44

The Journal of Peasant Studies

Cargos and Conflict: the Fiesta System

G1bbon, P and Neocosmos, M , 1985, 'Some Problems m the Pohtlcal Economy of "Afncan
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S. Amm and K Vergopoulos La Questwn Paysanne et le Capitalisme, Pans: Anthropos
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Amencan Studies, Vol 7, No I

[',!f,

,w

*";

nit"

s; ;

ii ~

,., ~.
= ;. ,

and Capitalist Development

in Eastern Peru
Torn Brass*
This article considers the fact of and reasons for pre- and post-reform
change in the structure of the fiesta system on a rural estate in the
province of La Convenci6n, and its effect on the development of a
capitalist agriculture. In economzc terms, this process involves a
transformation of the fiesta from a context in which the landlord
extracts rent from his tenants to one zn which different peasant strata
struggle for control over means of production acquired as a result of
the agrarin reform. In politico-ideological terms, the fiesta operates
as an arena where contradictory, non-religious, and class-specific
idioms of struggle are accepted or rejected by the protagonists.

In Latin America the fiesta system takes the form of individual or group
sponsorship of Catholic religious festivals or saints' days. Recruitment to
fiesta office (cargo) is either by election or co-option, and an incumbent
generally holds this position for a year. Sponsorship in this manner necessitates not only extensive ntual participation and allied religious and secular
duties on the part of the officeholder, but also the finance, provision and
organisation of all the festive activities connected with the fiesta.
Most analyses of the fiesta system relate to the 'autonomous' peasant
communites of Central America (see the bibliographic references cited by
Cancian [1967: 297-8] ). These studies tend to focus on the ritual associated
with religious officeholding, and theorise sponsorship in terms of reciprocal
exchange: that is, a levelling mechanism whereby the community as a whole
prevents individual peasants from accumulating wealth of any kind [Adams,
1957; Cancian, 1965; Foster, 1967; Nash, 1958, 1966; Tax, 1953; Vogt, 1969;
Wolf, 1966]. In the course of sponsoring fiestas, therefore, better-off
peasants redistribute surpluses among the poorer members of the community, and acquire 'prestige' in return. The fiesta is accordingly depicted as a
central and positive institution, supported voluntarily by all the inhabitants
*Centre of Latm Amencan Studzes, Umversuy of Cambndge, West Road, Cambndge CB3 9EF,
England Thzs artzcle is based on fieldwork funded by the SSRC and carried out m Peru dunng
1974-75. It was presented m semmars at the Department of Anthropology, Umversuy of
Durham, m 1981, and at the Centre of Latm Amencan Studzes, Umversuy of Cambridge, m
1982. The author rs grateful to the partlczpants m both these contexts for raismg useful pomts.

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46

and functional for community survival: subsistence is guaranteed to its

poorer members; no rich peasant stratum emerges; no internal socioeconomic differentiation takes place; indigenous culture is preserved and
reinforced; and as a result the community itself remains intact. A significant
corollary of this theorisation is that religious office holding is regarded as an
obstacle to capitalist development. The latter corresponds to a nonindigenous economic process which occurs outside the community, and is at
the same time successfully resisted by the strength of indigenous solidarity
established in and mediated through the context of the fiesta.'
Accordingly, functionalist analyses of the fiesta system project a concept
of non-coercive homogeneity, based on the concrete existence of community undifferentiated both ethnically and socio-economically. A second and
theoretically more sophisticated viewpoint argues against the fiesta as a
mechanism of integration [Harris, 1973; Nunez del Prado, 1955]; here the
fiesta system is presented as a colonial imposition on and appropriation from
the existing Indian population. Its materialism notwithstanding, this interpretation nevertheless reproduces many of the theoretical shortcomings
which characterise functionalist analysis; for exa111ple, economic categories
based on ethnic difference (non-indigenous exploiters, indigenous
exploited) and a corresponding externalisation of capitalist production (surplus extracted from indigenous religious officeholders is either reinvested or
consumed outside the community). 2
Since in none of these approaches is the peasant community differentiated
internally, fiesta sponsorship remains correspondingly uadifferentiated. By
contrast, the analysis presented below concentrates on the economic and
politico-ideological form and content of the fiesta system in a large rural
estate (hacienda) in eastern Peru, and emphasises both the unequal nature
of the material exchanges effected in this context and its crucial role in
facilitating capital accumulation within the 'community'. Of particular significance to this presentation, therefore, is both the fact of and the reasons
for the transformation in the economic and politico-ideological structure of
the fiesta in the pre- and post-reform period: specifically, the change from a
context where rent was extracted by the landlord from his tenants to one in
which different peasant strata struggle for control over new means of production acquired as a result of the expropriation of the landlord, an economic process accompanied by the mediation in the fiesta context of contradictory (non-religious) politico-ideological meanings, their disintegration and
reconstitution.
Analysis of politico-ideological change mediated in the context of the
fiesta is based on the theoretical framework developed by Faye [1976] who
examines class struggle in terms of language, an approach which focuses on
such aspects of ideology as changes in form, the circulation of narrative, and
the construction of acceptation in discourse. This process involves contestation over meaning, which in turn permits either the reproduction or the
transcendence of existing social reality insofar as it requires a break with (or
the unacceptability of) the reduction of the possible to the existing. It is

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47

Cargos and Conflicts

The Journal of Peasant Studies

precisely this struggle over meaning that is absent from Gramsci's concept of
hegemony.' According to Faye, in every social arena the subject encounters
(and actively contributes to or struggles against the reproduction of) a
politico-ideological matrix of linguistic forms which constitute discourse. In
this sense, therefore, language operates as the property of a social group
[Volosinov, 1973], and as such is itself the object of expropriation in the
course of politico-ideological struggle when a particular class-specific meaning is either installed in or expelled from discourse relating to - and thus
simultaneously defining/redefining - a given social activity or institution.
Furthermore, since this process of conflict over meaning will in some contexts by its very nature involve (and thus bring into question) other institutional forms and social activity which it encompasses, subjects will be offered
the possibility of accepting or rejecting other components constitutive of a
whole politico-ideological matrix. Given the institutional interrelatedness of
the different components of politico-ideological power exercised by a landlord in the estate system of La Convenci6n, this 'domino' effect possesses
implications for the reproduction of an individual component, such as the
fiesta, during a period of acute class struggle.~
THE FIESTA CONTEXT

