MODERNIST AND POST-MODERN PERSPECTIVES ON RURAL-URBAN

MIGRATION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ZAMBIA AND PERU

By Gerardo Castillo-Guzmán

Dissertation

for the MSc in Development Studies

University of Bath

September 2000
 LIST OF CONTENTS

Pag.
INTRODUCTION: Research Problem…………………………………………………….3

CHAPTER I. RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION AND MODERNIZATION IN

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES……………………………………………………………...9
1.1. Rural-Urban Migration and Urbanization……………………………………………9
1.2. Modernization……………………………………………………………………….10
1.3. Modernism…………………………………………………………………………..12
1.4. Modernity…………………………………………………………………………...13

CHAPTER II. FERGUSON'S ARGUMENT IN RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION

PATTERNS IN THE ZAMBIAN COPPERBELT………………………………………14
2.1. The Migratory History………………………………………………………………14
2.2. The Rising and Decline of the Copperbelt………………………………………….16
2.3. The Participatory One-Party Democracy and the Industrialization Model…………17
2.4. Ferguson's Critiques to the Political Reading: from farmers to miners.
Citizenship and detribalization……………………………………………………...18

CHAPTER III. FERGUSON'S APPROACH APPLICATION TO RURAL-URBAN

MIGRATION PATTERNS IN PERU…………………………………………………….23
3.1. The Colonial Model…………………………………………………………………23
3.2. Independence and The Aristocratic Republic……………………………………….24
3.3. The State Expansion, the 1970s' Reforms and the Breaking of the
Criolla Republic…..…….…………………………………………………………...25
3.4. The Political Reading: popular democracy and popular capitalism.
From peasants to informals………..………………………………………………..27
3.4.1. The Desborde Popular……………………………………………………..27
3.4.2. The Otro Sendero…………………………………………………………..29

CHAPTER IV. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED OF THE APPLICATION OF

FERGUSON'S ARGUMENT TO THE PERUVIAN CASE?…………………………...32
4.1. Rural-Urban Migratory Explanations……………………………………………….32
4.2. Modernist and Post-modernist Perspectives………………………………………...33
4.3. The Transformation of the Society and the Construction of the Modernity………..36
4.4. Modernization, Nationalism and State Power………………………………………40
4.5. Redefinition of State, Civil Society and Democracy………………………………..42

SUMMARY…………………………………………………………………………………46

NOTES……………………………………………………………………………………...51

APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………55

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………….61

2
INTRODUCTION: Research Problem.

The main objective of this dissertation is to evaluate James Ferguson's analysis of the

history of migration in the Zambian Copperbelt in order to understand a similar process in

Peru. The basic idea of Ferguson's argument (Ferguson, 1990a; 1990b) is that the traditional

historiography has regarded migration movements in the Zambian Copperbelt as a repetition

of the European experience during the Industrial Revolution. As a consequence, Ferguson

argues, the common academic wisdom: a) hides and simplifies a more rich reality and; b) it

tells more about an ideal view of the modernization of the society than about the process

they are trying to describe. The dissertation, therefore, evaluates the utility of Ferguson's

post-modern framework in interpreting rural-urban migrations in developing countries facing

accelerated changes.

To reach our objective, the dissertation has been organized in four chapters. The first chapter

asks why the study of the rural-urban migration has been prioritised over equally important

rural-rural movements. It states that that great part of the answer should be looked for in the

political impact of rural-urban movements and its capacity to transform the nature and vision

of the whole society. It argues that the rural-urban migration in developing countries has

been regarded as the symbol par excellence of the modernization of the society. Then, the

chapter defines three different but interrelated concepts: modernization, modernism and

modernity. The first refers to the technological changes that made the industrial revolution

possible. It refers also to the belief, summarized in the modernization theory of the 1940s,

that the bottleneck for economic growth is the lack of physical capital. Modernism are the

discourses or narratives constructed over this technological process. These narratives have in

common a linear vision of the history. In this linear view it is possible to move forward and

backward and to split social realities in modern and traditional. Modernity is the whole

experience initiated in Europe five centuries ago. It involves the expansion of capitalism, the

3
development of a formal rationality, the establishment of representative democracy and the

creation of new artistic forms. In addition, modernity implies the promise of individual

freedom and political legitimacy.

The second chapter presents the case of rural-urban migration in the Zambian Copperbelt

following Ferguson's analysis. This differs from standard analysis in that it focuses on two

levels: the analysis of a social phenomenon (rural-urban migration) and the analysis of the

ways in that this specific phenomenon has been understood (the social scientists' discourse).

Ferguson argues that traditional historiography has failed in the understanding of the recent

Copperbelt history because it was more interested in an ideological debate than in describing

the reality. It constructed a common wisdom where short-term labor migration was the

characteristic of the past and urban stabilization the characteristic of the present. Thus,

farmers with tribal identities have shifted to workers with urban, modern and class identities.

This modernist version of the Copperbelt history would have two major mistakes: a) a single

typical model of migration has never existed. Since the beginning many workers move to the

cities with their families and stay in them for all their life. In current times, mine workers do

not lose their rural ties and continue returning to their villages; b) the terms citizenship and

tribalism are unable to capture more complex identities. The mine worker lives cannot be

grasped with fixed categories of "modern", "class-consciousness", "urban identity" on the

one hand and "traditional", "tribal identity" and "localism" on the other.

The third chapter reviews more historically grounded literature of Peru and is an attempt to

apply a similar framework in the analysis of the urban reconfiguration of Lima, the capital of

Peru, after the 1960s. This chapter states that the Peruvian rural-urban migration process has

been shaped by the colonial order. It created an administrative and ideological apparatus that

divided the country into two nations: Spaniards and Indians. Since the beginning this ideal

order was challenged by circulation between these groups and the conformation of new ones.

4
However, the country continued thought in terms of two Perus: one "official" and centralized

in Lima, the other "deep and unknown" and isolated in the highlands. However, since the

1940s massive migrations changed the rural condition of the country and reconfigured the

urban landscape. This transformation has be explained by two influential works of the 1980s.

One is the desborde popular. It is the elaboration of the progressive left intellectuals and

supports the idea that the migration process and the new configuration should be read as the

democratic assault and destruction of the aristocratic state by organized indios who build a

new chola identity. The other is the otro sendero. It is the liberal proposal of a popular

capitalism: creative migrants, who evading the state bureaucracy have built their own wealth.

Departing from different sources the conclusion is convergent: the modernization of the

country has been built despite and contrary to the state administration and a more democratic

order is created as unintended outcome.

After having compared the rural-urban migration process in Zambia and Peru, the fourth and

final chapter presents some conclusions about the interpretation of the Peruvian society

transformation. They attempt to answer four questions: what have we learned about the

methodology? What are the modernist and post-modern perspectives and its implications?

