2006). In the same decade, the folkloric
performance companies of Moises and Alejandro Vivanco incorporated several scissors
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dancers into their staged performances in Huamanga, Lima, and other provincial cities
(Arguedas 1976 [1944], Vivanco 1988, Turino 2007). Meanwhile, the regional style
from southern Ayacucho, imagined by ethnographers to be more authentically indigenous
entered the national imagination primarily through the interventions of influential midtwentieth century public intellectual José María Arguedas (1911-1969), whose work I
analyze in the next chapter.
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Chapter 4
The Agony of José María Arguedas
4.1. Introduction
In his acceptance speech for the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega Prize in 1968, novelist
and anthropologist José María Arguedas staged a poignant moment in the transformation
of Peruvian identity.1 He referred to himself as a “modern Quechua individual who
thanks to his awareness of the value of his culture was able to broaden and enrich it with
what he had learned and assimilated of art created by other peoples” (Arguedas 2000:
268). Arguedas recognized his own subjectivity as a point of encounter between
Quechua culture and Western modernity. Later in the speech he exclaimed, “I am not an
acculturated man. I am a Peruvian who like a cheerful demon proudly speaks in
Christian and in Indian, in Spanish and in Quechua” (Ibid. 269). He signaled the
transgressiveness of his hybrid identity in relation to the dominant national culture.2 In
this speech, Arguedas staged his own identity as emblematic of the bilingual and
bicultural subjects who populated his utopian vision of a “New Peru.” He later implied
that his objectives as a hybrid intellectual included decentering the epistemological status
of Western rationality. After acknowledging his debts to Mariátegui and Marxism as a
way of understanding the stark economic and political inequalities and injustices that
characterized Peruvian society, he added, “How far my understanding of socialism went I
really do not know. But it did not kill the magic in me” (Ibid. 270). As numerous critics
have suggested, this passage critiques orthodox Marxism‟s devaluation of culture as a
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basis for political action (Montoya 2004, Hayatoshi 2002, Cadena 2005).3 Yet beyond
the status of “magic” as an alternative to the hegemony of Western rationalism, few
critics have explored what this term might have meant for Arguedas‟s intellectual project.
Arguedas is a towering figure of Latin American literature and the concept of
“magic” has formed an important, if undertheorized, aspect of literary perspectives on his
work.4 Literary studies on Arguedas have often invoked the notions of “mythic thought”
and “oral culture” to describe the multivalent uses of Andean popular culture in his work
(Castro Klaren 1973, Rowe 1979, Lienhard 1981, Columbus 1988). However,
Arguedas‟s literary staging of Andean popular culture exceeds the interpretive frame of
“magic realism” that typically contains it (Franco 2006: 178). Angel Rama and Antonio
Cornejo Polar offer related but more complex and historicized perspectives on
Arguedas‟s uses of popular culture through their theories of “narrative transculturation”
and “heterogeneous literature” respectively (Rama 1982, Cornejo Polar 1980, 2003).5
They celebrated Arguedas as a mediating figure able to not only translate subaltern
cultures into objects of literary representation, but also to destabilize the dominant
Western form of the novel through the incorporation of indigenous cultural forms into
lettered cultural production. Through the interventions of Rama in particular, Arguedas
acquired a privileged place in the genealogy of the concept of transculturation, originally
formulated by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz (Ortiz 1947).6 I do not wish to deny
Rama and Cornejo Polar‟s seductive characterizations of Arguedas‟s work, but rather
suggest they are constitutive elements in the construction of Arguedas‟s public persona as
a “cultural hero” (Cornejo Polar 1991, Montoya 1998, Flores Galindo 2007).7
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In this chapter I explore the multi-layered connections between Arguedas‟s uses
of “magic” and performance through a careful examination of the scissors dance as a
symbolic figure he repeatedly evoked throughout the different phases of work. In my
analysis, the concept of performance refers to two distinct but interrelated aspects of
Arguedas‟s work and public persona. I focus on the central importance of Andean
cultural performance to Arguedas‟s intellectual project. By staging the scissors dance in
literary and anthropological texts, and theatrical folklore performances, Arguedas
incorporated the dance into the national imaginary as an emblem of the creativity of
Andean popular culture. Unlike other indigenista writers, he constructed Andean popular
culture not as a picturesque object but as a “legitimate subject and producer of
knowledge” capable of creating an alternative Andean modernity (Lambright 2007: 10).
The magic Arguedas attributed to the dance corresponds to Michael Taussig‟s
ruminations on Benjamin‟s notion of “the mimetic faculty.” Taussig argues, “The
wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and power of the original, to
the point whereby the representation may even assume that character and that power”
(Taussig 1993: xiii). The power of mimesis lies in “the compulsion to become the Other”
(Ibid. xviii). In Arguedas‟s work, the scissors dancer appears less as a human performer
than a purifying point of encounter between the human community and the otherness of
subterranean sacred forces. Taussig‟s suggestion of the magic of mimesis links
Arguedas‟s staging of the scissors dance to the performativity of his public persona.8 He
aimed to deterritorialize the dominant language and culture, constituting literature (and
anthropology) as a performative domain that called into being new subjectivities and
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cultural configurations (Deleuze and Guattari 1986).9 Between Arguedas‟s performative
refashioning of his childhood memories of intimacy with indigenous culture, his mimetic
engagement with the scissors dance, and his death by suicide in 1969, the dance became
forever linked to the continuing presence of the author‟s public persona in the national
imaginary. During Arguedas‟s funeral ceremony, indigenous scissors dancers performed
the “agonia,” the melody and dance sequence that Arguedas unforgettably dramatized in
his most famous short story, “La Agonia de Rasu Ñiti” (1962). Equal parts utopian and
tragic, this event offered Arguedas‟s bicultural subjectivity as a sacrificial surrogate that
called forth a modern indigenous subjectivity and a new Peruvian nation.
4.2. (Auto)Biography and the Performance of Self
Arguedas‟s memories of his childhood intimacy with indigenous culture inform
his fictional and ethnographic writing and set him apart from earlier indigenista writers
and has endowed the writer with a powerful aura of authenticity as a “cultural hero” who
embodies the collective experience of a nation in transition (Cornejo Polar 1991, Flores
Galindo 2007, Montoya 1998, Landreau 1998, 2002, Tarica 2008).10 Posthumous critical
admirers frequently portray him as “an Indian of the Heart” able to project an authentic
indigenous worldview into works written in Spanish (Muñoz 1982, Landreau 1998,
Tarica 2008). However, John Landreau notes that Arguedas‟s fiercest critics use similar
language to denigrate his writing as simplistic, naïve, and even primitive.11 Landreau
argues that the truth-claims of Arguedas‟s unique (auto)biography should be viewed
critically as “a complex fiction; an intricate textual and performative mediation, not only
an intuitive or transparent form of representation” (Landreau 1998: 100).12 He advocates
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for a performative understanding of Arguedas‟s reworking of his childhood memories as
material for fictional and anthropological writing, and for the construction of his public
persona. Arguedas‟s work constituted a complex and transformative poetics of the self
(Smith and Watson 2010: 214).13 Through performative life-writing he sought to recreate his past intimacy with indigenous culture and to work through traumatic
experiences (Fass Emery 1996: 48-49). The scissors dance was a charismatic and
mysterious element of those childhood memories of intimacy with indigenous culture.14
Arguedas was born on January 11, 1911 in the small highland city of
Andahuaylas to a typical provincial middle class family.15 His mother died in 1914 when
Arguedas was only three years old, a tragic event that haunted him throughout his life. In
1917, Arguedas‟s father remarried the widow Grimanesa Arangoita de Pacheco, the
wealthy owner of a large hacienda in San Juan de Lucanas, near Puquio (Pinilla 1994:
34). Grimanesa apparently disliked the boy and sent him to live and work amongst the
indigenous servants, where he found much-needed maternal love.16 He later recalled,
“The Indians, especially the women, saw me exactly as if I were one of them, although
being white I required even more affection, which they gave to me with open arms”
(Arguedas 1969: 36). Arguedas became fluent in Quechua and participated fully in the
life of the indigenous community on the hacienda. When his father visited the hacienda
every Sunday, José María was cleaned up, dressed in respectable clothes, and allowed to
sit in the parlor with the family.17 But when his father left he returned to the Indian
quarters. He began to identify with the world of the servants in the kitchen and the saw
the parlor as space of oppressive discipline and artificiality (Pinilla 1994: 35). After
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more than a year of living in this manner, his stepbrother Pablo Pacheco returned from
his studies and took over as the overseer of the indigenous servants. He humiliated the
men and forced Arguedas to witness him raping countless indigenous women.18
In 1921, José María and his elder brother Aristides escaped from this oppressive
environment, taking refuge with an uncle at the hacienda Viseca, near Puquio. Arguedas
encountered the free landowning indigenous communities of the region. He learned to
differentiate between subjugated hacienda Indians and the wealthier and more
independent Indians of Utej Pampa.19 The indigenous leaders Felipe Maywa and Victo
Pusa counseled the young Arguedas, forever remaining a strong presence in his life. He
admired how the indigenous authorities drew on their ancestral knowledge and a desire
for progress for their communities.20 The differences between hacienda and free Indians
during his time in Lucanas had a profound impact on the formation of Arguedas‟s
intellectual project (Pinilla 1994: 38-39).21 He later wrote, “In Puquio and San Juan de
Lucanas I was a spectator and actor of all the power the indigenous population felt it had
and I felt it effectively had” (Arguedas 1986: 18). The theatrical language of this
statement reveals the tensions between intimacy and distance that defined Arguedas‟s
complicated relationship to “authentic” Indians during his childhood. His perspective as
both a participant and observer of indigenous culture situated him as the ideal
ethnographer many years before he formally trained in anthropology. His early fictional
works constantly dramatize the possibilities and trauma associated with a liminal position
between conflicting social worlds, belonging to both and neither at the same time.
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In 1923-1924, Arguedas spent a year travelling with his father to various highland
towns including Ayacucho, Yauyos, Cuzco, Chalhuanca, and Andahuaylas. 22 Finally, he
settled in the city of Abancay in order to continue his studies.23 Later in 1924, he began
secondary school in Ica. This was his first extended stay on the coast where he
experienced discrimination against highlanders firsthand, as “the Serrano (highlander)
and the Indian constituted one bloc different from the coastal and Western world” (Pinilla
1994: 50).24 Furthermore, his rejection at the hands of the most beautiful girl in his class
caused Arguedas to experience his first emotional crisis.25 Yet the alienation he felt in
Ica deepened his identification with indigenous culture and he vowed to dedicate his life
to correcting Peru‟s deep-seated prejudices. Due to this emotional crisis, his father sent
him to Huancayo where he attended Colegio Santa Isabel. Through the pages of Amauta,
Arguedas began to associate his intimacy with Andean culture as part of a growing
national consciousness (Pinilla 1994: 54-56). Inspired by the work of Mariátegui and the
other authors of Amauta, he founded the literary magazine Antorcha with some friends.26
In 1931, Arguedas enrolled at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in
Lima, the oldest and most prestigious university in Peru, where he studied literature. The
other students in his literature classes saw his direct knowledge of indigenous culture as a
unique and valuable asset. For the first time, Arguedas began to fashion himself as an
authentic Quechua-speaking indigenous writer. At San Marcos, he participated in the
growing leftist student movement inspired by Mariátegui and Amauta. Carmen María
Pinilla argues that Arguedas modeled his authorial persona on the heroic writer described
by Mariátegui, who had the ability to give voice to the “new Peruvianness” by creating
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master works that captured the interiority of the indigenous soul (Pinilla 1994: 66-72).27
Nevertheless, he developed a critical perspective on the representation of indigenous
culture by the writers of Amauta and other indigenistas.28 As he read more Peruvian
literature, the false image of indigenous characters he encountered strengthened his
resolve to write against simplistic stereotypes. He reflected, “When I arrived at the
University and I read the books that attempted to describe the indigenous population [. . .]
I felt so indignant, so strange, so defrauded that I considered it indispensable for me to
describe Andean man as he was and as I knew him from direct experience” (Arguedas
1976: 412). In 1933, San Marcos closed due to increasing leftist demonstrations.
Arguedas took advantage of this interruption in his studies to publish his first short
stories.29 His literary career began in a corrective fashion, utilizing his childhood
memories in novel ways to create a realistic portrait of indigenous reality.
4.3. Creating the Authorial Persona: Arguedas’s Early Fiction
The relationship of Arguedas‟s fiction to literary indigenismo is one of the most
debated critical points on Arguedas‟s contributions to Peruvian culture. Since
Mariátegui, indigenismo has been defined by the identity of its authors rather than by a
set of literary conventions. Arguedas‟s hybridity has placed him in an ambiguous
position between the “inauthenticity” of indigenismo and the “authenticity” of a truly
indigenous literature.30 Many of the author‟s staunchest admirers set him apart from
indigenismo, arguing that his intimacy with indigenous culture allowed him access to the
indigenous spirit (Rowe 1979, Rama 1982).31 Others historicize Arguedas‟s career as a
passage from “classic indigenismo” to a more complex “neoindigenismo” or place him
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into a new subcategory such as “intimate indigenismo” (Escajadillo 1994, Tarica 2008).
I suggest that it would be productive to situate Arguedas‟s fiction within the history of
literary indigenismo as an author with an exceptional knowledge of, and affinity towards
indigenous culture, who nevertheless both made use of the literary conventions of
indigenismo and reacted against them. What sets Arguedas apart from his peers is not
necessarily greater authenticity, but rather an explicit awareness and an intense struggle
with the politics of representation previous writers lacked.
The element that distinguishes the early phase of Arguedas‟s literary career is his
restless search for a literary form that could adequately express his bicultural identity.
Confronted with the challenges of a bilingual writer, he struggled to adequately convey
Quechua culture in literary Spanish, “a difficult proposition since he was vindicating an
oral culture through writing- the very instrument frequently employed for the purpose of
its subjugation” (Archibald 2003: 407). He developed an imperfect solution to this
delicate problem by creating “a forced poetics” he would later call “mistura” (Tarica
2008).32 He sought “to discover subtle ways to disarrange the Spanish in order to make it
into a fitting mold, the adequate instrument of expression” (Arguedas 1985: xv). He
invented “a special language” for Quechua-speaking characters “based on the Spanish
words that have been incorporated into Quechua and the elementary Spanish that some
Indians manage to learn in their own villages” (Ibid. xvi).33 These linguistic experiments
reflected a nascent performative project creating a new national identity out of the
anguish of the bilingual mestizo soul (Tarica 2008).34
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Most of Arguedas‟s early short stories dramatize the stark power dynamics of the
rural Andean villages in which he lived as a child. Writing about his first collection of
stories published under the title Agua (1935), he reflected “That was really written with
hatred, with the fury of pure hatred, the kind that springs from universal loves up there in
the regions of the world where two factions confront each other with implacable crueltyone group that bleeds and another that squeezes out the last drop of blood” (Arguedas
1985: xv).35 These stories represent a world of interminable conflict between the exercise
of tyrannical power by highland landowners and the ways indigenous communities
deflect that power, using their culture as a source of strength in order to have a modicum
of control over their lives. Within this conflictive existence there is very little room for
potential mediation. The primary mediating agent in these stories is the young narratorprotagonist, Arguedas‟s fictional surrogate who appears in one form of another in most of
his fiction. This figure struggles to reconcile his ambivalent position between the
dominant social class into which he was born and the indigenous communities he closely
identified with. The other potential transformative force in these stories is Andean
embodied knowledge. In “Doña Caytana” and “Los Escoleros” (The Schoolboys) he
introduces the figure of the scissors dancer as a charismatic and mysterious character who
embodies the enchantments of indigenous culture.36
“Los Escoleros” dramatizes the conflicted relationship between Don Ciprian, the
powerful landlord of the town of Ak‟ola, and Juan, the story‟s young narratorprotagonist. Juan closely identifies with the indigenous residents despite being the son of
a lawyer. He is painfully aware of the limits of his bicultural identity, characterizing
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himself as a “mak‟tillo falsificado” (False Indian boy), a position he sometimes uses to
his advantage but mostly underscores his uncomfortable situation caught between
antagonistic social worlds. The scissors dance appears in the story exclusively as an
object of imitation for Juan and Bankucha, his indigenous companion. When Juan and
Bankucha find the missing La Gringa, the best and most beloved cow in the region, they
celebrate by imitating Untu, a legendary scissors dancer from Puquio. Juan reports, “he
felt agile, playful, and skillful in the Indian dance. We whistled the tune of Untu, the
father of the scissors dancers of Lucanas: We raised our hands high as if we carried
scissors” (Arguedas 1974: 88). Here Juan shares with Bankucha the ability to participate
in indigenous culture. Little separates the boyhood friends as they engage in a game of
make-believe imitation of a master scissors dancer. After Don Ciprian shoots La Gringa
and Juan stands up to the violent landowner, the protagonist experiences a loss of
innocence. By strategically using his position as the son of a misti (white landowner) to
speak out against the abusive landlord he simultaneously binds himself to and distances
himself from the indigenous community. Later, Juan and Bankucha gather the children
together in a game where they chase and subdue large pigs. Bankucha wins the game by
taming the fiercest hog in town. In celebration, Bankucha whistled the melody of Father
Untu. He “became truly animated. He danced like a master scissors dancer [. . .] All of
the comuneros got really quiet. Their eyes watched with pleasure and pride as the young
Indian boy, a son of Ak‟ola, knew how to dance as well as the masters of Puquio and
Andamarka” (Ibid. 113). While Bankucha momentarily transforms into a master scissors
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dancer, Juan remains in the role of the observer, reflecting on the impossibility of truly
belonging to the community he so closely identifies with.
While the short stories of Agua introduced a number of Arguedas‟s literary
innovations, they utilized the standard plot conventions of literary indigenismo.37 In
Arguedas‟s first novel, Yawar Fiesta (Blood Festival) (1941), he moves the literary
setting from the rural village to the provincial city of Puquio, significantly complicating
the power dynamics of the Andean world and the impact of modernizing transformations.
The conflict of Yawar Fiesta centers on the struggle for the control of the turupukllay, a
hybrid Andean bullfight staged on July 28, Peruvian Independence Day during the 1930s.
A new subprefect from the coast views the Andean bullfight as a savage custom and
issues an edict ordering its replacement with a more “civilized” Spanish-style bullfight.
During several important moments of the novel, a scissors dancer named Tankayllu
intervenes in the action by displaying his dancing skills. Critic Martin Lienhard faults the
novel for marginalizing the scissors dance and not realizing the symbolic possibilities of
the form in relation to the author‟s later fictional works (Lienhard 1983: 152-153). While
the dance plays a relatively minor role, I show in what follows that in Yawar Fiesta he
articulates the figure of the scissors dancer with three major themes of the novel, which
are recurring preoccupations of Arguedas‟s intellectual project.
From its appearance, Yawar Fiesta evokes the magnetic aura of the scissors
dancer as a unifying force appreciated by the diverse constituencies of Puquio. The novel
significantly complicates Arguedas‟s previous depictions of the social relations of
Andean society.38 The scissors dance is one of the only elements of a shared common
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ground able to mediate the tensions between these competing Andean groups. When
Tankayllu dances, “people gathered from all four ayllus and when he entered Girón
Bolivar clicking his shears, the girls and mistis came out on the balconies” (Arguedas
1985: 30). The townspeople shouted, “He‟s an artist. They ought to take him to Lima”
and “He might be an Indian … But how well he dances” (Ibid. 30). The dancer‟s aura
solidifies the temporary position of power the indigenous communities possess during the
festival.39 The mistis are so enchanted with the spectacle of the scissors dancer, they see
him as a showpiece in order to impress the subprefect (Ibid. 33). The subprefect admits,
“they talk to me so much in this town about the dancing Indian that I‟m beginning to
want to see him” (Ibid. 34). The police captain, also from the coast, confides to him,
“That Tankayllu is a filthy Indian like the rest of them but he does some pirouettes and
calls attention to himself” (Ibid. 35). If the scissors dance represents a common Andean
culture shared across the Andean social spectrum, from the perspective of the coastal
oligarchy, this common culture further justifies the view that highland elites are little
better than the savage Indians they dominate so brutally.
Second, the presence of the scissors dance in Yawar Fiesta situates the dance as
an emblem of the creative transculturation of Andean indigenous culture. This hybridity
comes to the forefront when the indigenous ayllus confront the Spanish-style bullfighter
who arrives to replace the Andean bullfight. At first, they accept the imposition because
they perceive the Spanish bullfighter as “a foreign danzak” (Ibid. 140-141) Arguedas
humorously turns the table on his metropolitan readers by comparing the similarities
between the scissors dance costume and the Spanish traje de luces from the indigenous
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point of view. The supposed Spanish original becomes the copy from this perspective.
The hybridity of scissors dance drives Arguedas‟s faith that indigenous communities can
become active agents in an alternative vision of modernity from below (Elmore 1993,
Kokotovic 2006, Lambright 2007). It is precisely this aspect of Yawar Fiesta that a
number of critics misrepresent because they perceive the novel from within conventional
dichotomies that Arguedas attempted to open up. Vargas Llosa argues that Yawar Fiesta
is a “conservative” work of fiction that betrayed Arguedas‟s “desire to freeze time” and
“argue against the modernization of the Andean people” (Vargas Llosa 1996: 148).40
More recent critical voices have embraced the ideological ambiguities of the novel,
suggesting that Arguedas highlights the contradictions of the post-colonial spectacle of
the Indian (Archibald 2003: 410). He attempted to forge a vision of modernity from
below where indigenous Andean communities used their culture in order to confront the
overwhelming transformations of modernization from a position of agency (Archibald
2003, Kokotovic 2006, Lambright 2007).
The final and most important theme in which the scissors dance resonates with the
novel as a whole is the most confounding to critics who perceive a dichotomous
relationship between tradition and modernity. It is not the purity of Quechua language or
culture that Arguedas celebrates, but their power to transform the world as active forms
of knowledge. The almost magical powers of the collective spirit of the ayllus builds to a
crescendo in the climactic moment of the bullfight, where indigenous bullfighters
confront the terrifying Misitu, a gigantic bull endowed with mystical powers.41
Tankayllu‟s dancing serves as the most visible embodiment of the growing spiritual
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energies that embolden the indigenous communities. On the night before the bullfight, he
dances alone with the rest of the population staying in their homes terrified by the
ferocious bull. His steel shears sound with a magnifying force. The members of the
ayllus proclaim, “He and the devil are pals, that‟s why he‟s not scared” (Arguedas 1985:
120). On the day of the bullfight, the scissors dancer led the indigenous masses in
procession, embodying their collective empowerment (Ibid. 127, 131, 133). Without
explicitly describing its ritual significance, Yawar Fiesta gestures towards the dance‟s
aura as an intermediary between humanity and the sacred realm of nature.
4.4. Ethnographic Self-Fashioning
Arguedas was never really satisfied with his stylistic experiments and abandoned
literature for a long period of time after Yawar Fiesta. Most literary critics view the
period between Yawar Fiesta and Los Ríos Profundos (1958) as an unproductive moment
of Arguedas‟s career, with his literary silence driven by psychological illness.42 Prior to
Yawar Fiesta, Arguedas had already experienced the frustration of his hopes for radical
change. He noted, “We thought social justice was just around the corner” (qtd. in
Cornejo Polar 1996: 20). However, during the 1930s a conservative counter-offensive reestablished the power of the Lima-based oligarchy (Degregori 2000, Kokotovic 2006).
Arguedas turned away from formal leftist politics that had “failed to interpret the Andean
people‟s deeply held interests and capacity for historical transformation” (Cornejo Polar
1996: 20). According to Arguedas‟s close friend, anthropologist John Murra, the
author‟s anthropological work constituted a second phase of his career underappreciated
by literary critics.43 He argues that ethnography validated Arguedas‟s knowledge of
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Quechua as an important asset, and legitimated his personal experience as a source of
knowledge but enabled him to return to the Andes and enrich his childhood memories
with new experiences and knowledge of Andean reality (Murra 1996: 271).44
This
anthropological production stimulated Arguedas‟s increasing attention to the
transformational powers of Andean performance in the final decade of his life.
According to one anecdote, the scissors dance played a central role in Arguedas‟s
disillusionment with the Communist Party and subsequent turn to ethnography. After
San Marcos re-opened in 1935, Arguedas joined a student cell of the Communist Party
and edited the leftist student magazine Palabra (Mayatoshi 2002). One day in 1937, a
group of scissors dancer from Puquio arrived in Lima. Arguedas was happy to serve as
their guide and interpreter in the capital and proceeded to “lose himself” reminiscing
about Andean life, singing, and getting drunk with his guests. He missed several
meetings of his communist cell and when he finally returned, the group‟s leader chastised
him proclaiming that there would be time for happiness and festivity after the revolution
was won. The sensitive José María retired from the party, never to return (Montoya
2004: 222). Earlier the same year, he met Celia and Alicia Bustamante, sisters from
Lima‟s aristocratic elite who ran Peña Pancho Fierro, a club of intellectuals dedicated to
the collection and display of Andean popular art (Nauss Millay 2005: 77). Arguedas
frequented the establishment and brought his scissors dance companions to the venue to
stage an informal demonstration for a small audience of respected intellectuals.45
Through his friendship with Alicia Bustamante, he enthusiastically embraced the
collection and study of folklore, sharing Alicia‟s desire “to extend understanding of
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Andean popular art to the urban Creole republic” (qtd. in Nauss Millay 2005: 77). His
turn away from leftist politics and commitment to folklore as an emerging scientific
discipline in Peru deepened during his nine-month imprisonment in the El Sexto prison as
an accused communist sympathizer in 1938.46
Arguedas‟s initial forays into folkloric study in the late 1930s and early 1940s can
be contextualized within a larger folkloric turn within Peruvian indigenismo. By the mid1930s, both the academic study and theatrical performance of Andean popular
performance became a widespread strategy for provincial intellectuals to vindicate
regional identities and create a space for themselves in the larger national culture
(Mendizabal 2000: 76, Mendoza 2000, 2007). The scissors dance achieved a larger
visibility within folkloric representation by the 1940s. Groups of middle-class
intellectuals formed associations such as the Centro Cultural Ayacucho, formed with the
objective of validating the region‟s rich cultural history.47 In 1939, folklorist and
historian Manuel E. Bustamante published a short article in La Revista Huamanga,
depicting the scissors dance as a formerly glorious but now decaying tradition.
Modernizing trends had separated the traditional elites from the peasant performers they
had patronized, resulting in a lack of technique in the majority of the performers
(Bustamante 1943: 92-93). Around the same time, Moises and Alejandro Vivanco
included scissors dancers in their highly successful theatrical folklore companies who
toured the country, including several performances in Lima (Vivanco 1988: 424).48 This
folkloric turn incorporated a scientific ethos into Peruvian indigenismo, creating a
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network of provincial intellectuals that paved the way for the formalization of
anthropology as an academic discipline in 1946 (Degregori 2000).
If regionalism was one contributing factor of the emergence of Peruvian
anthropology, the influence of North American researchers and institutions was an
equally important factor. North American functionalist anthropologists arrived in Peru
with steadily increasing numbers during the 1930s and 1940s to study the cultures of the
Andean region.49 During the dictatorship of Luis Odría (1948-1956), Peru underwent a
rapid process of industrialization, quickly transforming from a mostly rural nation to an
increasingly urbanized one in a short time. Anthropology, under the guise of North
American development theory, became an active participant in the institutional
frameworks that attempted to discipline social change (Archibald 2003, Kokotovic 2006).
Development theory was a metropolitan discourse that “created an extremely efficient
apparatus for producing knowledge about, and the exercise of power over the Third
World” (Escobar 1995: 9). By the 1950s development theory constituted an inescapable
commonsense that promoted capitalist modernization as the only imaginable alternative
to pre-modern feudalism (Ibid. 5).50 Arguedas enrolled in the initial class of The Institute
of Ethnology at San Marcos in 1946.51 He published frequently throughout the 1950s,
concentrating on the dynamics of modernization in small highland cities.
This work did not escape the ideological pressures of the dominant paradigm of
development theory. Nelson Manrique claims that in this period Arguedas was “a
culturally colonized intellectual” whose anthropological essays echo “the promise held
out by the dominant developmentalist discourse of the 1950s” (Manrique 1999: 97).52
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Priscilla Archibald suggests that in his earliest publications Arguedas showed a great
deference to North American authorities and the tenets of development theory. However,
over time he developed an underappreciated counter-narrative. She demonstrates that:
Arguedas argues that the radical discontinuities and contradictions which
Andeans have known since the Conquest have produced a fiercely creative
and adaptive culture. Far from the ahistorical subject romanticized by the
indigenistas and denigrated by modernizing theorists, negotiated at the
crossroads of various overlapping traditions, the Andean emerges in these
pages as the ultimate historical subject. (Archibald 2003: 429)
Although he never wrote an ethnographic work focused exclusively on the scissors
dance, Arguedas frequently cited it as a paradigmatic example of the creative hybridity of
Andean culture. In “La Sierra en el Proceso de la Cultura Peruana” he argued that the
cultural repertoires of contemporary Indians were richer than those of the pre-hispanic
past due to the creative appropriation and re-invention of foreign elements by indigenous
actors. Citing the scissors dance as a primary example, he argued that nearly all of the
formal elements of the dance are of European origin, including the costumes, the musical
instruments, the melodies and choreographic sequences similar to the Spanish zapateo,
and the alleged pact with the devil. Nevertheless, it is “performed exclusively by Indians
for an Indian public. Many of the choreographic movements have received Quechua
names and are probably creations of the native dancers. The autochthonous musicians
have added energetic rhythms of ancient origin to the zapateo” (Arguedas 1975: 24).
Rather than a survival of a unadulterated past threatened by the corruption of modernity,
he depicts it as an inventive and creative force able to recreate and renew itself through
the incorporation of foreign materials. This historical example of transculturation
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provided Arguedas with a model for conceptualizing how Andeans may appropriate
modernity from a position of agency (Arguedas 1975 [1953]: 24).
Arguedas‟s ethnographic analyses of the scissors dance challenge not only the
romantic indigenismo and modernization paradigms of his time but also the ethnographic
characterizations of the dance that followed him.53 Towards the beginning “Notas
Elementales de la Cultura Mestiza de Huamanga” he provides his most widely cited
ethnographic description of the scissors dance suggesting that the dance is one of the
three elements that embodied the culture-area Huamanga-Wankawilka-Pokra-ChankaRukana (Arguedas 1975 [1958]: 151). His major objective in defining this region was to
analyze the undermining of traditional routes of artisanal exchange by the forces of
modernization.54 Arguedas does not mourn these transformations, but rather celebrates
the creativity of mestizo artisans, particularly the retablista Joaquin Lopez Antay, who
have successfully navigated a changing marketplace for religious art.55 He argues that
not only has Lopez Antay become economically successful by selling his retablos to new
national and transnational markets, but he has done so by maintaining his artistic
integrity. Although the change in audience has enabled Lopez Antay to introduce formal
innovations in the traditional retablo form, primarily the incorporation of costumbrista
figures including the scissors dance, Arguedas contends that a profound religiosity and
belief in the magical powers of nature continue to animate the master artist‟s work.
The anthropological article that speaks most directly to Arguedas‟s changing
conception and utilization of the scissors dance as a central aspect of his intellectual
project, does not mention the dance. “Puquio: Una Cultura en el Proceso de Cambio”
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returns to the site of Yawar Fiesta in order to examine the rapid transformations wrought
by modernization in a small Andean city (Arguedas 1985 [1956]). He depicts the
changing face of Puquio as profoundly contradictory.56 The bulk of the article engages in
the kind of urgent collecting of myths and oral tales James Clifford calls “salvage
ethnography” (Clifford 1988). However, Arguedas was not invested in saving a frozen
cultural patrimony, but collective knowledge through which Andean communities
actively define their history and identity. This catalogue of local knowledge includes the
first ethnographic description of the myth of Inkarri, and a complex analysis of beliefs in
mountain spirits.57 For Arguedas, the danger in the disappearance of Inkarri was not the
loss of cultural purity, but the displacement of indigenous collective organization by the
individualism of capitalist modernization. Arguedas concludes the article with an ode to
Inkarri’s power as an agent of Andean redemption. He suggests, “Inkarri returns, and we
cannot help fearing that he may be powerless to reassemble the individualisms that have
developed, perhaps irremediably. Unless he can detain the Sun, once more binding him
with iron hands to Osk‟onta Peak and change man; all is possible where such a wise and
resistant creature is concerned” (Arguedas 1985: 192). Arguedas‟s use of Andean myth
as an active form of knowledge disrupts the consignment of Andean ways of being to a
prehistorical time and anticipates his mobilization of the scissors dance as a surrogate for
the regenerative power of Inkarri in his later work.
4.5. Rivers of Passage
Arguedas‟s triumphant return to literature in 1958 with Los Ríos Profundos
represented a rite of passage in the development of his public persona. The themes
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dramatized in the coming of age novel and the author‟s apparent resolution of his earlier
struggles to construct a literary form able to express the conflicted world of the Andes
significantly contributed to the novel‟s impact in transforming a respected intellectual
within circumscribed fields into a towering figure of Peruvian and Latin American letters.
Los Ríos Profundos imaginatively reconstructed Arguedas‟s childhood memories of his
travels across the Southern and Central Andes with his father and his subsequent
education at a Catholic boarding-school in Abancay. The novel dramatizes the young
narrator-protagonist Ernesto‟s painful maturation in a world dominated by the values of a
small exclusive elite. Ernesto‟s conflicted rite of passage powerfully demonstrates how
the violence of Peru‟s dominant culture permeates all levels of society, enculturating the
young into a brutally racist and misogynist vision of the world. Since the dominant mistis
infantilize the Indians, “by identifying with indigenous culture Ernesto remains in effect a
child, his path to adulthood blocked” (Kokotovic 2006: 85). Through Ernesto‟s poetic
memory Arguedas was able to imagine a different kind of society ruled by the values of
solidarity, generosity, and complementarity. In this alternative vision, Ernesto will be
able to enter adulthood without renouncing indigenous culture. The novel locates the
cure for Peru‟s spiritual psychosis in Ernesto‟s poetic voice that evokes the sacred forces
of nature, the maternal, and the magical practices of indigenous culture (Lambright 2007:
122). Although the scissors dancer appears as a minor figure in the novel, in one
poignant moment he becomes the potential agent of spiritual purification that Arguedas
draws upon in order to fashion his interventions into the diseased national body.
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Both Arguedas himself and his critical admirers have credited Los Ríos Profundos
with resolving the author‟s earlier struggles to find a literary form that adequately
represented the Quechua voice in literary Spanish. Instead of subtly displacing Spanish,
in Los Ríos Profundos Arguedas aimed to translate the particular expressive capabilities
of Quechua into Spanish through the associative interlinking of metaphorical language
(Tarica 2008: 105).58 The effect of this process of translation is a powerful sense of
musicality indebted to the common use of onomatopoeia in Quechua. Buoyed by the
poetic imagination and memory of Ernesto, not only semantic meaning but also the
power of sound contributes to the effect of the magic of language to transform the world
(Landreau 2002).59 The rite of passage dramatized in the novel is conjoined with the
maturation of Arguedas‟s literary persona in both Peru and Latin America.
Los Ríos Profundos also announces Arguedas‟s re-enty into explicitly political
arenas. Kokotovic argues that the novel “registers the beginning of its author‟s
radicalization thanks to the novels transculturated form, which permitted Arguedas to
imagine the disappearance of feudal social structures, not as a gift of capitalism, but as
the result of a struggle motivated by Andean beliefs and values” (Kokotovic 2006: 98).
The first half of the novel shows Ernesto‟s socialization into the dominant white and
masculinist values through his experiences at school in Abancay. However, he
encounters alternative possibilities in the mestizo sector of Huanupata as the market
women who make chicha (corn beer) rise up against the hoarding of salt by the town‟s
dominant sectors. Ernesto participates on the margins of the rebellion, inspired by the
heroic leader of the rebellion, Doña Felipa. By asserting their agency, the subaltern
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women offer Ernesto an alternative path to adulthood and a vitally important role as a
mediator between the powerful and the excluded (Kokotovic 2006: 86-87). In the novel
Arguedas announced his solidarity with the real-life peasant movements of the late
1950s, which in turn inspired his return as a politically-engaged intellectual working
toward social justice and inclusion for his marginalized Andean compatriots.
In a number of episodes of Los Ríos Profundos, Arguedas evokes the scissors
dance as a powerful figure from Ernesto‟s poetic memory. He associates the dance with
the Zumbayllu, a rapidly spinning Andean top with magical properties. Explaining the
meaning of the Quechua ending “yllu,” related to the magic of music and light, Ernesto
begins a chain of associations including a description of Tankayllu, a hummingbird. He
also remembers a well-known scissors dancer from Puquio of the same name “who
danced in the town squares for important fiestas and performed diabolical feats on the
eves of the saints days- swallowed bits of steel, running needles and hooks through his
body, and walking, about the churchyards with three iron bars in his teeth” (Arguedas
1978: 65). For Ernesto, the dance embodies an intermediary link to an infernal
subterranean world. Later in the novel, after soldiers from the coast arrive to quell the
chichera’s rebellion, the authoritative force of their uniforms reminds Ernesto of those of
the scissors dancers. He describes the scissors dancer as a messenger “from another
hell,” a central figure in a repertoire of mythical beings with the power to restore
equilibrium to a fractured world (Arguedas 1978: 193). Ernesto does not sanitize the
diabolic aspects of the scissors dancer. Yet, by embodying the darker aspects of
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humanity, he imagines the figure as a potential vehicle for positive change (Usandizanga
2006: 237).
In one climactic moment the scissors dancer leaps outside of Ernesto‟s memory
into the main action of the novel. At Doña Felipa‟s chicha bar Ernesto takes in Andean
huayno music. The presence of soldiers adds a great deal of tension to the scene, until
one of the soldiers begins to dance. He performs spectacular leaps and Ernesto
speculates he may have been a scissors dancer in his hometown. The harpist and singer
performed in lockstep with the dancer, releasing a palpable energy felt by Ernesto and the
rest of the spectators. When Civil Guards interrupt the scene, one of Ernesto‟s friends
tentatively picks up the harp and begins to play the same song. Although he lacked
technical skill, his playing carried the energy of the moment. Ernesto laments:
I should have danced to the beat of the music. I was at the point of doing
it. I had seen the scissors dancers making diabolical leaps on the terraces
in front of the churches, moving their legs as if they were cats, springing
in the air [. . .] I had seen them dancing on the cemetery walls, clicking
their steel scissors blades in such a way that the dawn seemed to be born
from their tips. A thousand times I had wished to imitate them; I had done
it at school, among the children. I could have done it then and there, to
my friend‟s music, before a frightened audience who needed something
startling to shake them up to restore their souls that they might go out and
rescue Papacha Oblitas. (Arguedas 1978: 179-180)
This scene is a climactic turning point not only in the novel but also Arguedas‟s
trajectory as a public intellectual. Ernesto alludes to the possibility that in this moment
he might have ceased to be an imitator of the scissors dancer and truly taken on the
magical role of the dancer. The question is why he hesitates after presented with such a
felicitous opportunity for mediation and intervention.60 One potential answer to this
problem is offered by the subtle differentiation between the protagonist of the novel, the
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young Ernesto, and the narrator.61 Estelle Tarica contends that death lies in the prehistory of the novel‟s narrator. The differentiation between the young Ernesto who lives
in the fragmented and conflicted world of men, and the narrator who resides in the
integrated world of the sacred suggests that for Ernesto to truly fulfill his mediating
function as an artist he must “renounce the body and diminish the self in order to become
pure voice” (Tarica 2008: 129). Perhaps Ernesto is unable to inhabit the purifying role of
the scissors dancer because he still resides in the world of men. This intriguing
interpretation reveals a disturbing link between Los Ríos Profundos, the figure of the
scissors dancer, and Arguedas‟s eventual death by suicide in 1969.62
4.6 Andean Cosmopolitanism: Arguedas on Migration
The publication of Los Ríos Profundos ended Arguedas‟s literary drought and
brought international acclaim to the Peruvian author. The novel prefigured the increasing
radicalization of Arguedas, animated by a renewed hope for Andean protagonism in the
renovation of the Peruvian public sphere (Kokotovic 2006, Flores Galindo 2007: 421).63
During the 1960s, he closed the distance between his literary and ethnographic work,
focusing on urban Andean migration in Lima “where the anti-colonial battle reaches its
culmination” (Archibald 2003: 104). Arguedas theorized an Andean cosmopolitanism in
which Andean migrant artists became models for the successful negotiation of Andean
culture‟s “entrance into modernity” (García Canclini 1995). As a cultural administrator,
newspaper columnist, ethnographer, fiction writer, and high-profile public intellectual,
Arguedas constructed urban Andean artists as the embodiment of a renewed national
culture. He facilitated the entrance of the scissors dance into a broader public sphere
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through his personal relationships with migrant performers and sponsorship of staged
folklore performances in popular theatres and international touring companies.
Going back to the 1940s, Arguedas played a significant role in the shift in the
presentation of Andean music in Lima from elite-generated Inca-Cusco imagery to
stylized and urban adaptations of regional musical styles.64 As Andean migration
steadily increased throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Andean musicians maintained a
growing presence in the Fiesta de Amancaes by adopting the repertoires of Cusco-Incaic
indigenista musical performance (Turino 1990, 2008, Romero 2000, Alfaro 2004).
Andean musicians from the popular classes, such as Pastorita Huaracina, dressed in
Incaic-Cusqueña costumes and played songs from the indigenista repertoire. Arguedas
later named this phenomenon “El Monstruoso Contrasentido,” (The Monstrous
Contradiction), which he described as the admiration for the art of the ancient Incas
coupled with a perceived rupture contributing to the degradation of contemporary Indians
(Arguedas 1975: 216).65 As the Head of the Folklore Section of the Ministry of
Education, Arguedas gave a series of talks to the directors of the major folkloric
companies during the 1940s. Every Sunday, he encouraged performers to believe in their
positive role as emissaries of “our” culture (Romero 2000: 104). He also espoused
flexible notions of folklore and authenticity that valued creativity and innovation of living
cultural forms in conjunction with maintaining the integrity of centuries-old forms of
traditional knowledge (Alfaro 2005: 6). Arguedas‟s evolving re-elaborations of the
notion of authenticity recognized the self-determination and agency of Andean subjects
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and the dialogue between the creativity of the individual artist and fidelity to collective
cultural repertoires (Romero 2000, Alfaro 2004, Rowe 1996).66
The staging ground of the explosion of Andean popular music in Lima was the
coliseos, large open-air theatres often covered by circus tents (Arguedas, Turino 1990,
2008, Romero 2000). Between 1938 and 1970 Lima-based entrepreneurs, often of
provincial origins themselves, opened more than thirty such spaces that produced major
folkloric spectacles every Sunday. For much of the day, the bill was filled with unpaid
amateur folkloric companies or regional clubs who performed local folkloric dance
repertoires. During the evening, the solo stars of “Andean country-music” took the stage,
performing huaynos in a style highly influenced by urban-Western pop music. Migrants
from all regions of Peru attended these commercial folkloric spectacles en masse. These
large-scale performance events contributed to both the reaffirmation of local and regional
identities and a growing sense of a new over-arching Andean migrant identity (Turino
2008, Romero 2000, Alfaro 2005). Arguedas not only frequently attended these popular
performance events, but became an ally, mentor, and father figure to many performers
and musicians (Romero 2000: 100).67 Furthermore, in 1947 Arguedas convinced Odeon
Records to publish several titles of Andean music ushering in the Golden Age of
commercial recordings of Andean music in the same period.68
During the 1950s, Arguedas developed close personal relationships with several
groups of migrant scissors dance performers. In 1954, he staged a public competition
between scissors dancers from Huancavelica and Ayacucho. There he met the scissors
dancer “La Mar” from Huancavelica and his two young sons (Garcia Ninasqui 2006: 54).
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Recognizing the regional style from Huancavelica quite distinct from the style he
remembered from his childhood in the southern part of Ayacucho, he interviewed La Mar
in order to document the choreography and musical sequences of the Huancavelica
variant (Garcia Ninasqui 2006, Nuñez Rebaza 1990: 78). According to La Mar‟s son, the
group‟s relationship to Arguedas brought them significant popularity in artistic circles
and earned them frequent invitations to perform for foreign dignitaries (García Ninasqui
2006: 54). During the mid-1950s, Arguedas heard about a skilled Andean violinist
named Máximo Damián Huamaní from Ishua, a town near Puquio.69 The two began an
intimate friendship that lasted until Arguedas‟s death in 1969. Arguedas attended
Máximo Damián‟s performances in the coliseos and contracted him to perform with
scissors dancers at the Peña Pancho Fierro and for private parties on numerous occasions.
In turn, the young violinist invited Arguedas to attend fiestas costumbristas in Lima
staged by the migrant organizations of his own and surrounding towns. Due to his close
personal friendship with Arguedas, the violinist became an iconic figure of Andean music
and the most visible purveyor of the scissors dance before and after the author‟s death
(Gushiken 1979, Personal Interview “Máximo Damián Huamaní” 2008).
In 1962, Arguedas began to write a biweekly column for the Sunday magazine of
the newspaper El Comercio aimed at educating Peruvian elites about Andean cultural
traditions and the emergence of a vibrant Andean arts scene in Lima. One particular
article, “De lo Retablo Mágico Hasta el Retablo Mercantil” involves artistic
representations of the scissors dance in its exploration of both positive and negative
models for the negotiation of Andean visual artists with the forces of modernity and the
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capitalist marketplace (Arguedas 1975 [1962]). The article follows up on the praise
Arguedas expressed for retablo artist Joaquin Lopez Antay, by comparing the work of
Lopez Antay with that of the younger retablista Jesús Urbano Rojas, whose work was on
display in the collection of Alicia Bustamante. Arguedas remembers that Lopez Antay
represented the danzak as “a majestic figure; a messenger of the devil; a magical being
with terrible powers” (Ibid. 255). However, “In the sad retablo by Urbano Rojas, the
small dancers are almost lost in the multitude in any direction without any relation
between the musicians and the dancers [. . .] along with some of the choreographies
invented by the directors of folkloric companies in Lima, it is a falsification of tradition, a
deliberate distortion of its unity” (Ibid). According to Lopez Antay‟s appropriation of
modern techniques and market tastes melds seamlessly with the artist‟s creative
engagement with traditional artistic repertoires. Urbano Rojas creates simple spectacles
defined by the tastes of the market with little concern for their responsibility to traditional
knowledge. This article both refines Arguedas‟s flexible articulation of authenticity and
provides a model for his own forays into staged representations of the dance.
In 1963, President Fernando Belaunde Terry appointed Arguedas as the first
Director of the Casa de la Cultura. Although he would remain in the post for only one
year, Arguedas‟s pioneering role gave him a tremendous amount of influence in the
direction of the national cultural institution.70 In a series of articles, Arguedas clearly
made the promotion of indigenous culture and the conservation of cultural patrimony his
priorities (Mildred Merino 1967: 113, Cornejo Polar 1991).71 He formed a scissors dance
troupe to perform in important national and international theatres. He recruited the
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violinist Máximo Damián Huamaní to perform with the group Los Hermanos Chiara,
utilizing balletic techniques to choreograph the presentations. In 1964, the troupe
performed in Lima‟s Teatro Municipal, appeared on Canal 7, the state-owned television
network, and embarked on a diplomatic tour of Chile. Arguedas resigned from his post
as Director for political reasons in August 1964. However, the troupe remained active
under the leadership of Arguedas‟s colleague Josafat Roel Pineda, continuing to perform
in national theatres, and on international tours of Venezuela and Colombia in 1967 and
Mexico in 1968 (Gushiken 1979: 33, Personal Interview “Máximo Damián Huamaní”
2008, Personal Interview “Valentín Chiara 2009). The performers of the troupe
maintained a close relationship with Arguedas, appearing at private gatherings in his
apartment and at the funeral celebration after his death in 1969 (Millones 2007, Personal
Interview “Máximo Damián Huamaní” 2008).
Throughout the 1960s, Arguedas continued to refine his perspective on the
encounter between Andean culture and the forces of modernization in Peru. In doing so,
he “challenged the text-based and exclusively Western character of national culture” and
contributed to the expansion of the public sphere beyond the exclusive “lettered city”
(Archibald 1998: 29). While he lamented the degenerative effects of commercial
spectacles on Andean cultural forms, he generally marveled at the creativity of Andean
artists to appropriate the communications media for self-expression.72 In a 1966 article,
he proclaimed “the instruments employed to condition the mentality of the masses and
uproot their particular national tradition (radio, TV, etc) convert themselves into powerful
vehicles for transmission and contagion in the affirmation of the typical and the
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uncolonizable” (Arguedas 1975 [1966]: 188). Thus, he updated his own theorization of
tranculturation beyond the colonial period into an enthusiasm for contemporary
manifestations of a new cosmopolitan Andean culture. In 1968, he celebrated the
brilliant performances of Juan Aguilar, an Afro-Peruvian born in Lima who
enthusiastically learned the huaylas.73 His enthusiasm for Aguilar‟s performances
brought Arguedas to exclaim, “The coliseos are forges, genuine forges. Coast and Sierra
are fused by fire, and integrate, grow stronger” (Arguedas 1976 [1967]: 247). These
performances became the basis for his claim that the huaylas and huayno “are on the road
to transforming into cultural patrimony, a nationalizing link for all Peruvians” (Ibid. 243).