La Convenci6n, the northernmost province in the Department of Cusco, is

located on the semi-tropical eastern slope (ceja de La selva, literally 'eyebrow
of the forest') of the Peruvian Andes. As such, it constitutes an ideal zone for
the cultivation of sugar, cocoa, tea, coca and particularly coffee, all profitable cash-crops. Although its inaccessible geographical location prevented
colonisation and settlement until the early twentieth century, the province
has since the sixteenth century formed part of the Andean rural estate
system imposed at the Spanish conquest. Situated a short distance outside
the provincial capital Quillabamba, the rural estate of Pintobamba Grande
covers an area of just under 1,000 hectares divided between two different but
structurally interrelated sectors of production. The demesne sector consists
of 50 hectares of irrigated best flat land on the valley floor, and contains not
only the most fertile crop and pasture land but also extensive infrastructural
development. Until 1972 this sector remained the property of a single
landlord, and after this date it became the property of the combined membership of a Production Committee. Prior to its expropriation, therefore,
this area of the estate was the site of the landlord enterprise, whereas after
this point it formed the peasant cooperative. The remaining area within
Pintobamba Grande corresponded to the non-demesne sector, which consists of some 700 hectares of hilly and less fertile land lacking the irrigation
and transportation facilities available on the demesne, and which was leased
by the landlord to numerous tenants and sub-tenants who were required in
turn to supply the demesne with variant form of labour-service. After the
agrarian reforms of the 1960s, the tenants and sub-tenants became owners
and operators of the land they had been renting.

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holder. In the course of this secondary transaction, therefore, the landlord

collected the fruits of his intra-estate monopoly from the fiesta officeholder
purchasing these goods: c + v + average profit + excess profit, the latter
component deriving from the landlord's ability to purchase produce below
its market price and resell it within the confines of the estate above its market
price, a mechanism licensed by the existing property relation and corresponding to absolute ground-rent.
Table 1 indicates that the gross rent-in-kind cash equivalent plus the actual
cash expenditure incurred by the religious officeholder in the fiesta system of
Pintobamba Grande amounted to between one and two hundred thousand
Soles during the 1950s. In this same period the cost to the officeholder of
sponsoring the fiesta increased by 90 per cent. Although the landlord
possessed the right to reappoint the same tenant to the position of religious
officeholder in successive years, this was rarely exercised, given that a single
instance of fiesta sponsorship generally accomplished its economic object of
either diminishing or eliminating totally the capital accumulated by the
office holding tenant. Moreover, the reduced period between the assumption of tenant status on the one hand and appointment by the landlord to
fiesta office on the other compounded the economic effect of fiesta
officeholding, the outcome for the peasant concerned being a corresponding
reduction in the capacity to accumulate capital at the beginning of his
tenancy.
The pre-reform era in La Convenci6n was also characterised by an
increasingly acute struggle between landlords and tenants, a conflict which
took the multiple form of sudden increases in labour-rent as coffee became a
more profitable cash-crop, eviction of tenants, land invasions, peasant
unionisation, a general strike throughout the province, the organisation and
repression of guerrilla activity, and finally the expropriation of landlord
class [Bejar, 1970; Blanco, 1972; Fioravanti, 1974; Neira, 1968; Villanueva,
1967] _The importance of the fiesta system in this process emerges only when
considered in relation to the wider politico-ideological struggle over the
class-specific meanings on the rural estate, and in particular with regard to
the meanings attached to labour-service.
The principal variant of labour-rent in La Convenci6n was referred to in
Spanish as condici6n or turno, and in Quechua asjurk'a; whereas the former
constitutes a general descriptive term applicable to an unspecific notion of
labour-service, the latter term by contrast identifies the nature of the
relational form, its mode of recruitment and remuneration. Accordingly,
the remuneration received by tenants for labour-service contributions (in
the form of personal and/or mediated labour-power) was characterised as a
symbolic payment, both in Quechua Uurk'a =a small recompense, fee, tip,
etc.) and in Spanish (socorro = help, relief). This in turn allowed its
acceptance by landlord and tenant not as a wage (that is, a necessary
requirement for the reproduction of labour-power) but rather as a gratuity, a
non-wage payment variously projected as 'help', 'tip', 'relief', etc. Labourpower was thereby ideologically separated from the value it produced, and

THE FIESTA IN THE PRE-REFORM PERIOD

The fiesta in Pintobamba Grande takes place annually on 16 July in honour

of the Virgin of Carmen, the patroness of the estate. During the 1940-62
period a single religious officeholder (carguyoc) sponsored all the fiesta
activity_; Each religious officeholder was selected from among the estate
tenants and appointed to this post by the landlord in the year preceding the
holding of office, during which items for fiesta consumption were obtained
and fiesta-related activities organised. The religious officeholder was
obliged to secure requisite quantities of food and drink for the communal
feasting, to arrange the religious ceremonies (the decoration of the statue of
the Virgin, the maintenance of the chapel, etc.) and the various entertainments sucti as the hire of a musical band for the whole period of the fiesta, a
troupe of professional dancers and puppeteers. and a firework display. Since
few tenants owned cattle, the fiesta livestock requirement of at least two
full-grown animals was purchased either directly from or indirectly through
the agency of the landlord. The fiesta requirement of beer, maize beer,
sugarcane rum, cigarettes, etc., was similarly purchased from the estate
store (that is, from the landlord). These items represent the main cash
expenditure incurred by the religious officeholder for the fiesta in Pintobamba Grande. Staple products to be consumed in the fiesta (maize, manioc, citrus, coca, etc.) were usually cultivated by the officeholding tenant on
his non-demesne holdings, a process which required him either to diminish
the existing cultivated area allocated to other cash-crops such as coffee or
else to expand the sown area in his holdings in order to carry out the
additional production. The religious officeholder was also obliged to bear
the cost of the religious ceremonies: here the principal item of expenditure
was the priest's fee for the celebration of the three fiesta masses. This
ceremonial activity took place in the chapel on the demesne settlement, and
necessitated not only remuneration for the officiating priest and attendants
(sacristans, acolytes) but also expenditure on the maintenance and preparation of the chapel for the fiesta ceremonies (cleaning, repair, decoration,
etc.). The central fiesta activity itself occupied the whole day of 16 July: the
mass in honour of the Virgin of Carmen was attended by the religious
officeholder, the landlord, the kin and guests of the latter together with the
whole population resident on the estate (tenants, sub-tenants, labourers,
kinsfolk). This was followed by a communal feast in the settlement and,
finally, by the firework display. 6
Of particular importance both to the level and form of appropriation from
fiesta officeholding tenants during the pre-reform era was its operationalisation in the context of the intra-estate monopoly/monopsony.' Thus tenantproduced use-values were realised as exchange-values in the act of their
(compulsory) sale through the landlord, the tenant receiving as a result the
price fixed by the landlord for his produce (c + v + average profit), which
was then reconverted by the latter into exchange-values through its resale
either externally to local merchants or internally to the religious office-