How has the transformation of the society been explained? And what is the resulting

relationship between state and society? We claim for a long-term historical explanation of

migrations where it is not enough to construct a rational model that defines all the cases as a

looking of job (economist view) neither to say that every case is particular by itself and,

therefore, it is not valid to stand universal comparations (post-modern position). The long-

term historical approach allows grasping some similar patterns that have shaped the rural-

urban migrations in Zambia and Peru. Firstly, both countries were under the rule of colonial

governments that tried to split the population into two different nations: European and

African settlements in Zambia, and Spanish and Indigenous in Peru. Secondly, they have

suffered late and fast urban growths. Actually, Zambia is the most urbanized country in

5
Africa and Lima, with nearly eight million inhabitants, is the fifth biggest city in Latin

America (Gilbert, 1998: 36). Thirdly, Peru and Zambia have experienced a dramatic cycle of

economic growth and decline, and their industrialization attempts have failed completely.

Fourthly, in Africa (Clapham, 1992; Bayart, 1993) as well in Latin America (Collier, 1979;

Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar, 1998) there exists a central reflection about the nature of the

relationship between the state and the civil society and the fragility of the democracy.

A historical understanding of the modernity also allows to avoid the misleading opposition

of tradition-modernity. We argue that the opposition tradition-modernity is misleading

because these concepts are descriptive as well as normative categories. But more critical yet,

they are formal and not substantial categories. This means that they are defined only by

oppostion. They have no content, there is nothing that could be attached either to a timeless

tradition or to a changing modernity. The Zambian and Peruvian rural populations previous

to the Independence and the Agrarian Reform respectively are not the incarnation of a

traditional and ancient society. The experience of modernity, started five hundred years ago,

has created its own traditions and shaped other traditions around the entire world. The

history of the traditional or anthropological societies cannot be understood without the

comprehension of the modern capitalist expansion. In other words, they are part and have

been deeply influenced by this modern project. Modernity is a process with different

historical effects.

We argue that instead of interpreting rural-urban migrations in terms of a traditional-modern

society transition, they should be understood as the re-structuration of the relationship

between society and state. The decades from the forties to the sixties are the efforts of the

central state to assimilate the migrants within an industrial and urban economy and within a

national project of modernity. This vertical and relatively stable modernization failed

completely with the collapse of the industrialization and populist models. The state, unable

6
to offer a legitimate and inclusive order, reacts with violence and, then, with indifference and

impotence. The masses of migrants cannot continue been conducted through official

channels. The migrants informally occupy the city and the economy and popular icons

replace the official cultural symbols.

It is possible to establish a correspondence between the reconfiguration of society-state

relationship and academic interests. Facing the collapse of central state development projects

and the emergence of new social movements, social scientists have moved from a statist

view to a rediscovery of civil society and democracy as a political arena. Finally, we state

that all interpretations of social reality are embodied in historical trends and, contrary to

post-modern positions, it is not possible to establish a "meta-narrative" which can judge all

previous works. The major merit of the modernist interpretations is that --beyond the

explanations of rural-urban migration-- they served as point of reflection and search for the

national reality.

In his essay about modernity, Marshall Berman has argued that social scientists have split it

into a series of separate components. Namely, industrialization, state building, urbanization,

development of markets, elite formation (Berman, 1988: 33). Moreover, "current thinking

about modernity is broken into two different compartments hermetically sealed off from one

another: modernization in economics and politics, modernism in art, culture and

sensibility." (Berman, 1988: 88). Thus, through the description and comparison of the

Zambian and Peruvian experiences, this dissertation is looking to integrate converging trends

and reconstruct the modernity image expressed in the academic debate of the rural-urban

migration process.

7
The Zambian and Peruvian examples have been chosen because they represent paradigmatic

cases in the history of Africa and Latin America. The rural-urban migration in the

Copperbelt has been regarded in the social sciences as the paradigmatic case of "social

change" and "urbanization". The Copperbelt was considered the symbol of the "emerging

Africa" not for its mine richness, industrial potential and fast social change but because it

was regarded as representing a new era. The cities in the Copperbelt, unlike other African

cities, were "modern" ones. On the other hand, the massive rural-urban migrations to Lima

are a representative expression of the urban explosion in Latin America. This migrant

movement was regarded as a revolutionary transformation of the country, the abolition of the

traditional political structure and the emergence of a modern society. In both countries a

debate exists about tradition and modernity underlying the migration descriptions.

Effectively, the rural-urban migrations were read not only as the labor transfers from

agriculture to mining or industrial sectors but also as the shift from tribal (Zambia) or

communal (Peru) identities to a class and more democratic consciousness. Thus, the rural-

urban migration processes were regarded in terms of transformation of the society and

construction of new identities.

8
1. CHAPTER I. RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION AND MODERNIZATION IN

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES.

Despite the importance in developing countries of rural-rural migration --where analysis

proves possible, the rates of rural-rural migration are by far higher than of rural-urban ones

(Lucas, 1997: 728-729)-- it is the rural-urban migration that has captured academic and

policy attention. Why is this the case? Below I try to answer the question.

1.1. Rural-Urban Migration and Urbanization

For some authors, rural displacements to the cities are the cause of disintegration of

traditional ethnic boundaries (Celestino, 1972) or, in extreme cases, the unwilling and

compulsory result of political violence (Bakewell, 1993) and a matter of survival

(Altamirano, 1988). However, in general they have been regarded in a very positive view as

a symptom of and a pre-condition for industrialization processes (Todaro, 1976). In a stark

form, rural-urban migrations have been conceptualized as the movement of peasants that are

making an individual rational decision 1 and using different strategies they establish in the

cities because of their greater marginal productivity, higher wages, occupation opportunities

and social facilities (housing, education or health services). Thus, the inference drawn is that

migration is part of ongoing economic development.

One of the most influential arguments is presented in the pioneering Todaro/Todaro-Harris

model. The essential idea is that:

"migration proceeds primarily in response to differences in expected urban and

rural real incomes and that as a result of this the observed accelerated rates on
internal migration in developing countries in the context of rising urban
unemployment are not only a plausible phenomenon but are in fact entirely rational
from the private expected income maximization viewpoint of individual migrants."
(Todaro, 1976: 45).

9
The relationship is clear. People move from rural areas to the city looking for jobs and,

therefore, impelling economic growth. In brief, although not without discrepancies 2,

economic theorists find an association between urbanization and decreasing fertility rates,

higher levels of education, higher incomes, and urban-to-rural remittances with its potential

transformation of agricultural modes of production (Stark, 1991: 9-21).