In a similar fashion, Arguedas popularized the scissors dance through literature and the
sponsorship of staged folklore performance.
4.7. La Agonia de Rasu Ñiti: Surrogation and the New Peru
In 1962, Arguedas published his most well-known short story, “La Agonia de
Rasu Ñiti,” which became his most substantial and important literary and ethnographic
portrait of the scissors dance.74 He published the short story at the same time as his first
poem in Quechua, “Himno a Nuestro Padre Creador Tupac Amaru.” Arguedas began to
represent himself as a politically-engaged intellectual who self-identified unambiguously
with an emergent cosmopolitan Quechua culture (Zevallos-Aguilar 2009: 100). The
poem is Arguedas‟s most utopian narrative, portraying the mass migration of Andean
peasants to Lima as a rebirth of the Quechua people and the final “reconquest” of a
colonized geography. Addressing the heroic emblem of Andean regeneration, Tupac
Amaru, the poem triumphantly exclaims, „We are converting [the city] into a village of
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men, which enters the hymns of the four regions of our world” (Arguedas 1984: 17). At
first glance, “La Agonia de Rasu Ñiti” seems quite distinct from the poem‟s celebration
of an emergent Andean cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, the short story employs the
scissors dance as emblematic of the utopian national vision Arguedas was shaping in this
period. Like the poem, the story dramatizes the rebirth of Quechua culture as founded on
the transfer of knowledge from old to young and by extension, tradition to modernity in a
constellation of forces strong enough to dismantle Creole hegemony.
“La Agonia de Rasu Ñiti” tells the story of the ritualized death of a legendary
scissors dancer and his “rebirth” through the embodiment of his young disciple. The
structure of Arguedas‟s story can be divided into four acts or sequences. In the first
sequence, Rasu Ñiti and his family prepare for his final ritual dance. The protagonist, the
Indian Pedro Huancayre, awakens to a slight pain in his chest. Instantly he recognizes
the voice of the Wamani, the mountain god who possesses him, speaking directly to his
heart. The moment for his death has come. He declares, “The heart is ready. The world
awaits. I hear the Saño waterfall. I am ready” (Arguedas 1974: 170). He dresses in his
scissors dance costume with ritual care, transforming himself into Rasu Ñiti, the
legendary danzak and human manifestation of a great Wamani. Rasu Ñiti and his wife
are able to see, hear, and feel the presence of the Wamani, but their children do not have
sufficient knowledge to register his presence. The ritual preparations become a lesson in
the ancestral knowledge of Andean culture for the young. Rasu Ñiti‟s wife tells her
daughters, “Death makes him hear everything; what you have suffered; what you have
danced; what you are going to suffer” (Ibid. 172). The reference to suffering is followed
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by one of the daughters hearing the gallop of the hacienda boss‟s horse. Rasu Ñiti
responds, “the growth of our god is going to swallow the horse. Not the boss. Without
the horse, he is only the excrement of a calf” (Ibid. 173). Arguedas not only alludes to
Rasu Ñiti‟s antagonistic relationship to Peru‟s dominant culture, but also evokes the spirit
of Inkarri. The regeneration of Inkarri will take away the dominant culture‟s instruments
of power, redeeming the Quechua culture from a history of suffering. His wife instructs
the daughters, “The scissors are not manipulated by the fingers of your father. The
Wamani makes them collide. Your father only obeys” (Ibid. 173). She implies that the
scissors dancer is more than a musician or dancer, but a spiritual medium who facilitates
communication between the Wamanis and the human community.
This exchange leads into the second section of the story, where the narrator
intervenes with a lengthy ethnographic description of the scissors dance and its cultural
significance. Not only is this section the richest and most thorough ethnographic
interpretation of the dance Arguedas wrote, but it also clarifies the positionality of the
narrator in relation to the events recounted. The narration alternates dialogically between
an objective and informative ethnographic voice and a firsthand account clearly
identifying itself as an insider to Andean culture (Cornejo Polar 1997, Lambright 2007:
143, Zevallos Aguilar 2009: 105). In many respects Arguedas interprets the significance
of the scissors dance in similar terms to those he employs in his previous ethnographic
work. The narrator evokes a mysterious and auratic figure closely linked to the forces of
the natural world.75 After a broad objective account of the extraordinary feats the dancers
realize during the pruebas de valor, the narrator turns to his own childhood memories of
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the sight of “the great father „Untu” dressed in red and black, covered in mirrors, dancing
on a moving rope in the sky, playing his scissors” (Ibid. 173). In the most revealing
section, the narrator explains the spiritual significance of the dance:
The genius of the danzak depends on who lives inside of him; the spirit of
a mountain (wamani); of a precipice whose silence is transparent; of a
cave from which exits torrents of gold and condemned men of fire. Or the
cascade of a river that falls from the height of a cliff; or perhaps only a
bird or a flying insect that know the feeling of abysses, trees, ants, and the
secret of the night (Ibid. 174)
This passage contains the only allusion to the diabolic aspects of the scissors dancer that
Arguedas openly acknowledged in previous work. Perhaps, he intentionally sanitized his
representation of the dance so that it would become a better candidate as an icon of a
renovated national culture.76 The narrator closes his ethnographic intervention by
restoring the focus to Rasu Ñiti, “who was the son of a great Wamani, of a mountain with
eternal snowy peaks. At this time, he sent his spirit; a gray condor whose white back
constantly vibrated” (Ibid. 174).
New characters arrive to assist Rasu Ñiti with the completion of his ritual
sacrifice. The violinist Don Pascual and the harpist Lurucha arrive, trailed by Atok
Sayku, Rasu Ñiti‟s young disciple, and a small group of witnesses from the community.
Accompanied by Don Pascual and Lurucha, Rasu Ñiti begins to dance. The musical
sequences performed parallel the great dancer‟s descent towards death.77 Rasu Ñiti
enters into trance and sees a vision of the return of Inkarri, “the god is growing. It will
kill the horse” (175). At this point, Lurucha begins the melody of the Yawar Mayu
(bloody river), a recurring theme in Arguedas‟s work, which signifies the liminal space
between life and death.78 This space between life and death emerges paradoxically as the
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life-force itself. As Rasu Ñiti‟s body stops functioning, Lurucha changes the melody to
the Ilapa Vivon (the edge of lighting) signaling the moment before death. The narrator
places great emphasis on the synchronized communication between the musicians, the
dancer, and the natural world. Finally, as Rasu Ñiti closes his eyes, his body seems to
grow larger, illuminated through the reflection of mirrors of his costume (178).
The final act dramatizes the rebirth of the danzak through the body of his
surrogate pupil, Atok Sayku. The young dancer, who prior to his master‟s death ritual
only had a vague and partial view of the Wamani, senses the mountain-spirit enter his
body as he picks up his master‟s scissors and begins to dance (Ibid. 178).79 The
transformation transfixes the crowd as the narrator intones, “It was him, the father „Rasu
Ñiti‟ reborn, with fresh bestial tendons and the fire of the Wamani, flapping its wings
with the current of centuries” (Ibid. 178). The Wamani has renewed itself through the
body of its human surrogate, transforming Atok Sayku from a young disciple into a new
danzak. With newfound recognition and insight, Rasu Ñiti‟s youngest daughter intones
the final prophetic lines of the story, “Not dead [. . .] the same! Dancing! [. . .] Condor
needs dove. The dove, then, needs Condor! Danzak does not die! [. . .] For danzak,
nobody cries. Wamani is Wamani!” (Ibid. 178-179). The adults are left with only partial
insight, while the young, Atok Sayku and the youngest daughter in particular, become the
privileged inheritors of ancestral knowledge and memory.
This short story is amongst Arguedas‟s most critically and popularly acclaimed
works.80 According to John Beasley-Murray the attention given to “Rasu Ñiti” “is surely
due to the fact that it is one of Arguedas‟s very few texts that can at all convincingly be
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shoe-horned into a more or less conventional indigenist critical frame” (6). Indeed, it
provides Arguedas‟s most intimate view of rural Quechua culture with an uplifting
narrative about the triumph and redemption of the oppressed. Perhaps, the facility of a
conventional indigenista reading accounts for the story‟s centrality to the canonization of
the scissors dance as a national icon. Arguedas‟s work had begun to cultivate a youth
culture that saw him as a revered father figure and a model for a new type of intellectual
(Murra and Lopez Baralt 1996: 77).81 Similar Andeanist readings of the story produced
the earliest speculations that the dance descended from the Sixteenth Century Taki Onqoy
movement (Vokral 1984, Castro Klaren 1990).82 Yet I argue that Arguedas‟s celebration
of the continuity and redemption of Quechua culture is a more complex, if still utopian,
work of fiction. The ritual of death and rebirth it dramatizes, paradoxically stages two
forms of the transmission of cultural memory theorized by recent performance scholars
often seen at odds with each other. Diana Taylor argues that “performances function as
vital acts of transfer, transmitting knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through
reiterated [. . .] behavior” (Taylor 2002: 2-3). Joseph Roach argues that cultures
reproduce themselves through surrogation, “into the cavities created by loss through
death or other forms of departure [. . .] survivors attempt to fit satisfactory alternatives”
(Roach 1996: 3). While Taylor‟s theory emphasizes a form of unstable continuity
through the embodied transmission of cultural forms, Roach emphasizes the role of loss,
forgetting, rupture, and the (re)invention of tradition. Both are present in Arguedas‟s
acclaimed short story, as rupture transforms into a kind of unstable continuity and
regeneration similar to Taylor‟s model. Within the context of Arguedas‟s prolific work
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of the period, I read “La Agonia de Rasu Ñiti” as enacting a utopian vision of the
transmission of the vitality of Andean ancestral memory to a reconstructed Quechua
culture, enabling its agency in the remaking of Peruvian identity.
Another consequence of the publication and reception of the story is that the work
itself became a powerful emblem of the renewal of Andean culture. It what Roach calls
“performed effigies” embodying the becoming of a new national culture (Roach 1996:
36). The Peruvian critic Augusto Tamayo Vargas famously dubbed the story, “a balletscene” (Tamayo Vargas 1968: 850). In 1965, only a few years after its publication,
modern dance choreographer Trudy Kressel staged the story as a modern folk ballet
called “The Inheritance and Death of the Danzak” (Mildred Merino 1967: 115). That
same year, journalist Alfonsina Barrionuevo wrote a profile of the mysterious dance,
including interviews with performers associated with Arguedas that featured a very
similar narrative of Arguedas‟s story under the name “La Leyenda de Qaqa Ñiti”
(Barrionuevo 1965). In 1985, Augusto Tamayo San Roman directed a made-fortelevision educational video adaptation of the story that featured real-life scissors dancers
and musicians. In 1999 and 2000, Peruvian theatre artists created two separate one-man
theatrical adaptations of the story.83 In 2008, student filmmaker Gaby Yepes released her
award-winning short film, “El Danzak,” an updated adaptation of Arguedas‟s story set in
the contemporary slums in the outskirts of Lima and with a female protagonist playing
the role of the disciple. In 2011, The Ballet Nacional del Peru will debut a new ballet
adaptation of the story in honor of the centennial of Arguedas‟s birth. Like the events
narrated in the story, the death of Arguedas has left a dynamic “archive” for the creation
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of new cultural repertoires. The symbolic capital of Arguedas‟s legacy in turn has
bestowed a great deal of cultural capital onto the dance and its performers themselves.
4.8. El Zorro-Danzaq: The Death and Resurrection of the Author
Another reason “La Agonia de Rasu Ñiti” has received so much critical attention
is the intimate connection between the story and Arguedas‟s staging of his own suicide.84
By the mid-1960s his mental health deteriorated once again due to a number of
unfavorable personal and professional circumstances. In April 1966, he attempted to take
his own life for the first time. After a brief recuperation, Arguedas completed a quite
productive last three years of his life before successfully committing suicide on
November 28, 1969. Andean musicians and intellectuals commemorated the author‟s life
and work with a massive funeral celebration in the streets of downtown Lima. Arguedas
stage-managed the event himself through explicit instructions in several letters to
different individuals. In the central act of the celebration, migrant scissors dance
performers closely associated with Arguedas performed the agonia, the melodic and
choreographic sequence that dramatizes the death of a great danzak. The close symbolic
interrelationship between the earlier short story, the final novel, the act of suicide, and the
commemorative celebration theatricalized Arguedas‟s utopian vision of a “New Peru”
emerging from the rebirth of a modern and cosmopolitan Andean culture.
The author left the unfinished manuscript of his most complex and tortured novel,
which included an alternatively dystopian and utopian prophecy invoking both the
promises and challenges of a new era of Peru. The novel, entitled El Zorro de Arriba y el
Zorro de Abajo, was published posthumously in 1971. The performative force of
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Arguedas‟s final novel is apparent from the first pages of the text, where the narrator
announces his intentions to commit suicide by the end of the narration. The distinct
currents of Arguedas‟s life and work converge in a text in which “mythical narrative,
testimonial fiction, ethnography, diary, suicide note and novel coexist” (Flores Galindo
2007: 409, Kokotovic 2006: 146).85 The project began shortly after Arguedas‟s first
suicide attempt as ethnographic research on the survival of Andean mythology in the
northern coastal boomtown of Chimbote.86 If Arguedas‟s previous work had shown that
Creole hegemony had entered into crisis, in Chimbote he saw that the future of the new
Andean nation he desired was complicated by the entrance of transnational capitalism
into Peru.87 Clearly excited by the possibilities of the project, he wrote to Murra, “I will
be able to write a narrative about Chimbote and Supe that will be like sipping from a
strong liquor, the substance of the simmering Peru of these days, its boiling point and the
burning materials with which that liquor is stirred” (Arguedas 1990: 350). However, he
experienced frequent frustrations in his ability to write about sweeping transformations
he could hardly comprehend. His psychiatrist encouraged Arguedas to write about his
inability to write and he incorporated these diaries into the novel, giving it a fragmented
and confessional tone. He confessed his conflicting feelings about Chimbote, “the city I
understand the least and the one I‟m most enthusiastic about” (Arguedas 1990: 186).
With deteriorating mental condition on full display in the diaries, critics have
heatedly debated whether Los Zorros represents a defeat for Arguedas‟s social vision.88
For example, Albert Moreiras offers a convincing argument that Los Zorros represents
“Arguedas‟s dramatic staging of the implosion of meaning in transculturation” contesting
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what he views as a concealed version of the hegemony of the myth of mestizaje in Latin
American thought (Moreiras 2001: 190).89 For Moreiras, the fragmented, almost
incomprehensible nature of Arguedas‟s final novel performs a defiant refusal of
signification, the only remaining recourse to the hegemony of transnational capitalism in
a postmodern world (Ibid.).90 Priscilla Archibald astutely recognizes that the ubiquity of
such defeatist approaches to Arguedas‟s novel relates to the temptation to conflate the
narrator‟s loss of the ability to speak, dramatized in the “Final Diary” and ultimately to
the author‟s suicide, with the collapse of his values and hopes for the future of Peruvian
society (Archibald 2007).91 Lost in the oppressive and degrading environment of
Chimbote and the overwhelming despair at the heart of Arguedas‟s suicide, the characters
in the novel of heterogeneous backgrounds struggle not only to survive, but reconstruct a
meaningful cultural life (Ibid.).92 Los Zorros represents not a rejection of Arguedas‟s
previous work, but a radicalization of his social vision, embodying his most thorough and
convincing theorization of his concept of “magical socialism” (Ibid.).93
Los Zorros posits the vitality of Andean ancestral memory as a “changeable
resource” for the formation of a viable Andean modernity (Cornejo Polar 1990,
Archibald 2007: 7).94 According to the well-known interpretation by Martin Lienhard,
the scissors dance plays an integral role in the interventions of Andean ancestral memory
through the figure of “the zorro-danzaq.” Lienhard argues, “The zorro-danzaq is the
most extravagant and complex character in Arguedian narrative, converting the novel into
one of the most extraordinary experiments in contemporary Latin American fiction”
(Lienhard 1981: 145). In another example of the interrelationship between Arguedas‟s
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ethnographic and literary work in the last decade of his life, Los Zorros draws heavily on
Arguedas‟s own translation of The Huarochiri Manuscript.. The two mythical foxes
from the novel‟s title, representing the complementarity between Pre-Columbian
highland and coastal cultures, serve as ancient trickster deities in the Quechua
manuscript. Arguedas inserted the foxes into the novel in key moments where they
intervene with magical transformative powers. They function as extensions of
Arguedas‟s authorial persona and are central its final act of intervention.95
The role of the foxes in the novel is most effective through the character of Don
Diego, a surrogate of “The Fox from below.” In two key moments, Diego intervenes in
the fictional representation of Chimbote as the zorro-danzaq, whose hypnotic dancing
exerts transformational powers over his human interlocutors. Diego first appears in
Chapter 3, which recounts the dialogue between the mysterious messenger with a fox-like
demeanor and Angel Jaramillo, the boss of the Nautilus Fishmeal Factory. The strange
appearance of the visitor unsettles the factory boss. Nevertheless, he explains the inner
workings of the factory with frank acknowledgement of the exploitation of the workers
and the coordinated attempts of industrial corporations to coax the workers into spending
their wages in company-owned bars and brothels. As Angel begins to laugh
uncontrollably, Diego initiates an enchanting scissors dance, “whirling round and round
in one place, as if he were holding something invisible in his hand that hummed with a
melancholy steel rhythm” (Arguedas 2000: 115). Diego‟s strange and acrobatic dance
inspires Angel to begin his own dance, the long-forgotten Yunsa of Cajabamba, his
hometown. Diego infects his interlocutor with a repressed memory of his own Andean
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past, exposing the self-hatred deeply buried in the psyche of the ex-highlander. The
choreographic duet entices Angel to reveal the full extent of the exploitation of both man
and nature by the multinational corporation (Vokral 1984: 300, Lambright: 238-239).
The second intervention of Diego, occurs in the “Second Part” of the novel. This
scene follows a long conversation between Cardozo, a North American priest with leftist
leanings, Maxwell, an American ex-Peace Corps volunteer who has assimilated into
indigenous culture after living so many years in the highlands, and Cecilio Ramirez,
Maxwell‟s serrano boss. The scene reveals that Maxwell and Cecilio are the true
revolutionaries assisting the needy in finding food and shelter while Cardozo is
hypocritical and patronizing in his dealings with the poor (Arguedas 2000, Lambright
2007: 241). Diego arrives and his presence unsettles Cardozo, making him admit his own
hypocrisy and call for a genuine Marxist revolution. The priest asks Maxwell to play
Andean music on his charango, and as Diego begins to dance, his:
head began to be adorned with plumes, like some peacock or longshadowed hummingbird. They all stepped back to the walls. Diego began
to make his legs quiver- they were apart and bent from difficult angles; he
made them vibrate more rapidly than all the charango strings man has
bloodied and sent ablaze, then he did a somersault in the air and made the
lamp swing, making a sound like water, like the voices of the highland
ducks, of the tatara reed plumes, which make a wailing resistance to the
strength of the wind. (Arguedas 2000: 253)
The celebratory scene seems to give Cecilio hope, who exclaims, “I‟ve never, ever, had
hope!” (253). Cecilio too begins to dance. Maxwell and Cecilio leave with renewed
energy for organizing a radically democratic community. Cardozo remains in his study
reflecting on a passage from the bible that espouses love as the greatest virtue of man,
finally recognizing why those he cares for so often look at him with contempt.
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This final scene comes just before the placement of “The Final Diary” creating an
incongruent juxtaposition between hopefulness and despair. The interrelationship
between dystopian and utopian elements in the novel enable the staging of Arguedas‟s
suicide as a ritual sacrifice, as his authorial voice merges with the interventions of the
zorro-danzaq.96 Although the zorro-danzaq is not yet able to defeat transnational
capitalism, through his presence Arguedas “explores the margins where unleashing
occurs that attempts to reorganize meaning in the face of huge negotiations and very few
promises” (Ortega 1990: xxxvi). Significant evidence suggests that one of the reasons
why the scissors dance became a symbolic resource of increasing importance in
Arguedas‟s later works is that he began to perceive the dance as a metaphor for his own
role as a writer.97 He evokes the scissors dance in order to construct his own writing as
an instrument of spiritual purification for the national body. The performative
relationship between Los Zorros and Arguedas‟s suicide speaks to this affective
dimension, giving an ethical and aesthetic force to his death (Vokral 1984, Columbus
1995, Monte Alto 2009, Arriarán 2011). According to Arriarán, Los Zorros “should not
be understood as a novel but as a script that theatricalizes the death [. . .] a kind of map
that orients Peru towards the future and [Arguedas] towards the beyond” (Arriarán 2011).
In this powerfully theatrical act, Arguedas fused his own performative autobiography into
the history and future of the collective body and subjectivity of Peru.
Recognizing the theatrical and performative nature of Los Zorros as a script for a
suicide staged as ritual sacrifice sheds light on the disjuncture between the dystopian and
utopian dimensions of the novel. The “Final Diary” and various suicide letters published
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in the novel, quite explicitly imagine a utopian future for the Peruvian nation. These
letters “insist on the capacity of young people to change the present situation” (Lienhard
1981: 176). Arguedas represents the young people of Peru, as well as Cuba and
Vietnam, as the hope and possibility for the realization of a new future. In the “Final
Diary,” read by literary critic and Arguedas‟s long-time friend Alberto Escobar at his
funeral, Arguedas poetically expresses his belief in the coming of a new era of Peru:
Perhaps with me one historical cycle draws to a close and another begins
in Peru, with all that represents. It means the closing of the cycle of the
consoling calendar lark, of the whip, of being driven like beasts of burden,
of impotent hatred, of mournful funeral „uprisings‟ of the fear of God and
of the predominance of that God and his protégées, his fabricators. It
signals the opening of the cycle of light and of the indomitable liberating
strength of Vietnamese man, of the fiery calendar lark, of the Liberator
God. That God who is coming back into action. (Arguedas 2000: 259)
He clearly alludes to elements of the myth of Inkarri, and Andean millennialism within
the context of the present and with a dialogic relationship to liberation theology. In his
own funeral, Arguedas sought to theatricalize these utopian sentiments by actualizing
what Jill Dolan calls a “utopian performative,” a live performance that “provides a place
where people come, embodied and passionate, to share experiences of meaning-making
and imagination that can describe or capture fleeting intimations of a better world”
(Dolan 2005: 164). Arguedas‟ public funeral staged his suicide as an ethical and
aesthetic act with a potent theatricality.
On December 3, 1969, thousands of Andean peasants, migrants, workers,
students, intellectuals, musicians, artists, and revolutionaries took to the streets of
downtown Lima accompanying the procession of Arguedas‟s coffin to the Main
Cemetery. Famous Andean musicians commemorated their most enthusiastic supporter
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Illustration 4.1
Máximo Dámian Huamaní Performing at Arguedas‟s Funeral
Reprinted in Variedades, Sunday Magazine of El Peruano, Jan. 18, 2011.
with huaynos in both Quechua and Spanish. As per Arguedas‟s instructions, several
young provincial students gave eulogies and Alberto Escobar read “the Final Diary.” The
culminating act of this event was the performance of “La Agonia,” by Máximo Damián
Huamaní and Los Hermanos Chiara. According to Vargas Llosa, who was in attendance:
the violinist Máximo Damián Huamaní of San Diego de Ishua, Lucanas,
and the musicians Jaime Guardia, Alejandro Vivanco and Los Hermanos
Chiara, accompanied the funeral entourage playing the harp, violin, quena,
and charango to the tune of “La Agonia de la Danza de las Tijeras,” while
two of these Indian dancers that had fascinated Arguedas since he was a
child, danced alongside the coffin dressed in their multi-colored costumes
of feathers and mirrors. (Vargas Llosa 1996: 13)
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The presence of the scissors dancers in the procession was immortalized in a photo
published in El Comercio on December 7, 1969 accompanied by a testimonial written by
Máximo Damián Huamaní. The article and an image of the violinist, republished in
several sources, further consolidated the violinist‟s public image as “Arguedas‟s
violinist.” The procession served as a theatrical metaphor for Arguedas‟s suicide as a
ritual sacrifice modeled on “La Agonia de Rasu Ñiti.” As Edith Vokral observes,
“Arguedas completed the destiny of the danzak, waiting for the future, in which another
dancer will take his scissors in order to dance in a world of condors and foxes” (Vokral
1984: 303). I contend that the performance did not address a singular potential known or
unknown individual dancer, but rather a collective national future, represented most
clearly by young intellectuals, revolutionaries, and migrant Andean artists.
4.9. A Culture Hero of the New Peru
This funeral procession consolidated and dramatized the process of “the
dissolution of a personality into the national conscience” already begun in the last years
of Arguedas‟s life (Arriarán 2011). According to a number of commentators, Arguedas
became a cultural hero in the years after his death (Cornejo Polar 1991, Columbus 1995,
Montoya Rojas 1998, Flores Galindo 2007). If Mariátegui and Valcárcel were the
founding figures of the discourse of the “New Peru,” Arguedas became the patron saint
and Christ-like postcolonial martyr, repeatedly commemorated and canonized as an
embodiment of the coming into being of a new nation (Roach 1996: 103). His suicide
was a “sacrificial expenditure” that “paradoxically posits surplus” (Roach 1996: 74,
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Columbus 1995: 117). Reflecting on the meaning of Arguedas as an icon of
contemporary Peruvian culture, the late historian Alberto Flores Galindo remarked:
Arguedas was a person caught up in historical crossings and conflict
which he lived with an exceptional intensity, until they contributed to his
suicide. But the personal cost gave us as a result an exceptional body of
work that opened the possibility of thinking about Peruvian society in
another manner, while the social sciences were stuck in old paradigms and
schemes. (Flores Galindo 2007: 428).
In retrospect, Arguedas was correct in his prophecy that his death marked the beginning
of a “new era” in Peru. However, the crisis of Creole hegemony that began to be
apparent during the 1960s did not yield the utopian vision of a new society founded on
the values of solidarity, brotherhood, and inter-ethnic dialogue as Arguedas had
imagined. The thirty years after Arguedas‟s death wrought a chaotic period of military
dictatorship, unplanned urban growth, political violence by both state and non-state
actors, and the rapid expansion of transnational capitalism in Peru. Nevertheless, this
should not diminish the vitality of the radically multi-ethnic democracy Arguedas
envisioned. Just because his “prophecy” has not come to fruition does not mean it has
not had an impact on the cultural, social, and political history of Peru.
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Chapter 5
Urban Refashioning: Populist Nationalism, Mass Migration, and Political Violence
5.1. Introduction
José María Arguedas staged his suicide as a rite of passage that marked the
transition into a new era of Peru as a pluricultural nation. The timing of this utopian
performance dramatically increased its affective power. By the end of the 1960s, the
Creole nationalist project of the traditional oligarchy was clearly in crisis, creating the
potential for marginalized actors to participate in the construction of a new and more
inclusive Peruvian society (Franco 2004). Arguedas‟s collected works and public
persona continued to embody the incompletely realized project of an alternative Andean
modernity, and a radical pluricultural Peruvian democracy. His literary and ethnographic
depictions of the scissors dance became the script that inspired new cultural repertoires in
a changing Peruvian public sphere. This chapter chronicles what urbanizing scissors
dancers accomplished with the symbolic capital Arguedas bestowed on the artform.
However, this pregnant moment of possibility fostered an ambiguous legacy of
competing political and cultural projects, chaotic urban expansion, and large-scale
political violence over the next quarter of a century.
In October 1968 a left-wing military regime came to power in a bloodless coup
(Krujit 1994: 31-46). The Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces (RGAF), led
by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, swiftly proclaimed a fervently nationalist and
populist ideology rooted in Latin American dependency theory, and initiated a series of
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sweeping economic, social, and educational reforms (Ansión 1986: 47, Turino 1993:
140). While it produced a rhetoric that encouraged popular participation, the RFAF
“relied on a top-down corporatist power structure which often reverted to coercion” in
order to contain popular mobilization (Turino 1993: 141). Nevertheless, the populistnationalism that the RGAF promoted had a profound effect on the re-organization of
state-peasant relations and stimulated an even larger second wave of urban Andean
migration. The military regime successfully promoted the recognition of emblematic
Andean cultural practices, such as the scissors dance, as part of a renovated nationalpopular cultural repertoire (Turino 1993: 140, Zevallos Aguilar 2009: 93). Furthermore,
migrant performers and their audiences established new urban communities of scissors
dance performance in Lima and incorporated the dance into a growing cosmopolitan
Andean public sphere. New generations of performers formed in the metropolitan
habitus incorporated aesthetic elements from global popular culture and the urban
experience into the musical and choreographic repertoires of the scissors dance. Thus,
during the 1970s migrant artists from Ayacucho and Huancavelica fashioned new hybrid
styles of urban scissors dance performance that began to flow from Lima back to the
provinces (García Canclini 1995, Raymundo 2008, Zevallos Aguilar 2009: 115).
The process of urban renovation and hybridization dramatically intensified during
the 1980s under the devastating circumstances of political violence and the forced
relocation of entire rural communities to the relative safety of Lima and other cities. The
internal war fought between the guerilla insurgents of the Shining Path and state security
forces between 1980 and 1992 centered in Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac, the
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traditional home of the scissors dance. The celebration of rural festivities became
virtually impossible to such a degree that urban hybridizations of the form became the
only viable surrogates for the more “complete” rural festival repertoires. Nevertheless, I
argue that the dance was not merely exiled in Lima by the violence nor were the
performers and their audiences simply its passive victims as conventional ethnographic
narratives suggest (Nuñez Rebaza 1985, 1990, Bigenho 1991, 1993, Arce Sotelo 2006).
The collective organization and entrepreneurial energies of young scissors dancers and
musicians contributed to an urban renaissance of the dance in migrant popular culture at
the height of the conflict. Furthermore, the scissors dance became a cultural resource
through which effected populations responded to the horrors of their traumatic
experiences and present situation in a transculturated revival of an earlier Andean infernal
imaginary (Theidon 2003, 2004, Millones 2010).
5.2. State Folklore and the Refashioning of the National-Popular
In the first few years of his administration, General Velasco concentrated his
energies on political and economic reforms. Once agrarian reform and the
nationalization of selected industries were firmly underway, the regime turned its
attention towards education and the building of cultural institutions. Educational reforms
sought to “create a new consciousness amongst all Peruvians of the basic problems of our
country; and will contribute to forging a new type of man within a new social morality”
(Velasco 1972: 63).1 The re-structuring of cultural institutions was an integral part of this
larger pedagogical project. The RGAF elevated the status of the Casa de la Cultura,
dramatically increasing its shoe-string budget and prestige within the hierarchy of the
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state bureaucracy. The renamed Instituto Nacional de Cultura fostered the study and
promotion of Andean folklore (Turino 1993, Feldman 2006, Mendoza 2007). While the
military regime sought to create modern national subjects out of marginalized Andean
peasants “the indigenous referent maintained a mystifying character as a central pillar of
Peruvian nationality” (Ansión 1986: 48). The INC and other cultural institutions elevated
the status of the scissors dance as a visually-appealing national icon evoking an authentic
Andean identity. The representations of the dance authored by Arguedas gained greater
state patronage as the particular artists associated with his public persona became star
performers in staged folklore performances disseminated by various arms of the INC.
In 1969, Velasco appointed Victoria Santa Cruz, a leading figure of the AfroPeruvian cultural revival, as Director of the National School of Folklore. On December
1973, the newfound Conjunto Nacional de Folklore debuted on the stage of the Teatro
Municipal in Lima, under Santa Cruz‟s direction (Feldman 2006: 76). Los Hermanos
Chiara, the scissors dance group who had performed under the sponsorship of Arguedas,
were integral members and featured soloists of the state folklore company. The Conjunto,
composed of distinct Andean and Afro-Peruvian performance troupes, sought to create
visually-appealing and artistically professional representations of a multicultural national
identity on Peruvian and especially international stages. As Anthony Shay and Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argue, such staged folklore companies perform a distinct genre of
Western theatre dance that represents local and regional traditional cultures (Shay 2002,
Kirshenblatt Gimblett 1998, 2004).2 Like many successful staged folklore companies,
Victoria Santa Cruz directed the Conjunto Nacional de Folklore with charismatic
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leadership expressed with a distinctly anti-imperialist and cultural nationalist conviction
(Shay 2002: 238, Feldman 2006: 76-77).3 For the next nine years, the Conjunto
performed on a regular basis throughout Peru and various international tours to South
America, North America, Europe, and Asia.
Santa Cruz self-consciously directed the Conjunto‟s aesthetic style to further the
goals of the military revolution. She wrote:
The current process of changes entails the valorization of essential
elements of our popular traditional culture with the high quality and
technical level that the folklore riches of Peru demands. Considering that
the dynamic of the revolutionary process and the changing international
situation demand different proposals and actions the Conjunto Nacional de
Folklore uses totally new criteria to focus its work. (Santa Cruz 1978: 19)
These “new criteria” implied an anti-imperialist ideology and performance pedagogy that
minimized the dominance of European balletic techniques in favor of methods more
appropriate to Peruvian reality.4 While the Peruvian company represented the nation as a
multicultural tapestry rather than constituted by a singular ethnic identity, Santa Cruz
emphasized the complementarity of Afro-Peruvian and Andean expressive cultures with
their common roots in collective work and agricultural cultivation.5 Due to Santa Cruz‟s
nationalistic and folksy choreography, the dance critic for the New York Times called the
Conjunto, “one of the best and most interesting folk dance companies to be seen in years
that avoided “the unnatural slickness of groups like the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico”
(Kiselgoff 1975). Despite the generally warm reception by international critics and
audiences, Santa Cruz‟s efforts to put Afro-Peruvian expressions on an equal plane with
those of the Andes often clashed with the stereotypical expectations of international
audiences. The same New York Times reviewer was confused by the “strange, almost
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African appearance” of the Afro-Peruvian dances, but affirmed the Andean dances “as
supremely fascinating from an ethnic standpoint” (Kiselgoff 1975).
Perhaps due to this stereotypical identification of Peru with Andean culture, the
visually-appealing and virtuosic qualities of the scissors dance quickly made it an
audience favorite and earned the coveted slot of the show‟s finale (Personal Interview
“Valentín Chiara” 2009). The members of Los Hermanos Chiara were already seasoned
theatrical performers before they joined the Conjunto Nacional de Folklore. In addition
to their experience performing under the sponsorship of Arguedas, their relationship to
Victoria Santa Cruz went back to their participation in the Peruvian cultural delegation
she directed at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City (Feldman 2006: 77, Mendoza 2007:
146, Personal Interview “Valentín Chiara” 2009). According to harpist Valentín Chiara,
participating in the Conjunto was the highlight of their careers. They felt joy and pride
upon arriving in Mexico and being serenaded by mariachis, meeting internationallyknown artists and political figures, or shaking hands with the President of the United
States (Ford). The harpist emphasized that they came from a forgotten village and grew
up in utter poverty, yet they were able to represent their country as important artists on
the international stage (Personal Interview “Valentín Chiara” 2009).
On the other hand, the early international exposure and audience appreciation the
group received also distinguished and distanced them from the larger scissors dance
community, whether in Lima or rural Ayacucho. Valentín positions himself as a
folklorist, connoting a professional status as a compiler of ancient customs.6 He repeated
frequently, “in order to present in theatres, you have to be prepared. Not everyone can
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perform in Europe or the United States” (Ibid.). He explained theatrical performance
requires discipline, punctuality, and the ability to create a compressed synthesis of a
complex and lengthy sequence of melodic and choreographic progressions that typically
last up to a week in traditional rural festivities into a theatrical presentation of no more
than ten to fifteen minutes.7 This role as professional folklorists conditioned the group‟s
contradictory traditionalist position in relation to public representations of the scissors
dance. In a separate interview, Valentín‟s son told me that his father obsessively
conserved the melodic sequences of the dance from his childhood. Valentín would not
allow his sons, both of whom became dancers, to travel to rural Ayacucho because
contemporary performers were ruining the tradition. He further did not allow them to
practice the dangerous pruebas de valor. Their father‟s instruction emphasized the more
sophisticated acrobatics the group itself had introduced into the dance based upon their
experiences on the international folklore stage (Personal Interview “Fredy Chiara” 2008).
Thus, Valentín positions himself as the protector of a sanitized traditionalism, embracing
the unthreatening innovations appropriate for the respectable folkloric stage, but rejecting
more popular innovations.
Despite the distinction that distanced Los Hermanos Chiara from the larger
scissors dance community, their staged folklore performances became important models
for the urban innovation of the dance. As Anthony Shay argues, staged folklore is a
genre of Western theatre dance, distinct from dancing in the field, which deserves to be
studied in its own right. One of the reasons why such forms of cultural expression
deserve scholarly attention is because they do not merely imitate but also constitute
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“authentic” folk dances, in a mutual influence with more rural and popular iterations
(Shay 2002). Shay and others have argued that Russian and Mexican folkloric ballets are
the paradigmatic examples of the genre. Los Hermanos Chiara and later performers
widely acknowledge the influence of the highly-technical acrobatics of Russian folk
ballet dancers.8 Both Valentín and Fredy Chiara told me the same story about an
impromptu competition between the group and Russian dancers in the late 1970s. The
less formally trained scissors dancers apparently defeated the more technical Russian
dancers by adapting and improvising upon the Russians‟ own acrobatic maneuvers
(Personal Interview “Valentín Chiara” 2009, “Fredy Chiara” 2008).9 These
choreographic influences flowed in multiple directions. The Soviet Embassy later invited
the group to travel to the USSR to teach the scissors dance to Russian folk-ballet
dancers.10
The earliest available video footage that depicts the scissors dance is found in a
1978 documentary about Victoria Santa Cruz, entitled Black & Woman, directed by
Italian theatre director Eugenio Barba (Barba 1978). The film includes Barba‟s interview
of Santa Cruz interwoven with footage of the Conjunto Nacional de Folklore rehearsing
on a street corner in Lima. At one point, Santa Cruz explains that her earlier
investigations of the origins and spirit of African-derived dances has allowed her a point
of entry into the cultural manifestations of indigenous, European, and Asian cultures.
This segment of the interview is juxtaposed with multiple shots of Los Hermanos Chiara
performing the scissors dance as the singular example of Andean dance portrayed in the
documentary. Thus, it reinforces the exceptional uniqueness of the scissors dancers as
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specially-skilled crowd-pleasing soloists who stand out from the larger ensemble of
Andean performers. The video shows the dancers Gerardo and Zacarias Chiara engaging
in a mock competition dance in modern street clothes and the simple black widebrimmed hats typically worn by rural Andean peasants. Violinist Narcasio Gambray and
harpist Valentín Chiara accompany the dancers in similar clothing. The style of the
dancers appears to be influenced by urban cosmopolitan movement aesthetics. The
acrobatics are less developed than those of contemporary scissors dancers, but the roots
of such aesthetic innovations are clearly visible in the performance of the troupe.
Los Hermanos Chiara performed with the Conjunto Nacional de Folklore from
1973 until early 1983. Although initiated during the Velasco regime as a clear
demonstration of cultural nationalism, the more conservative second phase of the RGAF
led by Morales Bermudez (1975-1980), left the group untouched. This second phase
returned Peru‟s political economy to the earlier status quo, but maintained the prestige of
national cultural institutions with a softening of the populist rhetoric and a lack of
dynamism, growth, or innovation (Krujit 1994: 163). During the democratic government
of Fernando Belaunde Terry (1980-1985), the state reorganized state institutions along
emerging neoliberal lines. They drastically reduced the budget and scope of the
Institution Nacional de Cultura, privatizing a number of its earlier functions and
dissolving the Conjunto Nacional de Folklore altogether (Ansión 1986). In December
1982, the group staged a farewell concert entitled “Adiós al Perú” at the Teatro
Municipal in Lima (Feldman 2006: 71).11
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5.3. Máximo Damián y sus Danzantes de Tijeras
The scissors dance troupe formed by Arguedas during the 1960s begat another
high-profile theatrical group, headed by Máximo Damián Huamaní. The violinist famous
for his close friendship to Arguedas separated from Los Hermanos Chiara shortly after
the author‟s death. His public persona was more directly indebted to Arguedas‟s legacy
than his former partners. While Máximo Damian benefitted from his association with
Arguedas during the author‟s lifetime, it was Arguedas‟s death that bestowed legendary
status upon the violinist. The author dedicated his posthumous novel, El Zorro de Arriba
y el Zorro de Abajo, “to Máximo Damián Huamaní of San Diego de Ishua” (Arguedas
2000). In “The Final Diary,” Arguedas addressed Máximo Damián and charango player
Jaime Guardia by instructing, “you are never going to let yourselves be used (as long as
you‟re like when I first met you) for puppet shows” (Arguedas 2000: 259). It is these
sentiments that Máximo Damián‟s presentation of self (and presentation by others)
conveys; a humble highlander with an authoritative authenticity. The violinist‟s speech
at Arguedas‟s funeral, published in El Comercio, was entitled “With Tears, not PlayActing.”12 At the end of the speech, he uttered with sincerity, “the other day, everything
was dark for me. I was his friend, his violinist. I feel as if I am abandoned here alone”
(Damián Huamaní 1976: 343). To this day, Máximo Damián is a central figure of the
growing Arguedas industry, popularly known as “Arguedas‟s violinist.”13 Through a
double-layered public persona of humble authenticity and cosmopolitan artistry,
Arguedas‟s violinist became an important model for later scissors dance performers to
enter broader public spheres.
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After Arguedas‟s death, Máximo Damián Huamaní found a support network
amongst Arguedas‟s intellectual circle. He began performing with his wife, Isabel Asto
who sang huaynos and harawis, his brother-in-law Lazaro Asto, who was an
accomplished scissors dancer, and harpist Modesto Tomayro, in limited theatrical
engagements in 1973, mostly sponsored by Peruvian universities. The press baptized the
group “Máximo Damián y sus Danzantes de Tijeras” (Gushiken 1979, Personal Interview
“Máximo Damián Huamaní” 2008). In 1976, the Director of the INC, linguist Marta
Hildebrandt recruited the violinist for the position of professor of traditional Andean
music at the Escuela Nacional de Folklore “José María Arguedas” (Arce Sotelo 2006,
Personal Interview “Máximo Damián Huamaní 2008). Between 1976 and 2008, he
taught numerous students not only the technical principles of the Andean violin, but also
the oral tradition associated with Andean music, “so that their spirit is prepared along
with their ear; because technique without sentiment is not worth anything” (Cornejo
1997: 58). His association with the state-sponsored folklore school brought an informal
state patronage to his theatrical troupe. The Escuela Nacional de Folklore invited the
group to perform frequently on their own stage, or other events sponsored by the INC.
They performed in major national theatres, embassies, and by the late 1970s inaugurated
the tourist hotel circuit in dinner theatre shows at the Hotel Crillón in the central plaza of
Lima. During the 1980s, Máximo Damián and his group, which featured a revolving
door of performers, received numerous private engagements to perform internationally in
Europe and the United States. In 1979, José Gushiken published an oral history of the
violinist‟s life as exemplary of the migrant Andean artist. Finally in 1982, Máximo
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Damian and his performance group appeared as the scissors dancers in several scenes of
Luis Figueroa‟s film Yawar Fiesta, based on Arguedas‟s 1941 novel.
Perhaps Máximo Damián‟s most important public role was, like his famous
mentor and admirer, as a mediator between the Ayacuchano scissors dance community
and the larger world. Not only did his group introduce the dance to numerous national
and international publics through theatrical presentations, but he served as a field guide
and key informant to numerous ethnographers and literary scholars in search of the world
represented by Arguedas and he taught several ethnomusicologists the basics of the
Andean violin (Roel Pineda 1974, Vivanco 1976, Lienhard 1981, 1983, Cruz Fierro
1982, Nuñez Rebaza 1985, 1990, Bigenho 1991, 1993, Arce Sotelo 2006). This openness
to ethnographic inquiries has helped to consolidate and sustain the larger-than life legacy
of Arguedas in subsequent ethnographic representations of the dance. Furthermore, his
theatrical group has provided a training ground for other scissors dance performers from
Ayacucho to reach a wider audience. Los Hermanos Chiara was largely a self-sustaining
family troupe, with at least two dancers and the harpist from the same family. Máximo
Damián is only a single individual, who by necessity recruited younger migrant scissors
dancers and harpists to fill out the company. From the mid-1970s, nearly all of the
scissors dance performers from Ayacucho who entered the theatrical stage first had to
earn their stripes as performers for “Máximo Damián y Sus Danzantes de Tijeras.” From
the early 1970s to the early 1980s, this first generation of dancers and harpists included
Añascha, Ccecchele, Richard Saire, Chuspicha, Qori Sisicha, Champa, and Alacrán, all of
whom played a major role in the urban reinvention of the dance during the 1980s and its
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later expansion on the international stage (Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007,
“Máximo Damián” 2008, “Ccecchele” 2008, “Añascha” 2008, “Champa” 2009).
5.4. The Urban Andean Public Sphere
Numerous studies have located the period of the Velasco government as a major
turning point that accelerated the crisis of the old Creole republic and the emergence of
the urban Andean cholo as the paradigmatic figure of a new Peru (Quijano 1980, Matos
Mar 2004, Nugent 1992, Turino 1993, Williams 2002, Kokotovic 2006). According to
Matos Mar, the RGAF “did not achieve integration, but created the conditions for a
powerful liberation of the latent energies of the Andean world and popular sectors,”
producing a “popular overflow” (Matos Mar 2004: 37). This release of popular energy
reconfigured Lima as an Andeanized space that shaped the “new face” of Peru (Ibid. 21,
39, 41, 95). The dynamic hybridity engendered through the encounter between rural
indigenous cultures in transit and modern urban cultural and spatial practices “wrought
the radical fragmentation of modernity‟s national scripts” (Williams 2002: 23). The
combination of the RGAF‟s populist policies and urban Andean creativity “softened the
marginality of highland culture by the mid-1970s (Schaedel 1979: 408). Migrants from
Huancavelica and Ayacucho established distinct but overlapping multi-layered networks
of scissors dance performance in Lima. These complex performance networks linked the
city to the countryside and dramatically increased the visibility of the scissors dance as an
emblem within the heterogeneity of an emerging urban Andean public sphere.
Prior to the 1960s, Andean migrants in Lima had to navigate a series of
bureaucratic webs designed to protect Creole privilege.14 During and after the
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demographic explosion, which doubled Lima‟s population between 1961 and 1972, urban
Andean residents became increasingly conscious of their critical mass. They engaged in
collective grassroots organizing in order to increase their standard of living and create
community in the city (Turino 1993: 32, Burt 2007: 93). Despite their top-down
organization, the Velasco regime partially succeeded in renovating national hegemony
through the incorporation of rural Andean youth into the “new nation.”15 Agrarian
reform and the expansion of rural education generated the desire for progress and
stimulated further urban migration. However, when new migrants arrived in Lima, they
discovered that most formal employment opportunities were still closed to them and the
growth of industry could not keep pace with the dizzying rate of urban migration.
The disjuncture between expectations and formal opportunities led to a dramatic
intensification of alternative strategies of informality (Turino 1993: 34-35). Initially,
migrants settled in the existing popular districts of central Lima. These areas became
densely urbanized and crime-ridden inner-city slums with rapidly deteriorating living
conditions (Millones 1978, Driant 1991, Burt 2007: 93). A lack of housing caused by the
demographic explosion in the 1960s led to a second-wave of land invasions that
expanded into the vast unoccupied desert and hillsides to the north, south, and east of the
traditional demarcations of metropolitan Lima (Riofrio 1978, Burt 2007: 93).16 If they
successfully remained in the unoccupied lands for several weeks, the new community
petitioned the government for land titles and basic services (Turino 1993: 30-31).17 With
the RGAF‟s tacit support of land invasions and willingness to provide services, many
new barriadas or pueblos jovenes (young towns) were established during the 1970s,
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Illustration 5.1
Map of the Conos of Metropolitan Lima
Courtesy of http://www.urbano.org.pe
creating the northern, southern, and eastern “cones” that jet out from the traditional urban
districts (Collier 1978, Turino 1993: 31, Burt 2007: 93). Despite an unsavory reputation
191
in the national media, the barriadas are relatively safe and well-organized neighborhoods
whose “sole existence would be inexplicable without hope for progress” (Nugent 1992:
31).18 By augmenting the potential to transform their condition of poverty, the
establishment of the barriadas has enabled migrants to exercise new forms of cultural
and moral agency in the fashioning of a powerful myth of the triumphant cholo or
provinciano (Degregori 1986, Nugent 1992, Cánepa Koch 2002, Alfaro 2005).