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Cargos and Conflicts

The Journal of Peasant Studies

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The Journal of Peasant Studies

50

TABLE 1
RELIGIOUS OFFICEHOLDING AND FIESTA EXPENDITURE,
PINTOBAMBA GRANDE 1940-75

Soc1al Composition of
Religious Officeholder
Year

Peasant
Stratum

Non-demesne
Landholding
Hectares

Period of
Fiesta
Tenant Statusb Expenditure'
Years
Sf.

1940
1941
1950
1955
1956
1959

Middle
R1ch
Rich
n.a.
R1ch
Rich

8.00
29.54
10.95
n.a.
12 76
32.69

14
33
n.a.
20
n a.
2

1962 ~
to S
1973

D1scontmued

1974

Merchantd

rNRA

Coordinatord
Riche
Rich
MiddJe'

1975

Notes:

Source

n.a
n.a.
100,000
107,000
133,000
143,000190,000

24,000

n.a
1,000
n.a.
n a.

36 65
12.87
7.93

11
n.a.
23

a. refers to area rented in Pintobamba Grande durmg year of office; b: refers to penod
between onginal settlement as tenant and year of holding office, c: in 1975 Peruvian
Soles; d: held position of principal officeholder; e: held position of secondary
officeholder.
Information provided by ex-tenants m Pintobamba Grande

the exploitative nature of the relationship correspondingly mystified. Furthermore, both Spanish and Quechua project reciprocity as the content of the
landlord/tenant relation ('help', 'payment-in-kind for those helping with
work'), and as a result labour-service is depicted ideologically in terms of
equal exchange. This conceptualisation of the landlord/tenant relation as
'help' ( = reciprocity) also extends to the labour-service variant maquipura.
In Pintobamba Grande the landlord is reported to have addressed his
tenants thus: 'You have to help me (ayudarme) since you cultivate land
which belongs to me, you have to work (maquipurar) for me.' The use of the
term 'help' as a synonym both for 'work' and for the labour-service variant
maquipura is particularly significant. Although the vernacular clearly indicates the presence of an economic wage-relation, this identification of
unequal exchange is nevertheless juxtaposed with a term denoting its opposite, that is, the existence of reciprocal exchange.
In common with these labour-service variants, the fiesta system was similarly
embedded in a language of oppositions which permitted the dominance/

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Cargos and Conflicts

51

supersession of one or other of its class-specified politico- ideological

images. On the one hand, therefore, fiesta sponsorship during the pre-1962
period was presented in terms of multiple reciprocity: in exchange for the
labour-service contributed to demesne production, the landlord was
required to ensure that sufficient quantities of food, drink, entertainments,
etc., were provided for tenants, sub-tenants and their kinfolk during the
annual fiesta celebration; for his part, the tenant sponsoring the fiesta might
expect to receive 'help' both from the landlord (insofar as the latter undertook to supply the livestock, beer, etc., to be consumed in the course of the
fiesta) and from his own 'assistants' (subalterns employed by the officeholder who supply him with goods or labour-power for fiesta purposes); and
finally, the fiesta celebrations themselves reinforce and reproduce the politico-ideological concept of an intra-estate 'community' encompassing all its
residents. 8 On the other hand, the concept 'help' as it applies to the landlord/
officeholder relation is juxtaposed in discourse concerning the fiesta with
the vernacular termjurk'a, which refers to the coercive recruitment by the
landlord of an unwilling fiesta officeholder. This contradiction is illustrated
in a statement by an ex-tenant in Pintobamba Grande concerning the
pre-reform fiesta:
Of course, when one had money, one held fiesta office. Some who did
not have money also held office. The landlord compelled them to do
so, 'You are going to hold that office!' When landlords insisted, there
was no denying them. One was forced to carry out this duty (obligation), and if one refused one was evicted [from non-demesne holdings
on the estate].
This narrative indicates the way in which a series of politico-ideological
images both inform discourse concerning the fiesta and at the same time link
this particular form of demesne activity (together with its relational form)
with other types of demesne activity (and their relational forms). The
coercive nature of the recruitment of the sponsoring tenant by the landlord is
made explicit, as is both the exercise of political power in effecting this
recruitment and the effect of its rejection. Hence the act of fiesta sponsorship is conceptualised here as obligaci6n, a synonym for condici6n which
itself refers to the commonest form of labour-service. Accordingly, this
politico-ideological displacement permits the situation of fiesta officeholding within the ensemble of coercive, surplus-extracting and exploitative
landlord/tenant relations present on the estate. 9
This transformation in the politico-ideological meaning of the fiesta system, corresponding to a positive--? negative shift in its projection in tenant
discourse, is further supported by the fact that the demise of the fiesta was
both coterminous with and an effect of the rise in La Convenci6n of peasant
unions. This causal relation was emphasised in the following manner by
another ex-tenant in Pintobamba Grande who noted that: 'Officeholding
died in 1962 with the beginning of unionisation .... ' Tenant opposition to
the pre-reform fiesta system is juxtaposed with peasant unionism (thereby