1.2. Modernization

However, the great part of the answer about the enormous interest rose by rural-urban

migrations should be looked at in terms of the political impact of the rural-urban movements

and its capacity to reshape the nature and vision of the whole society. In the Europe of the

Industrial Revolution, with the exception of conservative thinkers who feared the loss of

traditional values and social boundaries in the countryside, the urbanization was regarded as

a desirable transformation. From the Durkheim's organic solidarity of professionals, to the

Marxist proletarian workers' consciousness, and to Smith's explanation of migration as the

search for attractive urban jobs, writers of different positions shared a positive and

progressive view of the change of the Society (universal, abstract and homogenous) with the

rural-urban migration as a consequence and a pre-condition at the same time. Since then,

modernization and urbanization has been regarded as synonyms (Berman, 1988).

This view continued being a strong belief in planning and development spheres after the

Second World War period. The American economy prosperity --under the New Deal and the

Keynes' ideas of an active state intervention--, the Latin American state expansion and its

strong nationalisms (García Canclini, 1995), the colonial independence of African and Asian

nations, and the Soviet Union five-year programs, gave the propitious setting for theorizing

and planning strategies to impulse a new industrial modernity.

10
Marx offers us one of the most vivid and influential visions of the modernization process.

First of all, it requires the emergence of a world market. Production and consumption

become increasingly international and cosmopolitan. The scale of communications becomes

worldwide and mass media emerge. Capital is concentrated in a few hands. Independent

artisans and peasants cannot compete with capitalist production and are forced to close their

workshops and leave the land. Production is centralized and rationalized in highly automated

factories. Masses of uprooted people move to the cities, which grow explosively. Altogether

with these changes, a legal and administrative centralization is developed. National states

arise and accumulate great power, although that power is continually undermined by capital's

international scope. Meanwhile, industrial workers gradually build a class-consciousness and

fight against the oppression and misery they live (Berman, 1988: 90-91). This view, as is

shown in chapter four, continued fueling and inspiring academic works in developing

countries.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s the modernization theory --developed by American

scholars3 and divested of its revolutionary origins but not of its teleological connotation--

keeps much of the latter vision: modernization is equated with industrialization, massive

rural-urban movements and fast urbanization, capital accumulation, and the development of

new and efficient production skills. This approach guided development policies and fueled

an important academic debate. In the next decades the dependency and structuralism

theorists attacked this model and stated the idea of a continuos backwardness of developing

countries4.

11
1.3. Modernism

Nevertheless, these diverse perspectives have in common: a) a linear vision of the history in

which the direction where society is moving to is taken for granted (thus, it is a miss-

understanding but also a desired model of the reality and, in this sense, a political

construction5 and, b) a sharp separation of the modern and the traditional. They oppose

traditional communities, traditional ways to make politics, traditional cooperation and

identities, traditional economies and markets on the one hand and modern cities, modern

politics, modern cooperation and identities, and modern economies.

Modernist Versions

Characteristics Implications
Linear vision of Misunderstanding of reality
Political construction of a desired model
history
Traditional Society (tribe, peasant community)
Modern Society (urban and industrialized)
Traditional Politics (tribalism, elitism, vertical relations)
Modern Politics (participatory democracy, horizontal relations)
Sharp opposition Traditional Identities (tribal, communal, localism)
Modernity/Tradition Modern Identities (class consciousness, chola culture, global,
citizenship)
Traditional Cooperation (reciprocity)
Modern Cooperation (contractual relationship)
Traditional Economy (subsistence, risk avoidance)
Modern Economy (market oriented, industrial Zambian paradigm,
Peruvian popular capitalism)

For this reason we call them modernist versions. They are a way of understanding reality

making a sharp distinction between traditional and modern societies. However, this

distinction is not clear nor necessarily the best way to understand social change, and indeed

we argue it is not analytically functional in chapter four. A modernist version means the

construction of a universal and linear interpretation of the societies that narrates its history in

terms of permanent progress (namely, democracy, economic growth, revolutionary change,

popular capitalism or globalization).

12
1.4. Modernity

Modernity is a complex process initiated five centuries ago that involves not only an

economic and productive revolution but also changes in social organization, aesthetics,

rationality and perception of the world. The experience of modernity has affected in more or

less levels the life conditions of the people around the world. As Eric Wolf (1982) and

Wallerstein (1979) have shown, in this long period modernity has created its own traditions

and it is not possible to understand the social and economic characteristics of present ethnic

groups without the context of the European expansion. Moreover, the present constitution of

these groups --studied by traditional anthropology in a timeless present-- is derived directly

from the colonial experience6. To understand modernity as a whole that involves deep

modifications in technologies and rationalities in a complex expansion over the world

implies that: a) the labelling of "traditional" and "modern" deals more with a perception of

the society in precise moment than with a empirical data and; b) discourses and practices are

produced and shaped by the political complex in which they are embodied.

Ferguson (1990c) and Escobar (1995) argue that no discourse or practice is innocent, value-

free, technical and, thus, independent from power relationships 7. Though, it does not mean

that any development practice is completely useless and counterproductive. The point is that

we should recognize this complexity and the relativity of knowledge. However, this does not

mean that we have "…to collapse into post-modernist vacuity and frivolity." (Halliday,

1994: 234) as critics of this perspective have argued. In fact, in subsequent chapters of the

thesis I have used this approach to reveal the modernist discourses implicit in the rural-urban

migration analysis.

13
2. CHAPTER II. FERGUSON'S ARGUMENT IN RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION

PATTERNS IN THE ZAMBIAN COPPERBELT.

In Zambia, the population that lives in urban areas increased from 21 percent at

independence times to 40 percent in 1980 (table 1). By the 1990s almost half of the total

eight million population is urban, a figure nearly twice that of the rest of sub-Saharan

countries (Tranberg Hansen, 1997). A long history of rural-urban migration and, more

recently, a high annual population growth rate8 counts for this sharp urbanization rate.

The Copperbelt has been regarded as the epitome of Zambian urbanization and industry and

it has captured academic interest. Although its importance is unquestionable, the Copperbelt

has hidden the importance of Lusaka in urban studies. As Tranberg Hansen (1997: chapter 1)

has noted, one of the reasons is that between the 1930s and the 1950s the Rhodes-

Livingstone Institute carried out one of the first and most ambitious research projects 9 in

urban anthropology setting methodological and theoretical tools to understand the linkage

among wage labor, migration and social change. This influential production has shaped

academic debate in the following decades and it is facing this tradition that Ferguson stands

his critique. This chapter summarizes the migratory history and socioeconomic context and

discusses the Ferguson's argument is relationship with two inter-related visions of the

Zambian society: detribalization and citizenship.

