HIGHLAND COMMUNITIES OF CENTRAL PERU—TSCHOPIK 13 
misleading. It must not be assumed, for example, 
that those individuals who habitually speak 
native languages are necessarily Indians. Both 
in the Ayacucho region and in the Jauja Valley 
there are many individuals, principally women, 
it is true, who on cultural as well as racial grounds 
must be considered Mestizos, yet who are more 
proficient in Quechua than in Spanish and char- 
acteristically speak the native language in their 
homes. Most Mestizos of Chucuito in Puno 
Department are less proficient in Spanish than in 
Aymara and frequently speak the latter language 
among themselves; yet in their way of life there 
is a vast difference from that of the Indians of the 
same town. 
Although, as Mishkin (1946, p. 413) has prop- 
erly pointed out, “proficiency in handling Span- 
ish and one of the Indian languages is often taken 
to be the mark of a Mestizo,’’ many Indians in 
the Departments of Puno and Cuzco and in the 
Highlands of Central Peru speak Spanish well 
and yet continue to live culturally on the Indian 
level. It seems unlikely, however, that many 
individuals who speak Spanish alone follow the 
Indian way of life. Hence, while languages are 
of some limited utility in breaking down the 
Sierra of Peru into its rough social-cultural com- 
ponents, the writer is inclined to agree with 
Gaémio (1945, p. 411), who states: ‘The utiliza- 
tion of cultural data . is probably the most 
practicable way properly to identify individuals 
and social groups.” * 
From the foregoing it should be clear that in 
the Sierra of Peru the problems relating to social 
definition and identification are primarily of a 
cultural, rather than of a racial or linguistic, 
nature. Yet the inevitable processes of culture 
growth and change have served to obliterate the 
distinctive characteristics of what were, at the 
time of the Conquest, two discrete cultural heri- 
tages, Indian and Spanish. After four centuries 
of intensive and sustained contact between these 
two groups, it is idle to look for “pure” Indian 
culture in the Highlands of Peru. Elements of 
the Roman Catholic religion, iron implements 
and tools, articles of European-type clothing, 
beliefs and customs of Spanish origin, and Old 
World species of cultivated plants and domestica- 
12 Regarding the language problem in Mexico, he writes, ‘Linguistic data, 
generally applied in the census, obviously cannot lead to correct estimates 
when they exclude a million people who do not speak a native language but 
are Indian racially and culturally.” The writer is not aware that this situa- 
tion is encountered commonly in the Highlands of Peru. 
ted animals have penetrated into the most remote 
mountain valleys and deep into the jungle-covered 
canyons of the east-Andean slopes.’ But al- 
though the civilization of the Inca is long since 
extinct, one may still speak properly of ‘Indian 
culture” in the Peruvian Highlands, and in many 
regions, particularly in the southern Depart- 
ments, the Indian elements heavily outweigh the 
Spanish in the mode of life of these present-day 
communities. '4 
Nor is it to be assumed that in the cultural give 
and take which followed the Conquest the Indian 
heritage always received and the Spanish always 
gave. One finds many elements of Indian origin 
in the culture of such a typical contemporary 
Mestizo town as Sicaya, in the Jauja Valley. 
Many cultivated plants grown in this town (maize, 
potatoes, ocas, ollucos, and quinoa), the ways in 
which these foods are prepared, and much of the 
domestic equipment (grinding stones, pottery ves- 
sels, wooden bowls and ladles, gourd dishes) are of 
Indian origin. So are the domestic guinea pigs, the 
custom of chewing coca on ritual occasions, and 
such articles of clothing as the hand-woven belt, 
shawl, and carrying cloth. The doctors, or curan- 
deros, employ some aboriginal techniques in effect- 
ing cures; the reciprocal exchange of labor between 
relatives and friends, wyay, is probably Indian, as 
are various folk tales and beliefs.!° Indeed some 
elements of Indian culture have even found their 
way to Lima, and into all but the highest circles of 
the Capital. Cases of witchcraft have reached the 
courts of law and some enterprising curanderos 
advertise the effectiveness of their cures in the 
leading Lima newspapers. As Mishkin (1946, p. 
413) has pointed out, ‘‘Whatever distinctions are 
made between Mestizo and Indian must depend 
for their validity upon the object of such distinc- 
tions. In reality, the two groups merge.” 
In describing and comparing certain present- 
day communities of the Central Peruvian High- 
13 It is not the writer’s purpose in the present paper to describe the ways in 
which Spanish and Western European elements generally have become 
integrated in Indian culture, nor to inquire into the functions and meanings 
of these elements. Yet it must be pointed out that after 400 years of culture 
contact, the borrowed Spunish elements have become so much a part of the 
contemporary Indian cultural heritage that it is difficult to abstract them even 
for purposes of description without doing great violence to the facts. The 
ox-drawn plow and the gasoline tin are just as real and meaningful to the 
present-day Aymara of Chucuito as the digging stick and the pottery olla, 
and wine is as acceptable an offering to the spirits as maize chicha. 
4 For brief descriptions of contemporary Quechua and Aymara Indian 
communities which preserve many aboriginal-type patterns, see Mishkin, 
1946, and Tschopik, 1946. 
1S The general situation in the Highlands of Peru is strikingly like that 
described by Redfield for Yucatan. See Redfield, 1941, especially chs, 3 and 
4, 