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52

labour-rent and the cost of fiesta sponsorship during this period constituted a
deduction by the landlord from the mass of surplus-value accruing to these
capitalist tenants, and was instrumental in the mobilisation of the latter in
the peasant movement which expropriated the landlord. In the course of this
conflict with rich peasant tenants, therefore, it became increasingly difficult
for the landlord to sustain his meanings not only of labour-service but also of
fiesta officeholding (in terms of reciprocity, 'help', etc.), meanings which
were displaced in discourse relating to these institutions by the opposing
concept of acceptability that stressed the exploitative nature of labour-rent
and fiesta sponsorship.

identifying it as one more variant of landlord appropriation to be eliminated

by a specifically peasant institution), and the element of discontinuity is
defined not in terms of the fiesta system as such but rather in terms of
religious officeholding (the significance of this will become clear below)."'
The dissolution of on~ or other of the contradictory meanings associated
with the fiesta system ('help'/reciprocity v. exploitation/appropriation) must
be located m a context of pre-reform changes in the politico-ideological
meaning and economic content of the totality of landlord/tenant relations.
Accordingly, the fact that both labour-rent and fiesta officeholding shared a
common language and mode of appropriation possesses implications with
regard to the function of both these institutional forms in the class struggle
between landlord and tenant unfolding during this period. 11
The crucial element characterising discourse common to the fiesta and
labour-service is that it is capable of (and projects simultaneously) different
and contradictory meanings. Thus the object of class struggle is the transfer
of acceptability from one ensemble of class-specific meanings informing this
discourse to another (and opposite) ensemble of class-specific meanings.
The landlord seeks to project (and gain a general acceptability in disourse
for) a supra-class notion of reciprocity implied by the concept 'help' (ayuda,
socorro), the efficacy of which requires a corresponding defusion of aspects
such as the coercive inception of relations structuring both fiesta and labourservice, and their decommoditisation in language in order similarly to defuse
the unequal exchanges effected in the course of the reproduction of these
relations. By contrast, the tenant seeks to project these same demesne
activities in a different manner, to attach importance to (and gain acceptance
for) those vernacular terms- such as jurk'a, obligaci6n and condici6n which indicate and emphasise the coercive inception, the extractive function
and (from the tenant's viewpoint) the negative effect of his relation with the
landlord. Hence class conflict in the economic instance is reflected at the
politico-ideological level only because different vernacular forms attached
to the same process permit class agents to engage in a corresponding struggle
over antagonistic meanings embedded in discourse. 12
The immanent double-sidedness of this discourse notwithstanding, it is
nevertheless necessary to identify the catalyst which confers acceptability on
one or other of the opposed meanings attached to activities such as fiesta
officeholding and labour-service. Both these institutional/relational
variants, together with their (transformed) politico-ideological discourse,
must therefore be situated in the context of changes in the scale of landlord
appropriation from tenants in these respective arenas. Thus, in Pintobamba
Grande the largest increases in real terms not only in the cost of fiesta
sponsorship but also in the amount of labour-rent took place towards the end
of the 1950s, a period when both economic and politico-ideological class
struggle was becoming more acute. n Moreover, the principal objects of this
dual appropriation by the landlord were the emerging rich peasantry who
cultivated coffee on their non-demesne holdings, and who profited from the
sharp rise in the price of this commodity in the 1950s. The increases in

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53

Cargos and Conflicts

The Journal of Peasant Studies

THE FIESTA IN THE POST-REFORM PERIOD

In Pintobamba Grande the fiesta system which ceased to operate in 1962 at

the height of the class struggle between landlord and tenant recommenced
during the post-reform era in 1974, two years after the formation of the
Production Committee. Although the fiesta system retained its previous
form with regard to ritual, communal feasting and entertainment, aspects
such as the structure and cost of religious officeholding together with the
social composition of officeholders underwent a considerable change."
As Table 1 indicates, the clearest difference in the form of the pre- and
post-reform fiesta is the transformation in its religious officeholding structure. Whereas the earlier period is marked by the existence of a single
officeholder appointed to this position by the landlord, the later period is by
contrast characterised by the development of a multiple officeholding system. Thus, although the main financial and organisational element of the
fiesta is retained in its principal office (cargo mayor), the subordinate
non-ritual aspects have been transferred to secondary office(s) (cargo
menor) for which each religious officeholder volunteers. 15 As one middle
peasant observed, 'Now officeholding is voluntary. Those who have money
hold office. It is different now.' In the post-reform era, therefore, the
principal religious officeholder in Pintobamba Grande came from either the
financial bourgeoisie (large merchants) or the administrative pettybourgeoisie (agrarian reform agency personnel) located spatially outside the
ex-estate. Secondary religious office was held by elements of the rural
bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie (rich and middle peasants) resident on
the ex-estate.
The principal officeholder in 1974 was a prosperous merchant from Quillabamba who sponsored the religious ceremonies of the fiesta (the masses,
the priest's fee), the communal feasting and the musical band.'" The organisational and service functions connected with this particular office were
carried out by fiesta 'assistants' consisting of casual labourers recruited and
supervised by a permanent employee of the officeholder; the former carried
out the manual labouring functions (the transportation of fiesta items from
Quillabamba to Pintobamba Grande, serving food and drink at the communal feast, etc.) while the latter undertook the requisite organisational