The urban Andean culture industries, comprised of interlocking networks of
coliseos, commercial musical recordings, and radio programs, were crucial to the
development and dissemination of this myth of provincial social mobility (Alfaro
2005).19 Nevertheless, numerous studies of Andean music and dance identify a major
historical shift in Andean cultural performance in the capital during the 1970s (Llorens
and Nuñez Rebaza 1981, Llorens 1983, Turino 1988, 1993, 2007, Romero 2000). As
migrants fled the overcrowded city center and formed barriadas they increasingly
abandoned the centrally located coliseos in favor of new cultural spaces developed by
regional migrants associations. Most of these studies explain the gradual decline of the
coliseo in terms of an increasing demand for authenticity, regional specificity, and
economic control over cultural events on the part of newly-arrived Andean migrants
(Turino 1988, 1993, 2007, Romero 2000). While these explanations undoubtedly contain
a degree of truth, they employ an overly-schematic distinction between the articulation of
an over-arching provincial identity and the re-elaboration of specific regional identities.
The 1970s produced a significant diversification of performance opportunities and hybrid
aesthetic styles that constituted interlocking heterogeneous networks of cultural
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performance in Lima. Even though second-wave migrant performers and their publics
tended to position themselves as defenders of tradition and specific regional identities,
the legacy of the coliseo remained very much alive as even the most traditionalist
reproductions of Andean festivities appropriated its hybrid aesthetics (Alfaro 2005).
The regional migrants associations and their staging of reproductions of rural
Andean festivities in urban space have acquired a paradigmatic status in the ethnographic
literature on “the Andeanization of Lima” (Doughty 1972, Millones 1978, Llorens and
Nuñez Rebaza 1981, Altamirano 1984, 1988, Nuñez Rebaza 1985, 1990). These studies
focus on these regional associations as recreations of Andean modes of social solidarity
in the city, and the urban reproductions of Andean fiestas they stage as more or less
faithful imitations of the rural originals. Thus, they reproduce the notion of the Andean
as the national “other” kept outside of the now figurative city walls of Lima (Cánepa
Koch 2002: 79-80). The important ethnographic study of the effects of urban migration
on the scissors dance, by Lucy Nuñez Rebaza, views these reproductions of Andean
fiestas as a form of more or less authentic transmission of the dance to urban space and
contrasts them with degrading commercial spectacles of the Andean folklore market
(1985, 1990). This purist position forces her to constantly complain about the
contamination of the former by the latter and portray the performers as exploited victims
of urban assimilation and capitalist hegemony. However, in cited interviews her
informants seem to take a variety of pragmatic positions that often combine nostalgia and
the valorization of tradition with pride in the visibility and popularity they have acquired
in multiple performance contexts. If we disentangle Nuñez Rebaza‟s descriptions from
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her dichotomous interpretive framework, the study reveals the emergence of multilayered networks of scissors dance performance in Lima during the course of the 1970s.
Regional migrants associations have existed in Lima since the 1920s and 1930s.20
However, until the 1960s most of these associations represented the departmental and
provincial levels with the bulk of the membership reserved for provincial elites. After the
growth of the barriadas, the number of associations multiplied rapidly, representing the
district level with memberships from more humble backgrounds (Altamirano 1984: 15).21
While only a small minority of clubs have established their own locales, the others rent
the locale of a club associated with a neighboring locality.22 These locales are walled-in
rustic spaces, usually about 1000 square meters, which include a soccer field, a small
chapel for religious services, a stage for musical performance that opens onto a concrete
dance floor and gathering place, and several kiosks for the sale of beer, soda, and typical
highland meals. A system of cargos, modeled on highland practice and chosen from
within the club‟s membership, provide the festivals with economic support, organization,
and labor. The particular cargontes (sponsors) who have the most interaction with
scissors dance performers are the mayordomo, the head sponsor, and the carguyoq, who
contracts the musicians for the festival (Nuñez Rebaza 1990: 93-95).
While highland fiestas typically last for up to a week, their urban reproductions
are confined to a single weekend. The work of the scissors dance performers begins on
Saturday evening during the anticipa, a gathering of the cargontes and leaders of the
association, taking place at the home of the mayordomo. The dancers perform a preview
of the main competition and serenade the image of the particular virgin or saint being
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honored, as well as each of the cargontes. On Sunday morning, they attend mass at a
neighboring church and accompany the patronal image in procession. After a meal
provided by the mayordomo, the cargontes and artists head to the locale for the Día
Central of the fiesta (Ibid. 96-97). This event is a commercial spectacle, to which the
association charges admission, directed towards a larger public of migrants from the
neighboring region and their friends and families.23 The scissors dance competition is the
main event of the first phase of the spectacle, lasting from approximately two to six in the
afternoon.24 The performers have to reduce a sequence of choreography designed to last
several days into a few hours on a single day. The performance space is limited to the
stage and concrete dance floor within the walled-in locale in comparison to the open
space of highland plazas. The second phase of the fiesta, the general dance, begins
between 6-7 pm and typically lasts until 10-11 pm. An orquesta típica, a kind of Andean
brass brand, or a series of folklore singers who perform the commercial huayno style,
take the stage and the public dances and socializes (Ibid. 98-102.25
While Nuñez Rebaza portrays these urban Andean festivities as examples of the
continuity of Andean forms of solidarity and reciprocity in the city, these elements are
intertwined with the informal capitalism of the commercial Andean folklore industry in a
variety of ways. The Día Central is a commercial spectacle that participates in both
monetary and prestige economies. The organizers sell beer and concessions, a major
transformation from highland festivals where the sponsors freely distribute locally-made
chicha and cane liquor. In order to increase attendance, the cargontes advertise the
festival on radio programs directed towards migrant audiences, on flyers with photos of
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the star performers, and in the popular chicha tabloids sold on nearly every major
intersection in Lima. The performance aesthetics of the festivals draw not only on the
model of rural fiestas, but also on the spectacles of the coliseos, including the presence of
the stage, sound equipment, commercial huayno music, the frame of folklore, and most
importantly, the ubiquitous presence of an animator. The animator is a master of
ceremonies who constantly talks into a microphone in Spanish. He tells the audience
information about the performers, directs them when to applaud, and praises the wonders
of regional and national folklore. The animators are entertainers in themselves, most
often successful or aspiring radio hosts. A significant part of the informal economy
revolves around the hundreds of fiestas celebrated in different parts of the barriadas in
Lima every weekend (Ibid. 113, Turino 1993).26
5.5. Urban Communities of Practice: Second-Wave Migrants
The significant increase in regional associations and urban Andean fiestas in the
barriadas during the 1970s accentuated the distinction between the first wave and second
wave of migrant Andean performers in metropolitan Lima.27 The first wave of scissors
dance performers was almost entirely comprised of migrants from the provinces of
Lucanas and Parinacochas in southern Ayacucho, mostly from the provincial capitals of
Puquio and Cora Cora. This group struggled for a place for the dance in the commercial
Andean folklore market, aided by the recognition of Arguedas and his circle of
folklorists. Although they sometimes performed in urban Andean fiestas, their activities
were confined to short staged folklore presentations in the coliseos and theatres
sponsored by state and academic cultural institutions. Among this group were Los
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Hermanos Chiara and Máximo Damián Huamaní who achieved the highest level of name
recognition on national and international stages, but also groups who performed in the
coliseos, such as El Conjunto de Danzantes de Tijeras de Puquio and Los Hermanos
Yawarcha. These groups were mostly comprised of lower-class indigenous performers
directed by a middle-class mestizo entrepreneur, a framework that derived from the large
folkloric companies of the 1940s and 1950s (Nuñez Rebaza 1990: 125-126).
The second wave of migrant performers arrived in Lima as adolescents or young
people in their twenties between 1960 and 1980, having already learned the dance in the
highlands and having some experience in highland festivals. They found the folkloric
culture industries already established, and became subordinate to the greater namerecognition of successful first wave migrant artists. Thus, they established a space to
distinguish themselves in urban the fiestas costumbristas.28 Both generations tended to
differentiate themselves from each other according to different criteria of authenticity.
The older artists claimed they performed a more original style with a greater degree of
purity of melodic and choreographic sequences. The second wave artists argued that
their predecessors only knew how to perform in theatres and were not accustomed to the
higher levels of competition in rural fiestas (ibid. 127).
During the 1970s, second wave migrants from Ayacucho and Huancavelica
established distinct but overlapping communities of scissors dance performance with
their requisite performance spaces, and audiences, in the southern and eastern cones
respectively. Previous ethnographic studies have not sufficiently delimited the complex
levels of interaction, competition, and mutual influence between these two communities.
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The influence of Andeanist interpretations of Arguedas has bestowed greater public
recognition on the variety from southern Ayacucho.29 Ethnographers portrayed all
regional variants as having a common essence, and the Ayacucho style became
emblematic of the genre as a whole. Yet, this conventional representation derived from a
circular logic that constructed a primordial essence out of a series of cosmopolitan
relationships between Arguedas and later folklorists and migrant performers. For
example, two folklorists closely associated with Arguedas published article-length studies
of the scissors dance in the 1970s, which relied almost exclusively on first-wave migrant
performers from Ayacucho (Roel Pineda 1974, Vivanco 1976). Both authors developed
their arguments from Andeanist interpretations of Arguedas, initiating the claim that the
dance represented a survival of ancient shamanic rituals. Although they primarily relied
on testimony from migrant performers, these authors barely acknowledged the presence
of the dance in Lima. Like the staged folklore performances sponsored by professional
folklorists, these studies enact a double-performative. They efface their representational
mediation in the construction of an image emblematic of spatial and temporal otherness.
The first-wave migrant performers from Ayacucho garnered a great deal of
prestige from their association with Arguedas and other folklorists. The later secondwave of migrant performers had to compete for recognition with an already established
community of performers and drew on Andeanist representations of the dance at the same
time as they sought to construct strategies for distinguishing themselves from earlier
migrant performers.30 The Huancavelica scissors dance community established itself
during the 1970s in the eastern cone of Lima largely through the collaborations between
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violinist Leoncio Rua and the dancer Máximo Hilario Solis (Derrepente).31 Performing in
newly-constructed locales on the central highway in the district of Ate-Vitarte, Hilario
Solis established an emerging network of urban scissors dance performance from
Huancavelica with the newly-arrived dancers Chicchi Para, Kishkamico, Pulgarcito, and
Los Hermanos Yawarcha (Personal Interview “Chicchi Para” 2007, “Kishkamico” 2009).
This small community of performers experienced less generational tension and appears to
have been much less conflicted about the renovation of musical and choreographic
repertoires because they were driven by the need to create distinction for themselves. A
modern, acrobatic version of the Huancavelica style began to emerge most clearly in the
1980s, even surpassing their competitors from Ayacucho on international stages.
By the late 1970s, these two communities of practice were increasingly aware of
each other‟s presence and entered into mutually influential relationships of both solidarity
and competition. The scenario for these initial interactions was the scissors dance
contests staged by cultural institutions, regional radio programs, entrepreneurs, and highprofile scissors dance artists themselves. SINAMOS, the military government‟s arm for
the organization of popular mobilizations, staged a network of folklore contests called
Inkari at the district, provincial, and departmental levels.32 Departamental winners
received an invitation to perform in an immense music and dance festival at the Teatro de
Pardo y Aliaga in central Lima (Turino 1993: 142, Ansión 1986: 191-192, Nuñez Rebaza
1985, 1990). The contests contributed to the RGAF‟s legitimacy amongst the popular
classes by officially sanctioning the recognition and participation of the previously
ignored heterogeneous cultures of Peru (Ansión 1986: 192). The events also stimulated
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further migration of folklore performers by providing an all-expenses-paid trip to Lima.
Chicchi Para, a well-respected dancer from Huancavelica, came to Lima for the first-time
to participate in the 1971 festival. After being inundated with requests for contracts to
perform in fiestas costumbristas in the capital he did not return home, seeing both the
event and migration itself as an opportunity to make a name for his village and artform in
the wider world (Personal Interview “Chicchi Para” 2007).33 These events enabled the
performers to attain popularity and progress not by leaving behind their cultural practices,
but rather by bringing them to a wider audience.
By the mid-1970s, regional associations and popular radio stations began to adopt
the model of the Inkari Festival, staging contests on a smaller-scale as a mode of
publicity and fund-raising. The dancer Añascha arrived in Lima in 1974 for a contest
organized by several regional associations representing localities in southern Ayacucho.
His account of the event dramatized the often prejudicial attitudes of established firstwave migrants towards newly-arrived cholos who they perceived as more indigenous
than themselves. Añascha arrived in Lima “as a complete cholo … I didn‟t even have a
suitcase” (Personal Interview “Añascha” 2009).34 During the competition, a wellrespected first-wave migrant from Puquio and father of a competing dancer insulted
Añascha. The father took offense that a newly-arrived cholo would dare to challenge his
son. Nevertheless, like so many similar anecdotes I heard in the course of my interviews,
this story ended in triumph. Añascha took first prize in the contest, beating his rival and
winning the begrudging respect of his tormentor. He received so many contract offers he
did not return to the highlands as planned and his newfound popularity led to his
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recruitment by Máximo Damián Huamaní to perform in prestigious theatres in Peru and
throughout the world (Personal Interview “Añascha” 2009).
Nuñez Rebaza reserved her most virulent criticism for the presence of the scissors
dance in such folklore contests as a particularly vile form of the exploitation of
performers and the degradation of the dance‟s authenticity (1985: 390-398). A number of
her informants complain of rampant exploitation and corruption on the part of the
producers of such events. Nevertheless, these contests did not disappear as Nuñez
Rebaza predicted. The next generation of urbanized performers appropriated control of
the framework for their own benefit, as they sought to convert themselves into informal
cultural entrepreneurs. These events also became a staging ground for increasing
interactions between Ayacucho and Huancavelica performers and a place of mutual
influence in the experimentation with hybridized cosmopolitan innovations of the form.
5.6. The New Limeños
Not long after the second-wave of migrant performers established these distinct
communities of practice, a new generation began to learn the dance. According to Nuñez
Rebaza, a third type of scissors dancer began to emerge in the mid-1970s. This group
consisted of the children of migrants from Ayacucho, Apurimac, and Huancavelica born
in Lima, or arrived in the capital before the age of five or six years of age (Nuñez Rebaza
1990: 127). This new generation constituted what various studies have called, “the new
limeños,” who constructed new identities and popular cultures out of the urban
experience and a continuing sense of being different from the dominant ethnicity of the
coast (Portacarrrero 1993, Tapia 1997, Molero 2007).35 The city of Lima became a
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laboratory of hybridization producing complex interweavings of tradition and modernity,
as well as the cultured and the popular, through diverse circuits of mass consumption
(García Canclini 1995, 1999, Molero 2007, Archibald 2007). Young urban scissors
dance performers reinvented the dance through the appropriation of a dizzying variety of
models from international youth culture, film and television, and popular music (Turino
1993: 143). This first generation of urbanized young performers fashioned an acrobatic
and cosmopolitan style of scissors dancing, which by the early 1980s had begun to flow
from the city to the countryside (Raymundo 2006, Zevallos-Aguilar 2009: 114).
The appearance of commercial audio recording of the scissors dance became a
central form of transmission of the dance to new generations of performers. By the
1970s, recorded Andean folklore music began to outsell all other types of music in the
capital (Vivanco 1973: 100-101, Llorens 1983, Turino 2007: 108).36 Informal businesses
emerged that recorded music directed towards particular regional niche markets, shifting
audio recordings to a wide variety of indigenous styles and genres (Turino 2007: 109).
During the 1970s, a number of successful scissors dance artists recorded discs, which
they sold themselves at performances or to independent kiosks in the central market
called Mesa Redonda (Nuñez Rebaza 1985: 379). The most well-known recordings were
those of Conjunto de Danzantes de Tijeras de Puquio, a group that formed in 1968 based
on the model of the large folkloric companies of the 1940s and 1950s. The performers,
including harpist Modesto Tomayro, violinist Inocencio Espinoza, and scissors dancer
Ruperto Canales (Qori Chaleco), were all migrants from Puquio with lower-class
indigenous backgrounds.37 The director of the troupe was Cesar Gutierrez, a successful
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informal entrepreneur. Growing up in Puquio he wanted to be a musician and he even
began to learn the scissors dance. However, his parents refused to allow him to pursue
music further and encouraged him to receive an education. Later, he was able to pursue
his early affinity for music by directing this troupe of scissors dancers and making
records (Nuñez Rebaza 1985: 380-381).
The story of Gutierrez alludes to a series of complicating factors of the changes in
the transmission of the dance due to the presence of audiovisual recordings.
Ethnographers tend to accept at face value the idealized myth of the face-to-face
transmission of the dance from master to disciple depicted so beautifully by Arguedas as
“the true traditional process of learning” the form (Nuñez Rebaza 1990: 138). Yet, the
testimony of various performers about how they actually learned suggests that if this
form of transmission ever existed it had begun to change long before the appearance of
audio recordings. Going back to the first-wave of migrant performers in the 1940s and
1950s, in nearly all cases parents refused to teach their children the art form they
themselves practiced. The parents claimed that scissors dancing was a life of suffering
and drunkenness, and encouraged their children to get an education.38 However, the
idealized relationship between master and apprentice has remained as a myth in the oral
tradition of the dancers. Therefore, the transformations in the transmission of the dance
are far more complicated than a simple opposition between learning with the aid of
audiovisual recording and the face-to-face transmission from master to pupil.
Audiovisual recordings enabled a new generation of performers to acquire an improvised
competence in a very difficult performance genre.39
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The most important innovation these urbanized young performers introduced into
the dance was the elaboration of more sophisticated acrobatics. By 1980 most young
dancers were taking gymnastics classes at the National Stadium. They began to adapt
moves from martial arts films, street clowns, and hip hop dance to the scissors dance.
These performers invented new pruebas de valor out of the urban environment, including
lying on a pile of broken beer bottles, eating fluorescent light bulbs, and piercing
themselves with various knives and sharp objects. They began to use more colorful
embroidered costumes and exchanged simple wool slippers for canvas sneakers with
multi-colored laces.40 The musicians abandoned locally-made violins and harps for
cheaper imported instruments and began to incorporate melodies from chicha, an already
hybrid blend of Andean huayno and tropical styles into the scissors dance repertoire.
While young dancers and musicians from both regional styles engaged in these stylistic
innovations with a certain level of mutual influence, performers from Huancavelica
embraced the wholesale reinvention of traditional repertoires more forcefully. Lacking
the public recognition of the Ayacuchanos and with a smaller community of performers
in Lima, even the older Huancavelica artists tended to encourage the modernization of the
form in order to compete for public recognition.41
However, cosmopolitan reinvention alone did not determine the legacy of this
important generation to the subsequent urban renaissance of the scissors dance. The most
committed and successful young performers began to compete in festivals in the
highlands. Cosmopolitan aesthetic styles enabled them to distinguish themselves from
the older generations and highland experience in the more competitive rural festivals
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enabled them to claim distinction from the young beginners with no highland experience.
These forms of travel initiated multi-directional flows of influence between rural and
urban space.42 In many cases, urbanized performers experienced firsthand the need to
make offerings to the Wamanis or suffer serious bodily consequences, such as mysterious
illnesses. For most practitioners the ritual elements of the dance are a matter of embodied
necessity rather than simply a question of belief. They claim that they do not perform the
requisite rituals in Lima not because they no longer hold magical-religious beliefs, but
simply because the urban landscape is not a living entity requiring payment. Moreover,
by travelling to the highlands these young urban performers introduced rural spectators to
cosmopolitan aesthetic values. They became role models for an upcoming generation of
rural youth as the distinctions between traditional and modern increasingly became more
about generational difference than rural or urban residence.
The most important young dancer of this generation from Ayacucho was Romulo
Huamani Janampa, who goes by the artistic pseudonym of Qori Sisicha (little golden
ant). He arrived in Lima from his hometown of San Antonio de Chipao in 1966 at only
five years of age.43 Like most performers of his generation, he learned the dance by
listening to the records of Conjunto de Danzantes de Tijeras de Puquio and watching and
imitating older and more advanced dancers at fiestas costumbristas in Lima.44 At the age
of thirteen, he began to compete in fiestas costumbristas and earned a reputation as an
able young dancer. During his secondary school years, Qori Sisicha became interested in
gymnastics and began to incorporate acrobatics into his dancing after seeing another
dancer from Huancavelica perform a hand-stand on top of a harp. From 1979 to 1981, he
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performed in “Máximo Damián y sus Danzantes de Tijeras,” leaving after differences
with the famous violinist and in order to pursue his own entrepreneurial ambitions.
Moreover, he appropriated ethnographic techniques in order to augment his knowledge,
tape recording interviews of respected masters about the ritual significance of the dance
(Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007). In 1981, he competed in his first rural festival,
claiming he earned the respect of a more knowledgeable and discerning public (Nuñez
Rebaza 1985: 366).45 Later in the 1980s Qori Sisicha would become the most visible
scissors dancer not only due to his dancing talent but also his self-promotional skills..
The initial author of the revival of the Huancavelica style was undoubtedly
Máximo Hilario Solis, who goes by the artistic name Derrepente.46 He arrived in Lima in
1962 to perform at the Coliseo Nacional. At this time, no dancers from Huancavelica
resided in Lima, and he joined forces with the violinist Leoncio Rua performing in
coliseos and theatres (Nuñez Rebaza 1985: 34). By the 1970s, Derrepente began to train
a new generation of dancers from Huancavelica in Lima such as Kishkamico, Pulgarcito,
Supay Wayra, and his own sons Lucifer and Luzbel. His eldest son, Lucifer, began to
dance at an early age, but stopped practicing for a while as other children insulted him as
a cholo. He returned to performing in 1978 or 1979, using audio discs and some
instruction from his father. Lucifer began perform at fiestas costumbristas in Lima and in
the highlands.47 His father encouraged him to invent new acrobatic sequences and the
father and son team created the theatrical troupe, “Corazon del Mercurio,” that greatly
expanded the dance‟s presence on the tourist show circuit.
Around 1981, “Corazon del Mercurio” received a steady job performing for a
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dinner-theatre show at the five-star Hotel Crillón in Lima‟s central plaza. The colorful
costumes and acrobatic choreography of the group quickly won over the favor of tourists
“satisfied because they saw the exotic flavors of indigenous Peru” (Nuñez Rebaza 1990:
149). Lucifer and the very young dancer Ccarccaria became the major authors of
renovated acrobatic choreographies that they incorporated into the Huancavelica style
during the 1980s and 1990s.48 Although the pay was low and the organizers treated them
like common cholos, the Hotel Crillón show gave the group the opportunity to transform
dancing into a full-time profession and began to achieve equal name-recognition for the
Huancavelica style in relation to the Ayacucho variant.49 Unlike theatrical presentations
by dancers from Ayacucho, “Corazon del Mercurio” began to innovate by synchronizing
the choreography with two to three dancers performing in unison, later developing into
the so-called scissors dance ballet style practiced today by numerous groups.
In the early 1980s, the scissors dance contests staged by radio stations, informal
entrepreneurs, and the dancers themselves became places of encounter and competition
between young dancers from Ayacucho, like Qori Sisicha and those of Huancavelica,
such as Lucifer and Ccarccaria. Nuñez Rebaza suggests that older performers maintained
their distance from such commercial events and the new generation was attracted to the
potential to gain popularity and monetary benefits. However, rampant exploitation and
corruption on the part of the organizers stained the reputation of these contests (Nuñez
Rebaza 1985: 397). Learning from these experiences, young performers began to
organize contests for their own economic benefit. Derrepente and Lucifer produced the
first of these performer-organized contests on April 8, 1981, during Holy Week. Qori
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Sisicha won the contest, explaining “the struggle was tremendous, with new pruebas.
The Huancavelicano told me that the public does not like the repetition of pruebas. I
agreed and I renovated and transformed all the pruebas” (qtd. in Nuñez Rebaza 1985:
403). This event initiated a close relationship between the enterprising young
Ayacuchano dancer and Lucifer and later Ccarccaria.50 In 1984, Qori Sisicha produced
his own contest in order to celebrate his 10th artistic anniversary. Through these events
Qori Sisicha and Lucifer became important models for other scissors dancers to follow in
a dramatic increase of the popularity of the dance in Lima, as the rural highlands were
swept up in a nightmarish decade of political violence and forced exile to the capital.51
5.7. Sasachakuy Tiempo: Political Violence and the Forced Deterritorialization
During the 1980s and a good part of the 1990s, Peru experienced a devastating
internal conflict between ideologically dogmatic insurgent groups and state security
forces.52 Both non-state guerilla groups, particularly Shining Path, and military forces
committed rampant sexual violence, torture, murders, and other severe human rights
violations (Poole and Renique 1992, Stern 1998, CVR 2003, Theidon 2003, 2004, 2009,
Taylor 2006, Burt 2007). The center of the conflict was the departments of Ayacucho,
Apurimac, and Huancavelica, the historical home of the scissors dance. The widespread
political violence engendered a third wave of massive migration from the highlands to the
relative safety of Lima and other urban areas. Lima became the refuge of scissors dance
performance as the violence impeded the realization of nearly all rural festivities in the
region for over a decade. Entire communities were abandoned and migration acquired a
quality of forced exile (Nuñez Rebaza 1991: 14, Bigenho 1991: 3, Arce Sotelo 2006: 37).
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I argue that this almost total relocation did not merely deterritorialize the dance, but
conditioned the specific ways in which performers refashioned it in response to their new
urban residence and the experience of political violence.53
The conflict arose out of the specific conditions of agrarian reform and the
transition from military to civilian rule (Degregori 1986, 1989, 1998, Stern 1998, Taylor
2007, Burt 2007). In August 1975, the more traditional arm of the military staged a
bloodless coup, replacing Velasco with General Francisco Morales Bermudez (Burt
2007: 27).54 The regime came to resemble a conventional right-wing Latin American
dictatorship, yet preserved a measure of populist rhetoric without innovation (Krujit
1994, Ansión 1986).55 In 1977-1978, emboldened workers, students, and peasants
organizations initiated violent protests and strikes. Morales Bermudez called for a
Constituent Assembly in 1978 and general elections in 1980.56 The majority of Peru‟s
new left parties enthusiastically participated in the national elections and the alliance
Izquierda Unida (United Left) gained a significant presence in parliament. However, an
enigmatic Maoist organization known as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) initiated their
revolution on the day of the election by burning ballot boxes in the forgotten village of
Chuschi in central Ayacucho (Isbell 1992, Poole and Renique 1992, Burt 2007).57
Sendero Luminoso emerged out of a burgeoning university culture and the
dramatic growth of rural education in Ayacucho in the aftermath of agrarian reform
(Degregori 1986, 1989, 1998). Abimael Guzmán, a philosophy and education professor
at the Universidad Nacional San Cristobal de Huamanga, created Sendero in the
aftermath of a series of fragmentations of the Communist Party of Peru in relation to the
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Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s.58 A disciplined network of university professors and
students, as well as rural schoolteachers established a strong presence within rural
communities in this region. The party constructed a cult of personality around Guzmán
and appealed to the crisis of identity of educated rural youth caught between the peasant
communities of their families and the broader national culture.59 By recruiting these rural
young people, the mostly non-Andean intellectual leadership gained access to the
majority of peasant communities in the region, establishing a presence as a kind of
shadow state in an area where the “real” state was almost entirely absent (Degregori
1986, 1989, 1998: 132, Lewis 2007, Burt 2009: 86).
While Shining Path quickly established its presence in many rural communities
through the interventions of educated youths, the acceptance of Shining Path by the
broader community was often more pragmatic and ephemeral than ideological. The
guerillas were inflexible, but they replaced incompetent authorities and punished thieves,
adulterers, and abusive husbands (Degregori 1998: 131). As soon as Shining Path took
power in a community, contradictions and conflicts developed that produced the first
signs of rupture between the peasants and their new Maoist bosses (Ibid. 132). The
peasants appeared to the Shining Path leadership as one-dimensional subaltern groups
outside of history and lacking their own closely-guarded forms of social structure and
hierarchy.60 Shining Path actively prohibited the celebration of fiestas, believing that
folklore was an unscientific remnant of semi-feudal forms of production. Claiming that
they represented the peasants‟ interests without recognizing their agency, the actions of
Shining Path often presented an affront to Andean conceptions of time and space and the
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conventions that governed social interaction.61 By early 1983, many localities sought to
expel Shining Path, which they considered to be a polluting external force, from their
communities (Ibid. 139-140, Theidon 2003, 2004, 2008).
The early signs of peasant rejection of Shining Path resulted in the paradigmatic
events of Uchurraccay. In January 1983, eight journalists journeyed to Huaychao to
investigate reports of peasants enacting violent retributions against Shining Path. As they
passed through the community of Ucchurraccay unannounced, local peasants attacked
and killed them with stones, sticks, and axes. Belaunde assigned an investigative
commission headed by world-renowned novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, and comprised of a
team of experts, including several anthropologists (Mayer 1991). While the
commission‟s report ostensibly excused the peasants of wrong-doing, Vargas Llosa
skillfully weaves together several strands of anthropological theory, depicting the
peasants as an “other” distant in both time and space from the modern nation. His prose
reveals the close relationship between the image of the noble savage constructed by
Andeanist anthropology and popular notions of the beastly primitive rooted in nineteenth
century national literature (Mayer 1991: 489, Starn 1998: 227). In a related 1983 article,
Vargas Llosa drew on Andeanist readings of the scissors dance in order to interpret the
ritualized nature of the killings. He wrote:
The murders had magico-religious as well as sociopolitical roots. The
horrible injuries found on the cadavers were ritualistic. The perpetrators
buried the eight journalists face down in pairs, in the form that the
comuneros bury those they consider „devils‟ or people like the scissors
dancers, that they believe have entered into pacts with the devil. (Vargas
Llosa 1984: 14).62
Although it presented itself as sympathetic marginalized Andean communities, the report
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served to legitimate the military‟s plans to launch a “dirty war” style offensive that
conflated Andean peasants with “terrorists” (Theidon 2003, 2004, 2008).
In January 1983, Belaunde turned the reigns of counter-insurgency over to
General Clement Noel, a graduate of the School of the Americas who employed similar
tactics brutally unleashed in the Southern Cone in the previous decade (Starn 1998: 228,
Burt 2007: 58). During 1983-1984, more than 7,000 civilians died in the indiscriminate
use of violence by the state and Shining Path counter-attacks directed towards peasants
they accused of collaborating with the military.63 The “dirty war” impeded the
developing ruptures between Shining Path and peasant communities, enabling them to
more than replace its losses with new recruits and expand its operations throughout most
of the highlands and the Amazon Basin.64 Due to the increasing violence, the majority of
peasants in the region fled to Lima, swelling the barriadas to an unprecedented degree.
The combination of the use of anthropological knowledge in the Uchucarray
report and the worsening violence in the highlands dramatically changed the conditions
of ethnographic fieldwork on Andean cultures.65 Peruvian anthropologists shifted their
gaze to the city as their traditional rural field-sites transformed into extremely dangerous
war zones. Anthropologists revived older preoccupations with folklore, redefined as
popular culture, conceived as a heroic form of cultural resistance in opposition to the
dominant culture. However, these studies did not critically approach the essentialization
of Andean culture, reproducing reified dichotomies between tradition and modernity
(Degregori 2000: 52, Cánepa Koch 2002: 79-80).66 Lucy Nuñez Rebaza‟s study of the
survival of the scissors dance in Lima is clearly on example of these early urban studies
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profoundly conditioned by political violence.67 Conducting fieldwork in such a fraught
political context, Nuñez Rebaza, initiated the interpretation that depicted Lima as the
refuge of the scissors dance during the years of violence (Bigenho 1991: 3, Arce Sotelo
2006: 37). The dance became caught “between two fires” resulting in the forced
deterritorialization of Andean culture (Theidon 2004). This perspective does not take
into account more complex relationships between the scissors dance as a cultural practice
and the political violence that performers and their audiences experienced.
5.8. The ADTMP and the Urban Renaissance of the Scissors Dance
During the mid-1980s, the scissors dance acquired new visibility in urban popular
cultures, mostly due to the collective actions of migrant performers. A group of younger
performers held a meeting on November 16, 1984, establishing the Asociación de los
Danzantes de Tijeras y Músicos del Perú (ADTMP). This self-help network was a
collective effort to assist several older performers suffering from various ailments and
illnesses (Nuñez Rebaza 1985: 423).68 Shortly after this first meeting, the participants
staged a commercial spectacle in Local Abtao in order to raise funds for the nascent
organization. The event achieved a level of success beyond their expectations and they
soon established legal status and an official hierarchy of roles and offices. The very
young but well-connected dancer Qori Sisicha became president and the harpist Llapla
served as his vice-president. The first few years of the organization stand out as a past
golden age when the artists achieved a certain level of unity beyond professional jealousy
and regionalist tensions.
The business and networking acumen of Qori Sisicha, combined with the
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favorable conditions of new forms of state patronage, enabled the nascent organization to
establish itself in urban Andean popular culture. Izquierda Unida had swept the
municipal elections of 1983, installing the leader of the leftist alliance, Dr. Alfonso
Barrantes, as the mayor of Lima. In 1985, the charismatic young leader of APRA named
Alan García took the presidency with a decidedly populist platform. Both
administrations, which developed a close working partnership, developed a host of new
social programs that benefited popular sectors including folkloric artists (Burt 2007: 73).
In this context, Qori Sisicha acquired the sponsorship of the Municipality of Lima to
produce several well-attended commercial spectacles a year in high-profile venues in
downtown Lima from 1986 to 1989. The first competition occurred in November 1986 at
the Parque de la Reserva, under the direct sponsorship of Mayor Barrantes. Qori Sisicha
worked directly with the municipal government‟s cultural wing in order to coordinate
press coverage, print flyers, rent sound equipment, and oversee the logistics of the event
attended by an audience of 3000 spectators (Zevallos Aguilar 2009).69
During the same year, Qori Sisicha gained visibility for the association with
numerous radio and several television appearances. According to one dancer, the other
performers were afraid of the national press, but their leader had a level of education that
prepared him to promote the dance in the public sphere (Personal Interview “Ccecchele”
2008). A group of musicians and dancers affiliated with the association participated in
the short film adaptation of Arguedas‟s “La Agonia de Rasu Niti,” produced for the
international video market but also broadcast on the state-owned Canal 7 in 1986. The
production cast nationally-renowned actors, from visibly Creole backgrounds, for the
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principal roles and “authentic” scissors dance performers in mostly non-speaking roles.
The dancer Ccecchele played the disciple Atok Sayku, a principal role, although most of
his lines were given to a newly-invented character. While the production team sought to
draw on the authenticity of casting genuine performers, they preferred them not to speak
and the performers accepted this predicament out of deference to the prestigious
institutions of Peruvian high culture (Tamayo San Román 1986, Zevallos Aguilar 2009:
114). Qori Sisicha, however, began to create a space for the performers as speaking
representatives of Andean culture in the national media. During his term as president of
the ADTMP, the aesthetic renovations of the form, of which Qori Sisicha was one of the
principal authors, captured the attention of a broader public. Ironically, the
entrepreneurial and promotional skills and aesthetic renovations of a dancer that Nuñez
Rebaza critiques as exemplary of the individualism of the dominant culture enabled the
success of an organization she celebrates as a form of cultural defense (Nuñez Rebaza
1985: 422). However, it is also clear that the same dancer‟s unique cosmopolitan
knowledges that made him a positive leader under favorable conditions contributed to a
growing level of distrust and discontent amongst other performers. When circumstances
turned less favorable these sentiments transformed into outright accusations of
corruption.
If the ADTMP experienced a brief golden age under the leadership of Qori
Sisicha, after 1989 their situation considerably worsened, paralleling the trajectory of
many self-help organizations during the administration of Alan García. The president
developed a heterodox economic plan that rebuked the policies of the Washington
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consensus. This populist strategy was initially a great success, and a number of
community organizations thrived during the first three years of his presidency (Tover
1986, Blondet 1986, Ballón 1986). However, García‟s economic model quickly fell into
crisis after the IMF declared Peru an ineligible borrower in December 1987. Throughout
1988 and 1989, a worsening economic crisis produced hyperinflation, the rapid decline of
purchasing power, massive crime waves, and the intensification of political violence
(Burt 2007: 37). As state budgets fell dramatically and patronage dried up, were left in a
sudden state of instability.70 Already existing tensions, struggles for power, and
ideological differences dramatically intensified as the membership accused leaders of
bossism and corruption (Del Pino 1991, Burt 2008: 73). In the case of the ADTMP a rift
gradually developed between Qori Sisicha and other members, which has not repaired
itself to this day. Other leaders accused him of using the name of the organization to
produce a commercial spectacle for his personal benefit that alienated previous
collaborators and funders of the organization (Personal Interview “Ccecchele” 2008,
“Llapla” 2008).71 However, after Qori Sisicha resigned, the new leaders did not possess
their predecessor‟s skill in publicity and sponsorship further declined (Personal Interview
“Ccecchele” 2008). The organization became only a shell of what it once, and to this day
has not achieved its ultimate goal of constructing its own locale (Personal Interview
“Qori Sisicha” 2007, “Ccecchele 2008, “Llapla” 2009, “Añascha” 2009).
5.9. Violence, Economic Collapse, and the Return of the Andean Infernal Imaginary
Despite the conflicts that produced the decline of the ADTMP, the dance
remained popular in urban public culture. Michele Bigenho, who conducted
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ethnographic fieldwork on the dance in Lima in 1990 and 1991, notes that the
organization actually split into two opposing organizations that each held their own wellattended events during Holy Week (Bigenho 1993: 241). Bigenho notes a continuing
relationship between the scissors dancer and the devil. She cites a young woman in
attendance who claims, “This holy week we should be with God. But who are we with
now? [. . .] The devil attracts more attention. [. . .] Here is where the devil conspires
against God” (Bigenho 1993: 241). Recent ethnographic fieldwork on the period of
political violence reveals another interpretation of why the figure of the devil would
make a dramatic return to interpretation of the scissors dance at the precise moment of
Bigenho‟s fieldwork. According to Andean interpretations of the violence during the
1980s, the portals to the uku pacha opened up, bringing the dominion of infernal beings
on the earth (Isbell 1992, Degregori 1998: 149, Theidon 2004, Millones 2010: 121-123).
Peasant communities perceived Shining Path militants as condenados or pishtacos, shape
shifters from another world who transform into llamas, foxes, and other animals and
attack humans in order to consume their fat. The militants apparently brought offerings
to the mountains and engaged in pacts with the devil by entering mountain caves.
(Theidon 2004: 40-41, 126). During the economic crisis and Shining Path‟s offensive in
Lima from 1989 to 1992, rumors and legends of the appearance of condenados and
pishtacos transferred from rural villages to the capital city (Kraniauskas 1998, Williams
2002: 249-250). In a period in which individual and social bodies became threatened by
political violence and the corrosive effects of economic crisis, the popularity of the
scissors dance grew as potential surrogates for invading diabolic forces in a revival of an
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earlier Andean infernal imaginary.
The degree to which the performers willingly took on the diabolical role to satisfy
the desires of their audience appears to have varied according to regional style. Bigenho,
whose research focuses on scissors dance communities from southern Ayacucho, noticed
a disjuncture between the scissors dance performers and the general public, in terms of an
association between the devil and the dance. The scissors dance performers denied that
such a relation exists in the present and clearly differentiated between the figures of the
Wamani, the sirena, and the devil. Other members of the community claimed that pacts
with the devil still existed and conflated all three of these spiritual figures. While the
performers accepted a certain theatrical representation of the past association by
submitting to a whipping at the end of all-night events during Holy Week, they distanced
themselves from it (Bigenho 1991: 126, 130, 135). It is probable that these performers
had already internalized Andeanist interpretations of “La Agonia de Rasu Niti” to
construct themselves as the guardians of more legitimate Andean ritual practices.
However, performers from Huancavelica had relatively less connection to
Arguedas‟s legacy and a less established place in the larger public sphere. Therefore,
many of these performers appropriated diabolic roles in search of greater fame and
recognition. In addition to taking on diabolic artistic pseudonyms such as Lucifer,
Ccarccaria, Luzbel, and Runa Miko (cannibal), they developed new pruebas de valor in
order to display endurance for greater levels of physical pain. Some high-profile dancers
brought these claims to the press, finding information in occult books in order to scare the
public and garner more attention (Personal Interview “Ccarccaria” 2007, “Victor
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Chavez” 2009). One dancer, whose artistic pseudonym is Condenado, told me that a
cultural promoter in Huancayo gave him the name in order to attract more attention and
popularity. In 1990 or 1991, a rumor of the presence of a condenado started after several
unattributed killings occurred near Huancayo. At an event in a coliseo, a group of
community leaders confronted him and accused him of being the condenado. He
eventually succeeded in alleviating the tension by presenting his identification card as a
registered artist with the Instituto Nacional de Cultura. In hindsight, he claims that this
incident served to heighten his popularity and fame and significantly raised the monetary
value of his contracts (Personal Interview “Condenado” 2007). Thus, the scissors dance
performers may have served as surrogate effigies who contributed to the ritual acts of
repudiation and externalization of Shining Path enacted by both rural and urban Andean
communities between 1989 and 1992 (Degregori 1998: 148, Theidon 2003, 2004).
5.10. Conclusion
The trajectory of the scissors dance shifted dramatically between Arguedas‟s
death in 1969 and the gradual end of the internal conflict in the Peruvian highlands in
1992 and 1993. The demographic explosion in Lima and especially the rupture caused
by the political violence transformed the dance from a rural festival dance into almost
exclusively a highly spectacular genre of urban Andean popular culture. Older
generations of performers as well as anthropologists complain that the aesthetic
innovations introduced by young practitioners have reduced a rich cultural tradition into
pure acrobatics and circus clowning with very “little soul” (Montoya 2004: 70).
However, it is probable that this urban reinvention enabled the scissors dance to not only
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survive but thrive under new circumstances at the dawn of the twentieth century. The
transformations of the form reflected and expressed the changing experiences of the
performers and their audiences in relation to urban poverty and political violence.
Moreover, these transformations positioned the dance to achieve a prominent place in the
emerging regime of multicultural recognition that followed the internal conflict, which I
turn to in the next chapter.
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Chapter 6
The Performative Economy of a New Peru
6.1. Introduction
The “contemporary global culturalist conjuncture” produced by the end of the
cold war, the expansion of globalization, and the triumph of neoliberalism has
conditioned a recent “indigenous renaissance” throughout the world (Turner 1999).
Terence Turner argues that, “cultural identities like ethnicity, gender, or indigeneity have
become the preferred medium for ascribing social power, demanding rights and laying
claims for status and honor for many subnational groups. Culture has tended to replace
nationalism as a political resource in struggles for empowerment within a nation-state”
(Ibid. 5). Indigeneity has acquired new value in a rapidly globalizing world since the
Quincentennial of Columbus‟s “discovery” of the Americas, celebrated in 1992 (Starn
and Cadena 2007: 10, Robin Azevedo and Salazar-Soler 2009). In 1993, Maya activist
Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Peace Prize and the UN declared the same year “Year
of Indigenous People.” By the late 1990s, even the World Bank and the IMF began to
elaborate a new model of “development with identity,” advocating a limited program of
indigenous cultural rights (Starn and Cadena 2007: 14).
Since this moment, a number of academic studies have exalted the appearance of
indigenous social movements in Latin America. Peru stands out as an exception to an
otherwise continent-wide trend, despite the large percentage of its population who speak
indigenous languages (Albo 1991, 2004, Yashar 1999, 2004, Warren and Jackson 2002).
221
Social scientists have explained this apparent weakness of indigenous identity in Peru
with recourse to an absence of indigenous-identified intellectuals, and the hybridity
produced by the particularly intense demographic explosion of urban Andean migration
in that country. Moreover, the political violence of the 1980s impeded the growth of
ethnic social movements at the same time they developed elsewhere. However, recent
work by Peruvianist scholars has problematized the notion that indigenous movements
flow naturally from the interests of native people. They call for more contextualized
investigations that go beyond the sphere of politics proper to the micro-politics of
everyday identity construction in relation to public culture (Degregori 1993, Cadena
2000, Lucero and García 2004, García 2005, Greene 2006, Cánepa Koch 2007).
In the aftermath of the internal conflict, cultural politics in Peru became an
exemplary laboratory for the emerging disciplinary regime Charles Hale calls “neoliberal
multiculturalism” (Hale 2002, 2006). Hale argues that the cultural logic of neoliberalism,
“thrives on the recognition of cultural difference, and by extension, on high-stakes
distinctions between those cultural rights that deserve recognition and those that do not”
(Hale 2006: 36). Through the mediation of national and transnational institutions,
corporations, and NGOs, neoliberal multiculturalism increasingly casts indigenous people
in the role Alcida Ramos identifies as “the hyperreal Indian,” constituted by commodified
images of the model Indian produced for Western consumption (Ramos 1998). Such
images may be exoticist fantasies, having little to do with the ways actual indigenous
people conduct their lives in the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, they produce
indigeneity as a mirror image of Western capitalism and regulate emerging forms of
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global indigenous citizenship. Drawing on Foucault‟s notion of governmentality in
relation to the constitution of subjects, Hale suggests, “the leading edge of
neoliberalism‟s cultural project is not radical individualism, but rather the creation of
subjects who govern themselves in accordance with the logic of globalized capitalism”
(Hale 2006: 220). Neoliberal multiculturalism manages diversity by recognizing cultural
difference as valuable while it masks the continuation of structures of racial and
economic inequality (Ibid., Zizek 1998, Yudice 2003, Postero and Zamosc 2004).
By the turn of the millennium, Andeanist ethnographers, provincial intellectuals,
tourist agencies, and the performers themselves had transformed the scissors dance into a
cultural resource that embodied both the exotic spectacle and mystical authenticity of the
indigenous Andean Other on Peruvian and global stages (Yudice 2003). I contend that
this process dramatized the passage of the discourse of a new Peru from an incompletely
realized vision of the national-popular to a performative economy of multicultural
recognition conditioned by the regimes of neoliberal governmentality. Contemporary
scissors dance performers have participated in the theatricalization of the dance as a
fetishized commodity representing an “almost metaphysical idea of cultural resistance as
a recontextualized image” (Vich 2007: 3). Within the global cultural economy the
direction of representation has inverted; the commodity no longer embodies a concrete
cultural object or practice, but rather cultural practices now stand in for images (Zizek
1989). The scissors dance as an iconic sign of authenticity and Andean resistance has
increasingly replaced a more complex choreographic and musical repertoire. In this
chapter, I trace the development of the “new Peru” as a performative economy of
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neoliberal multiculturalism between the governments of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000),
and Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006). I argue that an unmarked and supposedly universal
subject position has conferred recognition and value upon the scissors dance and its
performers as models for a neoliberal pedagogy of identity in order to teach Andean
subjects to perform their ethnic identities in permissible and unthreatening ways.
6.2. The Hypermasculine Indigenous Warrior
Although the political violence did not begin to subside until the capture of
Abimael Guzmán in 1992, the roots of a post-conflict Andean ethnic revival go back to
the surprising election of little-known agronomist Alberto Fujimori in 1990 over worldrenowned author Mario Vargas Llosa. After the disastrous final years of the García
regime, traditional political parties and strategies had very little legitimacy in the eyes of
most Peruvians and the climate was ripe for a political outsider.1 The Fujimori campaign
skillfully connected his ethnic and professional background to those of the
disenfranchised indigenous and mestizo majorities (Lee 2007: 48). Drawing on
essentialized ideas about his Japanese ancestry, Fujimori conflated Asian neoliberalism
with an emergent Andean modernity as alternatives to the Westernizing Creole elite
embodied by Vargas Llosa. His campaign promised, “A President Like You” and in one
speech he directly pitted, “the chinaman and the cholos against the whites” (Lee 2007).
Fujimori tirelessly campaigned in poor shantytowns and rural areas in a cart pulled by a
tractor called “the fujimobile,” often wearing Andean traditional dress and dancing with
older women to Andean folkloric music in televised appearances (Burt 2007: 224).2
Oliart argues, Fujimori “symbolically satisfied the need for inclusion and recognition by
224
groups previously excluded” (1998: 412). However, his performative neopopulism
established “a relationship of complicity” with the masses that legitimized the
“authoritarian reconstitution of the state” his administration enacted (Ibid. Burt 2007).
