Reviews of Books
306
will find in Le Bot's book one of our lasting analytical
resources.
SUSANNE JONAS
University of California,
Santa Cruz
NURIA SALA I VILA. Y se arm6 el tole tole: Tributo
indigena y movimientos sociales en el Vi"einato del
Pern, 1790-1814. Huamanga, Peru: Instituto de Estudios Regionales Jose Maria Arguedas. 1996. Pp. 320.
This book presents a finely documented, chronological
series of episodic narratives on the critical colonial
problem of Indian tribute and the related issues of
political and social allegiance in Viceregal Peru during
the proto-Independence period. Nuria Sala i Vila
makes several arguments, which nevertheless all lead,
via different routes, to the "rupture" of the colonial
pact with the wavering Spanish monarchy. A central
theme is the decline of the cacicazgo or hereditary
chiefship, noted by other scholars but here fleshed out
in greater detail. Key to the decline was the separation
of political and economic functions after 1784. The
economic functions of hereditary chiefs were in many
cases reassigned to appointed Spanish and mestizo
tribute collectors who usurped the title of cacique,
leading to heightened conflict between Indian peasant
communities and the colonial fiscal regime. At the
same time, Sala i Vila points to the rise of the Indian
alcaldes or varayoc, promoted by the late colonial state
as mediators of state-peasant relations, arguing that
the shift from dynastic to elected peasant leaders
produced an ambivalent "process that we qualify,
mutatis mutandis, as at once democratizing and disintegrative" (p. 162) for Indian communities.
Of great interest is Sala i Vila's discussion of
Andean receptions of the liberal projects emanating
from Buenos Aires, La Paz, Quito, and the Cortes of
Cadiz between 1808 and 1812. That Spanish-speaking
yanaconas on haciendas near Trujillo should, following
the liberal declarations of Cadiz, make radical claims
to their new civil identity as "Spaniards" gives an
interesting new twist (not fully explored here) to the
developing political consciousness of a region that
would soon become a stronghold of Bolivarian patriots. The book ends with chapters on indigenous participation in the Angulo-Pumacahua rebellion and the
return to royalism around 1815. The rebellion waved
the flag of constitutionalism against the forces of
absolutism, respectively represented in Lima's ruling
Junta Tribunal by the liberal Justice Miguel de Eyzaguirre and the conservative Viceroy Abascal, but the
Hispanized Inka and once-royalist General Mateo
Pumacahua opposed any egalitarian movement of the
kind sought by more radical peasant sectors in the
years before 1814. His break with the colonial state,
the author argues, had more to do with attacks on
cacicazgo privileges that, ironically, derived from the
same constitution he claimed to defend. Nevertheless,
the rebellion, which was brutally repressed, and sub-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
sequent ones before the arrival of San Martin in 1820
clearly indicate that both radical and liberal notions of
patria and independence circulated in certain Andean
sectors.
On the entangled issue of tribute and its abolition by
the Cortes of Cadiz, however, Sali i Vila's conclusions
are mixed. Some groups, particularly yanaconas and
subsistence-oriented peasants, appear to have resisted
the tribute and applauded its abolition; but others,
perhaps most, ended up supporting the tribute, which
guaranteed access to commons, was less costly than the
alternative ,alcabala tax, and provided for cacique
profits. In many documented cases, it was reimposed
by coercive means (pp. 256-57).
Finally, it is worth noting that Sala i Vila actually
delivers somewhat different (and often better) goods
than the book's title, its prologue, its exceedingly brief
and unhelpful introduction and conclusion, or even its
back-cover blurb suggest. The colorful title, which
might be translated roughly as "And All Hell Broke
Loose," conjures up images of confusion on the one
hand and spontaneous popular protest (literally, howling harangues) on the other; yet, the cumulative weight
of the evidence indicates that the disorder and protests
were both systemic and frequently orchestrated. Luis
Miguel Glave's prologue identifies the book as an
example of "microhistory," but this is not the case. The
book ranges freely over much of the vast viceroyalty of
Peru and is, like Scarlett O'Phelan's work, rather more
"macro" in scale than most other recent works in the
field. Still, Glave has a point, if what he means is that
Sala i Vila employs some of the literary techniques of
local social history to weave an episodic narrative that
is always close to a particular set of documents (mostly
criminal and civil trial records and official correspondence) but usually far from any sustained critical
theoretical discourse. As the book's subtitle indicates,
it stops short of covering the decisive years of the
Independence Wars. Instead, it contributes strongly to
a revised understanding of the contentious protoIndependence period in Peruvian history.
MARK THURNER
University of Florida
ANDRES GUERRERO. La Semantica de fa dominaci6n: Ef
concertaje de indios. Quito: Libri Mundi. 1991. Pp. 336.
