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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— PUBLICATION NO. 3 



vated than the manipulation of natural forces and 

 objects (as in mechanics). Patterns of medieval and 

 16th century mysticism are strong in the culture, and 

 these patterns show no inconsistency with those of 

 argumentation, for, as with the medieval scholastics, 

 the worth of the logic lies in the manipulation of con- 

 cepts, not in the empirical investigation of premises. 

 It is partly for this reason, I believe, that ideas have 

 been more readily accepted as part of the content of 

 the Creole culture than artifacts and their associated 

 techniques. The use of modern medical words and 

 the manipulation of verbal legal concepts, even in 

 Moche, for example, are more advanced than the 

 "practical" techniques associated with them in certain 

 other cultures. If we were to analyze the intellectual 

 content of Creole culture as a whole, we would find a 

 vast variety of ideas, derived from numerous sources 

 — ideas from the Enlightenment, from the French and 

 American Revolutions, and, more recently, from 

 Marxism, etc. The content of the ideas themselves is 

 in many cases not Spanish, but the patterns of argu- 

 mentation probably represent heritages from Spain. 

 In the more mundane level of life, we see other 

 Spanish or Spanish Colonial patterns fixed in the 

 Creole culture — for example, in town planning (the 

 "plaza plan" rather than the "main street" plan), in 

 family organization (official male dominance, double 

 standard, and patterns of ceremonial kinship), in the 

 preeminence of the ox and the ass as traction and 

 transport animals, in certain features of domestic 

 architecture (e.g., the "patio" or courtyard in some 

 form ; the barred window ; the house front flush with 

 the sidewalk, and the absence of "front yard"), in 

 the broad-brimmed hat either of felt or straw, in the 

 use of a cloth head covering by women (mantilla, 

 head shawl, decorative towel, etc.), in the preference 

 for the one-handled plow in agriculture, in concepts 

 of "personal honor" and emphasis upon form in in- 

 terpersonal relations, in certain political statuses still 

 persisting from the colonial system, in the patterns 

 of Roman law, etc. 



It should be clear that these remarks are not to 

 be taken as a substitute for a formal analysis of the 

 Creole culture, a task which is beyond the limits of 

 this monograph. But they are intended to suggest 

 that Creole culture is a synthesis of elements drawn 

 from various sources and that the Spanish stamp 

 gives to this general mode of a life a certain external 

 uniformity, at least. 



Although the Creole culture is to be found in all 

 nations of Spanish America, its areal, regional, and 



local forms vary and are distinguishable among 

 themselves. This seems to be primarily because the 

 natural environments of the various regions and 

 localities differ among themselves and, even more 

 important perhaps, because the indigenous com- 

 ponents of the regional Creole cultures derive from 

 aboriginallj- distinct configurations. Thus it is, that 

 the Creole cultures of Guatemala and Peru, for 

 example, while sharing a common set of Iberian 

 elements, are nonetheless distinguishable, because the 

 one contains many patterns of Maya origin while the 

 other is colored by its Inca heritage. And within 

 each such area of Creole culture one recognizes 

 present subconfigurations associated respectively 

 with regions and localities. Thus, although the 

 Inca culture of the Empire covered both the coast 

 and the highland of Peru, one recognizes a Creole 

 culture of the coast and of the highland at the present 

 day. On the coast, again, it is possible to distinguish 

 local differences between Moche, for example, and 

 Canete. 



Added to these two historical components, the 

 Creole culture since Independence and, particularly 

 during the present century, has received increasing 

 increments in the form of patterns contributed by 

 the cultures of North America and northern 

 Europe — from the mechanical, industrial, enipirical, 

 Protestant, democratic, secular phases of Western 

 Civilization — which Spanish culture was incapable of 

 transmitting or which Spanish policy endeavored to 

 bar from the New World. 



In Peru at the present time it is probably correct 

 to say that there are two types of cultures, generally 

 speaking: the Republican Native cultures and the 

 Creole cultures. I use the term "Republican Native 

 culture" in the sense in which Kubler speaks of the 

 Republican Quechua.^'^ These cultures, of which the 

 most prominent are those of certain Quechua- and 

 Aymara-speaking groups of the highlands, but which 

 also include various native groups of the Montana, 

 are not aboriginal as they were before the Conquest. 

 Each has absorbed elements from Western Civiliza- 

 tion (if nothing more than dependence on certain 

 types of trade goods, such as factory-made cloth 

 among the Campa of the Montana, for instance), and 

 the organization of each of these "native" cultures 

 has been affected by the impact of European political 

 and social controls, either directly or indirectly. 

 Nevertheless, the Republican Native cultures are still 

 predominantly indigenous both in content and in 



'"'Kubler (1946); tliis culture is described by Mislikin (1946). 