The election of Fujimori corresponded to a major shift in the counter-insurgency
strategy of the Peruvian military (Rospigliosi 1996, Tapia 1997, Burt 2007: 175). The
armed forces began to develop closer ties to peasant communities at the same time that
“many villagers were weary of war, ready to take any measure to end a revolution that
had brought them only suffering and death” (Coronel 1996: 92). Moreover, the military
began to develop partnerships with the nascent rondas campesinas, peasant self-defense
patrols organized to fight Shining Path as the ambiguous coexistence highlanders shared
with the insurgents gradually transformed into armed resistance (Starn 1998, Degregori
1998, Theidon 2003, Burt 2007: 177). During the Fujimori regime, the state co-opted the
rondas by placing them under the command of the military in exchange for massive
distribution of weapons. Fujimori himself presided over public ceremonies handing over
shotguns to peasants, often dressing in highland dress in order to connect with the masses
(Tapia 1997, Starn 1998: 232).3 The militarization of highland life left an ambivalent
legacy, introducing new models of masculinity that drew on both military codes and
globalized popular culture.4 As Kimberly Theidon argues, an epic narrative of masculine
heroism took on an explicitly ethnic component through the hypermasculinity of the
figure of the indigenous warrior (2003: 72-78). These complex processes of ethnogenesis
inverted generational hierarchies that granted authority and respect to older men and
women, enabling young Andean men to negotiate their claims to cultural citizenship in
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broader national and transnational public spheres. (Theidon 2004: 293, 2008).5
Despite its association with the otherness of infernal forces, and thus Shining
Path, the scissors dance gradually became a local model for the construction of new
(hyper)masculine Andean subjectivities. The young migrant scissors dancers of the early
1980s preceded the militants in the hybrid construction of triumphant Andean
masculinities through the appropriation of images from international popular culture
within the competitive framework of scissors dance performance. Like the scissor
dancers, the ronderos constructed a shadow self represented by their noms de guerre,
drawn from international action films such as Rambo, Tiger, Wolf or the Andean infernal
imaginary, such as Beast, Red Devil, Pishtaco, or Jarjacha (Starn 1998, Theidon
2003:72). The young ronderos often narrate their experiences of war by claiming that
they first needed to enter hell in order to defeat the dominion of the devil (Theidon 2003,
Millones 2011). In this moment, Andean conceptions of the scissors dance from a
theatricalization of infernal otherness began to shift toward a crystallization of an
emergent Andean masculine identity embodying the cultural resistance of a PreColumbian warrior. Narrating the origins of the dance, a young violinist told Bigenho:
The [scissors] dancers are from the colonial era when they were
persecuted as heretics. [. . .] During the Inquisition [. . .] the Spanish
tortured and abused them. Andean man began to grow rebellious … in
order to demonstrate to the Spaniards that he has the capacity to be a
warrior [. . .] The scissors dancer was born in this manner, as an imitation
of a warrior in order to resist the abuses they experienced during the
inquisition (Bigenho 1991: 90).
Although the musician narrates events from the distant past, this discourse parallels those
of the ronderos collected by Theidon (2003, 2004). Furthermore, this emergent subject
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position sheds light on the resonance of ethnographic narratives that began to locate the
origins of the scissors dance in the Taki Onqoy at this very historical juncture (Nuñez
Rebaza 1990, Castro Klaren 1990). The supposed connection to the Taki Onqoy added
another layer of historical complexity to the interplay between ethnographic
representation and the constitution of Andean subjectivities, as the dance became
associated with an emblematic colonial Andean resistance movement.
At the same time the scissors dance became a model for triumphant and resistant
(hyper)masculine Andean selfhood, the phenomena of women scissors dancers began to
emerge. Both transformations are intimately related to the experience of war and the
militarization of everyday life that reconfigured traditional Andean gender roles. The
combination of mass migration and internal conflict brought new opportunities for
subaltern women to participate in local and national public life (Coral Cordero 1998,
Theidon 2006).6 As Theidon argues, it is often the case that “women‟s‟ agency is
recognized only when women act in ways which resemble traditional male behavior”
(Theidon 2006: 464). Thus, Andean women inserted themselves into the scene of
hypermasculinity in a process that one of Theidon‟s informants describes as “making
ourselves macho” (2004: 72-73). The first women scissors dancers, Yuya Killa from the
Ayacucho style and Defensorita from Huancavelica, emerged in the early 1990s from
practitioners of parallel women‟s festive traditions (Personal Interview “Accarhuaycha”
2009). As the best practitioners of their genre, these women began to envy the popularity
of the male scissors dancers from their communities. They began to learn to play the
scissors and imitate the steps of the male dancers. Soon, they achieved recognition as
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they reinvented new acrobatic choreographies that displayed their flexibility. However,
most women scissors dancers have given up the practice after adolescence due to their
child-rearing responsibilities.7 Moreover, the recognition of women as legitimate
practitioners of the artform still depends on the acceptance of male leaders. Although the
founding figures of women scissors dancing came from both the Huancavelica and
Ayacucho styles at around the same time, the new tradition has taken root more easily
within the Huancavelica community, due to the relatively greater modernizing
positionality of the male leaders. Nevertheless, the two women dancers I interviewed
view themselves as exceptional to these general tendencies. Both Pura Sangre and
Accarhuaycha are single mothers who continue dancing despite their responsibilities to
multiple children. While these women dancers recognize certain limitations they have in
relation to the male dancers, they also emphasize their strengths, claiming they can
perform certain choreographic elements better than the most-skilled of their male
counterparts. Furthermore, while they honor the efforts certain popular male dancers
have made to bring them to new public spaces, they position themselves as fiercely
independent, following their own paths instead of remaining subordinate figures to
particular male leaders (Personal Interview “Pura Sangre” 2009, Accarhuaycha” 2009).
6.3. Local Development with Identity: Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Although it greatly intensified in the 2000s, Peruvian neoliberal multiculturalism
initiated during the “authoritarian reconstitution of the state” enacted by the Fujimori
administration (Burt 2007). Despite the deepening partnerships between peasant
communities and the military, the economic crisis worsened and Shining Path was on the
228
verge of taking over state power almost two years into Fujimori‟s presidency (Burt 2004,
2007). The administration had difficulty passing economic reforms and counterterrorism legislation as the result of strong opposition from APRA and FREDEMO in
congress (Lee 2010: 53).8 Through the interventions of Vladamiro Montesinos,
Fujimori‟s principal advisor and a shadowy intelligence operative, the president
developed intimate ties to the upper echelon of the military. On April 5, 1992, Fujimori,
Montesinos, and the armed forces staged an autogolpe (self-coup), dismissing congress
and the judiciary and assuming dictatorial powers over the state (Burt 2007: 159). The
newly authoritarian regime pushed through draconian anti-terrorist measures, resulting in
widespread human rights violations. Yet, in September 1992 an elite police unit captured
Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán in a raid on an upper-class home in Lima.
Fujimori used the turn of events to legitimate the coup and public opinion widely
supported him. As the threat of Shining Path gradually receded, the regime submitted to
international pressures to reconstitute democratic governance by the end of 1993.
However, the president retained control over the Constituent Assembly and the apparent
democracy retained its authoritarian character (Burt 2004: 266). The 1993 Constitution
formalized the administration‟s efforts to concentrate powers in the executive branch and
authorized neoliberal restructuring. Reflecting the contradictions of neoliberal
multiculturalism, the constitution included language that recognized cultural rights to
difference even as it dismantled the concrete protections on labor and peasant activism
and the collective land rights of indigenous and peasant communities enshrined in
previous constitutions (Greene 2006, Millones 2007. 171).
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After the passage of the 1993 Constitution, the armed forces instituted rural
development projects in collaboration with the rondas as well as NGOs linked to the
IMF, World Bank, and Oxfam International (Cánepa Koch 2007, Burt 2007: 180). The
development efforts constructed new roads, rebuilt churches and municipal buildings,
installed communications technology, and established cultural institutions in war-torn
areas. President Fujimori himself appeared at the inauguration of many of these projects
in staged media events that established vast clientelistic networks linking local
communities directly to the highly-popular president‟s public persona.9 Furthermore,
with the crisis of legitimacy of traditional political parties, labor unions, leftist ideologies,
and the unraveling of the traditional hierarchies of peasant community politics, new local
elites emerged to fill the gap in political representation. These new elites were typically
young hijos of the community who studied anthropology, history, tourism, or agricultural
engineering at state universities in Huancayo, Ayacucho, or Lima. They promoted ethnic
discourses in order to garner state and NGO funds and buttress the self-image of their
war-torn communities (Durand 2006: 20). In Ayacucho and Huancavelica, wellconnected scissors dance performers established themselves amongst these emerging
local elites, despite their relative lack of education.10 The generation of performers who
modernized the repertoires of the dance in the late 1970s and early 1980s legitimated
themselves as leaders in the reconstruction of traditional rural festivities because they had
acquired knowledge of cosmopolitan codes of conduct as well as experience in rural
festival performance prior to the violence.11
The ethnographic documentary Ritual Encounters: The Dansaq in Huacaña
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(1998) captures both the exhilaration and tensions surrounding the reconstruction of rural
Andean festivities in the wake of the internal conflict. The film documents the Festival
of Water celebrated on July 25-29, 1997 in the town of Huacaña in southern Ayacucho.
Anthropological consultant Rodrigo Montoya explained:
The four people of the TV Cultura team who filmed the performance of
the scissors dance in the five days of the festival and the anthropologist
who writes these lines were amongst the few outsiders who dared to travel
to the site after the occupation of the Shining Path and the armed forces.
The memories of the wounds were still fresh: three deaths caused by
Shining Path and five by the army, in addition to the dozens of displaced
residents and the destruction of the colonial façade of the Municipality by
a Shining Path bomb. (Montoya 1997: 46)
Yet, the documentary erases all traces of the effects of the violence from its narration and
visual presentation. Instead, it opts to highlight the continuity and authenticity “of the
magic of the scissors dance in its natural surroundings so different from the performances
played for tourists in Lima,” implying that the only possible iterations of the dance in
urban space are the trivial representations produced for tourist consumption (Uriarte
1998). Ritual Encounters depicts the survival or disappearance of cultural traditions as
an either/or proposition. Even the description on the front cover “the role of the scissors
dance is decisive in order to reproduce a symbolic universe of a culture that struggles to
survive” is fraught with the high stakes of the post-conflict reconstruction (Ibid.). The
three dancers who compete in the festival, Halcón, Alacrán, and Paqari, were quite young
at the time with little experience in the demands of the lengthy rural festivals. All three
were born in the highlands, but had arrived in Lima at a very young age after fleeing from
the violence. In one scene, the violinist Juan Capcha and an older dancer Añascha are
shown instructing the dancers how to make offerings to the Wamani.12 The young
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dancers clearly are adept at a more modernized and acrobatic style prompting one of the
village elders to complain, “It‟s not like it was before” (Ibid). Instead of critically
examining the complex dynamics of these generational tensions, the filmmakers position
themselves clearly on the side of the nostalgic older generation. Given little historical
context, viewers are left to assume that these ruptures are irreparable as the film ends
what began as a celebration with a mournful tone.13
I suggest we should view Ritual Encounter and other ethnographic representations
of the scissors dance as both products of and active agents in the processes of cultural
transformation they mourn in a defeatist fashion. When I met Halcón in Lima, he
proudly showed me a pirated copy of the documentary as if it were his starring role in a
feature film (Personal Interview “Halcón” 2009). The performers put the products of
salvage ethnography to their own uses as a form of cultural capital. However, scenes like
this do not simply contradict the romantic idealizations of indigenous culture depicted in
ethnographic narratives and visual cultures. In fact, the presence of this ethnographic
documentary in burgeoning markets for pirated videos may have made this particular
cultural text one of the most efficient mediums for the transmission of ethnographic
narratives of ethnic identity to the performers and their audiences for their own forms of
modern self-constitution. Towards the end of the film, the narrator notes, “for centuries
Catholic priests have disseminated the idea that the scissors dancers have a pact with the
devil that has nothing to do with reality. Well, the so-called Devil is the mountain god of
the Andean religion” (Uriarte 1998). This sanitization of the devil in favor of a
supposedly purified Andean spirituality is a common postcolonial narrative of cultural
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identity that ethnographic representation has bestowed upon the dance.
6.4. The Pedagogy of Cultural Identity
Drawing on the work of Nuñez Rebaza and Castro Klaren, a host of new
ethnographic studies set out to document the dance in its rural context during the period
of post-conflict reconstruction. Established national and international anthropologists
undertook some of these studies (Yaranga 1997, Millones and Tomoeda 1998, Vilcapoma
1998, Cavero Carrasco 1998, 2001, Arce Sotelo 2006). Furthermore, local historians and
ethnographers published booklets and pamphlets that claimed the dance as an emblem of
local pre-hispanic ethnic identities (Ccoñas 1993, Espinoza 1995, Villegas Falcon 1998,
Monteagudo 1997, Caso Arias and Rojas de la Cruz 1999, PROANDE 2000, Herrera
2005). Through these ethnographic representations, notions of Pre-Columbian origins
and links to the Taki Onqoy began to constitute a new common sense as essentialist
Andeanist tropes shifted from a discourse about the “other” to narratives of cultural
identity that posited an essentialized indigenous self.
Furthermore, assertions of Pre-Columbian origins no longer became the exclusive
domain of the Ayacucho style of the dance. In Huancavelica, local schoolteachers,
historians, and NGOs with funding from Oxfam and other international umbrella
institutions called for “the rebirth of the Anqara nation” (Durand 2006).14 Narratives
about the cultural significance of the scissors dance from Huancavelica began to shift
from a symbol of ambivalent mestizaje and hybridity to an emblem of the cultural
resistance of a warrior nation (Ccoñas 1993, Monteagudo 1997, Caso Arias and Rojas de
la Cruz 1999, Salas Guevara 2008). In a clear demonstration of the pedagogical nature of
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these texts, the authors chastise performers for taking on diabolic pseudonyms and
personas as a negation of their cultural identity.15 Ironically, this postcolonial pedagogy
of identity often reproduces traditional forms of exclusion based on education, by
proclaiming the enlightenment of intellectual elites and the oppressed ignorance of the
unwashed masses. Cultural identity became a new disciplinary regime distinguishing
those who have the knowledge to yield ethnographic and NGO-inspired discourses from
those who do not, as well as a new form of development pedagogy directed not only at
the construction of institutions but also the constitution of the modern self.16
These reformulations of local and ethnic selfhood also began to spill across
national borders. An author from Huancavelica who goes by the pseudonym Wanka
Willka, lives in Jujuy, Argentina working with NGOs on the vindication of Quechua
identity in both Argentina and Peru. In 1999, he published a children‟s book for use in
local schools, entitled Danza de las Tijeras, which includes a number of folk tales
collected from various local communities in Huancavelica. In an introductory section
“About Cultural Identity,” the author argues that cultural identity is a valuable inherited
possession requiring recognition and the development of the self (Wanka Willka 1999).17
Other internationally-led NGOs have explicitly mobilized the scissors dance as a model
for self-development with cultural identity. In 2000, the NGO PROANDE, which works
primarily in rural communities surrounding Andahuaylas, published the three-volume
series of booklets entitled Kallpanchakuyninchikkunamanta = Nuestra Resistencia
(PROANDE 2000).18 The bilingual pamphlets were part of a broader effort to strengthen
cultural identity amongst rural schoolchildren, as the organization suggests, “All people
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have innate abilities and talents that can be recognized, valorized, and utilized in order to
strengthen their self-esteem” (PROANDE 2003). They chronicle the Taki Onqoy as an
icon of the rebellious spirit of the Chanka nation and the scissors dance as its
contemporary manifestation. The authors cast the scissors dancer as “a character who
exemplifies much of what sacrifice and happiness mean in the life the Peruvian Andes
through the development of his skill and movement” and “one of the most important
elements of Chanka culture that expresses fundamental aspects of our rebellious identity”
(Ibid. 4). These pedagogical efforts have become the script upon which staged
presentations by PROANDE founder Holly Wilhelm are based. In 2008, I saw her
perform a one-woman show based on her experiences in these communities in a small
festival of woman‟s theatre in Lima. At the end of the piece, she performed an imitation
of a scissors dancer in full regalia in order to symbolize the resurrection of the
communities and their “millennial” identities after the internal conflict.19
That is not to say that the pedagogy of cultural identity is simply another form of
domination. In August 2008, I travelled with Carlos Gallegos Aponte, a journalism
student in Lima, to the Festival of Water in his hometown of Andamarca in southern
Ayacucho. Although Carlos spent most of his childhood in Lima, he returned to
Andamarca during the mid-1990s in order to participate in the community revitalization
efforts. In 1995, he and several other young “hijos” of the community inaugurated the
Case de la Cultura in Andamarca and established the week of the Festival of Water as the
“Semana Turistica de Andamarca,” that included a fair of local cuisine and food
products, the display of handicrafts, and greater involvement of the municipal
235
government in the staging of the Fiesta as they transformed it into a showcase of local
culture.20 Carlos introduced me to Fatima, an “hija” of Andamarca who spent most of
her childhood in Holland, adopted by a Dutch couple after her parents were killed by the
Shining Path. After finishing college in the late 1990s she returned to Andamarca and
became a local schoolteacher and the Director of the Casa de la Cultura. Fatima became
the most energetic force behind local cultural revitalization projects, including the
creation of a small museum of local history and culture and handing out honors and
commemorations to well-known artists and performers.21
The leadership of these young intellectual elites often encounters a quiet
resistance from respected community elders. In 2004 journalist Carlos Herrera Alfaro,
published an oral history of the life of Cirilo Inca, the 90 year-old patriarch of scissors
dancers from Andamarca (Herrera Alfaro 2005). According to Cirilo Inca‟s nephew,
Ccecchele, the account of his uncle‟s life is full of inaccuracies as the elder dancer
deliberately told his interlocutor lies and untruths (Personal Interview “Ccecchele”
2008).22 Furthermore, the efforts of the Casa de la Cultura and the municipal government
to improve the festival as a showcase for local culture have met with some resistance
from artists and older residents. The year I attended, a panel of two highly-recognized
scissors dancers and a former mayor the town, all of whom reside in Lima, judged the
atipanakuy, instead of the public itself. This innovation led to accusations of favoritism
and the deliberate defiance of tradition by some of the veteran artists. Moreover, a
promotional poster for the festival angered some local scissors dance artists, as it depicted
dancers from Puquio and not Andamarca.23 Despite their legitimate affective
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identification with the local and ethnic identity of their village, these young professionals
often contribute to generational tensions by abstractly and rhetorically honoring the
elders, but giving them little voice in how their cultural revitalization projects are carried
out.
6.5. Hyperreal Andean Indigeneity: Staging a Transnational Icon
Armed with appealing discourses of “millennial” authenticity and competent in an
unthreatening and spectacular form of staged folklore performance, scissors dance
performers of the 1990s found themselves ideally situated to take advantage of a
favorable global market for indigenous performance. International experiences further
consolidated the leadership of the most successful members of the generation of
performers who initiated the urban reinvention of the form in the late 1970s and early
1980s. These performers incorporated themselves into “the globalization of the discourse
of indigeneity” by mobilizing their connections to networks of ethnographers, NGOs,
international folklore festivals, and transnational indigenous organizations (Hodgson
2002). In doing so, they reconstructed hierarchies within the scissors dance community
according to a criteria of competence in cosmopolitan discourses of indigeneity and
performances of the role of “the hyperreal Indian” on the global stage (Ramos 1998).
While they became central figures in the ethnogenesis of Andean indigeneity, “the forms
in which these new ethnicities expressed themselves are influenced- even conditioned bythe demands of the West” (Favre 2009: 37). Through the disciplinary apparatus of staged
folklore, high-profile scissors dance performers have constructed themselves as modern
and cosmopolitan artists by inhabiting a newly-valued indigenous subject position for the
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consumption of a first-world audience.
At the end of the Cold War, the global network of international folklore festivals
known as CIOFF changed their organizational strategy. They entered into a formal
relationship with UNESCO and began to promote a multicultural ethos to go along with a
new era of globalization. As the Quincentennial Celebrations of Columbus gave
indigenous cultures visibility worldwide and the UN declared 1993 as “the year of
indigenous people,” CIOFF sought to expand its representation of indigenous cultural
groups from third-world nations on the folkloric stage (CIOFF website). During the
Quincentennial, the two scissors dance troupes long associated with state-sponsored
folklore, “Los Hermanos Chiara” and “Máximo Damián y sus Danzantes de Tijeras”
performed internationally in Europe. However, the privatization of staged folklore
opened the door for new groups to acquire an international presence without the
mediation of state cultural institutions. In 1992 and 1993, multiple scissors dance troupes
from both Ayacucho and Huancavelica embarked on international tours. Notably the
modernist positionality and aesthetic of the Huancavelica troupes adapted more easily to
the exigencies of the folkloric stage. Groups like “Corazón del Mercurio,” “Los
Hermanos Chavez,” and “Los Galas de Villallacta” established themselves as regulars on
the circuit of annual folklore festivals affiliated with CIOFF, as the Huancavelica style
gradually came to dominate international and touristic folkloric stages.
Prior to the absolute dominance of the Huancavelica style, another theatrical
troupe named “Los Danzaq de Ayacucho” had great success on the international circuit
during the 1990s. The stable members of this troupe were the dancer Qori Sisicha as
238
director, as well as the violinist Chimango and the harpist Llapla. In 1995, a group of
Native American artists from the state of Washington arrived in Peru as part of an
intercultural exchange sponsored by North-South Connections, a small NGO founded by
Peruvian-American theatre artist Rose Cano. Qori Sisicha and his musicians performed
for the distinguished guests at a showing of both North American and South American
indigenous performance at the ruins of Pachacamac near Lima. Cano and the Native
American delegation decided to invite the scissors dance group to Seattle to perform on
the pow-wow circuit as the artists noted similarities between the scissors dance and
Fancy Dancing in terms of their competitive virtuosity (Personal Interview „Rose Cano”
2010). Later in 1995, “Los Danzaq de Ayacucho” performed in several pow-wows
throughout Washington, the Festival of Northwest Folklife, and a school tour sponsored
by the Seattle Children‟s Theatre. All parties declared this first collaboration a
resounding success. However, tensions developed in 1997, when Cano invited the group
to return to Seattle for a longer tour. The scissors dancers violated the no-alcohol policy
at several reservations, drawing complaints by tribal leaders. In addition, the musicians
went to Cano to accuse Qori Sisicha and later Cano herself of exploiting them and the
tour ended in disarray.
Despite these tensions, the group maintained a cordial relationship with Cano, and
requested her services as an interpreter when Qori Sisicha arranged for a series of
performances in 2001 and 2003 at the Kennedy Center‟s AmericaArtes series through his
own contacts. The Kennedy Center performances were the crowning achievement of
“Los Danzaq de Ayacucho.” They expanded their standard fifteen minute theatrical
239
presentation to a full hour show that garnered an enthusiastic audience response and
positive critical reviews. In one of these reviews, the author cites Qori Sisicha who has
clearly internalized transnational discourses of idealized indigeneity. He claims, “The
rituals of the dance are still practiced today. It is impossible for a person of the Andes to
erase the memory of the ancestors” (Durban 2001). Despite these discourses of
authenticity, the aesthetic innovations initiated by Qori Sisicha in the 1980s largely
defined the appeal of the performances to foreign spectators. A video of one of these
presentations shows Qori Sisicha competing against the young dancer El Chino de
Andamarca in a mock atipanakuy judged by the audience, whom Cano‟s invites to
imagine themselves as part of the rural Andean community. The dancers played to the
crowd, attempting to outdo each other in a display of increasing acrobatic virtuosity that
drew comparisons to break dancing in the Kennedy Center‟s promotional literature.
However, the video also shows several members of the audience proudly displaying their
Peruvian immigrant identities, unsettling any narrative that might depict these events as
simply the staging of exotic Andean indigeneity for a first-world audience.
The dramatic increase in Peruvian immigration to the United States and Europe
since the 1980s has played a major role in the emerging “transnational performanscape”
of contemporary scissors dance performance (Dacosta Holston 2005). In addition to
invitations to perform for Peruvian migrant communities, many performers have used
their newfound opportunity to acquire artist visas as a strategy to emigrate themselves.
Numerous scissors dancers and musicians now reside in major cities throughout North
America and Europe, opening more permanent spaces for international scissors dance
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performance. One group, “Los Danzaq del Perú,” travelled to Toronto in 2000 in order to
perform in several multicultural events throughout Ontario. After their visas expired,
each member of the group independently filed for asylum status in order to remain in
Canada. At least the harpist, Champa, acquired his residency through asylum as Shining
Path insurgents had murdered his father a decade earlier. However, the process dissolved
the group as the young dancer, Killincha, and the violinist returned to Peru after their
claims were denied. Champa still performs informally with the group‟s director, the
dancer Alacrán. Yet, with no violinist they rarely make public appearances anymore.
Unlike the vast majority of immigrant performers, Champa‟s legal residency has enabled
him to bring his family to Canada and return to Peru as he pleases. He returns to his
hometown of Andamarca every August to serve as a role model for younger musicians,
who he claims are limited in their acquisition of the traditional musical repertoires.
International experience gives Champa a certain authority within the local community as
a guardian of authenticity (Personal Interview “Champa” 2009).
Newer Ayacucho theatrical troupes such as “Los Danzaq de Ayacucho,” and “Los
Danzaq del Perú” tend to be created solely for the purposes of international travel and
“Máximo Damián y sus Danzantes de Tijeras” still perform both internationally and in
Peru in concerts tied to universities and cultural institutions. The Huancavelica troupes,
on the other hand, have found more steady employment through a growing circuit of
folkloric dinner theatres and hotel shows staged for tourists in Lima. As I mentioned in
the previous chapter, “Corazon del Mercurio” were the pioneers in bringing the scissors
dance to these new spaces in the early 1980s through their crowd-pleasing presentations
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at the Hotel Crillón. In the late 1980s, this show and others like it closed as international
tourism in Peru almost entirely halted with the urban offensive of Shining Path in Lima
(Personal Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009). After the conflict subsided, the Peruvian
tourist industry became the fastest growing sector of the national economy in the second
half of the 1990s. New hotels sprung up rapidly, some owned by foreign chains such as
Hilton, Sheraton, and Marriot (Tamborini 2005). By 1997, the phenomenon of touristic
dinner theatres had returned with a new force, employing at least three well-established
international scissors dance troupes from Huancavelica. Unlike the homogenized
Andean and Afro-Peruvian dance companies these shows also employ, the scissors
dancers are independent contractors who perform exclusively as soloists in the final act.
The modernist positioning of the Huancavelica community has enabled them to develop
ever more crowd-pleasing acrobatics and balletic choreographies with four or more
dancers performing in unison. On the other hand, these innovations have created a more
homogenized aesthetic style with less room for improvisation than their Ayacucho
counterparts (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez 2009,” “Fredy Chavez” 2009).
The genre conventions of staged folklore mitigate the differences between various
local and national traditions performed under similar theatrical conditions. These events
celebrate difference as a commodified value at the same time that the conventions of the
genre bring a certain level of continuity to each act. Multicultural exhibitions enact a
dialectic between strangeness and familiarity common to many displays of the exotic
(Handler 1988, Kirshenblatt Gimblett 1998, Huggans 2002, Balme 2008). The genre of
staged folklore favors virtuosity, colorful costumes, and the spectacular over more subtle
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forms of cultural display (Ness 1992, Kirshenblatt Gimblett 1998, Desmond 2000). As
such, the scissors dance is not only well-equipped for the folkloric stage, but the
apparatus of this distinct genre has transformed and reduced its more substantial
repertoires into a brief display of spectacular acrobatics. Prior to the administration of
Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), which significantly amplified the performative economy
of neoliberal multiculturalism in order negotiate Peru‟s entrance into the global economy,
the scissors dance was already a commodified icon of hyperreal indigeneity. In the
2000s, its global circulation increased as state promotion agencies and cultural
institutions increasingly performed the nation with ample doses of strategic exoticism in
order to promote Peru as the central attraction of international tourism in South America.
6.6. An Andean President for a New Peru
The Fujimori regime succeeded in rebuilding state institutions and implementing
neoliberal reforms in the immediate aftermath of the initial conflict. The “authoritarian
reconstitution of the state” provided a measure of stability despite abuses of power and
severe violations of human rights (Burt 2007). The national economy significantly
recovered and violence subsided and Fujimori handily won re-election in 1995. He
remained extremely popular until at least 1997 (Conaghan 2005, Burt 2007, Lee 2010).
By 1998, a group of mafia-like leaders led by Montesinos gained control of the state,
deepening vast webs of corruption aimed at “simply maintaining power and assuring its
continued impunity” (Burt 2004: 266). They arranged for a constitutional mandate
legitimizing Fujimori‟s bid for an unprecedented third term. Fujimori‟s chief opponent in
the 2000 election, Alejandro Toledo, accused the administration of election fraud. On
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inauguration day, Toledo headed a massive citizen protest questioning the legitimacy of
an authoritarian leader. Through the protest, popularly called “La Marcha de los Cuatro
Suyos,” Toledo utilized his Andean ethnicity to construct himself as a patriotic hero
leading the marginalized against a corrupt dictator (Lee 2010: 54). Later in 2000, the
Fujimori regime quickly unraveled as undeniable video evidence revealed the large-scale
corruption and bribery employed by Montesinos in order to keep Fujimori in power
(Conaghan 2005, Burt 2007, Lee 2010).
After the interim president, Valentín Paniagua, called for new elections to be held
in April 2001, Toledo quickly emerged as the front-runner. His public opposition to
Fujimori, Andean ethnic heritage, and rags to riches biographical legend made him an
appealing figure for broad sectors of the Peruvian population (Lee 2010: 54-55).
Alejandro Toledo was born into a family of peasants in the Andean department of
Ancash. He helped to support his family as a shoe-shine boy at a very young age. As a
talented student, a Peace Corps volunteer assisted Toledo in earning a scholarship to
study at the University of San Francisco. After getting a bachelor‟s degree in economics,
he received doctoral degrees in education and economics at Stanford University. Toledo
went on to an illustrious career in development economics at the United Nations, World
Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank (Lee 2010: 54-55). This biographical
narrative of the self-made man appealed to both the popular and upper classes in Peru yet
made him an unlikely candidate to lead a protest movement. In a speech at the “Marcha
de los Cuatro Suyos,” Toledo cast himself as an “obstinate cholo” leading the forces of
“Peru Profundo” against the oppressors, now embodied by “the dirty chinaman”
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(Giménez Micó 2006: 7). Invoking the Andean utopia, Toledo took on the role of the
“New Inca,” weaving his personal biography of upward mobility into a narrative of the
triumph of the Andean people (Ibid. 6). During the 2001 campaign, Toledo effectively
instrumentalized this potent imagery in order to project a populist message relatively
inoffensive to neoliberal national and transnational elites.
Paradoxically, Toledo‟s Belgian wife, Eliane Karp, played an equally important
role in the ethnic populism of her husband‟s campaign. Trained as an anthropologist and
a near fluent Quechua speaker, Karp spent much of her career working on Andean
development issues with several NGOs and transnational institutions. The couple
symbolized a productive marriage between Andean and Western in which each partner
appropriated the symbolic capital of the other (Roncalla 2002, Vich 2003: 454). Running
for the presidency enabled Toledo, the self-described cholo, to interact with world leaders
on the global stage. As a potential First Lady, Karp took every opportunity to cast herself
as a romantic defender of marginalized indigenous people. Indeed, it was Karp rather
than Toledo who frequently travelled to the highlands, giving speeches on behalf of her
husband in Quechua (Vich 2003: 454). In one memorable appearance, Karp addressed an
audience of elite Peruvian women by claiming, “Listen to me carefully Miraflores
yuppies, the apus have spoken; my cholo is good and sacred” (qtd. in García 2005: 170).
Positioning her husband as blessed by the Andean mountain deities, Karp refashions
Andean spirituality as a fetish available for political appropriation. In both the campaign
and Toledo‟s term in office, the couple bestowed new visibility and recognition on
Andean spiritual concepts at the same time as they domesticated these very concepts
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according to romanticized Western stereotypes of indigeneity (Roncalla 2002).
After Toledo won a close runoff election against former president Alan García,
the international press hailed the victory as the vindication of Peru‟s disenfranchised
indigenous masses. On July 29, 2001, Toledo staged a ceremonial inauguration at the
ruins of Machu Picchu. In a spectacular televised performance, complete with Inca
costumes and thousands of folkloric dancers, Karp and Toledo declared the beginning of
a “new era” with recourse to the return of Tawantinsuyo (Vich 2003, García 2005: 171).
Two Andean shamans conferred spiritual legitimacy on Toledo as the reincarnation of the
Inca Pachacuteq, burning flowers and coca leaves in an offering to the pachamama (earth
mother), and the apus. Toledo declared, “I have come to give thanks for the force and
courage that the apus and the earth have given me” (qtd. in Bridges 2001). After the
ceremony, the event continued with an immense folkloric spectacle the visually
interpellated the recognition and participation of “all the bloods” in performing the “new”
nation. Appropriating this felicitous phrase from the title of Arguedas‟s 1964 novel
Todas las Sangres (All the Bloods), Toledo and Karp reduced the author‟s complex and
politically oppositional utopia to a sanitized multicultural celebration. For the domestic
audience, the event performed a powerful, if domesticated, moment of national belonging
that revived the indigenista imaginary from a postmodern perspective (Vich 2003: 452).
However, Toledo‟s performance of a renovated Inca nationhood clearly addressed
multiple audiences. The grandiose stage chosen for the event, Machu Picchu, is Peru‟s
most iconic tourist destination and a pilgrimage site for new age spiritualists worldwide.
Flanked by world leaders, Toledo proclaimed, “I want to send a message to the world to
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come visit this mystical place” (qtd. in Bridges 2001). He pledged to increase
international tourism in Peru fivefold during his term, exalting the nation‟s fastest
growing industry as benefitting the entire population by creating jobs and facilitating the
recognition of cultural diversity. Cynthia Vich reads the inaugural ceremony as
producing “a script of identity for Peru‟s entrance into global multiculturalism” (2003:
451). With Toledo as the protagonist, the inauguration offered disenfranchised Andeans
the opportunity for participation by performing their cultural difference, aestheticized as
attractive commodities on the global stage. In the era of globalization, new articulations
of nationhood are “more transparently than ever before produced with a global audience
in mind” (Buell 1999: 554). The inaugural ceremony enacted a rite of passage that
incorporated marginalized “others” into the national community by making indigeneity
safe for neoliberalism as the fruits harvested by Tawantinsuyo were now available to all.
The Toledo government could not sustain the high expectations produced by the
euphoria of the democratic transition and his inauguration, with his approval ratings
hitting single digits by 2004 (Vich 2007: 4). Nevertheless, the performances of
nationhood enacted by the ceremony at Machu Picchu went beyond the ephemerality of
the president‟s political capital. Toledo‟s performance as the New Inca, the latest in a
long line of utopian articulations of a “new Peru,” came to embody the process by which
“liberal democracy, late capitalism, and global mediatization together create performative
societies (Kershaw 1999: 11-12). These societies produce performative economies of
spectacle that constitute multicultural subjects as citizens through rituals of
enfranchisement disciplined by neoliberal governmentality (Kershaw 2007). Moreover,
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these performances of multicultural nationhood domesticate cultural difference in a way
that no longer threatens the neoliberal market economy (Hale 2002, 2004). We do not
need to doubt the sincerity of Eliane Karp‟s multiple written and spoken articulations of
pluricultural nationhood in order to acknowledge the limits and failures of her top-down
approach in leading a coalition of Amazonian and Andean indigenous movements, which
ended in accusations of clientelism and the mismanagement of funds (Greene 2006).
Furthermore, we do not need to question the good intentions of the Peruvian Truth and
Reconciliation Commission to recognize the silent work of hegemony in the almost
entirely unnoticed absence of indigenous leaders in its membership. In both cases, the
cultural logic of neoliberalism conceals the gaze of the unmarked and supposedly
universal subject necessary in order to recognize multicultural “others” as performers in
the spectacle of nation-building.
6.7. The Nation as Brand: The Logic of Promotion
The Toledo administration significantly empowered the promotion agency
PROMPERU to fabricate spectacular images of Peruvian diversity for the consumption
of international tourists (Tamborini 2005, Galdos 2006). Founded during the Fujimori
regime in order to improve Peru‟s global image amidst political violence and the drug
war, PROMPERU had developed marketing techniques to construct Peru as a brand even
before Toledo took office. In October 2000, the agency publicly unveiled its work on
country-branding in a special issue of their colorful bilingual magazine Peru: El Dorado,
entitled “Towards a Vision of Peru.” The editors encouraged the nation to promote and
market its “megadiversity,” arguing that “our unique identities and qualities are our
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principal resource to construct a new future” (PROMPERU Oct-Dec. 1999: 9). In a
section that illustrates the sensuality and visual appeal of traditional music, dance, and
festivities, a full-page spread features a photo of a scissors dancer from Ayacucho leaping
high into the air (Ibid. 74-75). PROMPERU‟s efforts at branding the nation literalize
Yudice‟s argument that neoliberalism mobilizes cultural difference as an economic and
sociopolitical resource for development (Yudice 2003). After the election of Toledo in
2001, PROMPERU received much greater state support and funding, greatly intensifying
their efforts at promoting Peru as the most desirable tourist destination in South America.
The agency selected the scissors dance as one of the icons it repetititively used to
promote Peru in print and advertising campaigns. Moreover, a select group of scissors
dancers directed by Ccarccaria travelled extensively with Toledo and/or Karp as part of
quite expensive theatrical spectacles staged PROMPERU at dozens of annual
international tourism fairs (Tamborini 2005, Personal Interview “Ccarccaria” 2007).
Both the advertisements and theatrical spectacles invent a Peru that does not exist,
a “mystical” and “magical” fantasy world outside of history (Tamborini 2005: 139, Vich
2007). Victor Vich argues that the tourist industry in contemporary Peru is “a discursive
machinery that produces representations of the nation that have important consequences
on the ways in which history and cultural identity are conceptualized” (Vich 2007: 2).
He likens the spectacular strategies of tourist promotion and the performance of Toledo
as Peu‟s first indigenous president of Peru on the international stage to the figure of the
brichero. The mythical gringa hunter validates himself and acquires social mobility
through virtuoso performances of authentic otherness that conform to the desires of the
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foreign tourist (Ibid. 3). In another article, Vich reads the figure of the brichero as “an
allegory of the nation in the neoliberal context of the contemporary world” reflecting
Peru‟s subordinate position in the global economy and efforts to fulfill the West‟s desire
for exoticism at any cost (Vich 2006). Even if he became a rather unpopular president, it
appears that Toledo became a rather successful role-model for the strategic exoticism
deployed by many Peruvians in their interactions with tourists and the tourist industry.
The president‟s own global performance of indigeneity and PROMPERU‟s promotional
strategies depended on a gentle if not very subtle, imperative for other Peruvians to
perform their identities as if to say, Be exotic so they can come to see you!
That many scissors dancers were already performing Andean otherness on the
global stage made the dance particularly attractive within the state‟s newly coordinated
strategies of tourist promotion. Visually appealing staged presentations and ethnographic
narratives of Pre-Columbian authenticity and cultural resistance reduced to marketing
slogans enabled the promotional agency to simultaneously market the nation‟s diversity
and appeal to indigenous rights. On one 2004 tour sponsored by PROMPERU, after a
series of performances in several international tourist fairs the scissors dance directed by
Ccarccaria appeared with President Toledo at the opening ceremony of the National
Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. As the guest of honor, Toledo gave
a speech in English in which he called for the unity of indigenous people throughout the
world in the coming of a new age of triumph. He also proclaimed himself the first
indigenous president of Peru, a self-representation he exclusively used for international
appearances. Along with ethnic performance troupes from around the world, Ccanto
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Scissors Dancers performed a short presentation of short improvised acrobatic
choreography. Narratives of authenticity coexisted with and legitimated this otherwise
cosmopolitan performance event (NMAI 2004). A self-identified indigenous Peruvian
immigrant blogger claimed that the scissors dancers “came from remote rural areas, their
dark red complexions could only come from working under the searing hot sun and the
freezing night winds high in the Andean mountains” (Benavides 2004). Coming from a
position of solidarity, the blogger nevertheless racializes the scissors dancers as “other,”
clearly missing the fact that this was an urban theatrical troupe quite accustomed to
performing for foreign audiences around the world.
If Toledo‟s discourse of indigenous rights was often conflated with tourist
promotion the same could be said about efforts to preserve cultural patrimony. In 2004,
Karp heavily promoted the Instituto Nacional de Cultura‟s adoption of a UNESCO style
program to recognize specific living cultural practices as Cultural Patrimony of the
Nation. In April 2005, upon the petition of the municipal government of Andamarca, the
Instituto Nacional de Cultura declared the scissors dance as Cultural Patrimony of the
Nation along with the Festival of Water of Andamarca. In an article in its own official
magazine, Gaceta Internacional, INC officials describe the efforts of state
anthropologists to research and safeguard the authenticity of the practice. The article
characterizes the dance‟s cultural significance with similar “millennial” language, and
visually appealing photographs as the promotional materials of PROMPERU, albeit with
a slightly more nuanced presentation of historical context (Carlos Picón 2005). The final
lines of the article pay tribute to “all the men and women who cultivate, disseminate, and
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teach it” (Ibid. 36). The discourse of cultural patrimony bestows agency upon the dance
itself as a clearly-defined cultural object that exists prior to its enactment by human
practitioners, conceived as merely interpreters (Handler 1984, Kirshenblatt Gimblett
1998, Taylor 2008). This logic reduces cultural practices to objects, images, or
commodities that acquire value in their own right while their practitioners can sometimes
be undervalued or exploited. Contemporary performers proudly utilize the designation as
a badge of honor, but complain that it has only served to enhance the value of the iconic
image of the dance in the global and cultural marketplace with no tangible benefits for
the practitioners. Furthermore, patrimonialization calls into question issues of intellectual
property; partially legitimizing the notion that culture in the abstract sense belongs to the
state. This situation could become even more complicated as UNESCO recently declared
the scissors dance as Immaterial Cultural Patrimony of Humanity.
The logic of the promotion of diversity has continued under Toledo‟s successor,
Alan García, without the genuine if contradictory interest Toledo and Karp showed in
promoting indigenous rights. García belittled the recommendations of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, which implicated his former government, as representing the
interests of terrorists (Theidon 2010). He has frequently used repressive measures
against indigenous and peasant demonstrations against mining claims and natural gas
exploration on community lands. On June 5, 2009, national police violently suppressed
indigenous demonstrators in the Amazonian region of Bagua, resulting in the death of
over 30 police officers and upwards of 200 protestors (Lucero 2010: 70-71). García has
frequently cast these demonstrations as the work of terrorists, revealing quite explicitly
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the limits of “the indio permitido” (Hale 2005). Nevertheless, PROMPERU maintains its
central importance within the state bureaucracy, promoting the nation with even more
spectacular images of “hyperreal indigeneity,” including the “Peru: Live the Legend”
campaign I described in the introduction. Moreover, the role of a few privileged scissors
dance groups as international ambassadors of Peruvian culture has greatly amplified. In
November 2008, several scissors dance groups played a feature role in cultural events
staged for the entertainment of world political and business leaders when Lima hosted the
APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit. The dance has become the central
showpiece as the nation performs itself through selected images of hyperreal indigeneity.
6.8. El Gran Reto: the Moral Economy of a New Peru
In a concrete example of the conversion of the scissors dance into a sign-image of
Andean authenticity, the television network Frequencia Latina released a short telenovela
in 2008 that dramatized the lives of several high-profile scissors dancers. Advanced
advertising for El Gran Reto (the great challenge) promised “magic and mysticism,” a
“millennial tradition,” “where every moment indicates a destiny,” and “much more than a
dance.” These marketing strategies echoed those of state promotional agencies,
especially PROMPERU, that depict Peru as a mystical land outside of history. What is
surprising is that the target audience for the telenovela was not international tourists or
even globalizing Peruvian elites but rather the urban poor of Andean migrants residing in
the barriadas of metropolitan Lima and other large cities in Peru. Since the Toledo
administration, a newly hegemonic public sphere has increasingly incorporated migrant
culture industries into an immense network of spectacle appealing to this emergent mass
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Illustration 6.1
Advertisement for El Gran Reto
Courtesy of Frequencia Latina http://www.frequencialatina.com.pe
public (Alfaro 2005, Tucker 2006). Situated precariously between nostalgia for Andean
peasant cultures of their places of origin and their newfound access to the signs and
modes of consumption of global modernity, migrant spectators increasingly consume a
new slate of national telenovelas that dramatize frictions and productive encounters
between Andean heritage and a globalizing world. Many of these programs chronicle the
lives of highly-successful stars of commercial Andean folklore music, such as Dina
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Paucar and Sonia Morales. Through melodramatic rags-to-riches narratives, these
telenovelas have become the principal mode of transmission of the myth of the
triumphant cholo or provinciano to emerging Andean publics (Alfaro 2005, Tucker
2005). Although Toledo lost much of his political capital because of scandals and
dissatisfaction with his aggressively neoliberal policies, his persona partially inspired
“the narration of social mobility with a multicultural tint; the provincial-Peruvian version
of the American dream” (Ibid. 120).
Television producer Susana Bamonde is a pioneer in this recent televisual trend.
During the Toledo administration she worked with Iguana Producciones, the event and
production company that created elaborate spectacles for PROMPERU. In 2004, she and
a few colleagues embarked on what she calls the “insane” journey of creating “Dina
Paucar: La Lucha por un Sueño” on a shoe-string budget. The miniseries tells the story
of struggle and triumph of the iconic folkloric singer who rose from obscurity as a market
vendor to mega-stardom through grassroots networks of audiovisual recording and live
concerts in the informal marketplace. Although they initially found it nearly impossible
to finance and find a network to air the program, a limited run on Frequencia Latina
garned the highest ratings of any domestically-produced telenovela in Peru. After a long
run with new chapters, Bamonde produced a string of miniseries using a similar
framework, including the biography of chicha legend Chacalón, who has become
somewhat a folk saint after his early death (Aguila 2011). By 2007, the producer had
tired of producing telenovelas with very similar rags-to-riches narratives about iconic
figures. After viewing the Chinese film, The King of Masks: Bian Lian, she and her
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production team decided to adapt the story of a traditional mask maker to a Peruvian
context (Puga 2008). They contacted high-profile scissors dancers Ccarccaria and Qori
Sisicha about the possibility of creating a miniseries based on the scissors dance.
In newspaper coverage prior to the run of the series, Bamonde attempted to frame
it as a departure from her earlier productions, given the importance of preserving a
traditional cultural practice. She claimed, “Recently we have dedicated ourselves to
showing the lives of figures related to the contemporary moment, but we also should get
to know our own culture” (qtd. in Puga 2008). She thanked the network for taking a risk
on a miniseries about such a profound and traditional world, implying that it was less
commercial than the earlier focus on the hybrid culture industries of Andean folkloric
music. Immediately prior to the premiere of the program, she more confidently declared,
“This is not a typical miniseries. On the contrary, it is different, and unusual, the story of
a dance that is recognized not only on the national but also the international level, and
here we present it with all of the mysticism and religiosity that characterizes it”
(“Protagonizan” 2008). However, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria framed the series quite
differently in their own press coverage. The entrepreneurial scissors dancers clearly
depicted El Gran Reto as the story of their lives, in order to acquire a celebrity status
approaching the level of Dina Paucar or the now deceased Chacalón. Furthermore, the
conventions of the telenovela favored this interpretation as the network clearly
understood that its audience was interested in stories of the triumph of provincial figures.
In the resulting production, the weight of Andean tradition and spirituality, embodied by
the scissors dance, acts as the moral compass for a new Peruvian community, guiding the
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social mobility of provincial Andean migrants in Lima.
The respected Peruvian actors Pold Gastello and Gerardo Zamoa, known for
major roles in Bamonde‟s previous productions, portrayed Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria
respectively. Despite the fact that the dancers tend to portray the miniseries as the story
of their lives, neither character is truly the protagonist. Borrowing a conceit from The
King of Masks, that distinction belongs to Julia, an adolescent provincial girl who
disguises herself as a boy in order to achieve respect as a scissors dancer. In the first
episode, she encounters her father, a scissors dance master, dying in his fields, victimized
by the witchcraft of a rival dancer. While her father has taught her the basics of the
dance, Julia disguises herself as an adolescent boy in search of a new master in order to
avenge her father‟s death. At first she tries to convince Ccarccaria to accept her as an
apprentice, but he refuses as he is already instructing his own son, Alex. However, he
agrees to bring Julio to his close friend and rival Qori Sisicha, who currently has no pupil.
They encounter Qori Sisicha in the middle of a confrontation with Cirilo, a young
scissors dancer who Julia instantly recognizes as her father‟s murderer. Cirilo has
entered into a pact with the devil in order to achieve fame and fortune beyond his
abilities. While Qori Sisicha refuses to challenge the “incomplete” dancer, Ccarccaria
suggests a competition between Cirilo and the apprentices, Alex and Julio. The
miniseries depicts the drama that unfolds in the preparations for the competition.
Like most melodrama, El Gran Reto enacts and confirms a conventional moral
framework that defines positive and negative values through Manichean characterization.
