The Lettered Mountain: A Peruvian Village’s Way with Writing

Three: A Tale of Two Lettered Cities: Schooling from Ayllu to State

three d A Tale of Two Lettered Cities Schooling from Ayllu to State Across the dusty patios of rural schools all over Peru, in the 1990s, platoons of gray-uniformed infant soldiers goose-stepped in wavering squares. From toddler age upward, young villagers acquired the alphabet in what looked like a child-scale boot camp for citizenship . Since 2000, the Education Ministry has deauthorized military drill and promoted a less authoritarian pedagogy. Yet by tacit accord among parents and teachers, marching continues in many places—an ingrained practice rooted in unspoken premises about community and state. ‘‘Alphabetization,’’ the never-ending project by which the Ministry of Education conquers and eternally reconquers the purported illiteracy of the countryside, is one of those premises (Portocarrero and Oliart 1989). So it is interesting to learn that ministerial ‘‘alphabetization’’ is actually a late chapter in the story of rural schooling. The rural school as known today came into being after Tupicocha had already developed a substantial written practice, and schools to impart it. The oldest generation still alive remembers how Andean communities made writing their own through autodidact resources, and how they developed a local school system, for both sexes, on the structure of their ayllu organization. The ayllu and community of the early twentieth century called upon the state for support ex post facto, seeking response from what seemed a remote and indifferent center. Only later did the state impose itself as the unique source of literacy. In the schoolhouse of today, 126 | Chapter 3 teachers trained to see their work as the literary enlightenment of a benighted countryside remain unaware that state schools have marginalized and submerged an older lettered establishment. In the pages that follow we will trace how Tupicocha village first built schools upon the ancient armature of ayllu organization, then obtained and paid for ministerial education. Ethnographically considered, literacy in Tupicocha becomes a tale of two lettered cities: on one hand the durable legacy of the older scribal model, gradually becoming more democratic and vernacular; and on the other, ‘‘standard’’ literacy projected from the capital city as a project of modernization-from-above. Both projects, of course, carried political freight too important to ignore. CAPTURING LETTERS: AUTODIDACTS, AYLLUS, AND EARLY SCHOOLING It was apparently in the later nineteenth century that villagers began to see generalized citizen writing, rather than the services of scribes and notaries, as the answer to their documentary needs. In that era the national state had yet to intervene in the way the village trained its members. Yet Tupicocha and similar villages already had some freestanding schools of their own. When the incomparable field geographer Antonio Raimondi made his detailed survey of Huarochirí in 1862, he found a school already functioning in Tupicocha (with sixty students), and another in San Damián, as well as a preceptor, or tutor, in Langa (1945 [1862]:19, 25, 27). In 1892 the prefect of Lima Department observed that the district which includes Tupicocha had four schools for boys and two for girls, and that the residents themselves financed and ran them with only a minor contribution from a nearby municipality (Zavala 1892:138). In 1876, Peru took a census of its territory with attention to education. In this year, public instruction in rural zones was nonexistent. However, the results showed that one-third of the male indigenous population of Huarochirí already knew how to read and write in 1876 (Peru 1878::253– 56). The 1876 census is ‘‘pre-Lancasterian.’’ That is, it contains separate reckonings for those able to read and those able to write (and presumably also read). Pre-Lancasterian pedagogy considered reading the prior and elemental skill, with writing an optional advanced course of study. In table 5, the columns labeled literate contain the sum of those able only to read, plus those who could read and write. San Damián district covers the ethnographic area studied intensively here (Tupicocha, Tuna, and adjacent villages). The one-third estimate of Schooling from Ayllu to State | 127 TABLE 5 Huarochirí’s 1876 Rates of Literacy, by Districts, with ‘‘Leer’’ and ‘‘Escribir’’ Summed as ‘‘Literate’’ District (Page in Census) Literate Men (%) Literate Women (%) Literate Total (%) Carampoma (≤≠∞) ≤∑.∏% ≠.≥% ∞∞.∫% Casta (≤≠∏) ∞∑.∑% ≠.∏% π.≥% Chorrillos (≤∞∞) ∂≠.∫% ∞≤.≥% ≤∏.∂% Huarochirí (≤∞π) ≤∏.∏% ∞.≥% ∞≥.∂% Matucana (≤≤∫) ≥∫.∫% π.∏% ≤∂.∑% Olleros (≤≤Ω) ∞∏.Ω% ≠.∫% ∫.∞% Quinti (≤≥∂) ∏≠.≥% ∞Ω.∞% ≤∫.∏% San Damián (≤≥Ω) ≥∏.Ω% ∞.∂% ∞∫.∏% San Mateo (≤∂∑) ≤Ω.∏% ∂.≠% ∞π.≠% Sta. Eulalia (≤∑∞) ≤π.≤% ∫.π% ∞Ω.∂% Province (≤∑π) ≥∂.∞% ∂.∞% ∞∫.Ω% Source: Peru 1878:201–57. literacy is an understatement, since the census did not filter out children too young to read. Of the 238 instruidos (‘literate’ men) in...