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this (politico-ideologically) diffuse conflict are mediated in the context of

the fiesta, where different class agents appear as religious officeholders and
yet also as bearers of antagonistic social relations. Thus, on the one hand the
large merchant seeks the political support of Cooperative members in his
struggle with small merchants for the coca trade in Pintobamba Grande, but
on the other hand 1s simultaneously engaged in the appropriation of a
portion of surplus-value produced by these same peasant members (a fact
about which the latter are both aware and resentful). Similarly, the ONRA
Coordinator seeks the political support of the peasant members for the
agrarian reform agency's struggle against the peasant union while at the
same time engaged in conflict with these peasant members for the control of
the accumulation and production process on the peasant Cooperative.' 6
Rich and middle peasant members seek the support of poor peasant members against external non-owning social forces (ONRA, wage-labourers)
whilst simultaneously engaged in struggle with these same poor peasants for
control over means of production on the peasant Cooperative. In this
situation of politico-ideological ambiguity, the fiesta by its very nature
permits religious officeholders both to emphasise and at the same time to
secure acceptance for the non-antagonistic (and hence unifying) components of discourse, for analogous reasons and in a manner similar to the
landlord during the pre-reform era. Thus all officeholders stress the element
of (politically disinterested) material 'sacrifice' on their part entailed in
fiesta sponsorship, together with the 'service' rendered thereby to the whole
'community' in the form of communal feasting, entertainments, etc. This is
turn licenses in politico-ideological terms the necessity of 'reciprocity' by the
receiving 'community' towards officeholders providing this 'service', and is
to this extent supportive of particular economic and political demands made
by these same officeholders in other (non-fiesta) contexts. 19 Specifically,
continued membership of the Production Committee whilst not fulfilling
membership conditions such as completion of the statutory labour requirement and political officeholding.
In exchange for ownership rights to Cooperative means of production,
each member was contractually obliged to contribute between one and two
working days per week on the demesne sector. Initially, non-completion of
this statutory labour requirement (aportaci6n) resulted in the expulsion of
the offender from the Production Committee by a majority vote of members
in an assembly meeting of the Administration Council. Following the introduction of work schedules which permitted a check to be made on the labour
contribution of each member, the first expulsions from the member group
were carried out in 1973. At that time political dominance in the Production
Committee executive had passed from poor peasants to rich and middle
peasants. Members m deficit, most of whom were poor peasants, were
therefore unable to resist expulsion. By 1974, however, sections of the rich
and middle peasant membersh1p had withdrawn from the Production Committee, which now passed under the political control of the remaining poor

tasks and duties (the selection and purchase of fiesta items, the supervision
and payment of hired labour, etc.). The religious officeholder himself was
present in Pintobamba Grande only for the fiesta activity on the 16 July. In
1975 the principal religious officeholder was the ONRA Coordinator for the
local district, a middle-ranking functionary of the state agrarian reform
agency. In this case the service functions were similarly delegated to hired
casual labourers, but the officeholder carried out the organisational and
supervisory duties in person (tasks facilitated by the frequent presence on
the peasant Cooperative of the officeholder in his capacity as the ONRA
Coordinator). In the same year the secondary religious officeholders
included two rich peasants and a middle peasant, all members of the Production Committee. One rich peasant sponsored the repair and maintenance of
the chapel on the demesne settlement, a commitment which required the
financing of raw materials (two bags of cement) together with his own
labour-power and that of subaltern 'assistant'. The purchase and transportation of the raw materials (by mule back) was undertaken by the spouse of this
secondary officeholder, while the repair work itself was carried out by his
bonded labourer. The fiesta dancers and puppete.ers were sponsored by
another rich peasant and a middle peasant; the manual labouring tasks
required of these secondary religious officeholders (the transportation of
the performers' equipment from Quillabamba to Pintobamba Grande) were
similarly undertaken by their respective bonded labourers, supervised in
both instances by the officeholder.
A second major difference between the pre- and post-reform structure of
the fiesta concerns the scale of financial sponsorship. Thus the cost to the
principal religious officeholder of sponsoring the main aspects of the fiesta in
1974 requires expenditure of only S/.24,000 compared with the equivalent
outlay of S/.190,000 in 1959, the post-reform cost of fiesta sponsorship to its
principal officeholder having declined to 13 per cent of the pre-reform level.
Similarly, the financial commitment on the part of a secondary officeholder
sponsoring a specific fiesta activity is negligible when compared with prereform levels of expenditure. The total cost of post-reform fiesta sponsorship for all its religious officeholders amounts to some S/.39,000, only 21
per cent of the total cost of pre-reform sponsorship. 17 In those cases where it
applies, the period of residence in Pintobamba Grande by the officeholder
has once again increased, thereby permitting an extended process of accumulation to precede fiesta sponsorship.
In the absence of a landlord, the post-reform fiesta is the politicoideological domain of the bourgeoisie and elements of the petty-bourgeoisie
(large merchants, administrators, rich and middle peasants). Although its
pre-reform economic function as a direct form of rental appropriation by the
landlord from his tenants is correspondingly absent, the post-reform fiesta
nevertheless licenses both the extraction of surplus-value and the reproduction of the peasant Cooperative production relation, and is therefore an
important arena of class struggle. Accordingly, the contradictory aspects of

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peasant membership. From this point on poor peasants were able to resist
expulsion for non-completion of the statutory labour requirement, and
non-completion by the whole membership became common.
A corollary of the extensive non-completion of the statutory labour
requirement by the Production Committee membership is its displacement
from a central position in the politico-ideological struggle between different
peasant strata, and its corresponding replacement as the focus of conflict by
the issue of political officeholding. Accordingly, concepts of 'duty' and
'obligation' socially embedded in discourse relating to the statutory labour
requirement (which identify its completion as the condition of continued
membership and thus confer acceptability on sanctions imposed for nonfulfillment) become associated instead with the willingness or unwillingness
of members to hold political office on the executive councils of the Production Committee, Idioms of 'sacrifice' and 'service' hitherto attached to
personal labour in the Cooperative labour process, which licensed reciprocity in the form of co-ownership and other rights to means of production on
this sector, are henceforth invoked in connection with the personal work
element intrinsic to political officeholding (the latter necessitating a heavy
labour contribution from the incumbent). 20 Hence politico-ideological struggle tends to focus increasingly on political officeholding, and takes the
immediate form of hostile/punitive nominations to political office (a refusal
on the part of an unwillingly elected member inviting censure and the threat
of expulsion). Unlike the issue of the statutory labour requirement,
however, the contradictions inherent in political officeholding are more
problematic and not transcended, since by its very nature the latter activity
cannot be delegated to hired labour (as is possible with the statutory labour
requirement).
When compared with political officeholding on the executive councils of
the Production Committee, religious officeholding in the reintroduced fiesta
system possesses a number of economic advantages from the viewpoint of
rich and middle peasant members. First, as regards both the extent and the
intensity of the workload, religious officeholding requires considerably less
commitment than political officeholding. Second, whereas the majority of
tasks required of a religious officeholder may be allocated by the latter to
'assistants' (that is, labourers employed by the officeholder), it is impossible
by the nature ofthe tasks involved to delegate the functions of political office
to subordinates of the officeholder. Third (and a corollary of the previous
two points), in terms of opportunity costs fiesta sponsorship constitutes a
fraction of the fmancial commitment represented by holding political office
on the Production Committee executive.
Religious officeholding also possesses distinct politico-ideological advantages when compared with political officeholding. Unlike political officeholders in the Production Committee, religious officeholders in the fiesta
context are vulnerable neither to accusations of embesslement nor to
accusations of devoting insufficient time to officeholding tasks (because of
the small sums involved on the one hand, and the fact that a division of