Stephanie Orue, the young actress who plays Julia in her star-making role, claims that “it
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is a story with various morals. It is the struggle of a woman in a world dominated by
men, but also the search for justice through a mystical dance. Moreover, it is a story
where love prevails over hate and vengeance” (“Protagonizan” 2008). As Bamonde‟s
press statements make clear, El Gran Reto seeks to reaffirm an idealized Andean
spirituality as the moral compass for a modern Andean community. As I showed in the
last section, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria frequently narrate the story of past victimization
and the demonization of the dance by colonial priests, transcended in the present through
a reclaiming of authentic Andean spiritual values. El Gran Reto uses this narrative as a
foundation, positing the two scissors dance “masters” as the voices of the positive values
of reciprocity, respect for nature, justice, and family solidarity. Joining them are Yuya,
an altamisayuq (Andean shaman), a muki (the ghost of a miner), a condor, and other
figures from the pantheon of Andean spirits and deities, as well as Qori Sisicha‟s family
who adopt Julia as one of their own. Opposing this “good” community are Cirilo, a
malignant brujo (witch), and Allin Supay (the devil himself), who represent the negative
values of jealousy, hate, and vengeance associated with the alienating aspects of
modernity and irresponsible capitalism.
If an “authentic‟ Andean spirituality frames the moral compass of El Gran Reto,
when the scene shifts from the provinces to Lima, these values guide an idealized vision
of provincial social mobility that posits a rapprochement between Andean traditions and
urban lifestyles. After Qori Sisicha reluctantly accepts Julia as his pupil, she follows him
to Lima to prepare for the competition. Amelia, Qori Sisicha‟s sister, adopts the
provincial girl into her home, as she shares a room with Amelia‟s young son Huascar.
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The program sanitizes its depiction of Andean migration considerably, as the family
resides in a residential district that resembles upper-rent Miraflores much more than the
barriadas located on the city‟s periphery. After Amelia falls ill from the witchcraft
practiced by Cirilo, Ccarccaria and Julia miraculously cure her, using traditional Andean
medicine. The medical professionals who attend to her are incredulous and make an
informal agreement with Ccarccaria promising a collaboration between modern and
traditional medical techniques. After healing from her illness, Amelia receives an
invitation by an international NGO to start a cooperative producing traditional Andean
woven blankets for an international free trade market. The fledgling business almost
immediately turns a profit, becoming a provider of better employment opportunities for
provincial women. Thus, the series promises a productive partnership between
traditional Andean culture and globalization, submitting an idealized portrait that
conforms to the logic of neoliberal multiculturalism.
What is truly at stake in El Gran Reto is the transmission of Andean knowledge
and spiritual values to the next generation. The series depicts rural and urban Andean
youths as precariously situated between two worlds and uniquely susceptible to the
seductions of global modernity. The apparent villain, Cirilo, is really just an
inexperienced young scissors dancer who desires fame and fortune without making the
requisite sacrifices. Manipulated by Allin Supay, who convinces him that Qori Sisicha
killed his mother, he enters a pact with the devil in order to achieve his vengeance. In
one scene he appears performing the scissors dance at a nightclub in Lima, flanked by a
chorus of scantily-clad female dancers who gyrate against him. Overt sexuality becomes
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an allegorical figure for the seductiveness of overconsumption. Luchita, a girl from the
neighborhood who dates Ccarccaria‟s son Alex, is a little too flirtatious and promiscuous.
Thus, she becomes the bait for manipulation by Allin Supay, who possesses her in order
to create tension and conflict within his rivals who have begun to create a modern
Andean community. The clearest demonstration that the younger generations represent
the stakes of the conflict between good and evil is the important role of the youngest
major character, Huascar. After Cirilo, his cousin, shows him a good time at a video
arcade, Allin Supay kidnaps the young boy. The evil partnership almost succeeds in
turning Huascar into the sacrificial victim of a ceremony that would bond the spirit of the
devil to the body of Cirilo.
One of the most contradictory and troubling aspects of El Gran Reto’s portrayal
of a potential modern Andean community revolves around the politics of gender. As the
show‟s producers approach the narrative from an undeniably liberal perspective, they
depict some modern innovations as positive. In particular, their sympathies quite
explicitly lie with Julia in her efforts to disguise her gender in order to succeed in a
masculine world. While the male characters accept her masculinity without question, the
other women, especially Amelia, see through her mask almost instantly. These women
agree to assist her in order to show the male characters that women are as able as men.
However, they urge her to reveal her true gender identity to her master before it is too
late. The conceit of gender disguise creates confusion that brings to the surface an
implicit homophobia, treated uncritically for comic effect. In an early episode, the young
Huascar accidentally catches sight of Julia‟s naked back, horrified by his attraction to his
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supposedly male roommate. When confronted, she reveals her true identity, allowing
Huascar to maintain his sense of masculinity. This scene is repeated with Alex, who
reacts to his sudden attraction to a rival dancer through violent confrontation. Yet, strong
feelings develop between the two characters, masked by animosity. When Julia reveals
her secret to Alex, they discover their love for each other and begin a clandestine
relationship. At this point, gender confusion and implicit homophobia begin to drive the
plot when Ccarccaria walks in on the two kissing. After Julia reveals her secret, he is so
relieved that his son is not gay that he blesses both the relationship and her bid to become
the first female danzaq. However, Qori Sisicha does not react so favorably to the news,
banning his former pupil from his sight just before the competition with Cirilo, initiating
a rift with Ccarccaria in the process.
If El Gran Reto depicts provincial youths as at risk for manipulation by diabolic
forces in the urban environment, they also acquire the potential for redemption by
embracing Andean spiritual values. In a bit of creative casting, the well-known Cumbia
singer Maricarmen Marin plays Teresa, an anthropologist with a provincial background.
While the actress and singer is most commonly seen dancing in skimpy outfits with her
group, Las Diablita de la Cumbia, in El Gran Reto she portrays a candidate for
redemption through her pairing with Yuyu, the Andean shaman. Reynaldo Arenas plays
Yuyu who instructs the urban-raised Teresa in the ways of traditional Andean
shamanism. This veteran actor‟s iconic status as a hero of Andean redemption lives on
through his most well-known role as Tupac Amaru II in a bio-pic of the historical figure,
This pairing reveals that El Gran Reto’s reverence for Andean mysticism as a moral
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compass relies on rather conventional gender politics. A beautiful and independent
female character, played by a performer most famous for her revealing costumes,
achieves enlightenment through the guidance and leadership of an authoritative older
man. Through this relationship, the character and thus the actress, re-discovers her
Andean identity. Meanwhile, the spiritually-assured Yuyu receives the companionship of
a beautiful and much younger woman. In another example of the power of Andean
tradition to redeem lost youth, a young homeless couple assault Julia and Alex in an early
scene. After they discover that the couple are not really criminals but have a young child
they struggle to feed, Julia and Alex befriend the young couple and enlist their assistance
in recovering a magical pendant in order to defeat Cirilo. During the conventional happy
ending, Amelia promises to give the young couple a second opportunity at life by
employing them in her weaving cooperative. By the end of the series even the
manipulated young characters, Luchita and Cirilo emerge as candidates for redemption.
All of the intersecting strands of El Gran Reto reach their climax in the final
confrontation that gives the series its name. At the start of the competition, the
community that has gradually developed throughout the program has fragmented. Julia
has returned to the highlands, rejected by her former master. Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria
are feuding due to their disagreements over the former‟s treatment of Julia and the latter‟s
own son Alex. As individuals, even these great scissors dancers are no match for the
powers of Cirilo and Allin Supay. In the middle of their separate demonstrations of their
dancing skills, they each fall victim to Cirilo‟s witchcraft, unable to finish the
competition. Just as the young diabolic dancer is about to declare victory, Julia arrives to
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challenge him to continue the competition the next day. In a pivotal scene, Yuyu
explains to her that in order to defeat Cirilo she has to forgive him and forget about her
desires own desires for vengeance. The shaman touches her head, showing her a vision
of her father who urges her that he is not interested in vengeance, but wants her to follow
the principles she has learned through the practice of the scissors dance. At the
competition, Julia tells Cirilo that she understands why he did what he had done and
publicly forgives him. As she dances, an unconvinced and still diabolically possessed
Cirilo prepares to attack her with witchcraft. But just as he momentarily succeeds in
paralyzing the young scissors dancer, the former delinquents arrive at the competition
after successfully recovering the pendant that blocks Cirilo‟s powers. Through the
pendant, they channel Yuyu who successfully separates the spirit of Allin Supay from the
body of Cirilo. As the competition resumes, the superior choreographic knowledge of
Julia easily defeats the undisciplined Cirilo, who dances awkwardly and without rhythm.
In the final scene, the protagonists celebrate their triumph and the initiation of a
genuine community based on the social norms of an emerging Andean modernity. Qori
Sisicha and Ccarccaria reconcile, promising to collaborate on the project of building a
national school for the scissors dance, reflecting a central aspect of the real-life dancers‟
public personas. In a final tableau of the new family standing together in an unbroken
line, Julia addresses the mountain-gods in a voiceover:
I want to thank you my dear Apu, with all of my heart: for all the help
you have given me; for allowing me to attain my dream of becoming the
first female danzaq; for the love and affection I have found in a new
family; for not allowing evil to prevail; for bringing me together with my
guide, my master, my father; for allowing me to find the love of my life.
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This speech neatly summarizes the moral code enacted by El Gran Reto. It incorporates
Andean spirituality as a set of guiding principles in an over-arching narrative in which
love, family, and genuine vocation triumph over jealousy, greed, and the desire for
vengeance. The miniseries is much less about the scissors dance as a corporeal practice,
and indeed it shows very little dancing, than as a role-model and guide for proper moral
conduct in the constitution of modern Andean individual and collective identities.
One of the central contradictions of the generic framework of melodrama is the
tension between its over-arching moral code and its exploitation of the popular appeal of
spectacle. Indeed, in many melodramas the villains are often the most appealing
characters, inviting a carnivalesque identification with transgression prior to an ultimate
affirmation of conventional social norms. Partially for this reason, many scissors dance
performers who did not participate in the series complain about the program‟s fantasy
and exoticism. They fixate on the good versus evil Andean mysticism framework central
to the narrative, which may redeem Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria as figures of the positive
pole, but leaves the door open for other practitioners to retain their association with the
devil, witchcraft, and even human sacrifice. These criticisms should also be seen in light
of the broader feelings of some performers that their more publicized counterparts will do
anything for fame and are out only for themselves, ironically linking them with the
character of Cirilo within the structure of the miniseries. These performers strongly
argued that Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria should have convinced the show‟s producers to
opt for a more realistic portrayal of the scissors dance that featured more actual dancing,
and less witchcraft and conventional melodramatic romance (Personal Interview “Llapla”
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2008, “Chimango” 2008, “Juan Capcha” 2009). It appears that Qori Sisicha and
Ccarccaria had very little control over the representation of the dance it produced. In the
next chapter I address the question of the performer‟s agency in performing on national
and transnational stages.
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Chapter 7
The Double Agency of Contemporary Scissors Dance Performers
7.1. Introduction
The performative economy of the new Peru has transformed the scissors dance
into a commodified icon of hyperreal indigeneity on the global stage. It could be argued,
as suggested by Zizek (1998) and Vich (2007), that neoliberal multiculturalism is nothing
more than a more effective form of colonialism. Performing for international audiences
disciplines the performers in certain ways. Successful theatrical groups distinguish
themselves through their competence in “civilized” and “professional” codes of behavior,
such as punctuality, hygiene, and the artistic unity of their presentations. Contemporary
performers tend to confer an abstract authority upon their ancestors, yet I have heard
several performers patronizingly refer to less cosmopolitan practitioners as ignorant,
uneducated, unclean, unable to communicate effectively in Spanish, and lacking proper
identification documents. They accept hegemonic notions that education and urban
lifestyles are legitimate means to construct hierarchies over those more “Indian” than
themselves (Mendoza 1999, Cadena 2000). This strategy of domestication is comparable
to earlier folk performers who used the disciplinary apparatus of the stage in order to
appropriate a mestizo identity (Turino 1993, Mendoza 1999, Cadena 2000, Romero 2000,
Cánepa Koch 2002). Yet, contemporary scissors dance performers do not construct
themselves as mestizos. As Charles Hale remarks, “multiculturalism is the myth of
mestizaje for the new millennium” (2002: 490). Instead of fleeing from hegemonic
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notions of the “Indian” as an inferior being, contemporary performers fashion themselves
according to the model of the newly legitimized subject position of the domesticated
hyperreal Indian.
We should also remember that most scissors dance performers are not only
engaged in staged folklore performance. The same performers frequently perform not
only for international audiences, but also in a variety of urban popular entertainments and
rural festivities for Andean audiences. I would like to suggest that this multiplicity of
audiences and performance contexts enables the performers to fashion complex hybrid
identities for themselves, acting as models for the construction of modern indigenous
subjectivities. As theatrical performers who mimetically enact an “other,” they perform
their identities according to the dialectical relationship between actor and role that
Hastrup calls “double-agency” (1998). The character that the scissors dancer enacts now
approximates global discourses of exotic indigeneity rooted in the authenticity of
“magical” otherness. Yet, the performers maintain a distinct identity as modern and
cosmopolitan artists, represented by their given names as distinguished from their artistic
pseudonyms. As theatrical performers who spend much of their lives off-stage and out of
character, they have distinct advantages over other global icons of hyperreal Andean
indigeneity. For example, the weavers of the island of Taquile feel burdened by the role
of idealized indigeneity thrust upon them even in their own homes by the international
tourists they host (Zorn 2007). The explicit theatricality of the scissors dance gives its
practitioners a space of distance from the confines of the role.
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Perhaps because of this distance, scissors dance performers do not perceive their
performances of “millennial” indigeneity as purely instrumental. Unlike how we
normally think of an actor putting on a role, they do not see the character they enact as a
mere fiction, but rather a model for an essentialized indigenous self. Through the
embodied acts of dance performance they repeatedly discover the “other” within the
modern self. Traci Zamir calls the “imaginative bonding” between the theatrical actor
and his/her role as “the existential amplification of the actor,” arguing that this process
“requires the presence and recognition of the audience to be completed” (2010: 227).
The scissors dance performer acquires a positive, if domesticated, indigenous identity
through the recognition of their corporeal embodiment performed by the audience‟s
appreciation. The performers nearly always narrate their diverse performance activities
from a position of agency. The formerly marginalized indigenous performers experience
audience appreciation as a form of affective empowerment. As Mary Weismantel argues,
“embodied knowledge is itself a form of cultural capital, more meaningful because it is
enacted through the body” (Weismantel 2005: 192).
By performing on cosmopolitan stages and constituting themselves as
entertainment entrepreneurs who produce spectacles in urban Andean popular culture,
contemporary scissors dance performers seek to acquire the social mobility and cultural
capital of an emerging cholo middle class. The scissors dance has become not only a
commodified object of multicultural recognition, but also a model for new articulations
of cosmopolitan indigenous Andean subjectivity and citizenship. Revising Renato
Rosaldo‟s original concept, Aihwa Ong redefines cultural citizenship as a “dual process
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of self-making and being made within webs of power linked to the nation-state and civil
society. Becoming a citizen depends on how one is constituted as a subject who
exercises or submits to power relations [. . .] in shifting fields of power that include the
nation-state and the wider world” (Ong 1996: 737). I argue that contemporary scissors
dancer performers have utilized this double-agency as a resource in order to negotiate the
terms of their visibility and recognition from a position of agency. They have become
central actors in the performative economy of spectacle that constitutes the new Peru as a
renovated national imaginary produced as much for the consumption of global spectators
as it is for an exclusively national public sphere. Although most contemporary
performers enact specific forms of double-agency, they do so according to quite different
models, exacerbating the tensions and conflicts within the communities of scissors dancer
performance. In this chapter, I analyze some of these strategies in order to situate the
cultural agency of the performers within the broader contours of national and
transnational representations of Andean indigeneity.
7.2. The Maximum Exponents of the Scissors Dance
The participation of Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria was instrumental to the ratings
success of El Gran Reto. They served as principal advisors in the conception of the story
and the scriptwriting process, trained the principal actors in the basic sequences of the
dance, and replaced them as stand-ins for more virtuosic maneuvers. Most importantly
they served as the public faces of the series in various cross-promotional strategies,
appearing on popular television programs, radio interviews, and newspaper profiles.
Despite their significant role in the production and marketing of El Gran Reto, the
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dancers received no payment for their efforts (Personal Interview “Ccarccaria”2008,
“Qori Sisicha” 2008). Were the enterprising performers merely the exploited victims of
entertainment capitalism as Nuñez Rebaza might suggest? It would be easy to claim that
Frequencia Latina exploited the dancers for their own economic benefit, yet that
characterization should not ignore the question of why the performers were willing to be
exploited. Ccarccaria told a newspaper interviewer, “We feel vindicated in our own land
thanks to this miniseries. Now they treat us like celebrities, they even ask for our
autographs on the streets of Lima. Before, that only happened in Europe, Asia, and the
United States where we travelled to perform this millenary dance” (“Ratings” 2008). In
his customary self-promotional rhetoric, Ccarccaria portrayed the celebrity worship he
receives from audiences as a reaffirmation of a previously forgotten cultural form and
ethnic identity. By participating in El Gran Reto, these entrepreneurial performers sought
to enhance their own brand identities in Peru, leveraging their cultural capital of their
international experience to achieve celebrity status in their own country. Their iconic
brands have become performances in themselves, skillfully positioning the dancers as
both living embodiments of a “millennial” Andean tradition and cosmopolitan artists in
an over-arching narrative of the triumph of the emergent middle class cholo.
Romulo Huamani Janampa, better known as Qori Sisicha, was born in 1961 in the
community of San Antonio de Chipao in southern Ayacucho. After his family migrated
to Lima when he was only five years old, he learned the dance in the capital by imitating
the dancers he saw at fiestas costumbristas and practicing along with audio recordings.
By the late 1970s, he began to perform in highland festivities. At the same time, he
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performed in the theatrical troupe of Máximo Damián Huamaní in important theatres in
Lima and began to take gymnastics courses in order to invent new acrobatic steps. By
using the ethnographic technique of tape-recorded interviews, he learned about the ritual
significance of the dance through conversations with older masters. In 1984, Qori
Sisicha became the first president of ADTMP, using his impressive network and publicity
skills to lead that organization in a brief golden age, until around 1990 when tensions
flared up within the organization forcing him to resign. During the 1990s, he frequently
travelled to the highlands with his musicians, Chimango and Llapla, participating in the
inauguration of development projects and leading efforts to reconstruct rural festivals in
the aftermath of the internal war. Although he retains an ambivalent status within the
Ayacucho scissors dance community, he is clearly the most visible performer from that
style within broader public spheres (Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007).
Damián de la Cruz Ccanto, better known as Ccarccaria, was born in 1970 in a
small village just outside of the capital city of Huancavelica. He claims that his family
inheritance in the scissors dance goes back at least five generations. At only eight years
old, he had to migrate to the city as his father died in a freak accident. He claims that his
grandfather had already begun to teach him the dance, but numerous other performers
told me that Lucifer formed him as a dancer for the troupe “Corazon del Mercurio”
(Personal Interview “Astro Rey” 2009, “Lasta Para” 2009, “Accarhuaycha” 2009).
During the 1980s, Ccarccaria along with Lucifer authored many of the renovated
acrobatic steps now an established part of the scissors dance repertoire of the
Huancavelica style. He expressed pride in his contributions to the modern style of
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scissors dancing, which he credits with the dance‟s achievement of worldwide
recognition. Yet, as he has gotten older he has positioned himself as an authority of
traditional knowledge, competent in both the modern style and the more complete
traditional repertoires performed by his ancestors. By the late 1990s, Ccarccaria broke
away from Lucifer‟s group, forming his own theatrical troupe, “Los Galas de Villallacta,”
with his brothers Runa Miko and Maldición. They frequently performed in international
festivals in Europe and maintained steady employment in touristic dinner-theatres in
Lima. Ccarccaria claims that he is the only scissors dancer able to make a living
exclusively from his art in a clear construction of a middle-class status. By the time
Toledo took office, he had surpassed his mentor Lucifer as the most visible and important
scissors dancer from Huancavelica, paving the way for his partnership with Qori Sisicha
over the past decade (Personal Interview “Ccarccaria” 2007).
In 2000, the two high-profile dancers collaborated for the first time on a project
sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura to construct a national school of scissors
dancing. The director of the INC contacted Qori Sisicha and offered him a space at the
Museo Nacional in the district of San Borja to create the school. Qori Sisicha selected
himself, Chimango, and Llapla as the master teachers from Ayacucho, Ccarccaria,
Alejandro Escobar (violin), and Edgar Belito (harp) from Huancavelica, and the young
dancer Qesqento as the representative from Apurimac. The course lasted for about half a
year, attracting numerous theatre artists, interested youth from the three departments, and
the according to Ccarccaria even a German tourist. However, after the INC changed its
directorship in October 2000 with the fall of Fujimori, the funding dried up and the
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project was cancelled. The experience left Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria hungry to build
their own institution as a center for the teaching of the dance. They teamed up in order to
construct a “Casa de la Danza de las Tijeras,” a project long abandoned by the ADTMP.
Although they still have not achieved this goal, they still dream about and put pressure on
the state for assistance in establishing their own locale, a national school, center for
investigation, performance space, and housing for performers who reside in the highlands
when they travel to Lima (Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007, “Ccarccaria” 2007,
“Chimango” 2007). Other performers feel frustrated by the broken promises of an
always soon to be constructed locale, questioning whether the highly-publicized duo
should be the authorities who represent the practice as a whole (Personal Interview “Rey
Chicchi 2007, “Condenado” 2007, “Ccecchele” 2008, “Llapla” 2009).
During the Toledo administration, Ccarccaria and to a lesser extent Qori Sisicha
became beneficiaries of a new form of state patronage. Between 2002 and 2006, Los
Galas de Villallacta became featured performers in the promotional advertisements and
spectacles of PROMPERU. Ccarccaria told me that Karp exploited him. He accepted to
perform in these elaborate spectacles without payment for the sake of publicity and the
promise of state officials to provide them with the property for their locale, which never
materialized. Nevertheless, he Ccarccaria claims that he holds no bad feelings because
these performances showed the world the wonders of his artform, making his ancestors
and the apus proud of him (Personal Interview “Ccarccaria” 2007). Through his
association with PROMPERU, Ccarccaria has honed his publicity skills, carefullycalibrating idealized notions of Andean spirituality into pithy slogans designed to appeal
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to Western audiences. In a profile published by PROMPERU, he vigorously rejects the
notion that the scissors dancers have a pact with the devil, claiming that instead that they
have a pact with nature.1 In the concluding passage of the same article, Ccarccaria
describes how he learned to make offerings to the apus and the pachamama from his
maternal grandfather, a famous curandero from Huancavelica. He learned how to read
coca leaves and perform cleansing rituals, constructing himself in the role of shaman,
which he readily performs for attention and monetary compensation from a Western
audience at PROMPERU‟s various events (Personal Interview “Javier Maravi” 2008).
While Qori Sisicha travelled with Ccarccaria in 2004 on an international tour to
France sponsored by PROMPERU, he had fewer direct ties to the Toledo government
and the state promotion agency. He found a space for promotion amongst the cultural
and human rights left that flourished with its successful opposition to the Fujimori
regime. Some have argued that with his status as an opposition hero, the Toledo
government co-opted the intellectual and cultural left making them complicit in the
institution of an aggressive neoliberal multiculturalism and the logic of the promotion of
diversity as commodified spectacle (Roncalla 2002, Personal Interview “Javier Maravi”
2008). Carlos Iván Degregori, one of Peru‟s most distinguished anthropologists and a
member of the TRC, put the conclusions of the commission into practice by theorizing
the notion of a “Diverse-We” not only in specialized anthropological texts but also a
Thematic Encyclopedia of Peruvian Diversity published by El Comercio (Degregori
2000, 2004). The colorful book includes a full-page photospread of the scissors dance,
featuring Qori Sisicha in various poses demonstrating the choreographic sequences of the
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dance (94-95). These well-intentioned cultural productions furthered the promotion of
Qori Sisicha‟s image that connected the scissors dance directly to his persona.
Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria have strategically appropriated ethnographic
narratives and the marketing discourses of PROMPERU to acquire cultural capital as
cosmopolitan artists within more circumscribed public spheres. In 2001, Qori Sisicha
contracted journalist Jesús Raymundo, then a writer for El Peruano, about running the
press campaign for the dancer‟s anniversary event. Raymundo, born of migrant parents
from Huancavelica, already had some familiarity and interest in the dance. He has
partnered with Qori Sisicha and later Ccarccaria to build their brand identities in various
niches of the Peruvian communications media. Raymundo claims that this collaboration
marks a significant departure from earlier journalistic depictions of the dance, which had
focused on the mysticism described by Arguedas, but rarely the individuality of the
performers (Personal Interview “Jesús Raymundo” 2008). At first, they sought to just
make an impact in different media outlets, constructing appealing personas for newspaper
profiles and television appearances. Around the time the INC bestowed the dance with
the honor of Cultural Patrimony of the Nation, they shifted the direction of their efforts
away from respected newspapers and news programs directed towards national elites and
concentrated on the vast consumer public of the conos, as the dancers intensified their
insertion into the market of live spectacles (Ibid.).
The elaboration of this new strategy took place at a time when the culture
industries catering to Andean migrants had began to shift their emphasis from recorded
music to live concerts and spectacles. New technologies had dramatically reduced the
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cost of production of audiovisual recording. The addition of visual images through the
now inexpensive sale of DVDs made the visually-spectacular scissors dance more
available and appealing to audiences beyond the regionally-orientated publics of migrants
from Ayacucho and Huancavelica. An expanding network of independent video
producers filmed and distributed edited versions of rural Andean festivities. At the same
time, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria initiated the trend of creating packaged video products
dedicated to the triumphs of an individual performer. Moreover, rampant piracy began to
re-orient the marketplace. Audiovisual recordings no longer turned a profit, but rather
enhanced the image of the artist in a dynamic network of live spectacles and
entertainments (Alfaro 2005). This shift empowered star performers, such as Dina
Paucar and Sonia Morales, who became brands whose business ventures spilled over into
the creation of theme-restaurants and film and television production. More than ever
before, “musical styles of one locality within the Andes have come to stand for a more
generalized ethnic and class positionality, first within Lima, then returning to the
highlands” (Tucker 2006: 57). With the aid of Raymundo, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria
sought to construct their own “brands” as iconic performers who embodied the scissors
dance as a whole as it increasingly became an emblem for broader Andean indigenous
and provincial identities. They constructed publicity narratives that linked the personal
triumph of the artists to cultural reaffirmation and the reconquest of national space
(Alfaro 2005: 11). While the publicity of both dancers repetitively invoked the themes of
triumph and legitimate authority, their personas are quite distinct, yet complementary.
These marketing discourses depict both dancers as the legitimate heirs to a
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“magical” and “millennial” tradition. Raymundo‟s first profile of Qori Sisicha opens
with the statement, “His acrobatic steps are guided by the telluric force of the Andes.
They are inspired by a profound respect for nature and a persistent defense of origins [. .
.] In each presentation, the danzaq from Ayacucho Romulo Huamani also remembers the
masters of his native land of Lucanas” (Raymundo 2002). In a later piece, Raymundo
elaborates on the same theme, “With his steps inspired by the footprints of his masters
and the force of the mountains, Qori Sisicha will continue to lead the cultural resistance
of a dance that symbolizes the liberty and faith of the Andean people” (Raymundo 2008).
Both statements repeat the refrain of the dancer‟s profound connection to the natural
landscape and his inheritance of a “millennial” tradition from ancient masters, drawing
directly from the tropes of globalized discourses of idealized indigeneity. In newspaper
interviews, television spots, and even my own interviews, the manner in which the
dancers repeatedly tell the same stories and anecdotes varies only slightly, constructing
publicity slogans out of narratives of cultural resistance.
Among the most effective of these slogans creates a scenario of past victimization
by the colonizers and reclaims an originary identity in the present. In one profile,
Ccarccaria exclaims, “They say we have a pact with the devil, but that is not true. What
we do is connect to the pachamama (earth), and with our ancient Gods. We danzaq are
like priests or shaman” (qtd. in Torres V. 2006). Ccarccaria still carries his diabolic
pseudonym. Prepared to explain this discrepancy, he often tells an anecdote about his
two cousins who married each other. The community in which they lived began to call
the young couple Jarjacha or Ccarccaria, which refers to a demon resulting from the act
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of incest. As a child, Damian de la Cruz Ccanto took this insulting name as his
pseudonym, vowing to vindicate his cousins by becoming world famous (Torres V. 2006,
Personal Interview “Ccarccaria” 2007). This anecdote not only distances the dancer from
his pseudonym‟s diabolic connotations, but it links his individual triumph to the
collective reaffirmation of his family as well as culture and ethnicity. Ccarccaria has a
particular talent for weaving such tales. He claims that he was born for the scissors
dance, pointing to the suggestiveness of the three parts of his given name. Damian
alludes to the devil, de la Cruz to the Catholic cross, and Ccanto to a sacred Andean
flower, making him the quintessential embodiment of a cultural form that emerged
through conflicted encounters between distinct sacred landscapes and imaginaries
(Personal Interview “Ccarccaria‟ 2007).
The parallel trajectory of personal triumph and collective reaffirmation within
Ccarccaria‟s persona enables him to seamlessly connect what might be considered
contradictory themes such as millennial authenticity and cosmopolitan social mobility. In
an allusion to his transcendent artistry, one article compares him to an “Andean Mikhail
Baryshnikov,” who uses his considerable physical skills to impress world leaders (Torres
V. 2006). Ccarccaria declares, “I have danced for President Clinton in Presidential
Summits, as well as at cultural fairs. When you dance at the tips of your feet or jump
from your backside the gringos get excited and scream” (qtd. in Torres V. 2006). In a
more conventional image of social mobility, the author of the same piece claims that the
dancer‟s home distinguishes itself from those of his neighbors, with three completed
floors made out of noble materials. The article describes the many photos of Ccarccaria
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in full scissors dance costume, posing besides the Eifel Tower, the Great Wall of China,
the Red Square of Moscow and other iconic world destinations, on display in his living
room (Ibid.). These images explicitly connect to a broader promotional strategy used by
both dancers, often imitated by other performers. They adorn their DVDs, and websites
with similar images, visually claiming their conquest of the world stage. The author
further suggests that Ccarccaria has not forgotten his humble roots, like any good cholo
or provinciano “who triumphs in life” (Ibid.). However, it is also clear that his social
mobility depends on catching the attention of the first-world gaze. In a literalization of
the figure of the brichero, this and other sources claim that the dancer is engaged to a
French anthropologist and even has a green-eyed son who practices the dance in France.
Regardless of the truth-value of these publicity narratives, this more suspect claim
illustrates the degree to which the triumph of Ccarccaria‟s persona is dependent on the
attracting the desire for the other projected by a first-world audience.2
Qori Sisicha‟s persona is much less flamboyant in its construction of social
mobility and a luxurious lifestyle. While his publicity rarely makes boastful claims about
personal wealth, they certainly position the dancer as a world-renowned artist
comfortable in a cosmopolitan environment. Referring to performances in international
festivals, Qori Sisicha explains, “The goal of these activities is to gain recognition for
Peruvian culture. Our presence in other festivals has enabled the scissors dance to be
today recognized as one of the most beautiful dances on the international stage” (Vadillo
Villa 2007). The dancer directly links his own individual persona to the positive qualities
of the dance. He depicts himself as a thoughtful leader, disseminating the dance to new
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publics with artistry and restraint. He claims, “It is a new experience for us to get to
know other cultures and new lifestyles. We have committed ourselves to the scissors
dance and Andean culture. Therefore we dedicate ourselves to representing it with
responsibility” (Raymundo 2002). Although muted in comparison to Ccarccaria, these
discourses of artistry with responsibility are also a narrative of social mobility and
construct a modern identity for the dancer. Furthermore, the ultimate objective behind
these various newspaper profiles is most often to promote an event staged by the dancers,
revealing more commercial aims behind Qori Sisicha‟s mask of genuine artistry.
Qori Sisicha has staged commercial spectacles since the 1980s, most often in
April to celebrate his artistic anniversary. Many performers stage such events once a
year in a bricolage that combines commercial motivations with Andean notions of
reciprocity, as well as a community gathering for migrants. The events Qori Sisicha and
Ccarccaria have produced over the past decade are much more frequent than once per
year, and are much larger commercial spectacles that seek to attract a more general
migrant audience beyond specific regional-identified communities, as well as a few
tourists and anthropologists. In April 2008, I served as Qori Sisicha‟s padrino, a
monetary sponsor and honored guest, for his thirty-fifth anniversary as a scissors dance
artist. The event follows a similar structure as the fiestas costumbristas. In the afternoon
there was a three to four hour scissors dance competition, followed by a musical concert
featuring folkloric singers. I attended the preparations for the event in the morning,
including the filming of a thirty-second television commercial that featured a
choreographed sequence of several young dancers rapidly performing different pruebas
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de valor in succession. Unlike theatrical performances on the international stage, the
grotesque appears to be the most appealing aspect of the scissors dance for a popular
Peruvian public. While the scissors dance competition was well-attended by a few
thousand spectators, it was also clear that despite the identity of its the producers, the
major draw was not the scissors dance but rather the folkloric concert at night, featuring
Dina Paucar. More than 5,000 spectators were in attendance for this part of the event.
The challenge for Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria over the past decade has been to find the
right balance between catering to the audience‟s desires for the folkloric singers and
promoting the scissors dance as an appealing spectacle in itself. They rely mostly on the
physicality of young scissors dance performers, who constantly invent new acrobatic
choreographies and grotesque pruebas de valor. At these events, the role of Qori Sisicha
and Ccarccaria is largely as producers, taking care of all the arrangements and making
frequent appearances in front of the audience. Between the larger competition between
the younger performers and the folkloric concert, the duo typically make an appearance
in their costumes, staging a mock competition for ten to fifteen minutes, which illustrates
their public relationship as an oscillation between close friendship and intense rivalry.
In a third narrative strand that combines traditional knowledge and social
mobility, they portray themselves as the legitimate authorities for the transmission of the
dance to the next generation of performers. Their publicity locates this authority in ritual
knowledge, the mastery of “complete” choreographic repertoires, as well as their
cosmopolitan knowledge that connects them to various circuits of multicultural
recognition. Although their own stories of how they learned the dance are significantly
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more complicated and improvised, they perform the role of the idealized master with a
close relationship with his pupils. This positionality authorizes them to make claims that
young dancers have lost certain elements of the ritual significance of the dance, even
though their elders made similar complaints against them when they were younger. In
one article, Qori Sisicha exclaims, “scissors dancers are not complete masters unless they
know how to work with metal, how to construct their costumes, and how to play the
scissors within the rhythm of the harp and violin” (Raymundo 2002). Through this
narrative strand, they continue to campaign for state support to construct the “Casa de la
Danza de las Tijeras.” It appeared as if the Toledo administration would fulfill its
promise to provide them with some land after the recognition of the dance as Cultural
Patrimony of the Nation. However, the project got held up by complaints by a rival
group and with the change of government in 2006, conditions became less favorable.
They realized in order to legitimate their claims to authority they needed to form their
own association having the appearance of being representative of the scissors dance
community as a whole (Personal Interview “Ccarccaria” 2007, “Qori Sisicha” 2007).
In 2006, the two dancers jointly founded La Asociacion Tradición Andina
“Wamani” with support from the NGO Achachi, directed by a French woman married to
a Peruvian from Huancayo who was an aficionado of the scissors dance. The
organization had two fundamental objectives. First, they seek to aid the NGO in the
distribution of clothes and other forms of tangible aid to impoverished children in
Huancavelica. Second, they advocate and raise funds for the construction of the “Casa de
la Danza de las Tijeras.” In June 2007, the association led a delegation of scissors
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dancers to perform at the Palacio del Gobierno for President Alan García and
distinguished guests. Qori Sisicha took the opportunity to request that the government
grant the practice considered to be Cultural Patrimony of the Nation a small piece of land
in order to develop their national school and train the next generation of performers in the
proper manner. The President publicly agreed to the request and for a time it appeared as
if the project was moving forward (Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007, 2008).
However, for various reasons it has stalled and now seems unlikely considering President
García only has a few months left in office. These frequent moments of hope followed
by setbacks have eroded what little confidence many performers outside of their tightknit circle have in their more famous counterparts‟ ability to lead a properly-run
institution (Personal Interview “Rey Chicchi” 2007, “Condenado” 2007, “Llapla” 2008,
“Victor Chavez” 2009). While the association receives collaborations from a wide range
of artists for its activities, only a small clientelistic network of their close associates
identify as core members.
Partly to raise awareness for the plight of their fledgling institution, sometimes
Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria have staged events catering for a higher-class public within
Peru. On November 4, 2007 they held the exhibition El Gran Desafío de la Danza de las
Tijeras (The Great Scissors Dance Challenge) at the Parque de la Exposición in
downtown Lima. This performance space is significantly more “respectable” for a
cultured public than the scattered locales of the conos. The different target audience
allowed them to experiment with more directly featuring the scissors dance in both
portions of the program. Like many of their other events, El Gran Desafío began with a
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competition between younger scissors dancers. They significantly toned down the more
grotesque pruebas de valor and focused on the exhibition of elaborate acrobatic
choreographies. Ccarccaria also presented a ballet of child scissors dancers performing
in unison appropriate for this more tasteful event. The evening concert featured a series
of fusion rock bands, headlined by La Sarita. This group combines punk rock, chicha,
and Andean folkloric music and have for several years incorporated scissors dancers into
their live concerts. The highlight of the show was Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria leading
more than twenty scissors dancers in a special presentation accompanied by La Sarita.
They later admitted to me that El Gran Desafío was an artistic rather than commercial
success. However, the event did lead directly to their participation in El Gran Reto, as
the successful television producer of telenovelas Susana Bamonde was in attendance
(Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007, “Ccarccaria” 2007).
The constant presence of Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria in cross-promotions
undeniably contributed to the unexpected ratings success of El Gran Reto. The
participation of the real-life scissors dancers gave the show an air of authenticity and
legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Although they received no monetary compensation,
the dancers‟ brands were suddenly ubiquitous. After it was clear that the program had
resonated with an audience, the now celebrity scissors dancers organized a series of
entertainment spectacles that promised El Gran Reto: En Vivo (Live). Nearly every
weekend during the six-week run of the show, these events occurred in various sites
throughout the conos of Lima. The structure of these spectacles evolved considerably
over time. The first event I attended on July 20, 2008 to celebrate the debut of the series
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took place in Club de Tiros, a huge locale in the district of Rimac. Though much larger,
the structure of the event was nearly the same as the dancers‟ annual anniversary
celebrations and the other events they staged several times a year. The scissors dance
competition lasted three to four hours in the afternoon, with young performers displaying
acrobatics and eye-catching pruebas de valor. Like earlier events, the major draw was
still the high-profile folkloric singers contracted for an evening concert. As the run of the
program continued, however, they began to realize that they no longer needed to spend so
much money on expensive big-name singers. The scissors dance itself and the actors of
the miniseries, who signed autographs and took photographs with adoring fans, became
the main draw. Moreover, they realized that their most enthusiastic audiences were now
very small to pre-teen aged children. They limited the sale of beer, shifting concessions
towards candy, popcorn, and soda and made several other accommodations to make the
events more family-friendly.
These transformations became even more apparent after the run of the program,
when they embarked on a nation-wide tour to large provincial cities in September,
October, and November. They eliminated the folkloric singers altogether and staged
much shorter events that focused on the scissors dance competition and autograph
sessions with the actors. I attended the events in two cities that attained contrasting levels
of success. In Ccarccaria‟s hometown of Huancavelica the event failed to garner an
audience of over 1,000 despite the reduced admission prices for the impoverished city.
The dancer complained that his “pueblo” did not love him and justified the poor
attendance by claiming that most residents did not own a television set and reception was
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spotty for those who did. I would suggest that beyond poverty and the small-size of the
city, these events held little appeal in a region where scissors dance festivities were
routine. However, in Cuzco they were clearly a novelty. Over 8,000 spectators attended
the event in the former Inca capital. The producers charged three times the admission
price as in Huancavelica. Kishkamico won the competition, a dancer known for his
large-size, making his acrobatic abilities and grotesque pruebas quite amazing. As
novelty acts, these performances had little to do with the display of more subtle dancing
skills. Nevertheless, the children at the event idolized the dancers as heroes. They
requested autographs and photographs from the scissors dancers as well as the actors. I
also observed numerous children attempting to imitate their movements. A common
refrain in my interviews was that performers most often began their vocation as dancers
or musicians by imitating the performers who they had seen at local festivities on school
playgrounds and agricultural fields as if they were their superheroes. In this respect, the
phenomenon of El Gran Reto achieved the objective of Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria to
transform the dance from a regional to national cultural form. It remains to be seen
whether this phenomenon is entirely ephemeral or if it will produce a new generation of
performers, some of whom with little to Ayacucho or Huancavelica.
Their success in achieving an emblematic status for the scissors dance in an
emerging national popular culture is not outside of the strategies of bricherismo, which
Qori Sisicha and especially Ccarccaria engage in to attract foreign audiences. At the
spectacle in Huancavelica, Ccarccaria asked me to speak in front of the audience in order
to praise him and pledge assistance in his project providing clothing for poor children.
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That was the first moment I became explicitly aware that I had a secondary role to play in
these dancers‟ public performances of self-legitimation. I remembered that not only Qori
Sisicha and Ccarccaria but also other performers had insisted that I participate in their
pruebas de valor, standing on their chests as they lied on broken glass. This imperative
to perform a secondary role not only had to do with my large size in comparison to most
Peruvians, but the cultural capital of my ethnicity, nationality, and profession. One
dancer who had invited me to his home village for a rural festival, addressed all those
present in the festival by announcing that I was the first tourist to arrive in Huachocolpa
and in the future more may follow. I had become a surrogate performer who stood in for
the regime of neoliberal multiculturalism, the usually unmarked (but in these cases quite
marked) subject who conferred recognition and value upon Andean culture.
For this reason, something intimately familiar flashed before my eyes when in
November 2008 I read the headline “Ccarccaria: El Rey del APEC (King of APEC)” in a
popular urban tabloid. During the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit
in Lima, the scissors dancer performed to enthusiastic applause in front of an audience of
global political and economic leaders. The author of the article cited Ccarccaria, who
claimed, “It was a beautiful ceremony of Peruvian music and dances. The heads of state
applauded the scissors dance with great force. I saw President García explaining the
significance of the dance to the President of the United States, George Bush” and later
emphasized “foreigners value our Andean dances” (“Ccarccaria Será” 2008). When the
wives of the leaders toured the ruins of Pachacamac, Ccarccaria returned in the role of
Andean shaman, asking the apus for positive results for this important international
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meeting. He exclaimed, “The Asian first ladies were surprised by my spiritual work and
I blessed them with cleansing and flowering rituals. The world has gotten to know this
Andean ritual up close, bequeathed to me by my grandfather, Valerio, who was a famous
shaman and dansaq from Huancavelica” (Ibid.). The reference to the “Asian first ladies”
was rather telling, for President García was at the same moment in the process of wooing
the President of China and Chinese business leaders, negotiating the final details for a
proposed Free Trade Agreement with that country.
In a final anecdote, Ccarccaria involved me more directly in his strategies of
brichero performance in order to enhance his public image within Peru. During my final
weeks of fieldwork, he was preparing for his annual artistic anniversary in May 2009, an
important event to keep him in the public eye almost a year after El Gran Reto. He
requested that I present him with a trophy of recognition as a great artist who embodied a
sacred ritual tradition. He took care of the trophy himself. All that mattered was my
performance as a designated representative of first-world and academic cultural capital
that I conferred upon this provincial Andean artist in front of a mostly provincial Andean
audience. With some reservation, I agreed to his request out of a feeling of obligation to
a performer who helped me a great deal during the course of my investigation and out of
a curiosity for an act that had potentially fascinating implications for my own research. It
also made me reflect on the sophistication of this dancer‟s tactics in order to use the
positionalities I represented as a marketing strategy. Unlike most other performers I
interacted with, Ccarccaria never asked me for a single monetary contribution for the
staging of a particular event or a project of cultural restoration, and he always invited me
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to enter his events without paying the admission fee. He was more interested in taking
advantage of my inescapable performance of difference as a white male US academic
amongst a provincial Peruvian public
7.3. Los Hermanos Chavez
Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria are still the dominant figures of the scissors dance in
the national public sphere and to a lesser extent on the international stage. However, they
are far from the only models of the intertwined relationship between the dance and
globalization. One group, Los Hermanos Chavez, has achieved near equivalency with
their more famous rivals in one area of contemporary scissors dance performance by
focusing their efforts on the staging of appealing presentations for the international and
tourist stages. The group, founded and directed by four brothers from Huancavelica,
spends much of their time each year performing at folkloric festivals, diplomatic events,
and artistic conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia. The roots of their success
lie in the group‟s development of a form of theatrical scissors dance show based on the
conventions of international folk ballets, placing eight to twelve dancers on the stage in
uniform costumes and moving to highly-synchronized unison choreography.
Furthermore, they have constructed a well-developed institution and school and the most
visually pleasing website of all current scissors dance groups. Surprisingly, they position
their elaboration of quite tame but appealing visual spectacles and mastery of
cosmopolitan media as a critical response to globalization. On their website, the group
proclaims, “we have a different proposal of doing national art and culture because we
believe that any act of the negation of a culture is a form of domination and any act of
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reaffirmation is a form of liberation” (Los Hermanos Chavez website). This seeming
contradiction resolves itself in a quite consistent discourse and set of performance
practices that model themselves on notions of artistic excellence, collectivity, the clear
articulation of a cultural philosophy, and disciplined self-education as antidotes to the
habits of over-consumption, and alienated individualism imposed by the dominant market
forces. While these discourses and practices may appear counter-hegemonic, they also
reproduce conventional hierarchies based on education and a concealed classism enacting
a mode of distinction seeking to legitimate the authority of Los Hermanos Chavez over
the ignorance of their fellow performers.
The brothers, Gabriel, Victor, Fredy, and Arturo Chavez, founded Los Hermanos
Chavez as a cultural institution before embarking on their first international stage tour at
the Festival of Confolens in France. They came from a relatively wealthy peasant family
from the provincial capital of Pampas, Tayacaja in the department of Huancavelica.
Their father was a municipal authority, marking a class distinction between them and the
majority of scissors dance performers from the start. According to Victor Chavez, the
brothers do not come from a family inheritance of artists, but they loved the dance since
they were children. The Chavez brothers pretended to be famous scissors dances on the
schoolyard, and on certain occasions even performed a rudimentary version of the dance
in school talent shows. When they each arrived in Lima at different times between 1980
and 1985 to begin their secondary education, they encountered the nascent community of
scissors dance performance from Huancavelica. Derrepente encouraged them to take
artistic pseudonyms and helped them integrate themselves into the evolving network of
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urban scissors dance performance. Nevertheless, they were more dedicated to education
than many young performers. Education was the only way for them to defend themselves
from the explicit racism in the capital city (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009).
Tensions emerged when a group of scissors dancers with a family inheritance, but
lacking their educational level, reached a certain age and attempted to marginalize the
brothers from the growing community of Huancavelica scissors dance performance.
They defended themselves and Lucifer and Derrepente left them their job dancing at the
Hotel Crillón for a few months in 1989, when the more established group travelled to
perform in the United States. This act of generosity was probably due to the feeling that
these inexperienced adolescents were no threat to the veteran group. Nonetheless, they
discovered an aptitude for theatrical folklore performance and clearly still look up to
Lucifer and Derrepente as models, even as they have developed a heated rivalry with
Ccarccaria (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009, “Fredy Chavez” 2009). In 1993,
Los Hermanos Chavez travelled to France to perform in the Festival of Confolens where
they met and began a close relationship with CIOFF founder Henry Corbaget. At the
same festival, they saw a Russian folk ballet performing a series of highly synchronized
acrobatics in unison choreographies. Highly impressed, the three younger brothers
discussed the idea of trying to adapt the idea to the scissors dance. Gabriel, the eldest
brother and director of the troupe, disagreed and defended the authenticity of a faithful
theatrical imitation of one-on-one competitions. However, the majority overruled him.
Gabriel stood up for his principles and retired from the theatrical troupe, although he
remained the designated teacher who prepared the group‟s new members (Personal
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Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009). Since 1994, Los Hermanos Chavez has become a
mainstay on the international folklore stage with their highly synchronized fifteen minute
choreography, which they call “El Ballet de la Danza de las Tijeras.” Eight to twelve
dancers begin and conclude the presentation with several minutes of unison
choreography. In the middle, each dancer takes one to two solo turns, demonstrating
their individual acrobatic virtuosity as the other dancers back them up by playing the
scissors and performing a few minimal movements in unison. Turn taking is extremely
regulated. This style of balletic choreography has become the most attractive variety of
scissors dance performance on the international stage and has opened up new spaces of
exhibition for the scissors dance in Lima (Ibid.).
