MOCHE: A PERUVIAN COASTAL COMMUNITY— GII.LIN' 



71 



mechanism, other than mutual good will and good 

 sense, for the amicable settlement of such differences 

 in Moche at the present time. Litigation is looked 

 upon as a way out of difficulties, especially if the 

 litigants are stimulated by young lawyers from 

 among their own people. The result is that increased 

 education has brought about more litigation during 

 the present period. 



The present generation of children will probably 

 all be literate. In the meantime, however, as many 

 illiterate property holders may be expected to live for 

 20 to 30 years more to carry on their quarrels, a 

 good share or all of the Moche land may be alienated 

 from the hands of Mocheros. In addition to qualified 

 lawyers there are a few fake lawj-ers, literate men 

 who have read some law and who pose as lawyers 

 to ignorant or illiterate people. The Peruvian term 

 for this type of gentry is tinterillo (little inker, re- 

 ferring to his preoccupation with documents). 

 These parasites are not apparently as numerous in 

 Moche as in many highland regions, but their 

 influence is just as prejudicial to the good interests 

 of Moche as a community. 



The intrusion of the legal profession into a situa- 

 tion such as that of Moche not only entails the ill- 

 afforded economic waste involved in hiring lawyers 

 by individuals in a community of Moche's compara- 

 tively meager wealth and standard of living, but has 

 two further consequences. ( 1 ) The lawyers stimu- 

 late conflict within the community and open wedges 

 for the entrance of larger and more powerful in- 

 terests. (2) Small-time lawyers, who are forced 

 for want of better business to promote litigation 

 among their home-town relatives and friends, be- 

 come the tools of bigger la\\7ers serving larger and 

 better organized clients. 



Women as well as men own land and inherit it as 

 well as other forms of property. Transfer from the 

 older to the younger generation is made by gift 

 before death, by written testament, and by customar\' 

 division if the deceased has died intestate. In the 

 latter case, my informants tell me that it has been 

 customary for the spouse to receive half of the prop- 

 erty in life trust, as it were, with the remainder 

 divided equally among the children and their 

 mother's share reverting, share and share alike, to 

 them on her death. Inheritances of this sort, how- 

 ever, run into many types of legal complications, I 

 am told, if the heirs are disposed to dispute the 

 estate, and give rise to numerous court battles. Even 

 written wills, of course, may be subject to legal ac- 



tion. Another source of difficulty is the fact that 

 the estate frequently is too small to be efficiently 

 divided into shares, as when a man loaves one-half 

 hectare of land to a widow and four children. One 

 method of solving this difficulty is to allow one of 

 the heirs, often the oldest brother, to operate the 

 property as a single enterprise, dividing the proceeds 

 among the other heirs. However, it is not difficult 

 to see how such an arrangement may produce dis- 

 agreements, when there is a widowed mother and 

 the operating heir's family to support, leaving a 

 residue for the remaining heirs which is almost in- 

 finitesimal. Such a situation is complicated by the 

 fact that the average Mochero has no idea whatever 

 of how to keep useful written records of his accounts. 

 Many such younger heirs are forced to seek work as 

 day laborers for their fellows with larger lands or to 

 obtain work outside the community. 



Another method in such cases is to sell the land and 

 divide the money between the heirs. This has been 

 done relatively rarely up to the present. If it should 

 happen frequently and the sales were confined to the 

 community, it would tend to create a class division 

 between landed and landless families, which, although 

 it exists in incipient form at present, is not socially 

 recognized as a class division. If the sales are made to 

 forasteros, as has happened in a few cases, the landless 

 still remain landless and the steady and much feared 

 encroachment of outsiders upon the Moche scene in- 

 creases. Old timers say that up to about 1900 there 

 were practically no jorasteros owning real property 

 in Moche, and that it has been traditional for the 

 Mocheros to refuse to sell to or deal with outsiders. 

 The influx got under way on an appreciable scale only 

 about IS to 20 years ago. I cannot be sure about 

 these dates, but I am convinced that the resistance and 

 reserve toward jorasteros shown by Mocheros in their 

 personal relations is rooted in fear for their land. 



Without more complete historical data it is difficult 

 to do more than speculate concerning the influence of 

 land scarcity on present-day Moche culture and the 

 character structure of the Mocheros. I know nothing 

 which would indicate that the Moche lands were at 

 any period since early colonial times greatly more 

 extensive than when the recent forastero alienations 

 began. The Mocheros have been surrounded by 

 jorasteros for centuries. It does seem probable, how- 

 ever, that the pressure from the forcusteros has 

 increased appreciably during the past generation. 

 First the railroad, and then the highways made the 

 Moche lands more accessible to outsiders; then cer- 