2.1. Early Migratory History10.

Zambia is located in the Southern-Central African plateau with the Luapula and Zambezi

rivers forming natural boundaries in the northeast and southwest respectively. Its borders are

a direct result of the colonial disputes in the late nineteenth century. Diverse ethnic groups

without an unified political structure occupied this territory at different stages. Original

14
Tonga populations were displaced to the South by the Lunda and Luba kingdoms from the

Northwest and the Bemba from the Northeast. A fluent trade of gold, ivory and slaves was

established with Arabs in the North and the Portugueses trying to connect their colonies in

the South (Mozambique) and West (Angola). In addition, new groups (Ngoni) arrived to the

area pressed by the Boer and Zulu war in the Southwest. The consequence is that the great

part of the Zambian population has its roots in this migratory complex in the nineteenth

century and that previous agriculture systems were dislocated.

The British influence over the territory begins with missionary establishments, but was not

until the Cecil Rhodes' investments that dramatic changes initiated. Rhodes, wanting to

extend his South African diamond empire to the gold reefs of Katanga (the Congo Pedicle)

and Mashonaland (Zimbabwe), financed the colonization. Between 1884 and 1885, the

colonial disputes over the remaining African territories where solved in Berlin (Davidson:

1994). Under the British control the territories of Southern (Zimbabwe) and Northern

Rhodesia (Zambia) were included, but the strategic fields of Katanga were annexed to the

Belgian Congo. All this huge territory was entitled to the newly formed British South

African Company (BSAC). Initially Northern Rhodesia seemed to be a bad investment for

the BSAC since they knew copper deposits, made up of deep-lying sulphide ores, were not

profitable at the time. The company decided, firstly, to turn Northern Rhodesia into a cheap

labor reserve for mining and white farms; secondly, to open it for white settlements and;

thirdly, to manage it at the lowest possible cost. The consequences were enormous. Firstly,

from a total population of around 1.3 million, approximately 90,000 young men migrate as

labor force and many of them by force (Van Onselen, 1976). A new distribution of the land,

secondly, gave the best agriculture land to white farmers (6.5 percent of the territory) and,

despite the low total density, grouped the African in Native Reserves causing overpopulation

and soil erosion with the subsequent economic pressure. The political structure, thirdly, was

built over a myriad of political loyalties tying local chiefs with British authorities.

15
2.2. The Rising and Decline of the Copperbelt.

The rural-urban migrations in Zambia Copperbelt were a consequence of the large-scale

mineral exploitation started in the 1920s. It is possible to identify three distinct periods in the

Copperbelt migration history. Low economic growth and the flourishment of unauthorized

squatter settlements characterize the first from 1920s to the II World War. The second, from

the post Second World War era --or the post independent era-- showed the effects of the

economic growth with employee expansion, relatively high wages and housing facilities. The

third, currently experienced, is a time of uncertainty with the collapse of the nationalized

copper mines11 and the imminent privatization of them12.

The establishment of the first mines in the Copperbelt traces the growth of urban settlements

in the region and with them a complex of relationships between expulsing agriculture zones

and receptive mining areas. The migration processes implied deep changes in the population

distribution --with gender and age imbalances--, re-addresses in agricultural practices,

economic dependence of mining wages and changes in land use and tenure system

(Hansungule; Feeney and Palmer, 1998).

Although the growing importance of the capital, Lusaka, the Copperbelt is still the most

populated and urbanized Zambian province (table 2) capturing 22.2 percent of the total

population. Nevertheless, since the 1970s the annual growth of the Copperbelt cities is

falling even below the national average (table 3). The deacceleration of the Copperbelt

growth --presenting cases of migration to Lusaka and return migration to rural villages-- is

the result of the sharp decline of the copper industry.

16
Historically copper production has contributed with more than 90 percent of the exports and

in 1969 reached a peak of 54 percent of the GDP and 59 percent of the government revenues

(table 4). However, since 1975 the copper prices and the importance of the mines have fallen

dramatically. By now, the mines cost the government US$ 6 million a month to keep them

going. The reason for this disaster is not only the generally argued African mismanagement

of the mines but also the world decline of the trade terms (table 5).

2.3. The Participatory One-party Democracy and the Industrialization Model.

In 1964 the nation got its full independence through a broad alliance of rural people of

different ethic groups and the powerful mine unions. These complex alliances led to political

struggles and eventually to the challenge of the UNIP (United National Independence Party)

in power. In 1972, Kennet Kaunda --president of the country and leader of the UNIP--

eliminated the opposition imposing the one-party system, the "participatory one-party

democracy". In practice, the system derived an enormous concentration of power in hands of

the president. To keep the necessary alliances Kaunda creates a giant bureaucracy where

entire key posts were elected directly by the president. In addition, to avoid the growth of

intermediate and potentially conflictive powers the people in charge of these posts were

removed continuously. The result was that the public positions were regarded and used as

political booty favoring some "clients" and punishing those in disgrace with the president.

The long duration and popularity of the government could be in part explained by the

launching of ambitious social programs. After decades of denied access to education and

health, the Zambians enjoyed an impressive growth of social facilities. In addition, much of

the salaries rose rapidily when the distinction between European and African workers was

eliminated. The government invested in infrastructure and implemented an industrialization

program. Thus, hydroelectrics, pipelines, airports and roads were built and factories 13 were

17
open in order to produce consumer goods. However, this import-substitution model resulted

ineffective to create an autonomous manufacturer sector. The technology chosen was capital

intensive, limiting the expansion in employment and being increasingly dependant of

imported intermediate and capital goods (Seidman, 1974). The agriculture sector, despite the

government rhetoric and the call of "back to the land", received very little attention. Without

land distribution and without market incentives the Zambian food imports grew continuously

(Muntemba, 1978).

However, the main point is that only the copper revenues maintained this economic growth.

When these started to run short the government utilized external loans. Thirty years after

Independence the Zambian dreams of modernization have disappeared. With a collapsed

industry and mining, a huge external debt and a corrupt government, the rural-urban

migrations continue but more for the extreme poverty in the countryside than for the bright

future of the cities.

2.4. Ferguson's Critiques to the Political Reading: from farmers to miners.

Citizenship and detribalization.

"The winds of change blow even more strongly for the Africans than for Europeans,
and the mine township was indeed a new world for them. In it time is lineal instead
of circular. Labor is sold for money instead of performed in a round of reciprocal
obligations. Manual work is disparaged instead of respected. Differentiation in
standards of living replaces the tribal egalitarianism. Young leaders tend to supplant
elderly chiefs, as the authority symbols on age and rank are weakened."
(Powdermaker, 1962: 87).