In addition to international performance, in the late 1990s the group became
ubiquitous in dinner-theatre shows staged for tourists, bringing the scissors dance to the
Sheraton Hotel and especially Brisas de Titicaca. Brisas stages the largest and most
distinguished folklore show in Lima and unlike other venues they exhibit the scissors
dance every night of the week. The group has travelled several times with the renowned
in-house performance company of Brisas. Furthermore, they frequently perform with the
larger company at important civic events, including the multicultural exhibition “Retablo
de los Sueños” every year since 2003 on July 28, Peru‟s Independence Day. This
presentation, sponsored by the municipal government of Lima, takes place in the central
Plaza of the capital city and broadcast on national television. Troupes of specific
regional folkloric dances from all over Peru display themselves in costume, like figurines
on a gigantic multi-level retablo. The troupes each perform ten minute presentations on
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the bottom floor of the retablo, which opens onto a larger proscenium stage. The
presentation visibly performs the exhibition value of the nation‟s multicultural diversity,
and the incorporation of visually-appealing cultural difference into a single unified frame,
making it an emblematic articulation of the new Peru from a hegemonic perspective.
The collective balletic choreography and organized institutional structure of Los
Hermanos Chavez embody a set of values upon which the group attempts to distinguish
itself based on education, discipline, artistic excellence, and intellectual leadership.
While highly critical of Ccarccaria, Victor Chavez looks up to the celebrity dancer‟s
mentor, Lucifer. He claims that while Lucifer always took care of his image, other
scissors dance performers often showed up late to their appointments, without proper
hygiene, and improvised poorly practiced choreographies. Furthermore, he critiqued the
lack of care with which younger dancers often treat their costumes, musical instruments,
and scissors. Victor admits that for a long period of time Ccarccaria was the most
talented and best scissors dancer from Huancavelica who the entered the stage or plaza
with a forceful presence. However, he suggests that after Ccarccaria left Lucifer‟s group,
who apparently kept him disciplined, he began to improvise in any way he could in order
to garner attention (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009). Los Hermanos Chavez
model their institution on these values of discipline, punctuality, and care for the integrity
of their artistic product, previously practiced by Lucifer and Derrepente.
The value the group places on notions of artistic excellence manifests itself in the
use of ballet not only as a framework for synchronized choreography but also the
adaptation of the classical positions as a training technique. Moreover, Fredy Chavez
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took over the role of Director and Choreography from his elder brother, Gabriel, in 2000.
He studied theatrical direction and choreography at a university in Argentina. Now he no
longer dances, and takes the role of the outside eye who directs the performers toward
greater levels of synchronized perfection. Fredy told me that he attempts to develop the
group‟s presentations based on the universal tendencies of dance and theatrical technique,
drawing not only on ballet but also the writings of Eugenio Barba (Personal Interview
“Fredy Chavez” 2009). Los Hermanos Chavez addresses their work to a more cultivated
audience, although they claim that all their performers are equally proficient in
performing in rural and urban fiestas. Victor positions himself as the most “complete”
dancer, becoming the only close rival to Ccarccaria in the late 1990s in rural festival
performances. However, the group as a whole directs their work towards a cultured
audience and first-world public in order to show the world that Andeans can produce a
sophisticated and quality artistic product (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009).
The emphasis Los Hermanos Chavez places on the values of discipline, decency,
and respectability shapes their views on the ritual significance of the scissors dance.
According to Victor, his brother Gabriel was one of the first Huancavelica performers to
reject the notion of the pact with the devil. He attributes this to the fact that his brother
had achieved a higher level of education. Gabriel began to investigate the origins of the
dance, reading the work of and interacting with anthropologists. He found no evidence of
the existence of the devil, but rather theorized that the figure of the scissors dancer has a
pact with nature (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009). The group positions its
work as an anthropological revival of tradition, and their philosophy develops out of a
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kind of ethnographic realism. According to Fredy, nobody can prove the existence of the
devil or God, but it would be impossible to deny not only the existence but also the power
of Tayta Inti (the sun), water, or the mountains (Personal Interview “Fredy Chavez”
2009). According to this perspective, animism is significantly more logical than the
abstractions required by Christian belief. This philosophy has contributed to the broader
shift where the figure of the scissors dancer has transformed from a theatrical
representation of an infernal Other within Andean communities to the very embodiment
of a core essential self within cosmopolitan articulations of Andean identity. It also
points to the importance of Andeanist ethnography and globalized discourses of
indigeneity as models for this emerging Andean subjectivity. Victor Chavez offered one
of the clearest articulations of the double-agency of the scissors dancer, distinguishing
between the human dancer and the mythical figure he portrays. This mythical figure
becomes a core element of the dancer‟s sense of self through repeated enactment and
embodiment, acting as both a model for identification and a guide for conduct for the
dancer and to a lesser extent his audience. According to Victor, the dancer feels like
himself the most when he is on-stage or in the plaza performing his role. He also claimed
that the recognition and appreciation performed by the audience significantly heightened
this effect (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009). Thus, he offered me a lay
theorization of the paradox of the actor.
The intellectual philosophy of Los Hermanos Chavez underrides their artistic
rivalry with Ccarccaria. In the 1990s, the group initiated a heated debate with Lucifer
and Ccarccaria over the notion of the pact with the devil. The latter dancers defended the
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diabolic pact because it was more commercial and it represented their legitimate family
inheritance. When the political situation changed with the government of Toledo,
Ccarccaria adopted the discourse of Los Hermanos Chavez, taking on the role of an
Andean shaman with a pact with nature, because this role offered new commercial
potential in a now global marketplace (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez” 2009).
Although they admire Ccarccaria‟s genuine dancing talent, skill, and dedication to his
craft, Fredy and Victor portray him as a crafty opportunist who will do or say anything
for the sake of publicity. However, Lucifer has always defended the devil and maintains
his diabolic persona to this day. Although they disagree with his interpretation, the
Chavez brothers respect his unwavering maintenance of a set of principles even though
they may now be unpopular (Ibid.).
The tensions between the group and Ccarccaria are most apparent in the theme of
the transmission of the dance to the next generation of performers. Los Hermanos
Chavez has developed an institutionalized school that trains youth from Huancavelica in
the practice of the dance in order to ascend to the regular folkloric troupe. The group
claims that they have a structured pedagogical technique that seeks to transmit not only
embodied practices but also a spiritual and intellectual philosophy centered on the
cultural significance of the scissors dance and the development of a disciplined staged
presence. Their objectives are to create an association without jealousy and to form
“complete” dancers who live and work according to principles instead of the continual
improvised search for popularity. They describe this utopian ideal as a spiritual
brotherhood and portray their development of balletic choreographies as an embodiment
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of this idealized synchronization of the collectivity (Personal Interview “Victor Chavez”
2009, “Fredy Chavez” 2009). However, they claim they have not yet achieved these
ideals. Their students often attain a certain level of skill in the dance and leave the group
in order to work with Ccarccaria in search commercial opportunities and media
popularity. Ccarccaria himself accused the Chavez brothers of exploiting these young
students, not paying them sufficiently for their labor in the folkloric show. He claims Los
Hermanos Chavez often initiates projects with fusion musicians or municipalities who
later cut ties with the group when they realize they can pay other dancers less money
(Personal Interview “Ccarccaria” 2009). The group claims that the high prices they
charge for their services reflect the high quality of the artistic product and their
unwillingness to be exploited, unlike most contemporary scissors dancer performers
(Personal Interview “Fredy Chavez” 2009). Many performers within the Huancavelica
community take Ccarccaria‟s side in the conflict, claiming that Los Hermanos Chavez
only know how to dance for the stage and not for the heightened competition of rural
festivals. To many performers, their emphasis on theatrical performance and lack of
family inheritance makes Los Hermanos Chavez merely aficionados and not “real”
scissors dancers, without the qualifications to truly rival Ccarccaria. Ccarccaria himself
suggests that the group speaks beautifully about the ritual significance of the dance, but
they do not know how to actually perform the rituals (Personal Interview “Ccarccaria”
2007). Clearly, both positionalities construct notions of authenticity in different ways in
order to distinguish themselves from the other.
Los Hermanos Chavez has continued its success on the international and touristic
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stages, which they attribute to their superior institution. Recently, the group has travelled
to the United States to perform at the National Museum of the American Indian, and to
China as part of a cultural delegation to celebrate the finalization of the Free Trade
Agreement between that country and Peru. Moreover, Fredy has recently served as the
President of the Peruvian Chapter of CIOFF. Every year he organizes the Festival of
Lima, a demonstration of staged folklore groups from throughout the world. Most of
these groups are from Latin America, but at least one or two special guests from Europe
or Asia appear each year (Personal Interview “Fredy Chavez” 2009). They shared the
honor with the ADTMP to represent the scissors dance as part of the Peruvian delegation
to the UNESCO meeting in Kenya in November 201, as the organization declared the
scissors dance Intangible Cultural Patrimony of Humanity. Conspicuously absent from
the ceremony were Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria. I suspect that the less commercial
positioning of these two institutions appealed to the mission of UNESCO, giving Los
Hermanos Chavez an avenue for distinction over their more famous competitors.
7.4 La Nueva Generación
Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria as well as Los Hemanos Chavez place great emphasis
on the transmission of a moral content to the next generation of scissors dance
performers. The public leadership still belongs to the particular generation who learned
the dance just prior to the outbreak of political violence in the 1980s. Although the
cultural practice had long been undergoing a series of modern transformations due to
migration and the changing relationship between rural and urban space within Peru, this
group perceives the internal war as a total rupture that justifies their moral leadership.
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The effects of the violence have sped up time in both rural communities and their urban
colonies. Qori Sisicha told me that today‟s youth lost their soul in the midst of the
internal chaos of violence and forced exile in the capital. Under the suffocating
conditions of urban poverty, they have no space to express themselves and most of them,
including his own son, do not speak Quechua. Those who practice the dance do so
because they feel attracted to their family inheritance, the spectacle of the acrobatics and
the costume, or the opportunities it provides to perform in respectable theatres, travel the
world, and to make money. But they are hardly aware of what it truly means to be a
scissors dancer, founded in the ritual content of a priesthood and guardian of the customs
and memory of a people (Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007).
Chimango
complained that his generation struggled to make a better life for their children, and the
new generation does not use the resources at its disposal for anything constructive.
Instead, they spend all their time playing video games and wasting their parents‟ hardearned money (Personal Interview “Chimango” 2007).
However, it would be a mistake to repeat earlier ethnographers‟ uncritical
acceptance of this generational nostalgia. A still older generation of performers ushered
very similar complaints towards these practitioners when they were younger. I have
found that the self-positioning of today‟s young scissors dance performers is significantly
more varied, complex, and interesting than these nostalgic sentiments of a lost youth
would suggest. I found it both surprising and compelling that when I asked young
performers to respond to the critiques of the older generation that they knew hardly
anything about what it means to be a scissors dancer, in most cases the younger
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performers agreed. However, they tended to turn the tables on the older generations,
placing the blame on them for not adequately sharing their knowledge. They suggest that
the masters maintain their jealousy and secrets and only express generosity towards the
young when commercial opportunities make it convenient (Personal Interview “Encanto”
2009, “Killihuara” 2009, “Pachak Chaki” 2009). They turn to a stunning variety of
models to construct their identities, from comic book and sports heroes to anthropological
texts and globalized discourses of indigeneity (Turino 1993: 143).
Yet, the very structures of the complex circuits of contemporary scissors dance
performance favor the reinvention of rather than discarding local and ethnic identities.
As the generation of performers who formed themselves immediately prior to the
violence still maintains its near-exclusive control over global and national stages, the
primary spaces for young performers to construct their own public personas are rural and
urban festivities. Dancers born in Lima still carry the name of their parent‟s village as
part of their artistic pseudonym. Although they no longer have to travel days on foot
from village to village to complete their cycle of contracts in rural fiestas, the very
exigencies of the length and competitive intensity that such rural festivities place on the
body invite them to learn previously ignored ritual practices, asking for the protection of
the apu-wamanis. I heard several stories from young performers about their first plaza
(rural competition), in which they did not perform the requisite rituals and found
themselves suffering from a wide variety of bodily calamities that weakened their
performance (Personal Interview “Killihuara” 2009, “Qoronta” 2008, “Cristal” 2009).
Moreover, the very cultural capital the dance has acquired as spectacle in
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cosmopolitan spaces sometimes strengthens the performers‟ ties to their place of origins
and ethnic identity. Cristal, a young dancer from Huancavelica arrived in Lima at the age
of only four months old. He comes from a family of musicians and his older brother is
Ccarccaria‟s long-time harpist. Yet, as a child he had no interest in the scissors dance,
finding himself more attracted to break dancing. He told me that he became interested in
the scissors dance after he saw a group of scissors dancers performing acrobatics on the
streets, similar to break dancers, and a group of onlookers threw money at them. He
made his own costume and practiced mainly the acrobatics. His brother later instructed
him that he needed to learn to play the scissors properly and taught him the various
tonadas. He did not learn Quechua until he began to earn contracts for rural and urban
festivals. Today, he proudly dominates the language almost like a native speaker and
claims he is a “complete” dancer after finishing several annual cycles on the rural festival
circuit in Huancavelica. He first learned to perform the pagapa (payment to the apu)
with Ccarccaria and his brothers, a major point of distinction for the young dancer as he
claims they rarely allow young performers to participate in these ceremonies. Yet, none
of the above cancels the production of a very identity. Cristal models himself on
Ccarccaria, envisioning himself as a cultural entrepreneur in the manner of his mentor.
He has inherited Ccarccaria‟s theatrical troupe and position within the tourist dinnertheatre circuit, after the celebrity dancer left it behind to concentrate on producing events.
Cristal has organized several of smaller-scale events of his own, which have turned a
small profit. He and his brothers also perform with fusion pop star Damaris during her
frequent concerts in Lima. His ultimate goal, he claims, is to make a name for himself,
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his dance, and his village in the wider world, a common refrain amongst the dancers and
exemplifying the interaction between local and cosmopolitan identities and objectives,
which constitute his generation of performers (Personal Interview “Cristal” 2009).
The rupture produced by the years of violence as well as dramatic improvements
in transportation communications infrastructure has brought urban and rural space much
closer together. Many of the most accomplished young dancers, such as Killihuara, have
significant experience living in both Lima and the rural highlands. Although born in
Lima in 1989, Killihuara‟s family returned to his hometown of Andamarca in 1996
during the post-conflict repatriation efforts of the state. He learned the dance in
Andamarca, mostly on his own through imitation, but with some help from his father. At
age fifteen, when he had formed himself enough as a dancer to compete, he moved back
to Lima on his own. From the capital, it was easier to secure contracts and make a name
for himself. During the festival season from June to October, he travels constantly by bus
from Lima to different villages in the highlands. Killihuara clearly distinguishes himself
from urbanized dancers who have only performed in theatres or urban contests. Yet, he
is not a traditionalist who rejects the validity of theatrical performances or commercial
activities outright. In fact, he aspires to acquire the level of Qori Sisicha or even higher
as a cultural entrepreneur. Rather, the intensity of competition and the knowledge of a
more “complete” performance repertoire required to triumph in rural festivities
distinguish him from the more urbanized performers based on specific skills rather than
an absolute essentialist position. As a novice he presented himself before the paccha
(mountain cave with a waterfall) to enter a pact with an apu-wamani like the generations
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of rural performers who preceded him. Yet, he also shares with many urban performers
the notion that the apu-wamani is a more metaphysical space, rather than a physical
location, which resides within the dancer‟s self (Personal Interview “Killihuara” 2009).
Almost opposite to Killihuara in his urbanized and cosmopolitan positioning,
Encanto de Puquio has live in Lima his whole life. His father is a much older migrant
who arrived in Lima from Puquio as a young man in the 1950s, and Encanto‟s much
older brother is Richard Saire, the so-called first scissors dancer born in Lima. Encanto
has spent most of his brief career as a scissors dancer performing in theatres and with the
fusion rock group La Sarita. In everyday life, he often wears heavy metal t-shirts and
black fingernail polish, which sometimes alienates him from other young performers. He
has never performed the dance in a rural festivity and only recently began to earn
contracts in urban fiestas costumbristas despite being several years older than Killihuara.
Yet, he shares with the more rural dancer the idea that the apu-wamani is always present
inside the dancer. Performing the dance allows the dancer to feel and communicate with
the spirit inside (Personal Interview “Encanto” 2009). Both dancers stressed the need for
young performers to educate themselves and learn more about the origins of the dance by
reading the work of anthropologists. Anthropological interpretations have become
models for moral and philosophical comportment of a globalized rural and urban Andean
youth (Personal Interview “Killihuara” 2009, “Encanto” 2009).
A group of young scissors dancers and musicians who take this logic to its
extreme have become active participants in the Tawantinsuyista movement. A full
analysis of the ideology and practices of this complex form of globalized indigeneity are
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beyond the scope of this study. It is comprised of associational groupings of urban
intellectuals and their youthful followers who theorize that Tawantinsuyo was an
alternative civilization as advanced as the modern West. Rooted in indigenista
discourses that glorified the Inca Empire, these groups go far beyond them by situating
the Incas as only the most unified manifestation of a long evolutionary development of
Andean civilization going back to the founding of the city of Chavin around 3,000 BCE.
Beyond a particular narrative of Andean history, Tawantinsuyistas construct a panAndean and postcolonial nationalism, which roughly comprises the territory within the
limits of the former Inca Empire. They argue that the modern nations of Peru, Bolivia,
and Ecuador, as well as parts of Colombia, Chile, and Argentina are illegitimate due to
their roots in Spanish colonialism. Tawantinsuyistas often affiliate with the vast
networks of the global indigenous movement, situating the Andean nation within the
broader continental framework of Abya Yala. Through the use of anthropological and
ethnohistorical sources, they attempt to live by the spiritual and cultural principles of
ancient Andean man (Anchita 2005, Personal Interview” Pachak Chaki” 2009).
Despite this postcolonial ideology, these groups often receive financial and
spiritual support from US and European NGOs affiliated with various cults of New Age
spirituality. For example, Intip Megíl Guaman is a tawantinsuyista author who lives in
Paris and is affiliated with the French NGO, Association Pachamama. One of his most
well-known works, Tawa: Más Alla del Paititi, is essentially a spiritual travel narrative of
his re-encounters with his Andean homeland (2010). He constructs a typology of yachaq;
Andean wise-men. Included in this typology are the Layqa, who the Spanish called
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witches. Creating a bricolage of reinventions of tradition associated with both the
Huancavelica and Ayacucho scissors dance styles, he situates the scissors dancer as the
contemporary inheritor of this Andean sacred tradition. He seamlessly merges the origin
myth of “El Niño Leñador” and the legend of „La Agonia de Rasu Niti” as well as the
origin myth of the Tusuq Layqa from Huancavelica in order to construct a coherent and
originary figure who embodies the survival of an ancient Andean priesthood (Megil
Guaman 2010: 34-41). Thus, he extends the notion that the contemporary practice of the
dance takes on an emblematic character which links the present to the Pre-Columbian
past and actualizes the purity of origins within a dynamic contemporary moment.
The initial links between young scissors dancers and the broader tawantinsuyista
movement came about through the interventions of Fortunato Anchita, the founder of
Integración Ayllu. A civil engineer by profession, Anchita is a migrant from the
community of Chipao in southern Ayacucho, who arrived in Lima more than forty years
ago. As a hobby he became interested in investigating Andean ethnohistory in order to
know more about his origins. He also was a major enthusiast of the scissors dance, which
had seen practiced since he was a child in his place of origin. In the 1990s, he became
fascinated with the dance‟s potential origins in the Taki Onqoy movement. Since 1992,
Fortunato has become a close associate with the ADTMP, participating as an unofficial
spiritual guide to the association (Personal Interview “Fortunato Anchita” 2009). In
2005, he published a pamphlet manifesto entitled, Taki Onqoy=La Danza de las Tijeras,
in which he narrated the entire 5,000 year history of Andean civilization. He located
1992 as the year of the beginning of a new Taki Onqoy, where the Andean people had
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begun to abandon their forced syncretism and colonized mentality. This pamphlet
depicts the scissors dance as a heroic figure of this new era ushering in the rebirth and
flowering of Andean civilization. Several of the current scissors dancers from Ayacucho
received titles of symbolic danzaq (Anchita 2005). Narrating the Ensayo Ceremonial
staged on April 9, 2004, Anchita claims that with the spiritual guidance of Integración
Ayllu, the scissors dancers have restored the adoration of the Wakas in place of Jesus
Christ. He suggests that “for the first time after 471 years of Spanish invasion they
danced openly in adoration of the Wakas in an event we call the stage of spiritual
restoration” (Ibid. 49). Many of the younger members enthusiastically embraced the
interventions of Señor Anchita (as they call him). Nevertheless, older members often
accepted the changes but quietly expressed skepticism. In 2009, the year I observed the
Ensayo Ceremonial, generation tensions flared up due to the change of leadership in the
association and the restoration of the image of Christ as the adorned figure of the event.
In order to better situate this conflict I first examine the perspective of the
youthful participants in Integración Ayllu. Toward the end of my fieldwork, I struck up a
friendship with a young dancer named Pachak Chaki. Although less accomplished as a
virtuoso performer than others, Pachak Chaki is an intellectual leader of a group of young
practitioners who view the dance as the central activity of a spiritual revival movement.
In the larger scissors dance community he is better known as the best confectioner and
embroiderer of costumes on the contemporary scene than as a dancer. He adorns his
costumes with colorful images drawn from Inca and Pre-Inca iconographies. The dancer
claims that although he realizes that most of his buyers are attracted to the eye-catching
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designs as simple decoration, they serve as the initial phase of a pedagogical process.
Once the dancers have the costume in their possession and begin to wear them on their
bodies, they may begin to wonder what these symbols refer to. Central to this theory is
Pachak Chaki‟s own notion of double-agency. He distinguishes between the mythical
figure of the danzaq and the human dancer. He views his spiritual compromise with the
dance as a form of embodiment that brings him closer to the ideal of the prophets of the
Taki Onqoy (Personal Interview “Pachak Chaki” 2009).
Pachak Chaki is less interested in the Taki Onqoy as a historical event than as an
embodied model for indigenous identity in the contemporary moment. The dancer has
developed close links to the transnational indigenous movement, by participating in
conferences in Bolivia and Ecuador. Every June 24, the day of the ancient Inca solstice
festival Inti Raymi, he leads other scissors dancers affiliated with Integración Ayllu in an
offering to the Wakas at the ruins of the Pre-Inca shrine Pachacamac. The group invites
indigenous organizations from neighboring Andean countries as well as several NGOs to
participate in the event. At the end of my fieldwork, Pachak Chaki offered to make me a
special honorary scissors dance costume to be finished for my next trip to Peru. In
talking about the design of the costume, he wanted to symbolize the marriage between
the United States and Peru, which constitutes my current professional and personal life,
by combining Inca iconography with images of Apache warriors. This association of the
Apache warrior as an emblem of all North American indigenous groups was a common
refrain in my research. An under-researched phenomenon of global indigeneity is the
appropriation of Hollywood popular culture stereotypes of American Indian warriors as
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models for South American indigenous identity. These appropriations create both
affiliations and tensions within the interrelationship between North American and South
American indigenous groups. References to Apache warriors by scissors dance
performers were made less out of a desire to offend other native groups as to express an
imagined brotherhood with them. These images also demonstrate the continuing
resonance of the heroic masculine warrior in articulations of cosmopolitan indigeneity.
After the leadership of the ADTMP in 2009, older scissors dancer practitioners
took back the Ensayo Ceremonial from the Integración Ayllu faction of the association
and restored the image of Christ as the adored figure of the ceremony. Anchita and the
younger practitioners protested baldly, threatening to boycott the event and stage their
own Ensayo Ceremonial. From their perspective, the deference paid to Christ at the
initiation of the ceremony and the flogging the dancers submit to afterward, repeated a
colonized imaginary. However, I suggest that it would be a mistake to accept uncritically
this distinction between colonized and decolonized enactments. During my
conversations with Pachak Chaki, he clearly showed reverence for academic study. By
reading anthropological and ethnohistorical texts he believes he has better knowledge of
the true significance of the dance than the less enlightened older practitioners (Personal
Interview “Pachak Chaki” 2009). Pachak Chaki and his younger compatriots portray the
older generations as ignorant and uneducated. Therefore, in addition to a series of
postcolonial discourses and practices, these young performers have reproduced the
hegemonic sacralization of education as the basis for legitimate hierarchies. The older
practitioners who restored the Christ image legitimately feel that the actions of
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Integración Ayllu disrespect their practical and embodied knowledge and represent an
affront to a time-honored tradition and the important role of the scissors dancer in local
versions of popular Catholicism. I contend that these generational conflicts are far too
complex and contradictory for an outside researcher to claim one or another represents a
legitimate defense of tradition or alternatively a decolonization of indigenous knowledge.
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Chapter 8
Conclusion
I have shown that rather than originating in Pre-Columbian shamanic rituals, the
scissors dance emerged as a highly-specialized genre of folk theatrical performance in the
hybrid Andean-Catholic intercultures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If the
dance developed out of the bricolage of mostly European performance practices, the
stock character of the scissors dancer enacted an ambivalent memory of earlier Andean
ritual specialists, reconfigured as a diabolic Other. The early documentary sources of the
dance depict a more mobile, hybrid, and historically contingent performance practice
than later Andeanist ethnographers have portrayed. At the same time, these sources
contributed to the emergence of the Andeanist ethnographic imaginary, progressively
participating in imagining the Andean Other in an idealized and ahistorical fashion.
Modernization efforts of the 1920s dramatically began to alter the relationship between
the national coastal center and marginalized highland peripheries. The realignment of the
so-called Chanka region, caused by the construction of modern highways, created two
distinct circuits of itinerant performance and exacerbated local differences into two quite
different forms of performance. José María Arguedas brought of these forms of the
scissors dance into the broader national imaginary by staging it as an emblem of the
creativity of Andean culture in his fictional and anthropological writings, and staged
folklore performances. Arguedas‟s representations of the dance embody the author‟s
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evolving performance of selfhood in relation to his intimacy to Andean indigenous
culture, enacted most clearly in the utopian performance of a new Peruvian nation staged
at his own funeral.
In the quarter century after Arguedas‟s death, populist nationalism, mass urban
Andean migration, and political violence dramatically transformed the scissors dance
from a rural festival form into a cosmopolitan genre staged in multiple urban
entertainments. This nearly complete relocation reduced the complexity of a rich musical
and choreographic repertoire. Nevertheless, it is quite probable that the dance would
have disappeared or emerged from the rupture of the internal war extremely weakened if
it were not for these aesthetic transformations that garned popularity in urban spectacles.
Moreover, the improvisatory flexibility of the genre enabled young migrant performers to
express their new experiences of urban poverty and to creatively respond to the
insecurities of living through extreme political violence and economic collapse. In the
aftermath of the internal war, the scissors dance increasingly became a commodified icon
of “millennial” Andean authenticity in a global cultural marketplace that values cultural
difference. The development of neoliberal multiculturalism during the successive
governments of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006)
favored the incorporation of the marginalized masses through spectacles of multicultural
recognition. Tourist promotion companies, cultural institutions, television producers, and
the performers themselves reduced ethnographic narratives of authenticity and cultural
resistance into marketing slogans that accompanied virtuosic spectacles of Andean
Otherness on the global stage. These narratives of authenticity and cultural resistance
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constituted a significant part of the dance‟s appeal. Nevertheless, the performances
domesticated indigeneity within the parameters of the unthreatening figure of the
hyperreal Indian.
One of the central aims of this study is to examine authenticity and resistance not
as objective realities but as perfomative tropes that may accomplish quite different ends
than either authenticity or resistance. As numerous folklorists, historians, and
anthropologists have recently suggested, the authentic is a notion inextricably tied to the
alienations produced by the experience of modernity. It names the desire for an imagined
otherness, distant in either time or space or sometimes both, perceived to be more holistic
and pure than one‟s own society. Performances of authenticity, often linked to the exotic,
have an affective power that may produce profound effects on the constructions of
identity of both performers and spectators. In the neoliberal society in which we live,
globalization has made such performances of authenticity both more available and more
appealing to the masses throughout the world. Commodified expressions of indigeneity
increasingly serve as an imagined antidote to the excesses of Western modernity. As
postmodernity has undeniably transformed hegemonic conceptions of global history,
melodramatic narratives of heroic indigenous resistance are no longer threatening to late
capitalism as long as they are projected onto the past. Both first and third world elites
tend to appreciate diversity only when it has been aestheticized, sanitized, and
disembedded from continuing histories of political and economic inequality, as well as
the political agency of marginalized people. Paradoxically, contemporary scissors dance
performers now create improvised hybridized performances of heroic cultural resistance
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in order to conceal their own hybridity from the wider world.
Yet these dramatic transformations of the aesthetic form and performance
contexts of the scissors dance have also entailed a shift in its significance for the people
who practice it and the communities that nourished them. Prior to these transformations,
the scissors dancer theatrically embodied an ambivalent yet charismatic diabolic other
tied to the repudiated Andean religious past. Following the example of Arguedas and the
intensification of commodified representations of the dance, contemporary performers
now enact a character that increasingly resembles globalized discourses of idealized
indigeneity. Rather than an instrumental fiction this character becomes the essence of a
modern indigenous self that the dancers repeatedly embody in performance. On the one
hand, they strategically use the value of hyperreal indigeneity as cultural capital in order
to become cosmopolitan artists who travel the world, cultural entrepreneurs who achieve
the status of the emerging middle class cholo, and even the leaders of indigenous spiritual
revival movements. On the other hand, the performances connect them to an imagined
past, place of origin, and essential identity that brings some degree of coherence to their
lives. As the performers get closer to the model upon which they construct their
identities through embodiment, sometimes they also become models for Andean
spectators to imagine their own identities.
Although it may not seem like what we traditionally define as theatre, I argue that
the scissors dance embodies the power of theatricality to shape the identities of both
performers and spectators. Thus, I position my study within a reinvigorated Theatre
Studies, which has begun to gently and sympathetically push back on Performance
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Studies. Performance Studies has too hastily conflated unmarked everyday performances
of identity with theatrical events where actors self-consciously perform in front of an
audience. Rather than enacting the self, theatrical performers usually portray an “other,”
which nonetheless can have a profound effect on the actor‟s self-fashioning. The
specialized mimetic competency of scissors dance performers encourages the
development of multiple subjectivities that gives them access to agency in the remaking
of Peruvian nationhood and the fashioning of modern indigenous citizen-subjects. The
distinct modes of audience reaction by Western and Andean spectators partially shape
these constantly evolving performances of identity. I contend that the conceptual lens of
performativity alone is not sufficient for a full understanding of these complex
intercultural performances. The related notion of theatricality helps us to articulate both
the creative agency of theatrical performers and their interactions with various audiences.
A theatrical understanding of the staging of the scissors dance allows us to account for
the ways in which performative economies of spectacle shape the reconfigurations of
Peruvian nationhood in the contemporary era of neoliberal globalization.
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Endnotes
Chapter 1
1
In agreement with Savran, I add that a critical historiography of culture has the potential to reinvigorate
the stalled interdisciplinary conversation between theatre and anthropology which played such a major role
in the foundations of performance studies. Too often we base our conceptual models on outmoded
frameworks borrowed from anthropology at the same time as we repeat the now hegemonic critique of
ethnography with little knowledge of the significant ways in which anthropology has transformed over the
past several decades.
2
In the 1970s, Dean MacCannel suggested that authenticity could be “staged,” yet he too maintained a
structuralist position, implying authenticity existed prior to the artifice of its enactment (1974).
Chapter 2
1
(Arguedas 1978: 131)
2
They look past the external hybridity of Andean cultural forms in order to reveal, “the Spanish overlay as
a merely thin veneer covering a clandestine but ongoing survival of a coherent and purely Andean
cosmology” (Abercrombie: xix). They acknowledge some degree of external change and syncretism, yet
they perceive these processes as masking an unchanging essential core.
3
His book celebrates the Taki Onqoy as a millenarian anticolonial resistance movement which contributed
to the “millenary consciousness” of the contemporary populations of the southern highlands, particularly
the descendants of the Hatun Soras in the southern part of Ayacucho. The scissors dance is amongst the
contemporary cultural practices that he suggests exemplify the inheritance of the “millenary consciousness”
of the Taki Onqoy.
4
As Fernando Cervantes notes in the case of Mexico, historians of popular culture and ethnographic
observers have tended to react with embarrassment to indigenous assertions of diabolic pacts, treating them
as a simple imposition of a hegemonic idea (1994: 2).
5
Even early colonial Andean chroniclers Garcilaso de la Vega and Guaman Poma de Ayala, both of whom
had converted to Christianity, vigilantly associated the term supay with the devil.
6
Cieza suggested that supay inspired Andean funerary, and still others asserted that supay huasi was the
abode where the pagan Andean ancestors served perpetual condemnation (Taylor 1980: 43).
7
These myths almost invariably deny any ancestral relationship between these ancient pagan beings and
contemporary Andean peasant groups, who trace their lineage to a mythical vision of the Incas imagined as
a civilizing force.
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8
Various Andean polities regularly invaded other ayllus, large regional empires emerged at various times
long before the expansion of the Inca empire in the first half of the fifteenth century. The conquered
groups typically incorporated the conquerors as their ancestors and Andean intercultural encounters became
enmeshed in increasingly complicated sacred landscapes with multiple and overlapping ancestral
obligations and origin points. The interconnected networks of ancestral huacas typically divided Andean
polities into hierarchical upper and lower moieties. The duality of Andean political and social organization
functioned on multiple scales organizing relationships not only within local ayllus, but also between
highland and coastal cultural groups. The superior upper moieties typically constituted a wealthier class of
llama and alpaca herders, and the inferior lower moieties a lower class of agricultural peasants. Each
interconnected political unit performed its own confessions, sacrifices and libations for its ancestral
mummies; whose camaquen, an Andean notion loosely translated as soul but refers more specifically to a
kind of embodied spirit double, animated the collective and individual lives of ayllu members and mediated
their access to water and other vital resources necessary for fertility (Gose 2008).
9
About a century before the Spanish invasion, the Inca state in Cuzco completed an unprecedented
expansion into a massive territory which encompassed nearly half of the continent of South America. They
exercised an impressive amount of state power, creating significant class divisions between a landed
aristocracy of Inca rulers and their peasant subjects. They succeeded in directing a great deal of economic
and political capital toward a centralized state and religious worship toward the imperial cult of the sun.
However, the success of the Inca state was in large part due to their reorganization and manipulation of
time-honored Andean frameworks of ancestral affiliation. They instituted new forms of political and
religious surveillance that monitored the activities of local Curacas and the religious specialists of local
ancestral cults. Yet, as long as these political and religious authorities openly supported the hierarchical
hegemony of the Inca state and religious cults, they retained certain levels of autonomy (Rostkrwowski
1997).
10
In fact, many Andean polities did explicitly collaborate with Spanish conquistadors in order to liberate
themselves from what they viewed at the time as despotic Inca rule. For at least the first few decades after
the arrival of the Spaniards, these groups enjoyed significant political and economic privileges. Even after
the initial years of Conquest, Spanish encomienderos were often too busy appropriating valuable resources
and fighting amongst each other to directly rule over Andean subjects.
11
I do not mean to suggest that relations between colonized and colonizer were harmonic, but rather
Andeans already had well-established repertoires of strategies of how to deal with invasion and conquest.
12
Andean commoners performed certain ritual obligations themselves, but also consulted a highly
differentiated network of oracles, priests, and deities. Probably because of their similarities as much as
differences with Catholic priests, these Andean religious specialists became the principal targets of colonial
religious persecution. Seventeenth century extirpators of idolatry isolated these individuals as the
purveyors of false religion rather than the simple superstition and error practiced by Andean commoners.
The latter could be molded and disciplined through proper religious instruction, whereas the former could
not. Through their protagonism in the Taki Onqoy movement and later separatist apostasies, the specialized
class of Andean priests and oracles became stigmatized figures vehemently persecuted during the
Extirpation of Idolatry campaigns beginning in the late sixteenth century. As they transformed over time,
these figures became the models synthesized into the stock character type the scissors dancer later came to
embody as a reenactment of historical memory.
13
In the religious, as well as political and economic domains early Spanish colonial rule resembled far
more of a conflictual competition for power amongst various factions, including indigenous elites and
commoners, than the domination of one homogenous bloc of Europeans over an equally homogenous
indigenous bloc as it is conventionally represented.
316
14
These priesthoods included both men and women officiants, as well as hereditary and non-hereditary
forms of the transmission of specialized knowledge (Rostworowski 1997: 159).
15
Amongst the most important religious specialists were those who cared for and communicated with the
mummified remains of past heroic figures in elaborate man-made cave-tombs known as chullpas.
Chroniclers of the early colonial period often disgustedly report that these ministers of the mallquis often
broke into church tombs and stole dead Andean bodies in order to perform mummification rituals and
entomb them in these cave-houses. The mummified dead were particularly important sources of fertility
and access to water.
16
The Incas replaced disobedient priests and oracles, who they routinely executed, with new officiants
who favored the Inca state. Furthermore, they installed multiple forms of surveillance monitoring those
huaca specialized who remained, included those they had hand-picked. Those who retained good relations
with the Inca state and their high imperial priests travelled once a year to Cuzco to convene in Coricancha,
the temple of the sun, for the capacocha festival (Gose 1996). Despite numerous tensions and sometimes
open conflict between imperial cults and regional ancestral networks, the Incas ruled through a hegemonic
model of hierarchical differentiation and control which favored the continuity of local religious and
political systems instead of their forced erasure. Although subject to state surveillance and control, Andean
religious specialists retained a great deal of power amongst their local constituents.
17
Although from a Western perspective many of these specialized performers resembled mummers,
clowns, and acrobatics, Andean societies revered them as priests. They did not oppose mimetic
entertainments to purely sacred rituals, but rather perceived both as “gifts of human expenditure to divine
forces” (Taylor 2004: 371).
18
The specialists who performed in such ritual purifications prepared by fasting and abstaining from sexual
activity for up to a week beforehand. A number of ethnographic accounts of the scissors dance hypothesize
the origins of the dance in these ritual performance practices (Barrionuevo 1988: 214, Cavero Carrasco
2001).
19
In recent years Andeanist ethnohistorians have celebrated the document as an Andean version of the
Popul Vuh or the Rabinal Achi. Although it reflects the missionary interests of its compiler, Avila appears
to have gone to great lengths to preserve a measure of the voice of his native informants.
20
With Millones‟s discovery of the Información de Servicios de Cristobal de Albornoz, the principal
extirpator of the Taki Onqoy, the emerging field of Andean ethnohistory began to pay more attention to the
sixteenth century nativist movement. Many ethnohistorians began to ask new historical questions about
indigenous Andean experiences of colonialism. Did they resist? Did any elements of authentic Andean
culture survive the Spanish invasion and the imposition of Catholicism? A number of Andeanist
ethnohistorians in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s hailed the Taki Onqoy from a nationalist perspective as a
genuine Andean resistance movement which demonstrated the early development of a Pan-Andean
protonationalist identity (Mumford 1998: 150).
21
His major accomplishment was the suppression of the Taki Onqoy when he served as the inspector of the
Diocese of Huamanga between 1569 and 1571. The four informaciones of 1569, 1570, 1577, and 1584 not
only exalted Albornoz‟s accomplishments but also engaged in detailed descriptions of the ideology and
embodied practices of the Taki Onqoy (Millones 1990, 2007, Mumford 1998, Gose 2008).
22
The subordinate preachers typically travelled in groupings which repeated this gendered pattern, and
included mostly already baptized Spanish-speaking indigenous elites. In his testimony on behalf of
Albornoz from 1577, Molina claimed “Certain Indian women called themselves Santa Maria and Santa
317
Maria Magdalena and other names of the Saints [. . .] in order to be revered as saints” (Millones 1990:
181). The women appear to have adored female saints as if they were added to the established pantheon of
huacas.
23
Written in 1584, more than a decade after Albornoz suppressed the movement, “Instruccion Para
Descubrir Todas las Guacas y sus Camayos y Haziendas” served as a functional guidebook in how to
successfully extirpate idolatries for use by later evangelists (Urbano and Duviols 1990: 192). His treatment
of the movement in this later manual differs considerably from those found in the Informaciones.
24
This group drew on worldwide scholarly interest in popular culture and history from below, as well as
new archaeological discoveries that proved that the reign of the Inca Empire was much shorter than
previously thought (Mumford 1998: 57).
25
The influence of this view within academic circles tempered in the 1990s, at the same as it began to
permeate popular culture in Peru and throughout South America. The Taki Onqoy appeared as a symbol of
Andean cultural identity in popular songs, theatre productions, modern dance, poetry, graffiti, textbooks for
Andean schoolchildren, and even televised historical fiction (Millones 2007:57-63 ).
26
They did not necessarily deny that the Taki Onqoy constituted a resistance movement. However, they
questioned the effectiveness of a purely inward-looking spiritual revival cult unaccompanied by military
action or political negotiation.
27
These revisionist historians argue that early colonial indigenous Andean resistance is unknowable at best,
as Spanish colonial authorities produced nearly all of the traces that remain in the archival record
(Mumford 1998).
28
It was only after the military threat of the Inca rebels was subdued in the late 1560s, that the Spanish
colonial state turned its attention to suppressing the religious apostasy under the authority of Cristobal de
Albornoz.
29
Most studies have focused on the movement‟s ideology mediated by discourse. Estenssoro (1992) does
situate the movement in broader colonial discourses about native music and dance, yet he is more
concerned with Spanish views and ecclesiastical debates about native performance rather than the
embodied practices actually performed during the Taki Onqoy. Some recent studies have noticed certain
parallels between the rituals and dances of the Taki Onqoy and Pre-Columbian purification rituals, such as
the Inca Situa, and a Pre-Columbian healing ceremony from Ayacucho which shares the name Taki Onqoy
(Millones and Tomoeda 1998, Cavero Carrasco 2001). However, their claims remain rather speculative
and they tend to reduce the Taki Onqoy to a primordial essence. Partially this lack of detailed research on
the performance practices associated with the Taki Onqoy is due to the limitations and biases of the
available sources. Nevertheless, drawing on some newly available sources which mention the Taki Onqoy
and research on other Pre-Columbian and early colonial performance practices,
30
Other parallels, such as the length of the festivals, the element of competition valorizing bodily
expenditure, along with the simulation of spirit possession performed by the dancer suggest that the
scissors dance is a performed reenactment which remembers the Taki Onqoy and later derivative
movement.
31
Toledo directed his reforms as much towards Spanish encomienderos, who claimed failed to provide
adequate religious instruction and exercised rampant corruption in the collection of tribute taxes, as towards
indigenous Andeans themselves. Nevertheless, the contradictions of the colonial enterprise, where
economic interests often clashed with religious instruction, continued to undermine the discourses of
complementarity between religious and economic goals promoted by colonial administrators. In particular,
318
the continuing mediating power of indigenous curacas in collecting tribute taxes and enforcing mandatory
labor undermined the supposed exclusivity of Catholicism, as the authority of indigenous elites was based
on religious beliefs in Divine Kingship (Gose 2008: 128).
32
The Jesuits conducted specialized religious instruction while the inspectors carried out trials against
accused idolaters. The inspectors handed out punishments which ranged from public humiliation and
flogging to exile and even execution for extreme offenders. Inspectors often found Curacas and smaller
regional elites as well as religious specialists the guiltiest offenders of idolatry due to their particular
interests in keeping Andean ancestor worship alive (Burga 1988: 203).
33
In fact, the vast majority of what we know about Pre-Columbian and early colonial Andean religions
comes from the various chronicles, instruction manuals, and the records of idolatry trials produced by the
first Extirpation of Idolatry campaign (Griffiths 1996, Mills 1997).
34
For example, according to Arriaga, the macsa were healers, the socyne were diviners, the moscoc were
interpreters of dreams, and cuachos were the most feared sorcerers and witches (Arriaga 1621: 34-41). He
also wrote about similar ecstatic dances and purification rituals as performed during the Taki Onqoy,
arguing that Andeans easily concealed idolatry under the guise of Catholic festivities (Ibid. 56-62).
35
Charged with the maintenance of traditional ancestral authority, they echoed the exclusivist discourses of
Catholic priests and preached that the huacas were famished from neglect, sending epidemics and plagues
to Andean populations as punishment. Despite their anti-Christian ideology these religious specialists often
appropriated aspects of Christianity.
36
All of these elements are suggestive of the figure of the scissors dancer. The multi-colored costumes,
including crowns of feathers, which appear to have been associated with idolatry by Spanish clerics and
shamanic specialists by both the Incas and Amazonian communities, describe similar costumes to early
scissors dancers recorded in nineteenth century documents. The dancers‟ scissors may have developed out
of imitations of these animal claws and other sharp objects held by the diabolic priests, later fashioned into
musical instruments. Finally, the descriptions of the priests as spitting fire and performing other
extraordinary physical feats recall some of the elements of the pruebas de valor performed by
contemporary scissors dancers.
37
He did not think highly of Andean sorcerers who he represented as deceivers and agents of the devil.
Guaman Poma resided in the central area of diffusion of the Taki Onqoy and served as Cristobal de
Albornoz‟s native interpreter and aid during his extirpation campaign. The indigenous chronicler clearly
blamed the sorcerers of Vilcabamba on the outbursts of idolatry of the Taki Onqoy, which may provide
further evidence suggesting the movement developed out of a revival of Inca imperial cults or may just be
another manifestation of his clear dislike of the Inca elite.
38
In fact, he blamed indigenous idolatry mostly on Spanish abuses as they caused Indians to flee
consolidated towns to gullies and high plateaus. Furthermore, he argued that Spanish landowners
frequently acted like Incas, receiving taquies and other forms of ancestral adoration from indigenous
commoners (Gose 2008)
39
Some recent research has nuanced this chronology by pointing out that a diminished number of idolatry
trials continued until the second half of the eighteenth century. They further suggest that religious change
was far more gradual and uneven, and intercultural exchange was far more dynamic than classical notions
of syncretism allow (Griffiths 1996, Mills 1997, Cahill 2002, Gose 2008).
319
40
Cock further suggested that the infiltration of exterior influences such as witchcraft and black magic
brought about the end of a recognizably Andean religious system distinct from Catholicism and with it the
various religious specialties that sustained it (1980: 195).
41
Either because of their resemblance to dancers from Galicia or because of similarities between their
costumes and trajes de gala, priests and townspeople began to call these mysterious dancers galas.
42
In 1653, Bernabe Cobo wrote “Each province throughout the Inca Empire had its own manner of dancing
which the Indians never exchanged; now, however, any nation [. . .] may imitate and simulate dances from
the other provinces” (Cobo 1653: 14, 17).
43
Poole argues that Andean communities sought to represent the “other” in quite different ways and for
different reasons than conventional Western performance traditions. She suggests, “The power politics of
dance is not a willful means to react to, satirize, or otherwise passively „represent‟ power. It is a means to
incorporate power first by impersonating it and secondly by using this decentered, individualized act of
impersonation as a ritual for the social-political reproduction of local Andean communities” (1990: 118).
44
Recent historical research has revealed that much of what contemporary Andeanists portray as timeless
and primordial Andean culture actually emerged and transformed in the dynamic intercultural exchanges of
the second half of the eighteenth century (Flores Galindo 1986, Burga 1988, Cahill 1999, Beyersdorff
1999, Gose 2008).
45
Within traditional Andean systems of duality, competition engenders complementarity and the end result
of fierce competition is often conceived of as a utopian form of reconciliation between oppositional forces
(Cánepa Koch 1998).
46
While the origin myth cited above only mentions a single Spanish dance with handkerchiefs and
castanets, the competitive aspect where individual dancers face each other, recalls the sparring of
matachines sword dancers. Visual illustrations of the dance from the nineteenth century appear quite
similar to the costumes of matachines of the same period. Like sword dances and other weapons dances,
the choreography of the scissors dance includes an introductory circular passage where the competing
performers attempt to intimidate each other (Poole 1990: 149).
47
For example, a female dance called the guiadores which shares a number of choreographic elements with
the scissors dance represents a combination of the singing angels who announce the birth of the Baby Jesus
to the shepherds and the stars which guide the wise men to the site of Christ‟s birth.
48
The descent of diabolic sorcerers from the high plateau to adore the Christ child enacted by the festival
dramaturgy parallels the origin narrative told by contemporary dancers.
49
After Potosi in modern Bolivia, Huancavelica was the most important mining center in the Viceroyalty of
Peru. Discovered in 1560s, during the height of the Taki Onqoy, the Huancavelica mines were long sites in
which the contradictions of the Spanish colonial state were most clearly visible. The colonial government
appropriated the Inca system of the mita, renovating the forced labor of young indigenous men for an
emerging capitalist economy, sending migratory workers to build roads, construct towns, and above all
work in the silver mines of Potosi and the mercury mines of Huancavelica. However, the itinerancy of
labor migration undermined evangelical justifications in general, and the objectives of settlement
consolidation in particular (Gose 2008).