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religious officeholding labour permits the delegation not only of tasks but
also responsibility). In short, although politico-ideological concepts which
permit the operationalisation of 'reciprocal' exchanges, such as 'service',
'sacrifice', etc., are inscribed in both political and religious officeholding,
the latter is of less economic cost to the incumbent than the former. Hence its
attraction for rich and middle peasant members, unwilling or unable to hold
political office in the Production Committee, who in the course of (secondary) religtous officeholding are nevertheless able to reproduce the politicoideological conditions whtch make possible not only particular forms of
private appropriation from the Production Committee as a whole but also
the reproduction of the Cooperative production relation itself.l' The object
of fiesta sponsorship by rich and middle peasants in Pintobamba Grande
during the post-reform era is that it defuses the issue of political officeholding as a condition of member status for those called upon- but declining- to
'serve' in this manner, and thus avoids the possibility of expulsion from the
Production Committee by an increasingly dominant poor peasant
membership. 21
CONCLUSION

Class struggle on the demesne sector of Pintobamba Grande in the prereform era involves a process m which both the fiesta system and labour-rent
share a common language, mode of recruitment, economic function, and
sanction. Within this matrix, contradictory aspects of one institution are
transposed on to the other, and a breakdown in the politico-ideological
efficacy of one entails a corresponding breakdown for the other. The
development during this period of a stratum of capitalist tenants, coupled
with increased appropriation from the latter by the landlord in the double
form of labour-rent and fiesta sponsorship resulted in the rejection of
landlord-specific meanings attached to these institutions and the acceptance
of tenant-specific meanings. The restructured post-reform fiesta similarly
corresponds to an arena in which attempts are made to deflect politicoideological conflict. Accordingly, contradictions arising from the struggle
for access to and control over new means of productton are marked by the
reaffirmation in this context of idioms stressing the contribution by capitalist
peasants to the Cooperative in the form of sponsorship. Insofar as it constitutes a politically-acceptable substitute for (and hence alternative to) political officeholding, therefore, religious office holding permits these capitalist
peasants to claim that the conditions of member status have been met. In
short, whereas pre-reform fiesta sponsorship corresponds to a deduction
from capitaL post-reform sponsorship by contrast reproduces the capital
relation.

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NOTES

2.

4.

S
6

r II

Texts which project many aspects of th1s theory onto the fiesta system in Peru mclude
Casaverde (1970]. Conhn (1974], FIOravanti (1973], Fonseca (1973, 1974], Gow (1974],
Isbell (1978]. Malengreau [1974], Nunez del Prado and Bonmo (1969]. and Sallnow (1974,
1981]. In a more recent text, Sallnow (1983] exammes the different ritual practices associated with fiestas on the rural estate in southern Peru dunng the Colonial and Repubhcan
penods; although this constitutes a welcome departure from ah1stoncal functionalist
approaches, it nevertheless confmes 1ts analysis to the hegemomc role of rellgwus ideology,
and thus falls to record the extent to wh1ch the fiesta is an arena where politically important
non-liturg1cal id10ms are reproduced and confhct takes place over theu class-spec1flc
meanings. In the case of the fiesta considered below, only non-religious ideology changes
wh1le religwus 1d10ms remam the same.
Both these analyt1cal approaches to the fiesta system employ the followmg oppositions.
nation
community
capitahst
non-capttahst
non-egahtanan egahtanan
non-md1genous : md1genous
The mfrastructure/superstructural relat1onsh1p 1s for Gramsci lJ971] encapsulated m the
concept 'hegemony', wh1ch refers to the ab1lity of a ruling class to exercise total soc1al
control Without explicit recourse to coercwn The obJect of this opaque power is to obtam
consent for rule by formulatmg alternatives through the definition of what constitutes
'reasonable' resolutions to (and thereby contaimng) conflict However, as has been noted
by Anderson [ 1977] and Negn eta/ [ 1979], the concept 'hegemony' IS madequate m that It
allocates a passtve role to politically subordmate class elements, the latter consequently
appeanng as (uncntJcal) consumers of ex1stmg ( = dommant) poht1co-deological meanmg
rather than as achve formulators of an alternative framework of consciOusness. The result
of th1s theonsation 1s that 'hegemony' negates both the element of politico-Ideological
contradiction and therefore struggle
This mterrelatedness of the different components of landlord power 1s accurately depicted
by one of the protagomsts in the struggle [Blanco 1972: 57]:
The (landlord] Is not only the boss and owner of the means of production; he 1s the
one who almost d1rectly appoints JUdges and local officials, just as he appomts
school-teachers or closes schools. In a large measure, he also supplants the local
authontles in h1s functions: he enforces law and order d1rectly . . . The power IS
clearly concentrated m h1m, unlike the situatiOn m the ctties where . . the system IS
more complex, the transmission belts more hidden and d1sgmsed Under those
Circumstances, when peasants have succeeded in orgamzing themselves to fight for
better workzng condtllons, they have m fact also succeeded in dzsplacmg the rule of the
landowner m other respects (emphasis added)
In Quechua the suff1x -yoc denotes possessiOn Hence the vernacular form carguyoc
md1cates that its subject 1s the 'possessor of a cargo', an officeholder.
The landlord, his km, guests, and the pnest were seated apart from the other f1esta
participants The fust dnnk and plate of food was served to the landlord by the rellg10us
officeholder m person, who then served the kin and guests of the owner. The estate tenants,
sub-tenants and theu kmsfolk were served food and dnnk by the km and/or subalterns of
the officeholder Feastmg and dnnking carried on mto the night, accompamed by contmuous mus1c and mterspersed w1th dancmg, puppet shows and speeches by the rehgwus
officeholder and landlord pledgmg friendshtp and emphas1smg communal spmt. The
firework d1splay m the early hours of the mormng simultaneously marked the chmax and
s1gnalled the end of the fiesta entertainment. After the final mass in the mornmg. the
tenants and sub-tenants returned to the1r non-demesne dwellmgs and the landlord to the
estate house on the demesne.
The mtrae~tate monopoly/monopsony. finally abolished m 1962 along w1th all the other
vanants of noncaptahst rent, consisted of the control exemsed by the landlord over all
market mputs and outlets ava1lable to estate tenants Th1s system reqmred that tenants and