Although developed in previous articles14, Ferguson's critiques to the traditional

historiography in the Zambian Copperbelt are deeply reviewed in his recent publication

entitled "Expectations of modernity. Myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian

Copperbelt". I cite the review placed on the rear of the book:

18
 "Once lauded as the vanguard of an African Industrial Revolution, Zambia's
economic boom in the 1960's and early 1970's was fueled by the export of copper
and other primary materials. Since the mid-1970's, however, the urban economy was
rapidly deteriorated, leaving ordinary people scrambling to get by. Focusing on the
experience of mine workers in the Copperbelt region, James Ferguson traces the
failure of standard narratives of urbanization and modernity to make sense of the
Copperbelt's recent history." (Ferguson, 1999).

During colonial times, according to Ferguson, conservative thinkers and authorities

considered that the Africans were "primitive" target-workers whose homes should be in rural

areas. Thus, permanent settlements were forbidden as well as the mobilization of the wives

and children of the mineworkers. Moreover, this view gave political justification for the

stand of miserable huts without facilities around the mines. Against this position, continues

Ferguson, rose liberal thinkers --grouped around the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute-- whose

main task was to proove that Africans are "civilized" beings able to "urbanize" following

European patterns.

For this purpose the liberals built, with variants, three "typical" models: a) "migrant labor"

model. It is characterized by short-term migrations of single young men. They work

temporarily in the mines to obtain money and return to their villages where they have interest

over the land, they will get married and will have their children; b) "temporary urbanization"

model. The men are born in the country but spend at least half of their time in the city with

their wives and children. Nevertheless, they do not loose their rural links and will return to

their villages when old or retired; c) "permanent urbanization" or "stabilization" model. The

men although born in the country have lived in the city since fifteen. They are attached to a

single job, lived with their family, have lost their rural links, and when retired they will

remain in the cities.

These typical models were fixed in a historical sequence: the first corresponds to the period

from 1920 to the Second World War. The second from the war times to the independence in

19
1964. Independence, with the removal of the legal migratory constrains, gave place to third

period of a plenty urbanization. A view where the migrant worker was a matter of the past

while the permanent urbanized was of the future was established. Indeed, the temporary

model was a concession to the fact that the majority of miners were not able to fit in the

category of permanent urbanized workers. Thus, it was interpreted as a transitional time of

mess and disorder but moving to an urban stabilization.

However, Ferguson asserts that this typology or "traditional wisdom" of the Copperbelt

urbanization hides a more complex reality. He presents data showing that since the

beginning of the 20th century urban settlements were important and currently many of the

mine worker, far from be completely urbanized, return to their rural village. In consequence,

there is not a single succession of one type to the other but multiple strategies used at the

same time: it is not the case that temporary migration was not important in early times but

was not the only one pattern, and inverse it is not the case that permanent migration is not

important in more recent times but it is not only one pattern neither. Due to lack of political

willing and administrative force, the colonial rules could never stop the migrations and the

growth of urban settlements. Inversely, the reason why migrants tend to urbanize in the

following years was not the removal of these colonial rules. Accordingly to Ferguson this is

a statist and legalist view while the reasons must be search in the different strategies used by

the migrants facing a changing socioeconomic situation.

Ferguson declares that this reductionist view was shaped by the ideological debate: for the

liberals was necessary to show that the short-migrants --linked to their tribal societies-- was a

thing of the past while in the present the Africans are completely urbanized.

Colonial authorities looked with fear the movement of rural people to urban centers as the

lose of the tribal identities that characterized the African populations and the consequent

20
acquisition of new identities. Double danger: on the one hand, the abolition of social ties that

support the cohesion of rural groups --essential as labor force--, on the other hand, the

creation of consciousness opposite to the colonial order. The liberal thinkers, from an

opposite point of view, regarded the same situation as evidence for equal rights. The

Africans belong no more to the traditional tribe but to the modern city forming a proletarian

class. As urban and fully proletarised workers, therefore, they develop a new identity, a

working-class conscious. Thus, with Independence the Africans have moved from tribesmen

to citizens. This was the modernization of the Zambian post-colonial society moving from

agriculture to mining industry, from colonial restrictions to independent freedom, from short-

term rural migrants with tribal identities to permanent urbanized citizens. In brief, from a

traditional to a modern society. Zambia was in the path of industrialization and urbanization.

The rural-urban migration was, therefore, read as the evidence that Zambia has reach the

path of civilization.

Decades later, with the collapse of the Zambian economy and politics, many academics

began to ask about the failure of the African nations to build a democratic order as their

European fellows had done. The exorcised tribal identities returned to the scene and much of

the answers were formulated in terms of tribalism, etnoregional and ethnolinguistic alliances

and antagonisms that permeate the political structure.

These interpretations of migratory and political processes have in common the assumption of

two different and clearly defined political and social entities: the tribe and the city.

Nevertheless, there are at least three objections to this assumption. Firstly, tribe was used in

colonial times to amalgamate in one word diverse political structures with diverse

complexity. Although useful to understand the colonial ideal of two different societies with

different culture --one white and urban, the other black and rural--, the term cannot be an

analytical tool15. Urban settlements, secondly, and rural-urban migrations in Africa date from

21
decades before 1920. The cities are not the simple result of a modernization process neither

an autonomous and self-identifiable entity. People that migrated to city did not lose their

rural ties and identities; the urban-rural relationships are more complex and not necessarily

exclusive and polar. Thirdly, tribalism is not a survival of a tribal structure in a modern

bureaucracy. It is a rhetoric language used by national politicians to mask a more complex

process of class consolidation and personal accumulation of power and prestige. Archie

Mafeje (1971) argues that analysts should restrict the term tribe to specific forms of

economic, political, and social organizations that can be fixed in time and space:

"A relatively undifferentiated society, practicing a primitive subsistence economy

and enjoying local autonomy, can legitimately be designed a tribe. When such a
society strives to maintain its basic structure and local autonomy, even under
changed economic and political conditions, perhaps it can be said to exhibit
tribalism. But to impose the same concept on societies that have been effectively
penetrated by European colonialism, that have been successfully drawn into a
capitalist economy and a world market, is a serious transgression." (Mafeje, 1971.
Quoted in Burdette, 1988: 70-71).

This observation prooved to be true for Zambian society so disrupted by urbanization,

Christianity, and capitalism. In the cities and towns, traditional tribes were not present;

hence, true tribalism did not exist either. (Burdette, 1988: 70-71).

In brief, the concepts of citizenship and tribalism are unable to capture more complex

identities. The mine worker lives cannot be grasped with fixed categories of "modern",

"class-conscious", "urban identity" on the one hand and "traditional", "tribal identity" and

"localist" on the other. Neither do both terms represent a continuous, moving the Zambian

worker from a "tribe man" to a "modern man" and returning to tribal ties when the

modernization model fall. The Zambian history in specific, and the African in general,

cannot be read as the failure of the Western experience.

22
3. FERGUSON'S APPROACH APPLICATION TO RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION

PATTERNS IN PERU.