50
Taussig‟s account draws heavily on the research of June Nash about the mythical figure of el Tio
amongst the tin miners of Bolivia. El Tio is a small bearded white man who is the owner of the minerals
found in the mines. He is often figured with the horns of a devil, and known by outsiders by the name
320
supay. The miners make offerings to the diabolic figure in exchange for the extraction of mineral ore
(Taussig 1980).
51
Salazar Soler recounts several variants of the origin myth of el muki, who lived on the earth in the past
era concurrent with the Incas. On the seventh day, supay tempted the muki by promising that all the riches
of the mines could be his in exchange for his soul. When the Inca King, Roal, found out about the diabolic
pact Jesus Christ condemned him to eternal life in the infernal Uku Pacha. Despite the diabolic
associations, Salazar Soler‟s research confirms that to the miners he can be both a malignant and dangerous
force or a generous provider, depending upon if the miners are generous in their offerings to the earth
demon (2006).
52
The text of a 1951 linguistic study of the regional dialect of Quechua from the province of Parinacochas
suggests a further connection between the Serena and the mysterious female apparition from Huancavelica.
One brief oral text cited by the study describes the cult of the serena by referring to her as Juanita (Centro
de la Colaboracion 1951: 291-292). The common use of the name Juana or Juanita to describe the female
apparition suggests a close interrelationship between the mythologies of the underworld in these two
regions where the scissors dance is performed. Furthermore, this name draws a specific connection
between the female serena and male diabolic figures, who often bear the name Juan, Juanico, or
Juaniquillo.
53
This figure derives from the Greco-Roman tradition of the siren and the mermaid. The mermaid is a
fantastic beast that reentered the European imagination with the discovery of the Americas. Columbus
himself recorded seeing mermaids in the Caribbean in his diaries. The figure probably entered Andean
culture and mythology through seventeenth century religious art, and perhaps more importantly Baroque
religious theatre, in particular the autos of Calderon de la Barca. In a number of his plays, Calderon
portrays the allegorical figure of sin as a beautiful mermaid.
54
Numerous accounts associate sirens with trout, freshwater fish introduced by the Spanish invaders.
55
The work of Bigenho suggests an interesting dynamic where scissors dancers and musicians vehemently
distinguish between the Serena and the devil, while performers of other folkloric dances, as well as most
residents of particular localities conflate the two infernal figures (Bigenho 1991: 124-126)
56
This particular region was the center of the Taki Onqoy movement. Thus, the attribution of the origins of
the dance to southern Ayacucho and narratives of a close intimacy between the early colonial nativist
movement and the origins of the scissors dance tend to reinforce each other. In addition, José María
Arguedas popularized this particular style in the 1960s, so it had a much larger national profile and was
more familiar to anthropologists than other regional variants.
57
However, the evidence that suggests the flow of materials from the mining center of Huancavelica and
urban Huamanga to the more agrarian areas of Lucanas and Parinacochas supports my larger argument that
the relationship between the scissors dance and Pre-Columbian performance and religious practices is the
result of surrogation and theatrical reenactment rather than direct descent.
58
For instance, in the versions recounted in Cruz Fierro (1982) and Barrionuevo (1988) the young dancer
becomes a presence in specifically Catholic festivities in honor of local patron saints. Furthermore, the
multi-colored embroidered costumes suggest a European rather than a purely indigenous style.
59
These names recall an association with the devils which inhabit the mines of Huancavelica and Bolivia.
In Umachiri, a small town in the department of Puno near the Bolivian border, local residents call the devils
who live in nearby mountain caves, el Tio Juaneco or Juaniquillo. Furthermore, the use of the name
321
Juanico in stories about contracts with the devil is widespread throughout Latin America, including folk
tales in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.
60
Abercrombie even notes that many contemporary Andean peasants take extreme offense when
researchers suggest that remaining Pre-Columbian mummies are their predecessors (1998: 117).
61
Some of the appropriated cultural elements appear to map well onto notions of the outsider, foreigners,
traveler and instability that contrast with the supposedly stable peasant community. For example, the
scissors dancer is a contracted itinerant performer, who appears to borrow elements from fakirs, and other
European itinerant performers. In the dramaturgy of Christmas festivities in Huancavelica, the scissors
dancer appears to play a similar role as the three wise-men in traditional nativity stories. They are clearly
foreigners from the outside the community who are domesticated by the copleros, parodic imitations of
learned colonial priests. The main task of the scissors dancers in these festivities is to venerate the Baby
Jesus. The competition itself is sometimes described as a gift to the Jesus figure that serves as the Patron of
the festival. This indicates that early modern auto-sacramentales of the Christmas story are clearly one of
the sources for the cultural practices of these festivities including the scissors dance.
62
John Rowe (1955) called this movement Inka nationalism and more recently, Manuel Burga (1988) and
Alberto Flores Galindo (1986, 1987) have traced the continuing reverberations of what they call the
“Andean utopia”
63
Even if they had little knowledge of these intellectual developments, idealized representations of the Inca
state in both places had a common source. A widely circulated 1723 edition of the “Royal Commentaries
of the Incas” by “El Inca” Garcilaso de la Vega included a preface that cited a legendary prophecy by Sir
Walter Raleigh that the English would defeat Spain and restore the Inca kingdom in the Andes (Flores
Galindo 1987: 203; Pratt 1992: 144). Flores Galindo suggested that this legend passed into the oral
tradition to such an extent that by the end of the eighteenth century Andeans of all social classes believed
that Garcilaso himself had written it, turning him into a kind of anti-colonial folk hero (1987).
64
Flores Galindo calls attention to a number of theatre pieces and paintings from the period that
represented the decapitation of the late Inca king. These works often conflated the events and personas of
Atahualpa who was captured and executed in Cajamarca by Pizarro‟s troops in 1532, and Tupac Amaru I,
whose was the last sovereign Inca king executed in the main plaza of Cuzco in 1572 (1987: 203).
65
The French Bourbon family took over the Spanish throne from the Hapsburg‟s in 1713, after the Spanish
War of Succession (1701-1713), after the last Hapsburg King, Carlos II died without an heir. During the
first half of the eighteenth century focused their attention on reforming the colonial state apparatus in Spain
itself. By the 1750s, they turned their attention to the American colonies (Klaren 2000).
66
Amongst the chief sources of unrest amongst indigenous and mestizo commoners was the repartimiento
de mercancias, legalized in 1752. The repartimiento de mercancias was a forced system of production and
consumption in which colonial authorities compelled indigenous and mestizo commoners to produce
marketable goods and purchase expensive Spanish products in special state-controlled stores. The system
saddled many commoners with unsustainable debts (Klaren 2000).
67
Condorcanqui was a moderately wealthy landowner, muleteer, and a member of the indigenous curaca
class from the village of Tinta near Cuzco. He was educated at a Jesuit college in Cuzco exclusively for the
indigenous aristocracy. Condorcanqui claimed descent not only to the Inca ruling class, but to Tupac
Amaru, the last sovereign Inca king himself. During the 1770s, his title of Inca nobility was challenged by
the colonial state. He traveled to Lima to defend his title, where he encountered new Enlightenment ideas
in a burgeoning liberal intellectual circle. He adopted the name Tupac Amaru II and became the center of
an anti-colonial movement by grafting liberal ideas of popular sovereignty with rising popular sentiments
of Inca nationalism (Klaren 2000, Flores Galindo 1987).
322
68
The role of Tupac Amaru II in the larger Inca nationalist movement is rife for a performance studies
analysis. Such an analysis might look at his public persona in light of a range of eighteenth century
representations of the Inca, from French theatre, opera, and ballet related to the Enlightenment, to Ollantay,
and other theatrical depictions of the end of the Inca empire popular in Peru in the eighteenth century, as
well as the Inca rebels own autobiographical text Genealogia written in 1776 as a document to defend his
claims of lineage to Inca royalty. Tupac Amaru himself was highly conscious of the theatricality of his
highly public persona. He typically costumed himself in the finest attire of the European aristocracy, a
bowler hat, which only partially covered his flowing long black hair, and a prominent Inca insignia
associated with colonial titles of nobility for the heirs of Inca royalty.
69
Numerous curacas challenged these policies with protracted battles in courts, yet the power of
indigenous elites gradually dwindled away during the period before independence.
70
Gose further argues that through the revival of the Inca as an Andean manifestation of Christ and the rise
of the mountain spirits as localized lineage ancestors linked to the broader powers of the Christian
pantheon, the Sun, and*, Andean societies became more egalitarian and articulated themselves as citizens
in the emerging independent Republic (2008: 319).
Chapter 3
1
See Hobsbawm 1962, 1975, and 1987.
2
Historian of European popular culture Peter Burke notes, “It was in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, when traditional popular culture was just beginning to disappear, that the „people‟ or
the „folk‟ became a subject of interest to European intellectuals” (Burke 1978: 5). Bendix (1997) argues
that romantic intellectuals during this period invented the concept of “authenticity.” The term
“ethnographic imagination” is an amalgamation of Fass-Emery‟s “anthropological imagination,” and Stone
Peters frequent use of “popular ethnographic imagination.”
3
Poole (1997) refers to this same period as the Andean postcolonial, using a similar logic. Her study looks
at the visual economy of images, particularly photographs, of Andean geography which flowed between
Europe and the Andes. Pratt‟s (1992) foundational study of travel narrative and transculturation argues that
popular travel writing constituted modern European subjectivity in relation to the rest of the world.
4
Indigenous Curacas had some success defending their titles in colonial courts, and indigenous commoners
used various legal and extra-legal strategies to defend their communal lands from appropriation and their
cultural practices from censorship. Nevertheless, the authority of the indigenous nobility gradually
declined in the decades following the Tupac Amaru rebellion. By the beginning of the republic, most
indigenous communities had replaced the ancestral authority of the Curacas with the rotating elected office
of the staff-carrying varayoq (mayor) (Walker 1999, Gose 2008). Nevertheless, state propaganda
succeeded in uniting most coastal Creoles with the peninsular Spaniards despite the former‟s resentments
of Spanish privilege, due to their fears of mass indigenous uprisings.
6
Many coastal Creoles, particularly in Lima, were entrenched in the colonial bureaucracy and fearful of
unleashing a popular revolution amongst the Andean masses (Thurner 1997, Walker 1999, Klaren 2000).
7
As the first president of the newly independent republic in 1824 and 1825, Bolivar argued that America
had no usable history. The new state would not be forged out of the Andean past, but a modern and liberal
future (Pagden 138, Thurner 1997: 10).
8
The military strong men who dominated the presidency for the first twenty years of the republic mostly
came from the provincial highland mestizo landowning classes. They developed strong regional bases,
323
mobilizing multi-ethnic and multi-class alliances through various forms of populist rhetoric, paternalism,
and clientelism (Walker 1999: 223).
9
The continuation of colonial systems of tribute actually appears to have allowed indigenous communities
to retain some level of collective land ownership. Many indigenous leaders fought against measures to
abolish the Indian head tax. They understood that by paying the tax, which made up 60-70% of the early
republican state revenues, they gained leverage they needed to keep their communal lands, as the state had
a strong financial interest in protecting the productivity of indigenous agricultural production (Walker
1999: Larson 2004).
10
Gose (2008) argues that this transformation in Andean politics was closely linked to long-term religious
change and the Andean utopia. Andean religion displaced their ancestral beliefs from ancestor worship
onto the worship of the landscape paralleling the definition of the ayllu from a hereditary to a territorial
institution.
11
Far from a holdover from colonial feudalism, the brutal latifundia system emerged out of capitalist
modernization, weakening the indigenous market economy and forcing many peasants into debt peonage,
toiling as cheap laborers for expanding hacienda landlords (Walker 1999, Larson 2004).
12
For the most part, Creole elites in Lima looked towards Parisian fashions and British intellectual culture
in order to distinguish themselves from both the indigenous majorities and the Spanish colonial past (Poole
1997, Klaren 2000).
14
Cahill does not explain why he believes the particular dance in question is the scissors dance, nor is there
an explicit description of the dance in the parts of the document he cites. Aimaraes is part of the
contemporary area of diffusion of the dance, but this document appears fifty years before other documents
from the area that show a dance similar to the contemporary scissors dance. Perhaps, the prohibited dance
was an early variation of the scissors dance, but it is impossible to say to what degree its choreography or
significance bore definitive similarities to the contemporary practice.
15
Official recognition and use of Andean popular performance coexisted alongside prohibitions in a way
that unsettles simple oppositions between elite and popular, Spanish and Andean, and repudiation and
validation. The heightened emphasis that top Bourbon appointed officials placed on reforming popular
culture after the Tupac Amaru rebellions was short-lived, waning by 1788 (Cahill 2000: 71). In 1790,
scissors dancers living on the periphery of Lima participated in a celebration of the ascent of Carlos IV to
the throne of Spain (Estenssoro 1989: 67).
16
For example, Montoya asserts, “the verb to prohibit is part of the whole colonial scheme of domination”
Montoya 1990: 17). He interprets the early republican period as essentially continuous with the colonial
period, opposing a rhetorically homogenized Andean culture against an equally homogenized Catholic
culture.
17
Bishop Olivas Escudero published Apuntes para la Historia de Huamanga in order to commemorate the
centennial of the Battle of Ayacucho, the final battle in the struggle for Peruvian independence.
18
Corculla is located in the province of Parinacochas in the extreme south of the department of Ayacucho.
It was originally part of the Diocese of Cuzco, but in the early republican period became part of the
Diocese and department of Ayacucho.
19
This repertoire is the basis of an extraordinary amount of folk tales and legends that permeate both
popular and learned culture, including such legendary figures as Faust and Robert Johnson.
324
20
Certain specifically Andean qualities are also present in the text, particularly the connection between the
diabolic scissors dance and mining as well as the profound depths of mountain caves.
21
Spanish protectionism greatly limited the numbers of non-Spanish travelers, scientists, and traders who
arrived in South America until the final decades of the eighteenth century. In 1778, in an effort to
modernize their American colonies, the Bourbon monarchy loosened these restrictions and opened up the
colonies for free trade (Poole 1997, Klaren 2000).
22
She pinpoints the work of Humboldt as representing a key shift in European perceptions of nature,
whereby the classification of physiognomy or the distinctive essence and character of a region contributed
to the objectifying language of type central to later racial and cultural discourses.
23
Witt was born into the rising German bourgeoisie in the beginning of the 19 th century. He spent a good
part of his adolescence in London, apprenticing with successful merchants. As a young man he sought to
make his own fortune in far off lands. In search of new commercial enterprises, he embarked from
Liverpool to Peru in February 1824. Witt settled in Peru for the rest of his life. He returned to Europe
often enough to keep up with European scientific and economic trends, but spent the majority of his life in
his adopted country. He kept careful notes of his observations in a diary he wrote in German. After
writing more than 10,000 pages by 1859, he began to compile an abridged version in English for
publication. Despite his desire to publish these diaries, he never had the opportunity to do so in his
lifetime. Custodianship of the historical value of the diaries was passed down amongst a small circle of
prominent Peruvian historians, including the aforementioned Jorge Basadre. Basadre affirmed the diary
was “of incalculable value” for its firsthand knowledge “about the social, economic, and political life of
Peru of the past century” (Basadre 1971: 102).
24
The masks and ankle-bells are performance elements not present in either contemporary scissors dance
styles, or other nineteenth century sources which represent the dance in Ayacucho.
25
While the culture of Puno, a mostly Aymara-speaking region, is quite different from the cultures of
Ayacucho and Huancavelica, cultural practices and products flowed easily between the mining centers of
Potosí. Puno is quite close to the latter and was on the route from Potosí to Cuzco to Huamanga to
Huancavelica to Lima.
26
Pablo Macera, another prominent historian who published portions of the diary in 1973, described Witt‟s
positionality in similar terms to the inside-outside dialectic of modern ethnography. Macera suggested that
when Witt returned to Germany, “He gazed upon Europe not only as a native European, but also with the
distanced eye of a foreigner” (Macera 1971: XXIX).
27
Blanco spoke the Quechua dialect from Quito and attempted to translate what he could of the local
dialects from Cuzco and Huamanga in the Diario, commenting frequently on the differences between
regional customs.
28
Mujica Pinilla suggests that the term pacha-angeles referred to fallen angels, as a way to speak about the
demons of uku pacha (Mujica Pinilla 1996: ). Although Blanco may not recognize it, the name of the
dance he cites clearly suggests a connection between these dancers and a demonic mythology similar to
that of the contemporary scissors dance.
29
In an 1848 article, he declared, “I entered into our project a little bit of an artist, a little bit of a bohemian,
and a little bit of a scientist” (20).
30
Upon returning to Paris, Marcoy published numerous articles in the Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie
de Paris, and Le Tour de Monde during the 1850s and 1860s (Rivera Martínez 2001: 20).
325
31
The principle complaints leveled at his work by scientists, the dominating subjective presence of the
author in the text, the picturesque and often humorous tone of the work, and the indulgent exoticism of
Marcoy‟s language and visual depictions, were the elements which most attracted general readers (Rivera
Martínez 2001:. 21).
32
The gendered portrait of Marcoy‟s persona is furthered by the reviewer‟s intrigue at Marcoy‟s exotic
descriptions of mestiza and chola women, “these charming creatures who are allied to Spain by their
ancestors, and to Peru by their ancestresses” (New York Times 1874)
33
This comparative strategy implicitly links the short description to one of Marcoy‟s over-arching theories
about the origins of American man. Like other scientific writers of the time, he argued that indigenous
people of the Americas originated in two races, an inferior mongol racial type from Asia, and a civilizing
racial type descended from ancient Egyptians. The latter group was responsible for the great Precolumbian civilizations in Mexico and Peru. Thus, the frequent comparisons and other nineteenth century
ethnographic observers made between Andean societies and old world antiquities were often thought to
have a historical basis (Chaumiel 1994: 276-277).
34
Throughout the text he frequently augmented the sensuousness of his narrative descriptions with sketch
drawings, illustrating various social types and exotic cultural practices of the Andean and Amazonian
regions.
35
The full title of Fuentes‟s book was Lima: Apuntes Historicos, Descriptivos, Estadisticas y de
Costumbres in 1866, simultaneously published in Spanish, French, and English editions. He argued that
driven by their fascination with the Incas and the uniqueness of Andean geography and cultural heritage,
European travel writers had circulated false images of Peru as an exotic fairyland (Poole 1997: 142). He
singled out the work of Marcoy as a particularly egregious example of these forms of exotic representation,
writing “Right now in Paris, a travel account is being published in which, [. . .] you might think that the
authors had set out to write a novel whose characters should have all the gross type of a savage” (Fuentes
1866: ). He does not name Marcoy specifically, but according to Deborah Poole the three woodcuts he
specifically critiques are all found in Marcoy‟s travel narrative, which Fuentes probably read in the early
serial edition published in the magazine Le Monde between 1862 and 1866.
36
Palma was perhaps the most important Peruvian writer of the nineteenth century. He invented the genre
of the tradición, an exaggerated take on a real-life event or legend, rooted in costumbrista sensibilities. He
was an avid enthusiast of Fierro‟s work, acquiring the first part of his collection as a gift from Augustin de
la Rosa Toro in 1885, and collecting others himself (Majluf 2008: 29). In one passage from his
Tradiciones Peruanas, Palma respectfully refers to Fierro as “el Goya Limeno” (qtd. in Barrenechea 1959:
15).
37
Tapadas were upper-class Limeña women who veiled their faces. These women became the object of
exotic and erotic fascination by costumbrista artists due to the mystery of their covered faces. Although
culturally „white,‟ they were often depicted with eroticized bodily features similar to Afro-Peruvian women
and prostitutes (Poole 1997: 119).
38
Nuñez Rebaza (1990) suggests that Palma did not really appreciate the work of the mulato Fierro.
However, this assertion is contradicted by the time and money Palma spent in amassing his collection. Far
more likely, Palma used the term chuncho as a generic term for Indian, perhaps referring to the crown of
feathers the dancers wear.
39
Angrand was the Vice-Consulate of France in Lima between 1834 and 1839, and a prominent Peruvianist
artist and archaeologist. Rivera Martinez was surprised to discover amongst this collection, forty nine
326
paintings by Fierro. The collection is entitled Costumes Peruviens: Scenes de la Vie Religiese Populaire a
Lima (1969).
40
I viewed this piece as part of an exhibition on “Music and Dance in Peruvian Popular Art” at the Museo
Nacional in August 2007.
41
Until recently, a similar tail was part of the traditional costume of scissors dancers from Ayacucho,
representing the dancer‟s intimacy with the devil (Vivanco 1976, Cruz Fierro 1982, Nuñez Rebaza
1985,1990).
42
Puquio is the capital of the province of Lucanas in the department of Ayacucho. I visited the sculpture
on September 15, 2008 on a quick trip to Puquio on my return to Lima from the Festival of Water in the
village of Cabana Sur.
43
Recently, young dancers from Puquio who reside in Lima have included shots of themselves dancing
beside the statue in promotional videos of their public personas in order to pay tribute to their provincial
roots.
45
He became known as “el brujo de los Andes” (The Wizard of the Andes) and his leadership of the
Compaña de la Breña catapulted him into the presidency to lead national reconstruction efforts in 1885
(Klaren 2000: 184).
46
As they had with Tupac Amaru a century before, indigenous highlanders adapted the myth of Inkarri for
the present circumstances According to the general‟s wife, Antonia Moreno de Caceres, “For the Indians,
Caceres was the reincarnation of the Inca” (Thurner 1998: 200)
48
For example, Ricardo Palma famously wrote, “The principal cause of the great defeat is that the majority
of Peru is composed of a wretched and degraded race we once attempted to dignify and ennoble. The
Indian lacks a patriotic sense; he is a born enemy of the white and of the man of the Coast. It makes no
difference to him whether he is a Chilean or a Turk. To educate the Indian and to inspire in him a feeling
of patriotism will not be the task of our institutions, but of the ages” (Kristal 1987: 97-98).
50
He categorized the Peruvian population in three groups: Indians who were both unenlightened and
servile, unenlightened whites who were free but ignorant, and a very small group of enlightened whites,
who were neither ignorant nor in servitude. The duty of the final group was to assist the Indians liberate
themselves from the bondage they suffered at the hands of the second group (Kristal 1987:114 ).
51
Middendorf spent twenty five years in Peru, serving as the medical doctor for Peruvian presidents Balta
and Prada, and undertaking his own independent investigations of archaeology and the linguistics of
indigenous cultures. After he graduated in philosophy and medicine in 1854, Middendorf departed to travel
the world. He found his way to Australia and Africa before arriving in Peru in 1856. He stayed in Peru
from 1856-1863, 1865-1871, and finally 1876-1888. In this final stay he did not have formal medical
obligations, allowing him to focus on his own scientific studies.
52
Although an amateur scientist, he published in respected journals, and made original contributions to
both Andean archaeology and linguistics. His scientific investigations were stimulated by an initial
question, “to study the origin of the American races and their possible Asiatic origin and to prove this
Asian origin through linguistic comparison.” He was one of the first scientific voices to challenge Inca
Garcilaso de la Vega‟s idealized view of the Incas as the first civilizers of South America. Middendorf
argued that the ruins on the Peruvian coast were evidence of earlier urban civilizations, later conquered by
the Incas. This revisionist impulse carried over to his linguistic analysis. He criticized the translation of
the Quechua drama Ollantay by German Quechuista Tschudi, who Middendorf argued was an expert in
327
ancient Quechua, but was not well-versed in the contemporary usage of the language. Middendorf
established that this famous tragic drama, at least in its theatrical form, was of colonial and not Inca origins.
Like many foreign travelers attracted to Peru‟s ancient indigenous heritage, Middendorf complained of the
racism and neglect of Lima‟s elite towards Peru‟s autochthonous cultures.
53
The three volumes are divided geographically with the first chronicling Lima, the second, the rest of the
coastal region, and the third, the sierra.
54
The opening of the Centro Cientifico del Cuzco in 1897 created new opportunities for social scientists to
conduct research on contemporary rural peasants, who they constructed as the guardians of Inca heritage
(Mendoza 2000: 49).
55
President Leguia named North American Albert Giesecke as the new rector of the University. Giesecke
initiated a number of modernizing reforms in the bureaucratic structure and curriculum leading to a
renaissance of Cuzco culture centered in the burgeoning university life. In addition to other cultural events,
Giesecke was an enthusiastic supporter of Inca theatre. Furthermore, Giesecke was instrumental in
assisting and publicizing the “discovery” of Machu Picchu in 1911 by his former Yale colleague Hiram
Bingham. The discovery of such a well-preserved Inca city consolidated the place of Cuzco in Peruvian
and international imaginaries as the archaeological capital of South America (Mendoza 2007).
56
These first modern Quechua dramas, such as Yawar Waqaq (1892), La Tragedia de Waskar (1896), and
above all Sumaq T’ika (1899) dramatized the responsibilities of this emerging elite as caretakers of the
popular classes and agents of the modernization of rural life (Itier 2000)
57
These erudite Quechua dramatists invented a particular form of Quechua that they claimed represented
the language spoken by the royal Inca elites. They distinguished Capac Simi (Royal Language), from Runa
Simi (The people‟s language), the everyday Quechua spoken by indigenous commoners (Itier 2000, Cadena
(2001).
58
This nationalistic folk opera dramatized a miners‟ strike against the North American corporation that
owned the Cerro de Pasco mining corporation since 1904. Robles and his librettist Julio Badouin,
developed the image of the Andean condor as a symbol of freedom and autochthonous Peruvian identity
(Mendoza 2007).
59
Attending one of the first performances of El Condor Pasa in Lima in 1912 piqued the antiquarian
interests of Raoul and the musical interests of Marguerite, a classically-trained composer herself. They
befriended Alomía Robles, and after hearing some of the melodies he had collected in his travels
throughout the Andes, they decided to embark on their own investigation of the Inca roots of Andean
musical traditions.
60
The title reveals their debts to prevailing notions in both indigenismo and French ethnology that
contemporary Andean peasants preserved the culture of the Incas intact.
61
Leguia was a self-made capitalist from a modest but well-connected family. Educated at a British
commercial school, he made his fortune as an agent and manager for New York Life Insurance Company.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, he entered politics as part of the progressive wing of the
Civilista Party. His presidency from 1909-1912 revealed the growing rifts between liberal industrialists
and the aristocratic export oligarchy within the ruling Civilista Party. The latter won the battle and chased
Leguia into exile, where he became the sworn enemy of Civilismo (Klaren 2000: 241-244).
63
Mariátegui himself wrote, “we discovered, in the end, our own tragedy, that of Peru. The European
itinerary has been for us the best, the most tremendous discovery of America” (qtd. In Vanden 1986: 120).
328
64
During this period he published frequently in leftist newspapers and journals, and his first book La
Escena Contemporanea (The Contemporary Scene), in 1925. In this work, he first began to theorize about
the potential to construct a “New Peru,” a national-popular imaginary that drew on the “archaic
communism” of the Inca Empire still present in the social structure of the indigenous community
(Mariátegui 1925).
65
He argued that peasants retained their racial memories of the Inca regime intact, but had lost their
historical memory. Thus, through the interventions of vanguard intellectuals they could liberate themselves
from their colonial oppressors, creating a “Nuevo indio” (Leibner 1999: 150-157).
66
An unorthodox Marxist, who rejected the demands of the second Comintern, he argued that Marxism was
a flexible theory and praxis adaptable to the historical and cultural conditions of different nations (Liss
1984: 131-138).
67
For example, the last chapter in Siete Ensayos interrogates the revolutionary potential of Peruvian
literature. His categorization of literary discourse on the Indian has become one of the most often-cited
critical positions in Peruvian literary criticism. He famously distinguished between an earlier indianismo,
which exoticized the Indian, and indigenismo, a literary discourse that advocates for the Indian written by
mestizos. He further imagined the possibility for a genuine indigenous literature, produced after the
moment of revolutionary liberation, which would become the most authentic form of national literature
(Mariátegui 1978, Escadajillo 2004, Coronado 2008: 21-51).
68
He was perhaps the most important figure in constructing the mythic discourses of Peruvian dualism, and
the “idols behind altars” paradigm, that became central to the configurations of Andean identity by
indigenismo and Andeanism (Coronado 2008: 21-51, Mills 1995).
69
Castro Pozo was born into the provincial middle class of the northern department of Piura. As a young
lawyer and social scientist, he gravitated toward emerging socialist circles in the 1910s (Franco 1989).
70
In 1936, Castro Pozo extended Mariátegui‟s work and his own fieldwork into a theoretical treatise
entitled Del Ayllu al Cooperativismo Socialista (From the Ayllu to Socialist Cooperativism)
71
In the first decade of the twentieth century, Inca theatre and music had mostly confined itself to the
representation of the Inca nobility, imagining the emerging vision of national and regional identity of a
rising elite intelligentsia. As the genre popularized in the 1910s, it increasingly incorporated contemporary
Andean music and dance as performed by anonymous peasant performers in the so-called cuadros
costumbristas (Itier 2000, Mendoza 2007).
72
The radical intellectuals associated with Amauta, including Sabogal, Valcárcel, and Uriel García played
major roles in this shift, drawing on the folkloric discourses and practices produced by the Mexican and
Russian Revolutions (Mendoza 2007: 8).
73
Both Mariátegui and Leguía drew on a common repertoire of images and symbols for their evocations of
a new genuinely postcolonial nation, illustrating one of the major arguments of this study. Although
socialists and liberal capitalists may have imagined very different political projects for remaking national
hegemony throughout the twentieth century, they often drew on quite similar discursive repertoires,
evoking the national essence through the indigenous past and promising a utopian future.
74
The scissors dancers appear to have travelled in a single circuit of performance centered in Huamanga,
prior to the construction of these roads. Some evidence suggests that in this early period, the performers of
the dance were highly-skilled indigenous specialists often patronized by members of the landed gentry,
329
much like the skilled indigenous and mestizo artisans (Bustamante 1941, Arguedas 1958, Vivanco 1976,
Cruz Fierro 1982).
Chapter 4
1
The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega Prize is the highest honor in Peruvian letters named after the early colonial
mestizo chronicler.
2
Unlike hegemonic notions of mestizaje in Latin American thought, he did not imagine his bicultural
identity dissolving into a new homogeneous synthesis. Rather he celebrated the radical heterogeneity
embodied in the mastery of distinct cultural competencies. See: De Castro 2002.
3
According to Marisol de la Cadena, Arguedas:”proposed an alternative politics of knowledge, one that
saw the necessity of Western reason and its incapacity to translate, let alone capture or replace Andean
ways of being [. . .] I want to read Arguedas as proposing multiontologism and a nationalism [. . .]
articulated by reason and magic, both on equal standing, and socialist at that” (Cadena 2005: 15).
4
In Latin American literary history, Arguedas is situated as one of the most important precursors of the
“Boom” and a founding figure of the literary phenomenon known as “magic realism” (Franco 2006).
5
Rama define “narrative tranculturation” a process whereby Latin American writer situate their work at a
cultural intersection between different ethnic and linguistic traditions. He classifies particular writers of the
mid-twentieth century, most notably Arguedas, as “los transculturadores,” mediators between dominant and
dominated cultures, tradition and modernity, national and regional spaces, and written and oral mediums
(Rama 1982, Spitta 1995, Kokotovic 2006). Cornejo Polar defined “heterogeneous literature” as a
methodological lens in order to study Latin American literature as a whole. He argues that all literary
works from Latin America are products of the collision of cultures since the conquest. He focuses in
particular on indigenista literature whose referent, the indigenous, is distinct from the conventional realist
aesthetics of the Western novel used to represent the indigenous object. He situates Arguedas as his
primary example of the best indigenismo, which “not only takes up the interests of the indigenous
peasantry; it also incorporates to varying degrees timidly or boldly, certain literary forms organically
derived from its referents” (Cornejo Polar 1978). See also: Cornejo Polar 1996, 1997, Spitta 1995, and
Kokotovic 2006).
6
Adding a complex circularity to Rama‟s argument, Ortiz‟s notion of transculturation informed Arguedas‟s
own literary and anthropological practice (Rama 1975, Kokotovic 2006).
7
Both the efficacy and redemptive qualities Rama attributed to transculturation have undergone significant
critique in recent years. John Beverley argues “the idea of transculturation expresses in both Ortiz and
Rama a fantasy of class, gender, and racial reconciliation” (Beverley 1999: 47). However, I concur with
Jean Franco who argues we should not simply dismiss such fantasies, which partially constitute Arguedas‟s
affective power as a cultural agent whose political value continues to resonate on a collective level (Franco
2006: 10). Franco argues that both Arguedas himself and his advocates have engaged in a complex
“ethnopoetics” that she defines as “a form of translation that negotiates the meeting of disparate
epistemologies and transforms their energies in the cause of justice and hence political action” (Franco
2006: 172). I suggest that the creativity and constitutive power of the imagination invoked by Franco‟s
term and definition bring us much closer to the political force of Arguedas‟s valuation and appropriation of
“magic” as an alternative epistemology to Western rationalism.
8
For if the powers of mimesis describes compare to the mimetic capabilities of the scissors dancer, I
suggest they apply equally well to Arguedas‟s representations of the scissors dance, drawing on its powers
as he attempts to poetically transform Peruvian nationhood. On a similar note, Landreau argues that
330
Arguedas‟s work embodies “the magical, luminous power of language to transform what it touches. To
name the nation by bringing its voices into contact, through the language of translation, is to transform it”
(Landreau 2002: 185).
9
In their work on Kafka, Deleuze and Guattari defined “minor literature” as a deterritorialization of a major
language through the introduction of specific elements of a minor language. “Minor literature” is always
political in its very existence, taking on a collective value through the creation of new ways of speaking,
writing, and being in situations of unequal power. The performative force of “minor literature” relates to
what musicologist Alejandro Madrid calls “performative composition,” suggesting “the act of composition
might allow a liminal composer to intentionally or unintentionally resolve he contradicting discourses s/he
experiences as an individual living at cultural borders or contact zones, while performing his/her self in
relation to these discourses as part of the compositional process” (Madrid 2003: 11). Considering the
liminal subjectivity of Arguedas and the importance of music as an organizing concept for his work
Madrid‟s notion would seem to have some rich resonances with my objectives here.
10
Although born into a privileged class of highland landowners, his orphanhood led him to deeply identify
with indigenous culture. Arguedas neatly summarized the basic contours of this autobiographical legend as
follows, “Due to very unusual circumstances my childhood took place in two Andean towns where the
predominant language was Quechua. Due to the same circumstances, as a child I fell into the protection of
monolingual Quechua Indians. My mother died when I was three. Among the Indians I found adequate
compensation for my orphanhood. They were my family … I understood and experienced the world as
they did … the rivers, the trees, the canyons, many insects, certain rocks and caves had a special meaning
and life. Happiness or evil could be caused by them. (qtd. and translated by Landreau 1998: 98)
11
The most notable example is Mario Vargas Llosa‟s book La Utopia Arcaica, which patronizingly praises
Arguedas‟s literary work as a beautiful fiction based on a nostalgic vision of the Peruvian nation that
struggles against inevitable modernity and progress. For critics like Vargas Llosa, who view the
relationship between tradition and modernity as necessarily dichotomous, Arguedas‟s visions for a
specifically Andean form of modernity is untenable (Vargas Llosa 1996). As Priscilla Archibald notes, at
times it is tempting to read Vargas Llosa‟s text as a self-serving attempt to belittle his primary competition
for the title of greatest Peruvian novelist of the twentieth century (Archibald 2007).
12
Roland Forgues has exposed the myth, often disseminated by Arguedas himself later in his life, that he
was a mono-lingual Quechua speaker until adolescence (Forgues 1991). For example, in 1968 Arguedas
wrote, “I was a monolingual Quechua speaker; I lived during my infancy and childhood in many towns
within the immense area in which what Alfredo Torero calls Quechua II is spoken” (Arguedas 1968: 84).
Forgues argues that although there is nothing unusual about Arguedas speaking Quechua as a boy, since
most highland elites spoke Quechua at a time, the social status of his family almost assuredly meant that he
also spoke Spanish since infancy. Furthermore, he only began to represent himself as a mono-lingual
Quechua speaker in childhood in the late 1950s, when he went to greater lengths to fashion himself as an
indigenous intellectual. Forgues suggested that Arguedas‟s dissemination of the myth was a sincere result
of the traumatic death of his mother and abandonment and cruelty on the part of his family, and the
tenderness he experienced on the part of Quechua-speaking peasants (Forgues 1991: 47-58).
13
In their well-known text on autobiography, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson “adapt the concept of
performativity from postmodern theory to define autobiographical occasions as dynamic sites for the
performance of identities that become constitutive of subjectivity” (2010: 214).
14
For this reason, I do not believe we should see Arguedas as a particularly trustworthy witness to the
scissors dance in an earlier era, as some have suggested (Bigenho 1991, Zevallos Aguilar 2009). He
performatively re-created the dance, endowing it with certain affective associations in both his fictional and
anthropological writings. I do not mean to diminish the ethnographic value of his testimony, merely to
331
point out that we cannot assume Arguedas‟s viewpoint is the ultimate authority on the scissors dance in a
prior, more authentic era.
15
Andahuaylas is located in the western part of the department of Apurimac, about half way between
Cuzco and Huamanga. His father was a provincial lawyer and judge from Cuzco who made a modest
income and his mother was a member of the landowning elite of Andahuaylas.
16
The years Arguedas lived on his stepmother‟s hacienda in San Juan de Lucanas had profound
consequences on the young boy‟s life. He would later explain, “I am a product of my stepmother [. . .] She
was the owner of half of the town, and she had many indigenous servants and the traditional prejudices and
ignorance of what was an Indian, and she had as much contempt and resentment towards me as the Indians,
she decided that I would live with them in the kitchen” (Arguedas 1969: 36).
17
His father, who found a job as a judge in Puquio, was absent most of the week.
18
In an interview with Sara Castro Klaren, he admitted that these events were the cause of his life-long
aversion to sex, that he associated more with violence and domination than pleasure (Castro Klaren ).
Arguedas frequently thematized sexuality as a form of violence in his fiction, especially Warma Kuyay
(1935), Los Ríos Profundos (1958), and El Zorro de Arriba y El Zorro de Abajo (1971) (Fass Emery
1996). The brutish ways of his stepbrother became the model for the figure of the archetypal gamonal, a
term employed in Arguedas‟s later fiction for the most violent exploiters of indigenous labor (Pinilla 1994:
38).
19
In the short story “Los Comuneros de Utec-Pampa” (1934), Arguedas wrote, “The Utec are not humble
or cowardly Indians; they are propertery owners. Everyone together works the land, and when the fields
are full, they pull down the fences that block the entries to the granges and herd the animals on, so they can
eat the sweet green maize husks. Utec, then, is for everyone, equally; the animals run about the fields as if
they belonged to the same owner. For this the Utec are united and proud. No misti abuses the Utec” (qtd.
In Pinilla 1994: 39).
20
They became models for Arguedas‟s vision of an alternative Andean modernity, a central theme of his
literary and anthropological work. Through their own volition, and driven by the competitive desire to
become more modern than surrounding towns, the ayllus of Puquio built a 150 kilometer road from Puquio
to Nazca on the coast in 28 days. This act of extraordinary collective effort directly linked the city of
Puquio to coastal cities, and Lima in particular, empowering the indigenous communities further as they
gained greater access to commerce. Arguedas would narrate this extraordinary event in his first novel,
Yawar Fiesta (1941) (Pinilla 1994: 38).
21
He would later state that “my childhood and part of his adolescence occurred amongst the Indians of
Lucanas, they are the people that I love and understand the most” (Arguedas 1966: 18).
22
While his writing shows a clear identification with the culture of Lucanas, it also displays an appreciation
and knowledge of regional cultures throughout the Andes.
23
These travels and his stay in Abancay inspired his most celebrated novel, Los Ríos Profundos (1985).
24
When he entered the Colegio “San Luis Gonzaga” in Ica, the secretary of the school named Bolivar, saw
his scholastic record full of 20s (100% score). The secretary exclaimed to the boy, “These serranos! They
always put 20s in their records when they recite any old verse: Here we will see if you achieve 20s.”24 The
young Arguedas took the challenge to heart, and achieved the record of the most 20s in all of the history of
San Luis de Gonzaga because it was a responsibility of the serrano to do it and I did it” (Arguedas 1969:
39).
332
25
The prejudice he experienced firsthand in Ica also came in the form of rejection by the first girl he loved.
Arguedas was madly in with Pompeya, the most beautiful girl in his class. He spent hours each day writing
poetry in her honor. When he finally gathered the courage to tell her how he felt, she flatly rejected him.
She told him, “I don‟t want to have anything to do with serranos!” (Arguedas 1969: 39).
On the pages of Antorcha, the autobiographical self-making project of the mature Arguedas was already
evident. A short article published in a 1928 edition of the magazine was entitled, “The Thought of (of my
work in preparation „The History of a Man”) Jose Maria Arguedas.” Arguedas and his companions were
highly influenced by the writings of Victor Hugo, particularly Les Miserables. The stark class divisions of
Hugo‟s novels resonated with their experiences in Andean Peru. Arguedas told an interviewer in 1937,
“When I began to read books, no author influenced me until I read Victor Hugo and Baudelaire.” Another
major influence on Arguedas and the other writers of Antorcha, was much closer to home. The magazine
Amauta edited by Peruvian socialist pioneer Jose Carlos Mariátegui was in wide circulation and quite
popular in the Peruvian highlands of the time. Arguedas described his participation in detailed and serious
readings of Amauta with other members of the Antorcha writing team (Pinilla 1994: 54-55).
26
27
The other students in his literature classes saw his direct knowledge of indigenous culture as unique and
valuable. He later remembered, “The students of my generation that today are important people, saw in me
a person that brought something they did not know and they looked at me with a great deal of respect and
admiration.” Encouraged by this sense of admiration, Arguedas began to intentionally fashion himself as a
Quechua-speaking Indian first and an educated writer second (Arguedas 1966: 18, Pinilla 1994: 66).
28
In a later article, Arguedas wrote, “Mariátegui did not have a wealth of information about indigenous
culture. He had not studied it, nor did he have the opportunity or time to do so. He did not know it from
experience and it is probable that in those days he did not even know that much about Inca culture”
(Arguedas 1978: 192).
29
Before the publication of his first novel, Yawar Fiesta (1941), Arguedas published twelve short stories,
“Warma Kuyay” (1933), Los Comuneros de Ak‟ola” (1934), “Los Comuneros de Utec Pampa” (1934),
K‟ellkatay- Pampa” (1934), “El Vengativo” (1935), “El Cargador” (1935), “Doña Caytana” (1935),
“Agua” (1935), “Los Escoleros” (1935), “Yawar” (1937), “El Baranco” (1939), and “Runa Yupay” (1939).
See: Lambright 2007: 45).
30
Mariátegui distinguished between indianismo, indigenismo, and an authentically indigenous literature.
He characterized Indianismo as an exotic representation of indigenous culture. Indigenismo grew out of
the genuine interest of non-Indians in improving the lives of Indians. Nevertheless, because of a lack of
intimate knowledge, it too was subject to romanticism. Mariátegui yearned for the day when a genuine
indigenous literature would be born in order to speak for the “new Peruvianness” (Mariátegui 1971,
Escajadillo 1994).
31
Arguedas distanced himself from indigenismo. He wrote, “people speak of the indigenista novel, and
my novels have been called indigenista or Indian. And that is not the case. It‟s a matter of their being
novels in that Andean Peru appears in all of its elements in its disturbing and confused human reality, of
which the Indian is really one of many different characters” (Arguedas 1985: xv).
32
He would later tell an amusing anecdote about how he wrote the stories originally in the most proper
Spanish he knew. He gave them to some of his classmates, who would later become important authors, to
read. They thought they were very good. But when he read them again he thought they were artificial and
horrible. Against the wishes of his friends he tore them up and wrote them again, combining Quechua
syntax with Spanish, “in a truly infernal struggle with language.”32 He put the stories away for a while.
333
When he came back to them, he thought they were true to the world and people he knew as a child
(Arguedas 1969: 41).
33
He emphatically declared that this invented language was a “fiction.” In a later essay he expressed clear
satisfaction with the exaggerated ways that other writers had appropriated this invented language. He
feared that the long and arduous process with which he developed a style capable of expressing the “soul”
of Quechua speech in Spanish was being used to further disfigure and stereotype indigenous characters
(Arguedas 1985: xix).
34
He later wrote, “to realize oneself, to translate oneself, to transform a seemingly alien language into a
legitimate torrent, to communicate to the almost foreign language the stuff of which our spirit is made, that
is the hard and difficult question” (Arguedas 1985:. xvi).
35
He defined these factions as, “the landowner, thoroughly convinced through the acts of centuries of his
human superiority over the Indians, and the Indians, who have arduously conserved the unity of their
culture, by the very fact of being subjected to and confronted by such a fanatical and barbaric force”
(Arguedas 1985: xvi).
36
In “Doña Caytana,” (1934) like “Los Muertos de los Arango” (1954), the scissors dance appears very
briefly as a charismatic element of Andean festivity.
37
According to Cornejo Polar, “the traditional indigenista novel repeats a scheme based on the
accumulation of dispossessions, usurpations, and abuses to such a point that it produced either the
destruction of the Indian‟s capacity for resistance or a violent and heroic, but always unsuccessful
response” (Cornejo Polar 1997: 59).
38
The novel pays attention to both the affinities and tensions between Puquio‟s four indigenous ayllus.38 It
not only shows the intricate hierarchies between principal and subordinate misti landlords but also the
subtle ways in which indigenous culture has shaped the misti elite.38 Furthermore, Arguedas adds new
intermediary social actors the conventional cast of characters of the indigenista novel. Both new middleclass mestizo business owners and migrants from the popular classes have arisen out of the modernizing
transformations of Andean social space. The road that connects Puquio to the coast, built in 1926 by the
freely chosen initiative of the indigenous ayllus, reconfigured Puquio into a booming commercial center
almost overnight. Arguedas returned to the scene of Yawar Fiesta, in order to analyze the social, and
cultural changes of Puquio in his 1956 essay “Puquio: Una Cultura en Proceso de Cambio” (Arguedas
1985).
39
Although the mistis appreciate the dancer from the elevated position of the balcony, the townspeople‟s
reaction unifies the four indigenous ayllus with pride, “the rejoicing was the same for all the Indians of
Puquio. And inside themselves they were taunting the mistis” (Ibid. 31).
40
Misha Kokotovic convincingly argues that Vargas Llosa is unable or unwilling to see beyond the binary
configuration of tradition versus modernity and equates the democratizing elements of modernity solely
with the civilizing project of the coastal authorities (Kokotovic 2006).
41
Misitu is a legendary wild bull who lives in the altiplano above Puquio. The capture of Misitu by the
K‟ayau Indians is one of the extended episodes of the novel. Kokotovic suggests that the creativity with
which the ayllu approaches what has been deemed an impossible task demonstrates Arguedas‟s faith in the
capacity of indigenous communities to actively participate in modernity (Kokotovic 2006).
334
42
While it is true that his depression worsened in the 1940s, other historical factors played an important
role in this literary silence and if we take into account the totality of his intellectual production this period
was not as sterile and unproductive as previously thought (Murra 1996, Archibald 2003, Kokotovic 2006).
43
As Muñoz (1982) notes, the style and themes of Yawar Fiesta reveal Arguedas‟s deepening interests in
ethnography, an endeavor he took up full-time after the novel‟s publication.
44
I concur with Murra that an examination of Arguedas‟s anthropological production counters the image of
the author as a tortured artist who suffered from debilitating depression and endured long unproductive
periods of his life (Ibid. 272).
45
A television documentary on Arguedas‟s life claimed that sitting at a table at the Peña Pancho Fierro,
Arguedas re-encountered danza de las tijeras bringing him warm memories of his childhood in Puquio. I
have not found any documentary evidence that specifically substantiates this claim, but it is possible that
Arguedas himself introduced the scissors dancers that visited him in 1937 to the Peña Pancho Fierro
(Guerrero 2005).
46
In prison, he wrote his second book, Canto Kechwa, in which he compiled and translated 21 Quechua
folk songs. The work includes a prologue that situates Arguedas‟s folkloric activities as a personal and
professional quest and places his personal experience in a unique dialectic with scientific knowledge
(Nauss Millay 2005: 78). After serving his prison term, he married Celia Bustamante and took a job as a
Spanish teacher in Sicuani (Pinilla 1994: 74). He found his return to the highlands refreshing and used the
surroundings as his personal laboratory, recruiting his students to help collect the region‟s folklore (Ibid.
74). He published articles on Andean music, dance, festival, and visual arts in La Prensa of Buenos Aires
(Nauss Millay 2005: 78). In 1940, Arguedas travelled with a congregation of rural schoolteachers to
Mexico, where he encountered state-sponsored anthropology, inspiring his hopes that through folkloric
representation indigenous cultures could be incorporated into the Peruvian national imaginary (Pinilla
1994: 75, Nauss Millay 2005: 78).
