INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— PUBLICATION NO. 3 



the Republic of Peru as manifested through its 

 various officers with whom I came in contact, and 

 I hope that the present report, whatever defects it 



may possess, will prove to be of some value to the 

 Peruvian Nation, which occupies so prominent a 

 position in hemispheric and global aiifairs. 



BACKGROUND OF MOCHE 



THE SETTING 



Traveling over the asphalted Pan-American High- 

 way from Trujillo to Lima, your car passes through 

 the outskirts of the village of Moche, about 7 km. 

 after leaving Trujillo, just before the highway enters 

 the desert and starts up the long grade leading over 

 the divide toward Viru, the next coastal valley south- 

 eastward. To the ordinary traveler, passing by it 

 in this way, Moche offers nothing distinctive or 

 particularly interesting. The adobe and white- 

 plastered houses stand flush with the cobblestone and 

 dirt streets, which are laid out in a rectangular grid, 

 as in so many other Peruvian coastal villages. The 

 campina. or irrigated countryside, is scarcely notice- 

 able from the road, since travelers are usually strain- 

 ing their eyes to see the imposing ruined pyramid 

 of the Huaca del Sol standing in the background at 

 the far edge of the area of green fields and willow 

 tops. Your car gathers speed for the long rise 

 ahead, the green fields end sharply at the edge of a 

 desert of drifted sand and bare rocks, and Moche is 

 left to its own devices. 



This, in fact, has been Moche's fate and fortune 

 since the Spanish Conquest over 400 years ago — to 

 be left in large measure to its own devices. Yet the 

 ruins of the Huaca del Sol, probably the largest single 

 adobe structure in the world, and the nearby Huaca 

 de la Luna testify that this region in times past was 

 a center of human activity and organized eftort on a 

 large scale. It was here that the ancient culture, 

 now known as Mochica, was first clearly differ- 

 entiated from other antique remains by Max Uhle.^ 

 This archeological culture is known even to laymen 

 by reason of the mold-made ceramics which, with 

 unusual vivacity, realism, and freedom from artificial 

 artistic conventions, convex' perhaps a clearer idea 

 of persons, physical type, and the material aspects of 

 a by<;;one age than the pottery of any other ancient 

 people of the Western Hemisphere. In Peru, it is 

 customary to think of the present-day inhabitants 



of Moche as descendants or survivors of the people 

 who created this coastal civilization. Although the 

 Mocheros themselves do not seem to recognize such 

 a connection, this belief is strengthened by the fact 

 that the Mocheros of today are "different" from the 

 ordinary run of folks living along the coast.* They 

 are more "Indian" in physical type ^ than is the 

 usual cholo, they are somewhat conservative in their 

 customs, preserving certain modes of life of a 

 former day, and they tend to keep to themselves 

 rather than allow themselves to become absorbed 

 in the general Peruvian population. The Mocheros 

 have preserved a large measure of individual owner- 

 ship of the small farms of their campina in their own 

 hands, and the district thus constitutes an enclave, as 

 it were, in a region now mainly occupied by a highly 

 mixed cholo population and largely owned by a few 

 giant haciendas. 



Thus, aside from the natural attractions of its 

 setting and of its people, Moche ofifers interest in 

 at least two senses of a more general nature. It may 

 be regarded, on the one hand, as a remnant or sur- 

 vivor of a basic ancient population and culture of 

 the north Peruvian coast. On the other hand, we 

 may see in Moche a modern example of rural life 

 in this region as it is and as it was before many 

 of the coastal villages were absorbed into the enor- 

 mous sugar, rice, and cotton haciendas which at 

 present dominate the Pacific valleys and which have 

 radically reorganized the manner of living and the 

 habits of work of the rural citizen. 



The entire coast of Peru, south of Tumbes, is one 

 of the driest deserts in the world, with an average 

 annual precipitation of 0.5 cm. (Romero, 1944, 

 p. 20) which in normal years is provided exclusively 



2 It will be recalled tli.it Uhle c.llltd this "Proto-Chimu." Although 

 he published some of his nvilerial ,ts e.irly as 1900 in an article in the 

 Trujillo newspaper "La Iiidustria," his first comprehensive account 

 of the excavations at the Moche ruins themselves was published in 

 1913 CUhle, 1913: Kroeber, 1925. 19J6). 



'For example, "Diccionario de 'La Cr6nica,"' (191S, pp. 300-301) 

 states: "The characteristic trait of the Moche district is the tendency 

 of the inhabitants not to make a common life with the whites, for 

 which reason they still retain many of their customs anterior to colonial 

 times." 



' It should be noted, however, that even during Mochica times, the 

 population was not uniformly "Indian" in the sense of being invariably 

 mongoloid in physical type. Although the mongoloid physical type 

 seems to be numerically the most numerous in the portrait vases, faces 

 are also portrayed which possess marked "white" features (e. g., 

 high-bridged noses, beards and moustaches of "white" race type, ex- 

 ternal epicanthic folds, etc.) as well as others showing presumable 

 negroid characteristics (Larco Hoyle, 193S-39, vol. 2, ch. 3). 