3.1. The Colonial Model.

The Peruvian process of urbanization goes back to the colonial times. The political colonial

project was built over the creation of two separated nations: Spanish and Indigenous. These

nations had particular spatial, economic, social and cultural features. Thus, while the Spanish

towns were built following the design of military camp the indigenous communities were

created under the rural Spanish model. Special taxation system, communal land protection

laws, and political, religious and education authorities were imposed. In cultural terms,

Catholic tradition, music and dresses shaped by the Castilian model, and the imposition of

the Quechua as native language, provided a relative homogeneity (Fuenzalida, 1969). At the

top of the structure, the king was the authority symbol that unified both nations.

Paradoxically, however, this economic, social and cultural homogeneity in the native

population did not represent an ethnic identity. The geographical boundaries and the tax

system created a sense of internal co-operation and external competition. The taxes --paid in

labor force, products and cash-- were established over the total communal population and not

individually. Thus, community members had to join as a whole and compete with other

communities for scarce resources in order to fulfil their heavy colonial duties. As a

consequence, these populations recognized themselves by their birthplace and not by a

Quechua or other ethnic identity. On the other hand the cities, and paradigmatically Lima,

crystallized the colonial power and the official Spaniard and Criolla 16 cultures of the elites.

Despite the attempt to keep these nations separated, a blending process took place. Spanish

elites in America developed economical and political interests that differ from the metropolis

23
concerns. On other hand, local leaders --educated in the Spanish tradition but keeping strong

loyalties with indigenous populations— obtained important economic power although

excluded from political decisions. Moreover, indios looking to evade the heavy tax system

abandoned their communities and moved to the cities. In addition, successive migrations 17 of

African, Chinese, Japanese and European people configured a multi racial but hierarchical

urban society (Flores Galindo, 1984).

3.2. Independence and the Aristocratic Republic.

Since the first half of the XIX century the increasingly prosperous local bourgeoisie in

Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Cartagena (Colombia) and Caracas (Venezuela) were not able

to continue tolerating the monopolistic trade of Lima, center of the declining Spanish

colonies. Obtained among a contradictory mix of external and internal interests, the political

independence of 1824 had two main consequences. Firstly, Lima lost its privileged position

in the Viceroyalty monopoly. Secondly, the imposition of new borders implied the necessity

of constructing national identities.

However, for the indigenous communities this independence war meant little or nothing.

Inspired by the French Revolution thoughts, the new Constitution proclaimed the egalitarian

principle of all the individuals with two direct effects over the indigenous communities:

individual rights replaced communal and unalienable property rights over the land, and the

taxes were the same for all the citizens. In practice this meant that landlords started an

aggressive campaign to buy communal lands and that the new state lost its more important

revenue, the indigenous tax. After a brief period the rule was removed.

Thus, the colonial ideal system, non-without fissures, lasted until advanced independent

times with the end of the República Aristocrática18. However, since the disaster of the

24
Pacific war with Chile new voices started to ask about the meaning of the national identity.

The poor unification of an army composed of individuals enrolled by force and, later, the

indigenous participation in the resistance campaign put in the debate the existence of another

Peru, the Perú profundo, the "unknown and deep Peru", more authentic and heir of the Inca's

legacy. This was the birth of the indigenismo19 in Peru.

3.3. The State Expansion, the 1970s' Reforms and the Breaking of the Criolla

Republic.

The export-oriented economy of the Oncenio de Leguía20 brought the state the necessary

resources for an unprecedent expansion. The Highways Conscription Act, adopted in 1920,

provides the base for a road interconnection. Educational and health plans were elaborated

and the public bureaucracy accommodates a growing number of civil servants.

Since 1940 the economy structure suffered deep changes in the relative weights of its

sectors. In general, agriculture started to be replaced by mining and by the raising of the

industrial and financial sectors. These changes are made evident when in 1959 the state

promoted a new economic development strategy based in the gradual industrialization for the

import substitution. Since then economic growth has been associated with industrial

development (Thorp and Bertram, 1978).

With the spreading industries and agriculture proletariat in the coast plantations grew new

ideologies. The communist, the Aprista (Latin American, Popular and Revolutionary

Alliance) and the socialist parties began to fight for securing the new urban masses (Burga

and Flores Galindo, 1979). These were years of pro-urban policies and rising contradictions

in the countryside the violent expansion of the large state system and the lack of land for

thousands of peasants. In 1970 a military government took power starting a leftist and statist

25
experiment. Using a nationalist discourse rooted in Andean symbols 21, the Velazco's

government implements one of the most radical agrarian reform in Latin America

administering the coup the grâce to the traditional hacienda serrana22 and displacing

definitively the productive core to the coast.

At the end of the 1970s one thing was clear: Perú was not a rural country any more. The

Perú profundo was no longer in the remote communities but in the main cities. As a

consequence of the massive migrations the urban population jumped from 35 to 70 percent

of the total in only three decades (figure 1). Lima grew from half million of inhabitants in

1940 to 7 millions in the late 1990s. Today, Lima houses nearly 30 percent of the country

population (figure 2). The current population of Lima is ten times bigger than the population

of Arequipa, the second Peruvian city (table 6).

The complete panorama which the social writers were trying to describe during the decade of

the 1980s includes the collapse of the national economy --accelerated by the debt crises in

Latin America-- and, latterly, the devastating terrorist violence product of the existing

political, economic and social contradictions.

The previous paragraphs are a summary of the Peruvian history. By the late of the 1970s the

social scientists agreed that this massive rural-urban migration had been transformed

completely the society in all its spheres. And this transformation has been interpreted in

terms of a modernization of the traditional structures of the country.

26
3.4. The Political Reading: popular democracy and popular capitalism. From

peasants to informals.

The result of the migratory blast is a complete reconfiguration of the traditional social and

economic relationships in the city. From the social sciences, two major works have tried to

characterize the complex resulting process: desborde popular (popular burst) and the otro

sendero (the other path). The desborde popular (Matos Mar, 1984) is the elaboration of the

progressive left intellectuals and supports the idea that the migration process and the new

configuration should be read as the democratic assault and destruction of the aristocratic

state by organized indios who build a new chola identity. The otro sendero (Hernando de

Soto, 1989) is the liberal proposal of a popular capitalism: creative migrants who evading the

state bureaucracy have built their own wealthy. Departing from different sources, the

conclusion is convergent: the modernization of the country has been built despite and

contrary to the state administration and a more democratic order is created as unintended

outcome.

3.4.1. The Desborde Popular.

"The city of Lima, transformed by the dizzy migratory growth of the last decades in
privileged focus of the new national consciousness, appears as protagonist
illustration of the structural change in march. Peru presents, in the middle the decade
of 1980s, a new face which trends are outlined with crescent clearness in the popular
world of the slum and it is duty of the anthropologist to study it." (Matos Mar, 1984:
16, translation of the author).