47
Whereas Arguedas‟s childhood memories were rooted in southern Ayacucho, most other representations
of the dance from this time were linked to intellectual movements in the city of Huamanga. The roadbuilding projects of the 1920s, which Arguedas had described in Yawar Fiesta, uprooted the departmental
capital from its former prominence as a regional economic and cultural center (Arguedas 1958, Urrutia
1976, Tucker 2005, Ulfe 2005).
48
Furthermore, Roberto Mac-lean included a rare look at the scissors dance from the northern department
of Arequipa (Mac-lean 1941).48 Respected national folklorist and musicologist Arturo Jimenez Borja
classified and the described the ideophone of the “Tijeras” in his Instrumentos Musicales en el Peru (1951).
49
1946 saw the publication of the landmark Handbook of South American Indians, edited by Julian
Steward. The volume became the primary textbook for the Institute of Ethnology at San Marcos, founded
in the same year by Luis Valcárcel. A number of its North American contributors spent time as faculty
members at the Institute, and the anthropology program founded in the same year at the Universidad San
Antonio Abad de Cuzco. Unlike the case of Mexico, while the initial years of Peruvian anthropology
initiated a relationship between ethnography and state politics, most of the funding for ethnographic
projects came from North American and European institutions (Degregori 2000: ). Thus, from its very
beginnings Peruvian anthropology was deeply indebted to North American capital and theoretical
frameworks.
50
The emblematic intervention of applied anthropology in the dynamics of capitalist modernization in Peru
was the Cornell-Vicos Project, which used new techniques of rapid modernization to remake subjugated
hacienda Indians into self-sufficient agricultural entrepreneurs. As numerous recent studies have shown,
335
the Vicos project was informed by good intentions and made undeniable gains in increasing the peasants‟
standard of living. However, its blinding faith in science as a non-ideological approach to social change
contributed to strategies that lacked sufficient understanding of the history, culture, and agency of the
Andean subjects they ostensibly attempted to liberate (Degregori 2000, Archibald 2003, Kokotovic 2006).
51
Arguedas struggled mightily with anthropological approaches to knowledge and often self-effacingly
depreciated his lack of theoretical preparation. Nevertheless, anthropological study facilitated his
acquisition of important positions in newly-formed public cultural institutions, most notably Head of the
Folklore Division of the Ministry of Education from 1947 until 1963 (Pinilla 1994: 78-79).
52
The primary object of Manrique‟s critique is Arguedas‟s emphasis on the mestizo as a hopeful figure for
the future of Peruvian nationhood, that Manrique suggests betrays the deep influence of Mexican
nationalism on Arguedas‟s thought. Arguedas did praise the strong sense of national identity and what he
perceived as an organic connection between the state and the people in Mexico at that time. In a number of
early articles he even appears to advocate “de-indianization” as a solution to Peru‟s social divisions.
However, Manrique takes these statements out of context, implying that they refer to a simple process of
assimilation or the creation of a new and homogenous synthesis as in the Mexico model of nationhood. By
“de-indianization” Arguedas refers to a process Marisol de la Cadena has called “indigenous mestizaje,”
the transcendence of the subjugated position of the “indio” in favor of greater contact with the forces of
modernity (Cadena 2000). To Arguedas, mestizaje implied not a homogenous synthesis, but rather the
dismantling of stable identities creating a highly contradictory and unstable character endowed with the
vitality of self-invention (Archibald 2003: 404). Furthermore, Arguedas‟s depictions of mestizaje were
inclusive rather than exclusive of indigeneity. According to Silvia Spitta, “In Arguedian narrative there are
no pure Indians and no pure mistis. Everyone, to a greater or lesser degree, is situated along a continuum of
mestizaje” (Spitta 1995: 141).
53
While at the same time they recognize the external hybridity Arguedas valued, these studies tend to
undermine it by invoking a timeless Andean content that constitutes the dance‟s essence. See: Vivanco
1976, Nuñez Rebaza 1985, 1990, Cavero Carrasco 2001, Arce Sotelo 2006).
54
Contemporary ethnographers have borrowed Arguedas‟s definition of this culture-area, shortened to La
Región Chanka, in order to situate the scissors dance as a pinnacle of a timeless regional identity with a
remarkable continuity since the Pre-Columbian period (Nuñez Rebaza 1990, Cavero Carrasco 2001, Arce
Sotelo 2006). Although he evokes Pre-Inca ethnic groups in naming the culture-area and traces the
genealogical roots of the unity he describes to the Chanka Confederacy, Arguedas clearly argues that the
shared cultural heritage of the region was produced by the economic and cultural routes of the colonial
period. The Hispanic character of the regional capital of Huamanga interacted with the almost entirely
indigenous populations of surrounding areas to create dynamic networks of commercial and religious
artisanship along a multi-directional axis of cultural exchange.
55
Retablos are hand-made religious art pieces traditionally used in the Department of Ayacucho as part of
the celebration of festivities for the branding of livestock. Sabogal and Alicia Bustamante discovered
Lopez Antay‟s work in the 1930s, just as the construction of highways was undercutting the market for
traditional religious objects in Huamanga (Arguedas 1978, Ulfe 2005).
56
On the one hand, the economic boom created by the highway to the coast has liberated the indigenous
communities from their subjugation by misti landlords and transformed the relationship between mestizo
merchants and peasant agriculturalists from antagonistic into a mostly symbiotic partnership. He notes that
indigenous parents have intentionally engaged in a project of indigenous-mestizaje by encouraging their
children to become educated mestizos (Arguedas 1985: 159). On the other hand, he cites the authority of
several elder leaders of Puquio‟s ayllus who express concern that the younger generation has little
knowledge of deeply-held community traditions.
336
57
Unlike later Andeanist ethnographers, Arguedas did not censor or seem embarrassed by the multiple
articulations of these myths with Christianity, but rather highlights them in order to foreground the
creativity of Andean cultural invention.
58
Arguedas portrayed this technique as the end of an exhaustive search that finally yielded “the use of
Spanish as the legitimate means of expressing the Peruvian world of the Andes; noble whirlwind in which
different spirits, as if forged on antipodal stars, struggle, attract, repel, and mingle with one another amid
silent snows and lakes, frosts and fire” (Arguedas 185: xx).
59
As a number of critics have noticed, the novel does not merely represent Andean music as its object, but
functions much like a musical composition itself (Rowe 1979, Rama 1982, Cornejo Polar 1997). 59
Arguedas‟s incorporation of the musicality of Quechua culture and language into the novel is the primary
reason Rama and other critics have celebrated Los Ríos Profundos as the pinnacle of “narrative
transculturation” in Latin American literature.
60
Anne Lambright argues, “Ernesto openly expresses his desire to touch the people, to reach an audience
and participate in its transformation, to return to the people their soul” (Lambright 2007: 137). She
suggests that the greatest achievement of the novel is the projection of the mestizo artist or intellectual able
to move between and bring together Western and indigenous elements, culture and nature, the masculine
and feminine (Ibid.). But in her enthusiasm Lambright ignores the obvious. Ernesto was unable to break
into the magical virtuoso performance he desired, indicating a continuing paralysis and doubt.
61
Many critics have picked upon the difficulties of identifying the number of Los Ríos Profundos. Some
divide the narrator into multiple voices, such as the older Ernesto and the impartial ethnographer (Cornejo
Polar 1993). Estelle Tarica argues that these multiple voices cannot be separated. She suggests that the
most important quality of the narrator is its self-effacing nature, almost entirely without a distinct persona
of its own (Tarica 97). Other authors have attributed this self-effacing quality to what Arguedas had
learned from the conventions of ethnographic narrative (Fass-Emery 1996).
62
Indeed, from this moment on, the scissors dance is powerfully linked to death in general and Arguedas‟s
death-wish in particular in the multi-faceted work of the last decade of Arguedas‟s life.
63
The success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 bolstered his confidence in the liberation of the Andean
people, which he saw as already taking place. Arguedas‟s solidarity with the demands of peasant
movements sprouting throughout the highlands and his participation in the emergence of a dynamic urban
Andean culture of migration linked Andean agency in both rural and urban spaces and inspired Arguedas‟s
revived articulations of Andean modernity (Manrique 1999, Kokotovic 2006).
64
His involvement in the development of spaces for the production of Andean art and music in the capital
city goes back to his role as a translator and guide to visiting scissors dancers from Puquio and his close
involvement in the Peña Pancho Fierro. Arguedas‟s treatment of the phenomenon of mass Andean
migration to the capital through the significant role the Centro Union Lucanas, an organization of migrants
from Puquio in Lima, played in his first novel Yawar Fiesta.
65
In another article, Arguedas wrote that these sentiments were held even by self-identified educated
indigenous elites such as the indigenista archaeologist Julio Tello. He praises Tello‟s energy and his
superior scientific knowledge for his day, however, Tell “lost sight of the living Indian. He admired
folklore, but having formed a group of dancers from his native town of Huarochiri, he dressed them in
„stylized‟ costumes created from the inspiration in archaeological motives, with contempt for the typical
dress of the people of Huarochiri” (Arguedas 1978: 191).
337
66
While some scholars have critiqued Arguedas‟s involvement with the romantic “folklorization” of
Andean culture by promoting theater-staged presentations based on urban-Western aesthetics, Arguedas
followed ongoing popular processes that sought to appropriate Western staging practices to achieve a
presence in broader public spheres for marginalized indigenous and mestizo subjects (Romero 2000, Alfaro
2004).
67
This style of “urban-country Andean music” included the adaptation of traditional huayno’s and other
folksong genres to urban-Western aesthetics with a star system of solo singers. They introduced
microphones, vibrato, stylized versions of traditional dress, and modern hair styles to Andean folk music
(Turino 1990, 2008).
68
According to Murra, Arguedas told him that one of his finest achievements was facilitating the recording
of Andean music (Murra 1996: 286). See also: Romero 2000:
69
According to the violinist, one day Arguedas showed up at his humble home in a poor district of Lima,
offering him a contract to perform at the Peña Pancho Fierro (Gushiken 1979: 30).
70
Juan Ansión proclaimed that Arguedas was “the first man that gave a serious impulse towards the
development of a coherent cultural politics in Peru” (Ansión 1986: 194).
71
In an earlier article in 1962, he praised the results of such state troupes in Russia and Mexico, arguing
that Peru had sufficient cultural diversity to surpass even these well-organized groups. He argued that there
two paths existed towards similar excellence, “the perfection of ballet choreography and ethnographic
techniques or the presentation of original indigenous performers from rural communities themselves”
(Arguedas 1976: 232). His initial attempts at forming such a state-sponsored theatrical troupe appear to be
inspired by both goals.
72
In a 1962 article, Arguedas wrote “We have been interested and even active witnesses- are nearly
repentant of that- to first, the discovery and then the great diffusion and the disorders and transformations
that particularly in Lima, these arts have undergone” (Arguedas 1976: 209).
73
It is certain that his ideas of cultural authenticity transformed over the years. In 1944, he claimed that
“only the native-born artist, he who inherits the genius of folklore, can interpret and transmit it to others”
(Arguedas 1976: 233).
74
In a letter to John Murra, Arguedas confessed, “I am very happy with this story because it has been
maturing for eight years and I wrote it in two days [. . .] Rasu Niti was a legendary dancer from Puquio”
(Murra and Lopez-Baralt 1996: 66). This statement situates the story‟s sources within oral tradition and the
origins of Arguedas‟s adaptation to around the time he re-encountered the dance in Lima through his
personal relationship to migrant performers such as Máximo Damián Huamaní. It also clearly places the
rapid and inspired process of writing within an enormously creative and productive period of Arguedas‟s
career in 1961 and 1962.
75
About the scissors he writes, “Each dancer can produce in his hands with this instrument a light music,
like a small water or even fire, depending on the rhythm of the orchestra and the „spirit‟ that protects the
dansak” (Arguedas 1974: 173).
76
As William Rowe suggests, “I understand that the scissors dance includes a series of Christian elements,
nevertheless, in the story „La Agonia de Rasu Niti‟ these elements do not appear; Arguedas excludes them.
It appears that Arguedas in this story is constructing the possibility of an autonomous Andean culture, not
dependent, perhaps in a utopian mode” (Rowe 1984: 28). Although Arguedas has not eliminated the
foreign elements of the dance, he downplays their significance, while in other cases it is this very hybridity
338
that he celebrates. He aimed at depicting a coherent and persuasive intimate portrait of Quechua culture as
a living entity (Zevallos Aguilar 2009). The „living juice‟ of this culture is the profound relationship
between the human community and the natural world, embodied in the figure of the scissors dancer (Rowe
1998: 48).
77
He begins by energetically dancing el jaykuy (entrance), and continues on to the sisi nina (fire ant). (Ibid.
175). Little by little his body begins to fail. At a certain point, Lurucha changes the melody to the Waqtay
(the battle).
78
In Andean mythology, Yawar Mayu is a subterranean river of the underworld that both originates in the
realm of death and is the source of life. According to Carlos Huaman, “This Yawar Mayu is the renewal of
life, of man and of nature. Its essence irrigates the countryside, quenches the thirst of livestock, awakens
music and dance and nourishes the hunger of man” (Huamán 2004: 211).
79
At this point, Lurucha plays melodic sequences that symbolize the coming of a new day, including lucero
kanchi (the illuminated star) and the wallpa wak’ay (the rooster‟s call) (Ibid. 178).
80
The enthusiastic reception of the work by both critics and general readers has increased over the years.
Its concise-length and simplistic beauty has made it a favorite of Peruvian secondary school teachers to
teach to their students. Literary critic Antonio Cornejo Polar called it “an admirable story, the most
beautiful of those that Arguedas wrote” (Cornejo Polar 1997: 164).
81
In a letter to his psychiatrist Lola Hoffman, Arguedas proudly declared “The publication of „La Agonia
de Rasu Niti‟ had created great enthusiasm amongst the young people and critics‟ (Murra and Lopez-Baralt
1996: 79). One young critic claimed the story demonstrated that Arguedas the major writer in Peru of that
time (Ibid.)
82
According to anthropologist Luis Millones, the first time he heard the idea that the scissors dance
represented the inheritance of the sixteenth century movement was in 1966 or 1967 at a private party in
Arguedas‟s apartment. One of the scissors dance performers close to the circle of Arguedas made this
claim, and a number of the folklorists and musicologists in Arguedas‟s circle agreed (Millones 2007: 57,
Personal Interview “Luis Millones” 2009).
83
One of these performers was José Navarro, originally from Apurimac. He underwent a major training
process learning the scissors dance in Lima before performing the short theatrical adaptation, directed by
veteran Peruvian director Sara Joffre. He has since migrated to London, where he performs the scissors
dance in a variety of theatrical venues (Personal Interview “Sara Joffre” 2009). The other theatrical
adaptation was created and performed by Javier Maraví, director of Grupo Cultural Waytay. This actor is
originally from Huancayo, where he learned the scissors dance style from Huancavelica. While he only
considers himself an amateur, his brother, Julio Maraví, is a well-known scissors dancer from the
Huancavelica community (Personal Interview “Javier Maraví” 2009).
84
Some evidence suggests that he originally intended the short story as a kind of suicide note. In a letter to
his psychiatrist Lola Hoffman referring to “Rasu Niti” he wrote, “I am sending you two versions of the
story that I wrote with the idea of suicide. I said farewell to life writing this story, which as you will see is
more of a song to life than to desperation” (Murra and Lopez-Baralt 1996: 77). However, after publishing
the story in 1962, Arguedas approached his life and work with a renewed vigor.
85
Thus, Arguedas significantly complicates his earlier attempts at performative autobiography in a
powerful authorial act that seeks “to write the social into being and even more to write the self taken as its
medium of expression” (Archibald 2007: 6).
339
86
As late as the 1950s, Chimbote was a small fishing village that exploded almost overnight to become the
largest supplier of fishmeal in the world. By the mid-1960s its population bloated to nearly 200,000, 70%
of whom were migrants from the Andean highlands (Ortega 1990, Lambright 2007: 143).
87
Soon, he discovered that ethnographic writing or social realism were inadequate mediums for the
expression of the convulsive transformations produced by the capitalist modernity which he experienced in
Chimbote. He abandoned his earlier attempts at social realism and adapted the techniques of the modernist
avant-garde in a novel tortured by alienation and the degradation of the natural and social environment.
88
The fictional sections of the novel paint Chimbote as an oppressive environment, degraded by massive
pollution and the contamination of the social environment. Prostitution serves as a potent metaphor
throughout the novel attesting to the effects of unbridled capitalist development on a once peaceful
community (Archibald 4, Ortega 1990: xi, Lambright 2007).
89
Furthermore, Roland Forgues argues that, “On observing the deep mutation suffered by Chimbote‟s
society, a mutation that radically questions the ideas he had previously formed about mestizaje and the
social and cultural integration of the Indians and other marginalized sectors, the writer had to confront the
destabilization of what had until then constituted the very foundation of his work” (qtd. in Moreiras 2001).
His argument rests on the assumption that Arguedas‟s work posits a myth of mestizaje as a resolution of
difference. In addition, he assumes that Arguedas could not adapt his previously held ideas and beliefs to
changing circumstances.
90
Even many authors who take a more measured approach to the dystopian aspects of Los Zorros tend to
ultimately interpret the novel as a representation of the collapse of Arguedas‟s social vision (Cornejo Polar
1990, Lambright 2007).
91
Many of the Arguedas‟s own statements refute this interpretation.
92
Archibald argues for the “depoliticization” of the author‟s suicide and the „recovery of individual
pathology” as an explanation for his death. She further suggests that “depoliticizing” the act of suicide
does not imply the depolitization of Arguedas‟s writing, but rather a recognition of the political agency of
both Arguedas as a productive and creative artist and the strongly-drawn characters of the novel “whose
agency jumps from the page” (13).
93
Archibald, as well as Kokotovic (2006), and Lambright (2007) bring to light the resourcefulness of
Andean migrant culture despite the dehumanizing effects of the environment. Particularly in the novel‟s
second half, the multiple protagonists achieve some success in constructing “a radically democratic
community with, not in spite of, cultural difference, these characters engage one another in the process of
creating meaning and community out of heterogeneity” (Archibald 14).
94
In this vein, Julio Ortega offers perhaps the most generous assessment of Los Zorros as “an allegory of
nationality reformulated at the center of modernization, where life and death are not in opposition, but yield
the word and plot to an unknown world, ancient and future, apocalyptic and renascent” (Ortega 2000: xv).
95
That Arguedas used the scissors dance as a surrogate for his own authorial consciousness and staged his
own death upon the model of “La Agonia de Rasu Niti” speaks to his cultivation of a new cosmopolitan
Andean public with heterogeneous competencies.
96
Lienhard argues that the zorro-danzaq, “in its quality as actor and sign of oral tradition theatricalizes the
struggle between the conventional novel and popular tradition inside the text. This struggle represents the
values of the Peruvian people, Pre-Columbian, contemporary, and future, brotherhood and reciprocity
against hierarchy” (Lienhard 1981: 143).
340
97
Luís Arista Montoya suggests that in 1966 Arguedas gave a conference presentation entitled “La
Motivación del Escritor” in which he argued that the writer, at least in his own case, was a medium
possessed by the Wamanis. He characterizes his own persona in a similar manner as Rasu Niti, the great
dansak. Thus, Arguedas initiated the broader shift in which the scissors dance would later become a model
for the modern Andean self (Arista Montoya 2011).
Chapter 5
1
The paradigmatic model for the new Peruvian man was the modern Andean mestizo, competent in urban
and western knowledge but retaining his ancestral memory of traditional Andean culture.
2
The Golden Age of this genre occurred during the Cold War as a spectacular yet unthreatening form of
cultural diplomacy within and between nations of antagonist ideological blocs (Shay 2002: 1, 231).
3
The paradigmatic models for such folklore companies, most often fostered by second and third-world
nations, were the Moyseyev Ballet of the USSR and the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico choreographed by
Amalia Hernandez (Shay 2002).
4
Believing that Peruvian folklore had become distorted, Santa Cruz adapted the techniques of “Discovery
and Development of the Sense of Rhythm” which she had developed for her earlier company “Teatro y
Danzas Negras del Perú” (Santa Cruz 1979: 1, Feldman 2006: 77). Through these techniques, she sought
to help the performers rediscover the authentic spirit of the distinct dances. Furthermore, she only selected
performers who had learned folkloric traditions in their native home as part of the ensemble.
5
In one interview she described folklore as “pure life- the wisdom of a people who had discovered how to
live harmoniously with each other and with nature” (Barba 1978).
6
Furthermore, he distanced himself from beliefs in the pachamama or the Wamanis, the central elements of
rural folk religion often associated with the dance.
7
The group‟s separation with the violinist Máximo Damián Huamaní shortly after Arguedas‟s death was
due to a supposed lack of discipline and punctuality on the part of the violinist.
8
Indeed, in a moment of ironic humor, one recent newspaper article imagines “satirically that in one of his
most authentic and patriotic moments Velasco could have sent an able compatriot to learn to dance at the
Volsca Russian Ballet, in order to later translate what he learned to Andean culture [. . .] How millennial
could this dance be?” Although simplified and meant to be taken as a joke, this suggestion contains a kernel
of truth (Smith Quilca and Romero 2006).
9
It is also telling that staged performances of the scissors dance frequently invite comparisons to the
emblematic masculine virtuosity of the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico‟s famous reconfiguration of the Danza
del Venado (Yaqui Deer Dance).
10
Valentín swears that John Travolta borrowed one of the group‟s iconic movements in Saturday Night
Fever (Personal Interview “Valentín Chiara” 2009). While it is not possible to verify this claim, it is
certainly possible as the Conjunto Nacional de Folklore toured the United States in 1975, including
performances in New York and Los Angeles.
11
Valentín‟s son Fredy carries on the family tradition as a professional folklorist who studied at the
Escuela Nacional de Folklore “José María Arguedas.” He teaches over 60 Peruvian dances to Peruvian and
Latin American immigrants in Los Angeles, CA. His more advanced students perform an annual large-
341
scale concert at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. Although Fredy does not teach the scissors
dance, he and his brother perform the dance as soloists during these concerts. He told me that when he
performs the scissors dance he feels like himself, but when he performs other dances he is only imitating.
As his final requirement for his degree at the Escuela Nacional de Folklore, he is currently finishing his
thesis which combines his own experiences as a professional folk dancer and choreographer with
ethnographic field research on the scissors dance in his family‟s hometown in the Parinacochas province of
Ayacucho (Personal Interview “Fredy Chiara” 2008).
12
This speech has been published in several other sources, including Recopilación de Textos Sobre José
María Arguedas (1976).
13
He has appeared in numerous documentaries about the author‟s life, annual commemorations for
Arguedas‟s birth and death, academic conferences, and is an obligatory reference for journalistic and
academic articles about the famous Peruvian author.
14
The social environment rarely tolerated public displays of indigenous or highland identity, obliging
migrants to at least partially assimilate urban-Creole lifestyle in order to acquire a degree of social mobility
(Schaedel 1979: 409, Turino 1993: 30-31).
15
Anibal Quijano argued that unstructured urban growth had brought about the rise of a new sociocultural
subject; the urban Andean cholo. He contended that this process of “cholification,” “was not only a stage
on the road to acculturation, but develops in large part through the formation of a cultural structure distinct
from those in conflict” (Quijano 1980: 110). The RGAF drew on progressive intellectual discourses which
saw this emerging group as a foundation of a new national-popular with the potential to resolve the
contradictions of the Creole republic.
16
The first organized land invasions occurred in the late 1940s, just east of the established areas of central
Lima (Driant 1991, Burt 2007: 93).
17
These invasions formed through family and regional networks, planning for months and enacted the
occupation of unused public land on a single night.
18
The barriadas are clearly an improvement over the older inner-city slums, giving migrants the
opportunity to own their own homes and build their own communities. (Millones 1978, Schaedel, De Soto
1989, Matos Mar 2004).
19
During the 1970s, both scholars and the national press finally took notice of the cultural phenomenon of
provincial music in the capital. At least three different newspaper articles figured coliseo performances as
the sacred ritual of an emergent cholo identity in the process of redefining the nation (Canedo Reyes 1973,
Roel Pineda 1977, Levano 1979).
20
For example, the regional association Centro Union Lucanas plays a major role in Arguedas‟s first novel,
Yawar Fiesta (1985 [1941]). Arguedas argued for the potential of urban migration to create positive
change much earlier than other scholarly and literary commentators, as the former comuneros become
empowered within their communities of origin through their urban experience.
21
During this same period, many associations shifted their central activities to culturally unmarked soccer
matches to the staging of urban reproductions of fiestas from their place of origin as highland culture
became significantly less marginal in urban Lima (Turino 1993: 210).
22
Some of the associations formed by the first wave of Andean migrants were able to purchase small
parcels of lead near the city center where they constructed walled-in locales for sports and cultural
342
activities. In the 1970s, some of the newer associations established larger locales in the barriadas of the
conos.
23
Admission fees, as well as the sale of concessions, are central fund-raising mechanisms for the
associations who use them for other cultural events, towards the purchase of a locale, and to commission
works for their corresponding place of origin.
24
First, various less-specialized folk dance troupes, often schoolchildren, stage short presentations of local
folk dances.
25
This phase of the fiesta includes only minimal participation from the scissors dance performers, who
often gather in a circle drinking beer away from the main dance area.
26
These events employ or give business to costume-makers and embroiderers, the makers of musical
instruments, sound system operators, radio programs, the printers for the ubiquitous promotional flyers,
food and beverage service workers, and photographers.
27
Nuñez Rebaza classifies a series of types of performers based on what years they arrived in Lima, and
their level of knowledge of the dance before they migrated. I prefer to refer to these distinctions as
generations, and recognize these categories are more fluid and internally heterogeneous than she suggests.
Nevertheless, this distinction between the first generational wave of migrant performers (and audiences)
which arrived between 1945 and 1960, and the second wave, which arrived between 1960 and 1980 is a
useful heuristic framework for demarcating the competition for distinction and various tensions amongst
the performers.
28
The first wave artists rarely performed or even attended fiestas costumbristas, in some cases because of
advanced age and sometimes because of the conditions of poverty and heavy drinking on display in these
events.
29
Later ethnographers not only found a greater pool of potential informants amongst the larger and more
sustained migrant community from this region, but the aesthetic and ritual elements of this particular style
conformed more to Andeanist expectations of authentic indigenous Andean culture.
30
The spaces for scissors dance performance of the Ayacucho style remain divided between the large locale
of ASU (Asociacion de Sociedades Unidas) in La Victoria near the traditional city center, and a constantly
growing network of spaces in the southern cone.
31
A much smaller group of performers from Huancavelica arrived with the first wave and found some
success during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in several large folkloric companies. Nevertheless, at a greater
distance from Arguedas and other nationally-renowned folklorists, this community was not able to establish
much continuity. The dancers, in particular, came and went or stopped practicing the artform altogether at
a young age. Only a few musicians, particularly the legendary violinist Leoncio Rua, represented a fragile
continuity for urban representations of the Huancavelica style.
32
The presence of folklore contests in Peru goes back to the 1927 Festival of Pampa de Amancaes.
However, scissors dance performers only infrequently competed in such contests until the Velasco regime
sponsored the massive Inkari Festivals between 1969 and 1975.
33
Santiago Pariona, who won the departmental contest in Ayacucho in 1972, also articulates the motivation
of gaining respect and recognition for his village as well as increasing the value of his contracts for rural
and urban fiestas (Nuñez Rebaza 1985: 324).
343
34
The contest took place in the Locale Abtao 525 in La Victoria, a notoriously rough area of the older
inner-city slums. He described his shock at the masses of people and fear of potential thieves.
35
In the initial stages of the entrance of globalization into Peru, this group complicates Matos‟s Mar‟s
claim that with the popular overflow, Lima „is stripped of its Creole-colonial attributes and becomes a
predominant trend toward transnationalization and another toward Andeanization, cholification or perhaps
more simply and precisely nationalization” (Matos Mar 1986: 20).
36
In 1975, the media reform law of the Velasco government required the dedication of 7.5% of radio
programming to national folkloric music, augmenting an already dramatically expanding market (Llorens
1983: 127).
37
After the untimely death of Canales in an automobile accident in 1975, a young dancer named Richard
Saire replaced him. Saire became known as the first scissors dancer born in Lima, who learned the practice
primarily by listening to earlier recordings of the group and watching their presentations in the coliseos.
38
Nearly all performers who learned the dance in the highlands tell the same story. They practiced the
dance or musical instrument clandestinely under the threat of extreme corporal punishment. In some cases,
the parents sent them to Lima in order to keep them away from the dance (Personal Interview “Ccecchele”
2008, “Juan Capcha” 2009, “Qoronta” 2008, “Añascha” 2009).
39
In many cases, the successful first-wave performers also guided the younger dancers both directly and
indirectly. Richard Saire not only learned informally from the musicians of El Conjunto de Danzantes de
Tijeras de Puquio, but also from Máximo Damián Huamaní and Lazaro Asto who oriented him for
theatrical performances. Furthermore, Gerardo Chiara taught a number of young urban students using
balletic techniques and encouraged the development of the body through gymnastics. Thus, Los Hermanos
Chiara contributed directly to the most prominent urban innovation of the dance; the invention of ever more
sophisticated acrobatic choreographies which accentuated the physical virtuosity of the young practitioners.
40
They also replaced the heavy wool headpiece with a much lighter synthetic variety made out of sponge.
41
Meanwhile, the Ayacucuchano community of performers and their audiences achieved a larger degree of
preservation of traditional repertoires and experienced a great deal of generational tension.
42
Some of the young performers who had limited or no knowledge of Quechua began they began to
practice the scissors dance acquired an impressive fluency in the language dispatching lived in Lima most
of their lives. Furthermore, they re-established tangible and affective links to a specific regional heritage,
partially resolving the ambiguous positionality of many children of Andean migrants unable to truly claim
an identity as a provinciano or Limeño.
43
In different interviews he has told three different stories of how he came to be a scissors dancer which
nevertheless have the same narrative arc of vengeance for a shamed family member followed by personal
triumph (Nuñez Rebaza 1985: 365-366, Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007).
44
He also received some guidance from his uncle, Eulogio Taipie Janampa, a minor dancer from the
second-wave migrant generation. However, he never had close contact with a teacher he could call his
“master” (Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007).
45
Around the same time, he began to teach young adolescents born in Lima attracted to both their unknown
heritage and the growing popularity of the dance in the capital.
344
46
Although he belongs to an earlier generation, Derrepente began to make modifications to the dance when
he arrived in Lima in 1957 as a soldier in the army. He adapted the red husbandry paints of the military
uniform to the scissors dance, an innovation which became standard by the late 1960s.
47
Tellingly, when he returned to rural festivities, he was impressed with the respect for traditional
sequences and took pride in his mastery of them, but ultimately found the dancers of Lima to be more able.
48
Lucifer replaced his father in the training of new dancers. One of these young dancers was Damián de la
Cruz Ccanto, later known by the Peruvian press as “The King of the Scissors Dance.” De la Cruz Ccanto,
who goes by the artistic name of Ccarccaria (incestuous demon), came from a family of musicians and
dancers but arrived in Lima as an orphan at the age of only eight years old.
49
Nuñez Rebaza complains about the small stages, the reductions and modifications to traditional
choreographies for fifteen minute presentations, and the exploitation of the artists at these kinds of events.
However, she ignores the performers own motivations and agency for acquiring a circumscribed space for
recognition, not only by foreign tourists but their own communities through such public presentations.
50
In 1982, Qori Sisicha travelled to Rantay, Derrepente‟s hometown in Huancavelica to compete in the
annual festival, initiating the participation of Ayacuchano performers in Huancavelicano festivities and vice
versa, in both urban and rural spaces (Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007).
51
Nevertheless, staged by performers or not, these events were still often accused of rampant exploitation
and corruption on the part of the organizers, increasing the professional jealousies within the scissors dance
community itself.
52
According to the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report (2003), the internal war
caused over 69, 280 deaths, and 13,000 forced disappearances, as well as displaced over 600,000 rural
highlanders and leaving 40,000 children orphaned.
53
These studies follow what Theidon calls the “between two fires” thesis which represents the violence as
perpetrated by two forces external to peasant communities (Theidon 2004, 2008). This perspective not
only ignores the myriad ways in which peasant actors involved themselves in the conflict, but portrays
migration and its effects on cultural practices such as the scissors dance as nearly entirely passive
mechanisms for self-presentation.
54
During the period of the RGAF, Velasco‟s language of social, economic, and political rights emboldened
popular grassroots movements. However, the contradictions of actual governance increasingly divided the
military over how to control popular mobilizations. The more institutional wing of the armed forces
became nervous that popular movements showed signs of increasing radicalism.
55
The military government did not change its ideological direction for about a year, when Morales
Bermudez shifted hard to the right in economic policy, restoring many of the privileges of the Creole
oligarchy which Velasco had gradually dismantled.
56
The military attempted to tightly control the electoral process. However, the sudden death of its favored
candidate, the long-time leader of APRA Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, opened a space for the election of
centrist Fernando Belaunde Terry, who the military had deposed twelve years earlier (Burt 2007: 29).
57
The civilian government, understandably wary of empowering the military, initially ignored the
increasing reports of revolutionary actions in the central and southern highlands, characterizing Shining
Path as a gang of common delinquents. In hindsight, it is now clear that this willful negligence enabled an
ideologically dogmatic, ruthlessly violence, and well-disciplined guerilla outfit to build its infrastructure
345
and propaganda machine in preparation for an insurgency which nearly toppled the Peruvian government
by the early 1990s (Stern 1998, CVR 2003, Taylor 2006, Burt 2007).
58
At a time when even the most radical Marxist organizations in Peru gained greater visibility and
legitimacy in the public sphere due to their close relationship to rural and urban popular movements,
Shining Path laid low and clandestinely built up its base and infrastructure in the rural highlands of
Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac.
59
Lacking the opportunities their education had promised them, joining Shining Path gave these youth a
strategy for achieving the social mobility they sought through a utopian vision of remaking society along
Maoist lines.
60
They replaced traditional community authorities, composed of wealthier peasants who engaged in a
hierarchical and ritualized system of cargos, and installed party commissaries in their place. During the
harvest season of 1982, they blocked the peasants‟ access to markets, declaring that crops should be
produced for subsistence with the excess distributed amongst the party (Degregori 1998: 133).
61
By far the most intense conflicts between Shining Path and peasant communities revolved around the use
of violence. Initially, the guerillas targeted representatives of the state and abusive authorities. However,
their ideology valued indiscriminate violence as a purifying force, and they punishments they handed out
frequently went beyond the severity of the crime according to peasant perspectives. The peasants
frequently set a limit of “punish but do not kill” on the use of violence, frustrating Shining Path leaders
who in turn viewed these social conventions as further evidence of archaic ideas which ensured the
peasants‟ subservience to their oppressors. Furthermore, the disturbing manner in which Shining Path kills
involved excessive violence against the body, including mutilation, horrified the peasants who placed great
importance on the ritual obligations of the living toward the dead.
62
The Peruvian anthropological community reacted strongly against the report accusing Vargas Llosa and
the government of uninformed and politically motivated appropriations of anthropological knowledge.
Even Luis Millones, an anthropologist who served on the commission, compared the investigation to “the
performance of a set drama in which the authorities acted in order to ensure that the libretto was faithfully
followed” (1983: 88).
63
According to one high-ranking general, “In order for the security forces to be successful, they will kill 60
people and maybe 3 will be Senderistas, but they will say that all 60 were Senderistas” (Burt 2007: 58).
64
Even peasant communities which did not actively support the Shining Path often saw the insurgents as
the lesser evil, employing strategies of “resistant adaptation” in order to survive in an increasingly informal
landscape of killing, torture, sexual violence, and targeted use of humiliation (Degregori 1998, Starn 1998,
Theidon 2004). Nevertheless, the majority of peasant communities continued to perceive the guerillas as
an external force and resented that Shining Path retreated at first-sign of the military, contrasting with the
idealized role of the Andean patron who supposedly protected his clients (Degregori 1998: 143).
65
According to Degregori, the Vargas Llosa commission revealed the limits of an essentialist culturalist
perspective which continued to depict the Andean people as the national “other.” (Degregori 2000). The
protagonist of Julio Ortega‟s novel Adios Ayacucho, a dead comunero seeking to recompose his mutilated
body, stated, “Anthropologists from Lima are very temperamental. One day they dress like Indians and
chew coca, and the next day they come with the police and round everybody up” (Ortega 1985: 19).
Speaking directly to the reader he asks, “Don‟t you think that this Uchucarray report will end anthropology
in Peru” (Ibid. 20).
346
66
These early anthropological studies of the maintenance of Andean cultural practices in Lima Degregori
define as “anthropology in the city,” only later developing into “anthropology of the city,” which produced
more nuanced examinations of urban space as a site of encounter between various cultural formations and
traditions producing heterogeneity and hybridity (García Canclini 1995, Degregori 2000: 52).
67
She explains, “Due to the confrontation, the continuity of traditional fiestas in rural communities was
nearly impossible. The migrants in Lima were the only ones who had the possibility to continue with the
realization of said fiestas in the capital itself” (Nuñez Rebaza 1985: 14).
68
The violinist Chimango attributed this outbreak of ailments and illnesses to the physical and emotional
effects of the violence (Personal Interview “Chimango” 2007).
69
The organization‟s president made a call for unity amongst the practitioners of the various regional
scissors dance communities, while respecting the distinct aesthetic styles. According to the flyer, more
than thirty performers participated, mostly from Ayacucho but including the highest-profile dancers from
Huancavelica such as Derrepente, and Lucifer.
70
Facing near collapse, the state reverted to “the default into an IMF-style policy of the worst kind- an
austerity-induced recession- without the IMF and the credit relief it provides” (Graham 1992: 110).
71
Qori Sisicha claims that after a confrontation, he voluntary resigned from his position, leaving a fund of
$5000, which the new leaders plundered for their own pockets (Personal Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007).
Chapter 6
1
Although Vargas Llosa had never held political office, his right-wing neoliberal coalition and the author‟s
urbane mannerisms came to represent the status quo of rule by a small Creole minority (Oliart 1998: 412).
2
After he unexpectedly became the frontrunner, the political establishment began to attack Fujimori on
nationalistic grounds, questioning his place of birth, and ridiculing his highly-accented Spanish speech,
quiet demeanor, and informal mannerisms. In retrospect, those attacks probably backfired because they
played right into the close identification between his targeted constituency and the highly embodied
performance of the candidate‟s public persona. The majority of Peruvians shared the experience of being
1st or 2nd generation Peruvian citizens in affective terms if not in legal status, spoke Spanish with a
“foreign” accent or had parents who did, made their living through strategic informality, and were quite
familiar with the ridicule of the traditional elite (Lee 2010: 50).
3
The military and the rondas collaborated on civic action campaigns and development projects even before
the violence on civic action campaigns and development projects even before the violence subsided. Orin
Starn argues that the intimate relationship between the military and rondas reveals the “instability of the
line between grassroots and imposed” mobilizations as the participation of Andean men and women
“restored a sense of identity and agency “to rural and urban communities (Starn 1998: 236, 247).
4
As Kimberly Theidon‟s informants explained, the emergence of the rondas meant “the people began to
get macho” (2003).
5
However, in order to acquire legitimacy the embodiment of the figure of the Indian warrior had to be
directed against the insurgents, because resistance or even critique of state actions risked inscription into
the ultimate stigmatized subject position; the terrorist (Theidon 2004, 2008).
6
On the one hand, both left many women with new burdens and responsibilities as the caretakers of
increasingly fragile family units and both the military and Shining Path targeted women for horrific
347
ritualized acts of sexual violence and/or forced them to witness the brutal execution of family members
during the war. Nevertheless, migration and political violence also offered Andean women new
opportunities to actively participate in the public sphere, whether as militants either in Shining Path or the
rondas campesinas, or through the emergence of new mothers, women‟s, or widows organizations.
7
As Rich and Sirleaf suggest, “Conflict can change traditional gender roles. Women may acquire more
mobility, resources, and opportunities for leadership. But the additional responsibility comes without
diminution in the demands of their traditional roles. Thus, the momentary space in which women take on
untraditional roles and typically assume greater responsibilities within the household and public arenas
does not necessarily advance gender equality” (2002: 2).
8
FREDEMO was the name of Vargas Llosa‟s right-wing coalition which advocated for neoliberal austerity
measures and a return to traditional Catholic values
9
Fujimori often appeared dressed as an Andean peasant, and danced to Andean highland music, thus
portraying himself as a man of the people. He even enlisted the aid of local shamans in highly televised
ritual purification ceremonies addressed to the apus and the pachamama (Montoya 1998, Millones 2007).
10
Due to their popularity, and recognition in broader public spheres and their specialized role as guardians
of local traditions, performers such as Qori Sisicha, Chimango, and Llapla frequently performed at
ceremonies inaugurating reconstruction and repopulation efforts, particularly in 1996 and 1997 (Personal
Interview “Qori Sisicha” 2007, “Chimango” 2007).
11
They distinguished themselves from a younger generation of performers, whose younger bodies were
more physically able for spectacular acrobatics, but whose knowledge of the “complete” scissors dance
repertoire was interrupted by the rupture of the violence.
12
Although Añascha did not dance, he served as a local consultant and guide for the film crew in just one
example of how performers with both urban recognition and previous experience in rural festivals
positioned themselves as leaders in the process of cultural revitalization and reaffirmation of the local after
the internal conflict.
13
The film ends a series of final captions which note that no winner of the atipanakuy was declared due to
the illness of the dancer Halcón after he swallowed a sword too hurriedly in a previous competition. In
addition, none of the villagers volunteered to take the responsibility of a mayordomia for the following
year. We are left to assume the failure of the aims of the scissors dance which the documentary portrays as
“decisive in order to reproduce a symbolic universe of a culture which struggles to survive” (Uriarte 1998).
14
The actions of the Fujimori regime and transnational mining corporations weakened earlier strategies of
labor organization in the massive mercury mines of the region. Under the leadership of new local
professionals and intellectual elites, mining workers began to reorganize their claims against exploitation
on the grounds of environmental protection and ethnic identity (Durand 2006).
15
For example, Caso Arias and Rojas de la Cruz argue that “without harmful intention, this diminishes our
people, putting us at the disposition of Spain, ashamed of our Anqara identity” (1999).
16
As well-connected scissors dancers from Huancavelica incorporated themselves into this disciplinary
apparatus of self-making, it often produced incongruent phenomena, such as performers whose public
popularity forces them to keep their diabolic pseudonyms, proclaiming that the Spanish invaders persecuted
us as devils. We do not have a pact with the devil we have a pact with nature.
348
17
This particular text‟s status as s children‟s book for classroom use gives it an overtly pedagogical
function, pointing towards the disciplinary nature of its discourse of cultural identity.
18
PROANDE was founded and directed by a Danish couple, Marc and Holly Wilhelm, who has worked
since 1993 on the reconstruction of communities around the city of Andahuaylas. Their main objectives
are to improve hygiene, access to clean water, and self-esteem and cultural identity in marginalized areas
using a methodology they call SARAR.
19
In 2008, anthropologist Cavero Carrasco described a theatrical enactment of the Taki Onqoy staged by
local schoolteachers and students in the community of Huancaray near Andahuaylas. The final act depicted
the “warriors” of the millennial movement as scissors dancers who dance in order to celebrate the
expulsion of the Spaniards from their land. Cavero Carrasco admits that the libretto was based on the
PROANDE pamphlets and his own study Los Dioses Vencidos (2001). Nevertheless, he interprets the
event as a clear example of what he calls the “millennial consciousness” of the Chanka people (Cavero
Carrasco 2008). I would argue that it more clearly shows the interventions of ethnographic and NGO
discourses with local educational institutions in order to produce a performative pedagogy of cultural and
ethnic identity. Rural schoolchildren perform this “millennial consciousness” for the older campesinos,
who are doubly removed from a position of agency as spectators in the reinvention of the local.
20
Carlos returned to Lima in 2000, but has remained active in this small network of cultural revitalization
in Andamarca by publishing a magazine and a blog promoting cultural tourism in the region.
21
Since 2000, she has collaborated with local historian Hugo Vallenos and teacher Pascal Flores in the
staging of a reenactment of the death of the Inca Huascar with local schoolchildren on the first day of The
Festival of Water. These kinds of events, staging local history for the consumption of local residents and
outsiders, are increasingly common throughout the rural Andes.
22
Unlike younger performers who most often invite attention from the press or anthropologists, Cirilo Inca
still jealously guards his secrets even from his own family and apprentices. He is known to have a low
opinion of the contemporary scissors dancers, publicly claiming they are no more than circus dancers
23
The harpist known as Champa explained to me that while these younger authorities see all scissors
dancers as the same, he remembers as a child growing up in Andamarca, one of the two so-called “cradles”
of the scissors dance maintained a fierce rivalry. The artists from Puquio, the provincial capital, used to
look down upon and insult those of Andamarca as more Indian or cholo than themselves (Personal
Interview “Champa” 2009).
Chapter 7
1
That this discourse contradicts the diabolic quality of his artistic pseudonym and the testimony of several
other performers who claim that in the previous decade Ccarccaria had played up the notion of the pact
with the devil for the sake of publicity for a different consumer public, suggest that there is more going on
than a merely heartfelt articulation of a postcolonial indigenous identity. On cue he claims that the pruebas
de valor represent a manner of protest against the pain and trauma caused by the Spanish invasion.
2
Other performers and even Ccarccaria himself have told me that this claim is basically a publicity stunt
and I have met his Peruvian wife.
349
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List of Interviews
“Rey Chicchi”(dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. July 12, 2007.
---. Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. Dec. 15, 2007.
“Rey Chicchi and Chicchi Para I” (dancers). Interviewed by Author, September 5, 2007.
“Rey Chicchi and Lasta Para (dancers). Interviewed by Author, May 21, 2009
“Julio Peréz” (singer of La Sarita). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. August 10, 2007.
---. Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. January 19, 2009.
“Qori Sisicha” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. August 17, 2007.
---. Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. December 18, 2007.
“Ccarccaria” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. August 19, 2007.
---. Interviewed by Author. Cuzco, Peru. October 3, 2008.
“Chimango” (violinist). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. August 21, 2007
---. Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. August 29, 2008.
“Patricia Awapara” (modern dancer/choreographer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru.
August 25, 2007.
“Condenado” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Huancayo, Peru. September 6, 2007.
“Mariano Marcacusco” (violinist/member of La Sarita). Interviewed by Author. Lima,
390
Peru. January 3, 2008.
“Fredy Chiara” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Los Angeles, CA. March 31, 2008.
“Chuspicha” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Andamarca, Peru. August 25, 2008
“Ccecchele” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. September 8, 2008.
“Qoronta” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. October 1, 2008
“Alvaro Zavala” (video artist). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. September 21, 2008.
---. Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. December 7, 2008.
“Máximo Damiá Huamaní” (violinist). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. October 16,
2008.
“Fredy Ortiz” (Singer, Uchpa). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. October 18, 2008.
“Javier Maravi” (theatre actor). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. November 29, 2008.
“Sara Joffre” (theatre director). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. November 30, 2008.
“Damaris Mallma” (fusion singer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. December 5,
2008.
„Pura Sangre” (female dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. December 15, 2008.
“Llapla” (harpist). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. January 6, 2009.
“Valentín Chiara” (harpist Los Hermanos Chiara). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru.
January 6, 2009.
“Fredy Chavez.” (Director, Los Hermanos Chavez). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru.
January 8, 2009.
---. Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. January 19, 2009.
“Kishkamico” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. January 12, 2009.
“Encanto de Puquio” (dancer/ member La Sarita). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru.
391
January 16, 2009.
“Victor Chavez” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru January 17, 2009.
“Gabriela Yepes” (filmmaker). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. January 17, 2009.
“Pachak Chaki” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. January 26, 2009.
---. Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. March 29, 2009.
“Cristal” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. March 19, 2009.
“Fortunato Anchita” (indigenist intellectual). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. March
31, 2009.
“Accarwaycha” (female dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. April 2, 2009.
“Añascha” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. April 6, 2009.
“Cheqche de Sondondo” (violinist). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. April 8, 2009.
“Killihuara” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. April 13, 2009.
“Manuelcha Prado” (fusion guitarist). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. April 17,
2009.
„Amiel Cayo” (Actor in Yuyachkani). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. April 19,
2009.
“Terrible” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. April 21, 2009.
“Champa” (harpist). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. April 29, 2009.
“Halcón” (dancer). Intervieed by Author. Lima, Peru. May 3, 2009.
“Juan Capcha” (violinist). Interviewed by Author. Lima, Peru. May 22, 2009.
“Qesqento” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Port Chester, NY. June 11, 2009.
“Lucerito de Paucara” (dancer). Interviewed by Author. Queens, NY. June 12, 2009.
“Rose Cano” (actress/ director of NGO North-South Connections. Interviewed by
392
Author. Bogotá, Colombia. August 24, 2009
---. Interviewed by author (telephone). February 19, 2010.
“Pishtaco” (dancer). Interviewed by Author (email). October 30, 2009.
“Lucifer” (dancer). Interviewed by Author (email). March 28, 2011.
393