POLITICS-PERU: Torn between Globalisation and Indigenous Roots

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Jul 18 2001 (IPS) - Peru’s president-elect, Alejandro Toledo, an economist of indigenous origins, will take the helm Jul 28 of a nation that is being pulled in the seemingly opposite directions of globalisation and the affirmation of Andean identity.

Toledo has followed a long and unusual route from his native Cabana, a deeply impoverished rural area in Peru’s northern sierra, to the presidency, which he won Jun 3 with 52 percent of the valid ballots in the run-off vote.

He grew up in the northern port city of Chimbote, where he also completed secondary school. He helped pay for his schooling by working as a street vendor and as a novice writer for a local newspaper.

Later, a scholarship from a religious institution took him to the United States, where he studied economics at the University of San Francisco, and then completed two masters’ degrees and a doctorate at Stanford University.

Toledo remained in the United States and found work at the World Bank, where he served for several years as adviser for development programmes in Asia and Africa.

His electoral campaign was based as much on his status as a noted international economist as it was on his indigenous origins. His supporters call him “Pachacutec”, the name of the most important Incan emperor, and they consider his triumph a “historic revenge after 500 years of domination by whites.”

But Toledo does not speak the Quechua language despite his descendance from that indigenous group, and even his Spanish comes under criticism from his political adversaries, who maintain that his poor pronunciation and sentence structures reveal that “he thinks in English and then translates to Spanish.”

Toledo’s political “Indian-ness” has been cast into doubt by some indigenist intellectuals, including Isaac Humala, president of the Lima-based Institute of Ethno-Geopolitical Studies, and by the writer Freddy Rocallo, head of a group of Peruvians living in New York.

“He is a ‘de-culturised’ Indian and, although we should suppose he has sensitivity toward his ancestors, we do not think he can truly understand the roots of ‘Indian-ness’ because he is a liberal economist gringo with an indigenous face,” stated Roncallo.

For his part, Humala said Toledo should not be compared to Pachacutec, “but rather to Paullo Tupac, the brother of the last Atahualpa and Huascar Incans, who formed an alliance with the Spanish Conquistadors.”

President-elect Toledo “represents the mentality and the interests of transnational corporations, world banks and foreign investors,” Humala added.

With a less critical approach, sociologist Edgardo Murrugarra said “Toledo reflects in his personal history the cultural drama of Peru: the involuntary distancing from one’s ancestral roots and the presumed desire to recover them, but, at the same time, a heavy dependence on external culture.”

Journalist Tarcila Rivera pointed out that 90 percent of Peru’s 26 million inhabitants are indigenous or mestizos (mixed race), “but the majority try to ignore their indigenous roots. We would like to appear more like the prototypical Englishman, and we copy his language, his styles and his customs.”

“At least as important as integrating ourselves with the rest of the world is integrating with ourselves, without complexes, accepting ourselves for what we are, and valuing our identity,” said Rivera, who also serves as president of the Chirapac centre for indigenous cultures.

Upon taking office, Toledo will have to take a stance on balancing Peru’s insertion into modernity and globalisation with the preservation of the unique identity of a country with a rich cultural heritage.

“This matter, which appears now as a theoretical question, will be at the political forefront when the government takes on educational reforms, particularly when it comes to bilingual education,” Murrugarra said, referring to schooling in Spanish as well as an indigenous language.

Peru’s Constitution establishes that the official languages are Spanish and, in the regions where they predominate, Quechua, Aimara and other native tongues.

But primary school education in Peru is conducted only in Spanish, while at the secondary level there are required courses in English, though teaching is inadequate, say experts.

For years, educators, teachers and anthropologists have been demanding the incorporation of various native languages into primary schooling, and propose requiring education in at least one of them.

“Bilingualism of Spanish with other vernaculars would have positive cultural, social and educational effects,” said education expert Elvira Tizón.

“In the cultural sphere, it contributes to affirming national identity, and in the personal sphere would improve the self-esteem of a large portion of the population, many of whom feel marginalized because they speak a second-category language. It would also benefit literacy,” she pointed out.

Monolingualism in primary school subjects indigenous children, especially those living in remote rural areas, to the “gruelling requirement of trying to learn to read in a language that is not the one spoken at home,” Tizón stated.

Peru is home to 26 million people, and the mother tongue of more than four million is one of the 42 native languages existing today, which belong to 19 linguistic groups.

The predominant indigenous languages in Peru are Quechua, centred in the Andean sierra and spoken by more than 3.2 million people, and Aimara, spoken by more than 4.4 million people living in the Puno area, located in Peru’s extreme southeast near the Bolivian border.

The government of Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-1976) tried to impose bilingualism by official decree but was only able to achieve radio and television news read in Quechua.

The Intercultural Bilingual Education Directorate (EBI) was established in 1986 to provide education in two languages in some areas of the Andean mountains and in the Peruvian Amazon.

“In 4,280 schools, history, geography and mathematics are taught in nine native languages, Quechua, Aimara and seven Amazon languages,” reports Juan Carlos Godenzi, national director of EBI.