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People of the Andes: Challenges Facing the People of the Altiplano
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10531 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1986 |
3,965 Words |
| Author
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Thomas Molnar
Thomas Molnar is professor of religion at Yale. He is the
author of The Pagan Temptation; The Decline of the
Intellectual; Sartre: Ideologue of Our Time; and God and
Knowledge of Reality. |
In the background of the news from South America - liberation theology, Castro's propaganda, revolutions, and changes of regimes - there is a mysterious people living on the high peaks and plateaus of the Andes. They are mysterious perhaps because they were isolated and lived under the colonial conditions and conquests for almost a thousand years. Organized first by the Inca rulers of a vast empire on the Pacific coast, then colonized and Christianized by the Spaniards they finally became independent in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
But what does independence mean to the Aymara and Quechua tribal-linguistic groups, the historical inhabitants of the Andes, people still very different from the white and mestizo descendants of the Spaniards? Very often, the people of the altiplano in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, do not even speak Spanish, except for the few words that their household heads must know in order to communicate with government and municipal officials.
Do they know that they are counted as "Peruvians" and "Bolivians"? There is no sure answer since their family and clan structure is self-sufficient, going back to time immemorial. It seems that the white man's labels do not quite affect their thinking. At any rate, a majority still live up in the mountains, having its own economic base. Only a minority, although in a steady stream, come down to the towns and cities, to La Paz and Lima, a situation which creates particular problems.
The life of altiplano "Indians" explains and illustrates the vast differences still existing in South America, between whites and nonwhites, rural population and city folk, the educated
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