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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 14 



toward race, rather than with scientifically descrip- 

 tive concepts of race that this paper deals. 



The popular attitude toward "racial" statistics, 

 and the attitude of the governing group are de- 

 termined not by biological standards of race, but 

 by other factors. The chief of these concerns the 

 self-identification of people who are being counted. 

 They may or may not allow themselves to be 

 called Indians, mestizos, or whites. The official 

 taking the count, on the other hand, must in each 

 case, given the extant attitudes toward race, form 

 a judgment about the race of the individual before 

 him. The aggregate of these attitudes and judg- 

 ments, as reported to the Government and public, 

 affects the prevalent attitude toward "race." 



The same observation holds for non-Indian 

 "races." For all practical purposes Peru is 

 inhabited by Indians and non-Indians. Of the 

 latter, the mestizos form the great majority, with 

 small groups of Caucasians, Asiatics, and Negroes. 

 Through four centuries of population mixture, 

 these latter groups have so thoroughly been mixed 

 into the Peruvian gene pool that it is no longer 

 possible or meaningful to discriminate among the 

 crosses. In 1940 the identifiable Negroes, Asiatics, 

 and others numbered but 1.1 percent of the 

 Peruvian population. 43 White and mestizo, repre- 

 senting 52.89 percent, could not be separated by 

 the census takers, so that these two categories were 

 enumerated together as one. Our practice is to 

 enumerate all "races" other than Indian as non- 

 Indian. In the main, non-Indians may be taken 

 as equivalent to mestizo. The term "mestizo" 

 here has only a caste meaning, and no biological 

 meaning. 



It must be repeated that we are dealing, not 

 with biological race, but with social attitudes 

 toward race. Far more appropriate than "race" 

 are the terms of Indian and non-Indian castes. 

 Again, we are not dealing with objectively 

 measured magitudes, but with social approxi- 

 mations to the relations between the castes that 

 are real because they are desirable to the governing 

 group and with the tacit or passive permission of 

 the governed groups. 



Between 1795 and 1940, radical changes altered 

 the geographical distribution of Indians and 

 non-Indians. In 1795 an Indian world surrounded 

 the non-Indian enclaves (map 2). These are 



« In 1876 their total came to 3.84 percent (103,776 in a total population of 

 2,699,106). The diminution in their percentage testifies to mestizaje. 



surprising by their extent and unity, but on the 

 whole they were still enclaves. In 1940 the non- 

 Indian occupation of Peru (map 8) may be 

 compared to a sea of lowland mestizo settlers 

 encircling the mountainous island of Indian 

 settlement on central and southern Peru. That 

 this figure of speech holds only for static percent- 

 ages will shortly be evident. 



DISTRIBUTION IN 1795 



In 1795 Indians were a minority in the area 

 from the Rio de la Fortaleza to the Pacasmayo 

 Valley, and from this coastal zone into the high- 

 lands as far as the Province of Huanuco, and 

 northward to Jaen Province (maps 1,2). A second 

 great block of non-Indian majority appears on 

 the south coast, from Pisco to Arequipa. Indian 

 majorities are recorded for all the rest of Peru, 

 excepting Lima and Cuzco Provinces, and Anda- 

 huaylas. The reasons for an Indian minority in 

 Andahuaylas are nowhere explicit, for the tax 

 collectors' reports on the economic condition of 

 the province have not been discovered. After 

 1795, and to the present, Andahuaylas shows 

 Indian majority at all times. 



Huanuco also presents this problem of an area 

 that shows non-Indian majority only at the end 

 of the Colonial era, and then reverts to Indian 

 dominance. In the case of Huanuco Province, 

 which straddles the main north highland entrances 

 to the Peruvian montana, the territory was opened 

 to settlement only late in the eighteenth century 

 by non-Indian enterprise. "With advancing isola- 

 tion, these original settlers reverted during the 

 nineteenth century to Indian status as farmers and 

 villagers cut off from the main centers of Republi- 

 can life. Huanuco may offer an eighteenth- 

 century parallel to the twentieth-century phenome- 

 non of the thinly settled montana provinces, of 

 which the counted population is today pre- 

 dominantly non-Indian. If their development be 

 retarded, as in the vicinity of Satipo, it is not 

 unlikely that another generation will count them as 

 predominantly Indian again. 



The viceregal census of 1795 needs careful 

 study. We here use its figures as they stand, for 

 the reason that much Republican policy was 

 based upon them. Since the figures were socially 

 significant, their absolute objectivity may be 

 disregarded. It seems clear that the late Colonial 

 era manifested an attitude far more inclined to 



