A brief history of the Aymara in Peru

IRPA’s mission is to develop and enable the productive and organizational skills of less favoured populations in the highland region through the management of sustainable, integral development practices, based on the solidarity and ethnical perspective of the Aymara culture.

But who are the Aymara in Peru? The following blog provides a brief introduction and background to the history of the Aymara population and their socio-economic realities today in the nation of Peru.

It is difficult to gage the exact roots of the Aymara society, though it is perceived that “The development of the Aymaran kingdoms marks the beginning of the historic period of Bolivian history, that is, the period for which written records exist.”[1] It is known, thought, that the Aymara kingdoms pre-date the rise of the Incan Empire. Anthropological findings point to the initial inhabitation of the Titicaca region around 8000 B.C.[2] Between 1300 B.C. and 500 B.C. concentrated populations began to form around Lake Titicaca.[3] Tiwanaku at the southeastern corner of the lake became the major cultural and spiritual center until around 1100 A.D.[4] at which point señoríos (kingdoms) began to develop “partially a result of the drought that peaked” as well as the increasing powers of regional leaders.[5]

It is believed that these new Aymara kingdoms, “at least seven major ‘nations’ [señoríos] of Aymara speakers […] extended from just south of Cuzco into the northern highlands of present-day Bolivia.” The Lake Titicaca region, which borders current nation- states Peru and Bolivia, was “considered the heartland of the Aymara people.”[6] According to legend passed down through traditional oral story-telling, Mánco Capác traveled from his place of birth in Lake Titicaca to found the capital in the Andean cordillera and reign as the first Inca (king).

The Incan Empire began its era of power in the mid-15th century and its army overpowered and integrated communities up and down the Andean highlands and western coast of the South American continent.[7] By the time of Emperor Atahalpa in 1530, the Empire,
stretched for almost three thousand miles along the Andes, from central Chile to the South of modern Colombia—a distance greater than that across the continental United States, or Europe from the Atlantic to the Caspian. With the Pacific Ocean to the West and the Amazonian forests to the East, the Incas were confident that they had absorbed almost all civilization.[8]

The Empire was known in Quechua as Tahuantisuyu (four parts united). To the north was the quadrant, Chinchasuyu, northeast the smaller Antisuyu, westward, Cuntisuyu, and in the south, Collasuyu. (The suyus are color-coded on the map to the left) The four regions met at the Incan capital, Cuzco, which translates from Quechua to bellybutton—the center of what the Incas perceived to be the civilized world they had obtained through their military conquests. Of the four zones, “Collasuyu was […] probably the richest” and home to the Aymara kingdoms that were integrated into the Empire.[10]

The Aymara population has historically been recognized as a rebellious culture. Even for the Quechua-speaking Incan Empire, the Aymara population presented a challenge. The Aymaras proved to be a very productive sector of Incan Empire, the leadership was content in collecting tribute while “[doing] little to disturb the fabric of Aymara life.”[11]

Through the Spanish conquest, and through the modern statehood, the Aymara-speaking populations of the highlands have maintained their religion, language, and cultural practices in spite of pressures to conform to outside influences. Sinclair Thomson offers an excellent summary of the depiction of the Aymara in scholarly work over time:
The older ethnographic literature painted a picture of the Aymara as generally sullen, suspicious, and long-suffered, but with a pronounced streak of cruelty and belligerence. The North American anthropologist Adolph Bandelier wrote,
‘Cupidity, low cunning, and savage cruelty are the unfortunate traits of these Indians’ character.’ Citing Spanish chroniclers, he continued, ‘These traits are not, as sentimentalism would have it, a result of ill-treatment by the Spanish, but peculiar to the stock, and were yet more pronounced in the beginning of the Colonial period than present time’ (the emphasis is Bandelier’s). Drawing from his field-work impressions, he added: ‘The stranger, who remains but a short time among the Aymarás, is easily misled by their submissive manners, their cringing ways, and especially by their humble mode of greeting the whites. Upon closer acquaintance, however, the innate ferocity of character cannon remain concealed.’[12]

Even today, this imagery is evoked by coastal citizens for Aymara highland populations.
The department of Puno is home to the largest concentration of Peru’s Aymara minority. As a minority group, the Aymara represent only 2.3 percent of national population.[13] The rural Aymara population is located in a “zone” of five of Puno’s thirteen provinces. The Aymara “zone’ is located in the south of the region in the provinces of Chucuito, El Collao, Huancané, Moho, and Yunguyo.