The desborde popular is the elaboration of the progressive left academics joined in the

Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP). Desborde popular is defined as the response of the vast

majority to the deepest political and economic crisis in the independent Peruvian history. In

the context of a devastated economy, a failed industrialization attempt, an inflated

nationalism during the Agrarian Reform, growing unemployment, uncontrolled inflation,

administrative labyrinth and corruption, and an exhausted state under the enormous external

27
debt, the popular masses deploy surviving strategies beyond any formality. At a political

level, there is increasing breach between the state and the society expression of an unfinished

nation-state project. Moreover, there is an evident lack of legitimacy and leadership in the

ruling classes: industrials and ex landlords have been unable to restructure their lost

hegemony; financial groups are subordinated to international institutions; and a weak

technocracy and middle groups are more interested in the state pillage than in the

construction of a national project. To complete the scene of crisis, capital coming from the

drug traffic hinder the state and civil institutions, and terrorist violence initiated by the

Shining Path is the frontal rejection of the traditional political order.

In this panorama, masses of migrants left their rural homes in search of better job conditions.

However the collapsed industry of Lima cannot absorb this labor force. Moreover, the

planned and aristocratic capital is unable to offer housing for these families. With a state

lacking economic resources, development plans and political will, the people only have as an

option, to organize themselves and solve they immediate necessities at the margins of the

legality. The peasants turn into informal workers. They use kinship networks to constitute

commercial, service and manufacturing businesses avoiding taxes and the absurd

bureaucracy. They occupy, pacifically or by the force, urban land in the dessert or in the

hillsides and build precarious huts. With time, these migrants fight for property titles, water

and sanitation facilities, electricity, transport and permanent brick houses (Matos Mar, 1977).

The land invasions, characteristic of the 1950s, are the prelude of more important invasions.

The assault of the urban and criollo grounds of the economy, the politics, the education, the

judicial world, the religion, and the official culture by the Andean masses in constant

eruption and expansion. The economy is informal and dyed by vertical reciprocal

relationships and kinship. The new popular movements cannot be fixed in syndicates either

in traditional left or right parties. Schools and superior institutes proliferate outside state

28
regulations. People organize self-defense committees and apply popular trials and executions

in view of the useless of the police and judicial systems. Popular saints are consecrated

beyond the Catholic Church consent. Illegal cemeteries spread in the hillsides with its

Andean funerary rituals and Evangelic congregations challenge the vertical authority of the

Catholic tradition. The cultural symbols are reshaped, middle class neighborhoods show

two-water roofs of red tiles characteristic of the highlands, TV channels adapt their programs

to masses taste and include characters with indigenous features to increases their rating, the

chicha23 is the second most popular music style after the salsa24.

There is a parallel and symbiotic existence of two Perus. One official, monolithic, Criollo,

urban, incarnated in Lima as the symbol of the illusion of the republican identity. The other,

subterranean, authentic, mobile, that keeps and fuses traditions in a adaptive and creative

process. In this confrontation the emerging society is taking advance. The new Lima portraits

the creation of a new national identity, it is a microcosms of the Peruvian macrocosms. The

city is being rebuilt from the periphery slums to the downtown and, for first time since its

foundation, the Viceroyal Square no longer belongs to the elites. Thus, the desborde popular

represents the withdrawal of the oligarchy in all the fronts.

3.4.2. The Otro Sendero.

"Things have changed in Peru. Although life goes on as it has for centuries in some
parts of the country, it is in the cities that today's history is being written. It is there,
rather than in the countryside that we must look for the meaning of or the answer to
the changes that have been placed. The present has finally prevailed. Nothing will be
as it was; the past will not return." (de Soto, 1989: 7).

The otro sendero is the reflection of the liberal academics in Perú 25. The book, as advises the

reader's guide, contains a political proposal; "…which alters the terms of debate concerning

the prerequisites for economic development, effective democratic institutions, and

29
appropriate foreign policy towards the Third World". Indeed, the author declares that the

book has evolved against three widespread assumptions (supported by the structuralism and

dependence theory) concerning the situation of Peru: a) the world of informality and slums

represents only poverty and marginalization; b) the Perú profundo or the "unknown Peru" is

incompatible with entrepreneurial spirit and modern economic systems and; c) the problems

that burden Latin American countries is not their fault but the result of external forces.

Which is the analysis of the otro sendero about the Peruvian reality? In a similar way to the

desborde popular, de Soto starts describing the massive rural-urban migrations and, as is

noted in the initial quote of the section, declares that these have caused a transformation of

the country where "nothing will be as it was". There are two times: past and present. The migrants

have produced the shift from one era to the other yet not in their original communities --where "life

goes on as it has for centuries"-- but in the cities -- where "today's history is being written" and it is

there "that we must look for the meaning of, or the answer to, the changes that have been place".

Faced with the three assumptions that he tries to refuse, de Soto argues that: a) the world of

informality and slums represents the world of capitalism accumulation and innovation; b) the

migrants, representatives of the Perú profundo, are modern entrepreneurs and use a free-

market rationality and; c) Latin America in general, an Peru in specific, is poor because its

legal system has made it poor.

De Soto's argument is that the lawmakers in Peru have developed, through centuries, a

system that does not encourage the wealth's creation but the distribution of this. Thus,

through concessions, monopolies, privileges, taxes, subsidies or any other political

intervention in the economy the state distribute the stock of wealth, favoring some groups

and excluding others. The consequence is the politicization of the society: the wealth is not

the result of the competitive production but of ties with the state and the ability to influence

30
in its distributive policies. This situation of a bureaucratized and law-ridden state is call

"mercantilism". In this context the law is not more than the mechanism to benefit those who

are in the power and exclude --trough the immense cost of the formality-- those who are not.

Obviously, migrants are excluded of any state benefit. What can they do to solve their

immediate necessities of housing and work? Be informals. To build their own houses and to

get their own jobs despite legal regulations. The migrants, due to legal constrains, have

evolved into informals and in this process they have built thousands of houses and

kilometers of roads, controlled the public transport, produced in manufacturing sector,

employed millions of people and contributed to the wealth of the country. Thus, with their

example of popular and spontaneous capitalism, the informals have shown the path for

development.

31
CHAPTER IV. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED OF THE APPLICATION OF

FERGUSON'S ARGUMENT TO THE PERUVIAN CASE?

After having compared the rural-urban migration process in Zambia and Peru we ask about

the interpretation of the transformation of the Peruvian society. In many senses these points

are a conclusion and can be joined in four questions: what have we learned about the

methodology? What are the modernist and post-modern perspectives and its implications?

How has the transformation of the society been explained? And what is the resulting

relationship between state and society?