The "concertaje de indios," or simply "concertaje" or
"conciertos," was the prevailing labor system in the
highlands haciendas of Ecuador during the colonial
period and especially throughout the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. As in the rest of Latin
America, the concertaje in Ecuador was a program of
systematic indebtedness that "tied" the Indians to the
haciendas. For this reason, the concertaje was both a
work system and system of servitude through which
patrones were able to master the peasant population. It
did not differ from that of the peon acasillado of the
north of Mexico, the Peruvian yanaconaje, the inquilinD system of the central zone of Chile, or any of the
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Latin America and the Caribbean
systems of debt servitude on haciendas in Latin America up to the twentieth century. The huasipungo, the
name for the indigenous peasant who was the object of
the concertaje, was seen, as were his counterparts in
the regions mentioned above, as a living example of
feudalism in Latin America.
In this book, Andres Guerrero studies the libros de
rayas, or hacienda accounts and books, for the early
twentieth century in the sierra of Ecuador. These
reveal much about the operation of the concertaje de
indios. The patron, owner of the hacienda, delivered
money, food, clothes, and various goods to the indigenous peasants, thus increasing their debts. Of course,
they were debts that would never be paid; they were
"paid" with servitude, noted in the libros de rayas. The
true nature of the work-salary relationship was thus
hidden. Guerrero's study contributes to the detailed
knowledge of this way of contracting labor.
The author analyzes the fiestas that were produced
by the hacienda system. Many festive rites accompany
the relationships of servitude. The modern salary
relationship, as is known, possesses formal contracts,
written and legal arrangements. The non-salarial relationships of work, on the other hand, possess "ceremonial contracts" ensuring that certain fiestas are
reconstructed annually. Guerrero studies the holiday
of San Juan, which has been celebrated since antiquity.
The holiday of the summer solstice, which comes from
Spain, is joined to the pre-Hispanic commemorations.
Many of these holidays recall the arrival of the Spanish
and the mythical scene of the Plaza of Cajamarca with
the death of Atahualpa. Guerrero knows these fiestas
de hacienda very well. This book has a historical
context and at the same time an ethnographical or
anthropological flavor.
Although concertaje was suppressed legally in the
beginning of the twentieth century, it continued in the
form of huasipungo. This became the focus of accusations by the proponents of indigenismo, of the
famous book by Jorge Icaza named Huasipungo
(1936), and of the progressive sectors during this
century in Ecuador. During the decade of the 1960s,
the huasipungueros were organized, becoming the most
important peasant movement in Ecuador. This was
especially true for the provinces of Cayambe and
Ibarra, where Guerrero's study is located. A shy
agrarian reform was accomplished, and the huasipungueros remained with their small land parcels. The
haciendas were modernized, and today they are modern farms with machinery and salaried work. But the
holiday of San Juan and the fiestas de hacienda, says
Guerrero, continue, recalling and reproducing the old
domination systems even though the concertaje no
longer exists.
Guerrero's book explains well the mechanisms of
domination in the haciendas of the sierra of Ecuador.
It does not explain, however, the resistance systems
and the systems of cultural autonomy and cultural
survival of indigenousness itself. This last element is
particularly important. With the same data, one might
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307
build a different analysis. True, the indigenous peasants were subjected to debt servitude. They maintained
their mores, rites, holidays, and cultural autonomy,
however, and compelled the owners of the haciendas
to establish relationships of reciprocity.
The owners established the material procedures of
domination: money, wages, punishments. The indigenous peasants, however, established the cultural procedures of domination; the operating rules of the
haciendas were culturally shared. The landowners had
to adapt their rules to the local culture. They mastered
the indigenous peasants but they had to adapt to them
as well.
Guerrero discusses the cultural area of the Otavalo
peoples in the south of the highlands of Ecuador. The
otavalefios are today one of the most active indigenous
groups in Ecuador as well as internationally. As such,
they manifest considerable cultural force and have
demonstrated their capacity to survive beyond the
frontiers of their community. The domination of the
hacienda through the centuries has not affected the
culture of these indigenous people: it has been transformed, it has been adapted, but it has been maintained with a strong sense of identity. Regrettably,
Guerrero does not connect historical labor processes,
holidays, and ceremonies to the political processes,
indigenous identities, and indigenous movements that
are so strong in Ecuador. He does not succeed in
showing how historical agency is achieved by the
economically disadvantaged. Huasipungueros were living as slaves, according to a contemporary witness
cited by the author, but they succeeded in maintaining
an identity and cultural force that in other parts of the
world disappeared. The semantics of domination, always, is built at the same time as the semantics of
liberation.
JosE BENGOA
Santiago, Chile
SUSAN K. BESSE. Restructuring Patriarchy: The Modernization of Gender Inequality in Brazil, 1914-1940.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1996.
Pp. xv, 285. Cloth $39.95, paper $16.95.
Over the course of the last decade, scholars of Brazil
have transformed women's history into more comprehensive histories of the place of gender in the development and various transformations of the Brazilian
polity, economy, and social structure. New analyses of
slavery, the transition to free wage labor, and workingclass history have detailed the ways gender influenced
and was influenced by the extant racial and class
systems. One feature that almost all of these works
share is an interest in popular class groups. Indeed, the
few studies of elite women in Brazil concentrate on the
political push for suffrage rights in the first two
decades of the twentieth century.
Susan K. Besse's book is a welcomed addition to the
historiography, because it uses the analytical tools and
interests of those works concerned with gender among
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