Aymara speakers, like other non-Spanish speaking populations, have been seen as second-class citizens in the Andean nation-states. They are considered inferior in the social class system to the more white, Spanish-speaking, modernized class. Discrimination manifests not only through social and cultural barriers, but also in the services and support available to the population for economic, academic, political, and social development.

In the early years of the republics, the Aymara worked under the hacendado or gamonales farming system. The system afforded the elite provincial, Spanish-speaking Peruvian citizens with economic and political power in the provinces. Agrarian reform was established in Peru, breaking the large estates’ controlled system of abuse on the rural masses. Redistribution of land from the wealthy provincial elite to the peasant indigenous masses was designed to create an entirely new source of identity for the population:
the Agrarian Reform Law gives its support to the great multitude of peasants who today belong to indigenous communities and from this day forward—abandoning unacceptable racist habits and prejudices—will be called Peasant Communities [Comunidades Campesinas]. The hundreds of thousands of farmers who are a part of them will have from this day forward effective support from the state in order to get credit and technical assistance that is indispensable for converting their land into dynamic and productive cooperatives.[14]

The new legislation (granted through of revised constitution) afforded minority highland peasants the chance to begin to develop communities recognized and protected by the national government.

Still, redefining rights and identity for the indigenous populations was a mandate from the coastal capital of Lima, in the highly centralized political system. Decision-making took place a long distance away from the rural highland communities in the nation’s capital in Lima. Peru’s Aymara is geographically separated from the seat of power,
From the regions, the impression was that it was a grand, advanced, and uncontrollable machine from the center to the periphery, generating expectations, resentment, and confusion. From there, the agrarian reform—a key piece for the military program—was fulfilled with scarce participation on the part of any type of peasant organization. Less so in Puno, where—as José Tamayo Herrera observed—nothing similar to that of Cuzco had been registered to take initiative to break the haciendas system.[15]

Access to land was a right received by the local population, neither earned nor won on their own accord.

This blog entry is a compilation of work studies written Centro IRPA consultant, Laura Kurland: “The Struggle for the Aymara People of Peru: A Continual Battle for Rights and Representation” Honors Capstone Thesis, Spring 2005, American University
and
“The Marginalized Aymara: Struggles of Rural Communities in the Face of Peru’s Decentralization” M.A. Thesis for School of International Service, Spring 2008, American University

[1] Klein, Herbert S. A Concise History of Bolivia, 13.
[2] Stanish, Charles. Ancient Titicaca, 1.
[3] Young-Sánchez, Margaret, Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inca, 13.
[4] Ibid
[5] Stanish, 13.
[6] Klein, 14.
[7] Ibid, 17.
[8] Hemming, John. “Atahualpa and Pizarro” The Peru Reader, 88-9.
[9] See Appendix II.
[10] Stanish, 1.
[11] Ibid, 17.
[12] Sinclair Thomson, We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002) 13-4.
[13] Perú Sistema de Información para Gobiernos Descentralizados, Censo de Población, 1993. http://sigod.sd.pcm.gob.pe/, [accessed 02 December 2006].
[14] Juan Velasco, “The Master Will No longer Feed off your Poverty” in The Peru Reader: History, Culture and Politics, eds. Orin Starn, Carlos Ivan Degregori, Robin Kirk (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 268.
[15] José Luis Rénique, 168.