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sub-tenants resident on the non-demesne both purchase theu commodities from and sell
produce to the landlord, the former rece1vmg as a result between 50 and 60 per cent of the
free market pnce from the latter for crops cultivated by peasant producers (C/DA, 1966.
214--15; Hobsbawm, 1969 46-7, Fioravantz, 1974: 78]. An obstacle to the development of
cap1tahst peasant farmmg, th1s restrictiOn on free commerce was Imposed contractually by
the landlord on his tenants (that 1s, It constituted a pre-cond1tion for the assumption of
tenant status), and earned the sanction of exclus1on or ev1ction from non demesne means
of productiOn on the estate
8 In the neighbounng province of Paucartambo, for example, the nght of estate tenants to all
the components and activities assocJated w1th fiesta celebratiOns was enshrined m tenure
contracts between landlord and tenant [Palacio, 1962.79, 86]. Sigmflcantly, the 'economic
assistance' extended by the landlord to the offlceholdmg tenant sponsonng the fiesta 1s
expressed m terms of 'help' (derecha a Ia ayuda econ6mzca del patron cuando e/ colona se
compromete a pasar cargos reltgiosos) Similarly, in La Convenc16n the act of f1esta
sponsorship was projected as a 'gift' made by the officeholder to the landlord [Craig, 1967:
20]
9. For an analogous depictwn of f1esta sponsorship as 'religwus duty' (oblzgaci6n relzgiosa) m
Paucartambo. see PalaciO [1962 86]. The existence of a hybnd form of the labour-rent
vanantfaena constitutes further evidence of the identification by estate tenants of religwus
sponsorship w1th landlord appropriation; thus a memorandum presented to the civ1c
authont1es m La Convenc16n by the Cusco Workers' Federation m 1960 con tams a protest
by estate tenants against the vanant of labour-rent known as glonafaena, wh1ch entailed
labour-serv1ce on the landlord demesne 'in honour of the patron saint of the estate'
[Aranda and Escalante, 1978 70-71]
10. This v1ew of peasant umon oppositiOn to religwus sponsorship m La Convenc16n IS
supported by Crag [1967. 81], who observes that 'most hohdays, pnor to the commumty
breakaway from the hac1endas, were of a religious nature and generally were Imposed by
the [landlord] - often to exact tnbute from the [estate tenants]. The [peasant] umons
generally d1d not support any religiOus functions as an mtegral part of . umon actiVIty'
11. Of additional poht1co-1deological importance was the spatial element, the fact that the
landlord demesne was the s1te of both labour-serv1ce and the fiesta
12. Class struggle med1ated in terms of ayuda, socorro, Jurk'a, oblzgan6n, etc., upholds the
v1ew advanced by Volosinov [1973: 22] that 'm order for any 1tem [of language], from
whatever domam of reahty 1t may come, to enter the social purv1ew of the group and ehc1t
semiOtiC reacuon, 1t must be aswciated with the vital socw-econom1c prereqms1tes of the
particular group's existence, 1t must somehow, even If only obhquely, make contact w1th
the bases of the group's matenal hfe.'
13 Between 1948/50 and 1959/60 there was a threefold increase m landlord revenue from
labour-rent and the fiesta [Brass, 1982: 231, Table 3-10]
14 W1th regard to the social compositiOn of rehgwus officeholders, each peasant propnetor m
Pmtobamba Grande was class1fled as belonging to the rich, m1ddle or poor peasant stratum
on the bas1s of ex-tenant or ex-sub-tenant status together with the quantity, quality and
productivity of h1s holdmg. The amount of non-demesne land owned was a s1gmf1cant
different~atmg element because of 1ts crucial role m the cultivatiOn of coffee, the most
profitable cash-crop grown by peasant producers m La Convenc16n (Brass, 1983: 370-72]
15. Ev1dence from both the Pampa de Anta m highland Cusco, where during the md-1970s '1t
was agreed that the most expens1ve cargos . . would be eliminated because of theu cost'
[Guzllet, 1979: 28], and the agrarian cooperatives on the coastal region, where f1estas which
'had been mfrequent in the coastal haciendas ... were held almost once a month m these
enterprises after 1974' [McC/tntock, 1981: 211], suggests that similartransformatlons m the
fiesta officeholdmg structure and functwn have occurred elsewhere m Peru for the same
economic reasons. A more recent study of the fiesta system m Central Amenca (Smith,
1977] ind1cates that mult1ple officeholdmg in order to reduce sponsorship costs has also

become common in th1s regwn.

16. As an owner of a lorry and a depot m Qmllabamba, th1s wholesale merchant (mayor1.1ta)
must be d1stmgmshed from the small trader (rascatzsta) The latter's commercial operatwns

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The Journal of Peasant Studies

were confined to one estate, and usually entailed tnps with one or two mules in order to
purchase directly from the peasant producer. These crops were then sold to a wholesale
merchant, who then resold them on the reg1onal and natiOnal market through h1s own
d1stnbutwn network. It 1s precisely m the context of th1s cham of operations that sponsorship by the prosperous wholesale merchant of the pnncipal fiesta office Pmtobamba
Grande assumes S1gmf1cance. Thus, hke the Productwn Committee, the Commercmhsation Comm1ttee was formed by peasant propnetors from different peasant strata, and w1th
cap1tal advanced by th1s same wholesale merchant It competed w1th small traders on the
estate by similarly purchasmg coca directly from non-demesne producers, delivering th1s to
the wholesale merchant's depot m agreed quotas, at agreed times and at agreed pnces. The
object of this alhance between a large merchant and peasant propnetors was to undercutand eventually ehmmate- the small trader enterpnse in Pintobamba Grande. Accordmgly,
f1esta sponsorship by the prmc1pal non-peasant protagomst constitutes an important pohtlCOldeologcal mterventwn m th1s struggle.
The 1975 fiesta in Pintobamba Grande involved one principal rehgious officeholder and 15
secondary officeholders. The majonty of the latter, according to informants, were betteroff peasant members of the ProductiOn Committee, none of whom were expected to (or
mdeed would) spend more than S/.1 ,000 on sponsorship.
Th1s conf11ct took the form of the attempt by ONRA to reduce or eliminate the employment by peasant members of wage-labour on the Cooperative (instead of working personally), to block state cred1ts, and to extract payment of the agrarian debt from the
Production Comm1ttee membership [Brass, 1980; 1984]
Long and Roberts [ 1978 313] outline the analogous manner m wh1ch the projectiOn of
non-conflictive commumtanan 1deology by economically dominant elements m the context
of the fiesta system counteracts the pohtlCOldeologcal contrad1ctwns of class struggle m
the Mantaro Valley area of Peru
Increases m the amount of personal labour expended on the Cooperative by nch and
m1ddle peasant members over the 1972-75 penod were due to political offlceholdmg on the
execullve counc1ls of the Production Committee Unhke members who did not hold office,
those elected to the more Important posts were committed to a VIrtually contmuous
presence on the Cooperative m order to make deciSions about and coordinate the production process on this sector These time-consuming officeholdmg functwns were not only
reflected m the large personal labour contnbutlon of the mcumbent but- more Importantly
- also prevented the latter from devotmg h1s personal labour-time to his IndiVIdual
non-demesne holding This was a fundamental consideratiOn for many nch and middle
peasants (resultmg in theu voluntary withdrawal from Production Committee membership) who cultivated coffee on their extensive non-demesne holdmgs, a cash-crop which
reqmred the constant presence of the owner to personally undertake the orgamsatwn of
tasks such as the hmng and supervisiOn of labour engaged in prunmg, weedmg, the
applicatiOn of fertiliser and pesticides, harvcstmg, processmg and the marketmg of this
profitable commodity The problem concermng allocatiOn of personal labour-time did not
affect poor peasants to the same extent, smce m many cases they neither owned extensive
holdmgs nor cultivated coffee.
Pnvate appropnatwn from the Production Committee entailed usmg It as a source of
capital fundmg (interest-free loans for remvestment m indiVIdually-owned non-demesne
labour processes). means of production (pnvatJsatwn of Cooperative land) and subsistence
(milk. meat).
Conflict over the extent of the personal workload entailed m poht1cal off1ceholdmg
emerged as an ISsue m the ProductiOn Committee dunng 1974. At this stage It became clear
that votmg support from the rank-and-file membership of one peasant stratum for
officeholdmg candidates from another peasant stratum no longer corresponded to straightforward consideratiOns of political support. The pnncipal object of the nomination process
durmg Cooperative electiOns was on the one hand to make a member who showed himself
unwilling to hold office vulnerable to accusatiOns of bemg 'selfish', for faihng m his 'duty'
towards the membership, and on the other to project willing officeholders as engagmg m
'self-sacnfice' for the good of the membership. It Is of some sigmficance, therefore. that all

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three of the (known) secondary rehgious officeholders for 1975 were also rich and middle
peasants who had demonstrated publicly their unwillingness to hold pohucal office after
having been nominated dunng the annual election for executive posts in November 1974

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Anderson, P, 1977, The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsc1', New Left Review. 100
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Rural Artisans and Peasant Mobilisation

in the Socialist International:
The Fasci Siciliani
Peter Schneider*
This article explores the conditions under which peasant cultivators
and rural artisans participate in movements of social transformation,
a case in point being the Fascia movement of Sicily in the late
nineteenth century. It analyses the reasons why artisans could play a
critical role in politicising local protest and articulating it with
pan-European socialist movements, by describing their relations to
other classes in a differentiated peasant community.

INTRODUCTION

In autumn, while the struggle was radicalising, it appeared

even more evident that the forces were heavily polarised- on
the one side were the army and the police, and the latifondisti
or rich landowners linked to the municipal administrations,
and on the other side the peasants, artisans, and 'middle
classes' .... This was the moment of great popular unity that
saw entire towns lined up against the grande borghesia of the
countryside and latifundia .... [Casurrubea, 1978: 184-5].
Even as the movement swept through the cities and agrotowns of the
island, contemporary observers of the Sicilian Fasci could not agree on the
significance of widespread peasant participation in it. Leaders of the more
moderate left, such as Napoleone Colajanni, intent on forging an alliance of
left-wing democratic bourgeois leaders with socialist workers' organisations, argued that the peasants, while essential to the movement, did not
share in a true Marxist consciousness, being more committed to fragmenting
the land into small individual properties than to a long range collective effort
to transform the mode of production [Ganci, 1959: xlv; Renda, 1975: 11011]. On the right, there was the more reactionary characterisation by

Professor, Division of the Social Sciences, Fordham University, College at Lmcoln Center, New
York, NY 10023. The author gratefully acknowledges that the research on wh1ch this article IS
based was supported by grants from the Natwnal Scumce Foundation and Fordham Umverstty

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