4.1. Rural-Urban Migratory Explanations.

This dissertation has dealt with migration and socioeconomic crises and the explanation of

the resulting outcomes. The demonstration of the argument --starting from the macro

concepts of modernization, modernism and modernity, and followed by specific historical

perspectives-- is not gratuitous. Behind this method lies a belief that social phenomena

cannot be explained without historical references. The historical framework is not merely a

mute stage were actors make rational decisions. The historical processes are simultaneously

constructions of the analyst and social realities that constrain the individuals. Fernand

Braudel suggest that social events take place primarily in the structural time (longue durée)

--the long history where the social phenomena take place-- and in the cyclical ( conjonture),

middle-range time or cycles within structures (Wallerstein, 1998: 30-32). Thus, they are not

the time dust, the sequence infinite of events in a linear history (the ideographic historians)

neither the timeless construction of models and rules possible to apply everywhere and every

time (the nomothetic social scientists).

32
Thus, for migration explanations, it is not enough to construct a rational model that defines

all the cases as searching for a job (economist view) neither to say that every case is

particular by itself and, therefore, it is not valid to stand universal comparations (post-

modern position).

The migratory processes, as well as the allocation of resources, cannot be abstracted from the

political context where they took place. In many cases, they have been less a result of

rational, profitable and freely individual decision than of political constrains (colonial

experience, for instance). The rational and individual choices take place in a setting shaped

and limited by political forces. On the other hand, to recognize that the colonial era's

economic history and today's international context have set Third World urbanization apart

from the circumstances that prompted the cities in the industrialized West (Tranberg Hansen,

1997: 7), is not the same that befell an absolute and sterile particularism (Macmillan, 1993).

4.2. Modernist and Post-modern Perspectives.

Chapter one describes three different, although overlapped concepts: modernization,

modernism and modernity. In coarse words, modernization refers to the technological

changes that made possible --and at the same time were product of-- the European Industrial

Revolution. This experience generated the belief that modernity --equated to urbanization,

industrialization and economic growth-- could be repeated with the introduction of physical

capital. This belief, summarized by modernization theory, guided policy and development

strategies in the two decades after the Second World War. Thus, modernization was regarded

as a top-bottom technocratic and industrial process directed by the state bureaucracy.

Modernism are the discourses or narratives constructed over this technological process.

These narratives, which are diverse and sometimes totally opposed, have in common a linear

33
vision of the history. In this linear view it is possible to move forward and backward and is

possible to classify something as modern and something as traditional.

Modernity is the whole experience initiated in Western Europe five centuries ago. Modernity

implies the impulse of an economic order (capitalism), with the subsequent technological

changes, but also a way to thinking (formal rationality), to make politics (representative

democracy), a legal framework (rational bureaucracy), and sensibility (modern art and

cities). However, the central point in the conception of modernity are the ideas of individual

freedom and political legitimacy (Habermas, 1981). The first involves the notion of universal

rights as well as teleological action. Abstract individuals, with inherent rights per se,

establish mean-end actions. This is the characteristic action of the fields of the economy and

science and uses efficiency and truth as criteria of validity. The modern individual is free of

political (the king) and theological (God) constraints and science will show him the way to

control its natural and social environment. The second idea relates to the construction of a

legitimate political order. Having no possibility to claim a natural order, the only legitimate

political order is that where individuals --freely and consensualy-- reach an agreement and

concede to confer the violence monopoly to the state. This is the base of the modern social

contract.

We argue that the opposition of tradition-modernity is misleading because these concepts are

descriptive as well as normative categories. A society is not only described as modern but, at

the same time, to be modern is a desired model to head for. But more critical yet, they are

formal and not substantial categories (Wallerstein, 1998). This means that they are defined

by opposition. They have not content, there is nothing that could be attached to a timeless

tradition either to a changing modernity. The Zambian and Peruvian rural populations

previous to the Independence and the Agrarian Reform respectively are not the incarnation

of a traditional and ancient society. The experience of modernity, started five hundred years

34
ago, has created its own traditions and shaped other traditions around the entire world. The

history of traditional or anthropological societies cannot be understood without the

comprehension of the modern capitalist expansion. In other words, they are part and have

been deeply influenced of this modern project. Modernity is not a closed and linear process

but one in permanent construction and with different meanings.

The modernist version of history falls in its belief that the society will move from traditional

to modern (with the implied ideas of democracy and economic progress) simply relieving the

colonial (Zambia) or state (Peru) constraints. They are more interconnected societies to

market economies but this does not mean a progress in the sense of political freedom or

economic growth. Perhaps, as Wallerstein has pointed out, "...we do not live in a

modernizing world but in a capitalist world." (Wallerstein, 1979: 133).

The post-modern perspective states that the modernity is a Western construction that implies

the creation of the "others", the "no-moderns", the "under-developed", the "Third World". It

denounces the arbitrary of any social construction, never value-free and, thus, never

independent from power relationships. If any social construction could claim more validity

than others then all of them have to be understood in its own specificity. The post-modern

critique argues that the modernist version constructs the history of the others in terms of how

successful or unsuccessful have been achieving the Western modern pattern. Ferguson calls

these constructions the grand narrative that has read the Zambian rural-urban migration as

the expression of the inevitable modernization process of the society. He maintains that the

traditional historiography in the Zambian Copperbelt has constructed two polar models of

migration: one male and temporal, the other mixed and permanent. The historical shift from

the first to the second, Ferguson continues, has been used as sign of urban stabilization. The

final interpretation was that Zambia shifted from a tribal order to an urban and class society.

In other words, Zambian society was becoming modern. Ferguson maintains that the latter is

35
an ideological reading of the reality because the data shows that the sharp distinction of two

models has never existed. Since the beginning urban patterns were important and in the

following years the mine workers have not loose the links with their rural villages and many

of them return to it when retired.

Elsewhere Hugh Macmillan (1996; 1993) has argued that: a) the simplistic view of the

migration process in the Zambian Copperbelt criticized by Ferguson has been drawn upon

only few minor researches with very little influence in the academic debate of the time; b)

the main research body, grouped around the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, has put particular

attention to the rural-urban links and networks and; c) against Ferguson's plea for an

Afrocentric approach there are advantages in universal comparisons.

Ferguson (1994) has replied to these critiques. Since both authors show empirical evidence

and since this dissertation is based only on secondary sources, it is not intention of this

dissertation to settle the debate. Instead, it focus on the image of the society produced by the

rural-urban migration analysis. Following Ferguson's work in Zambia we ask about the

representations of the Peruvian society and their capacity to explain the deep transformations

experienced during the decade of the 1980s.

4.3. The Transformation of the Society and the Construction of the Modernity.

The explanations of the rural-urban migrations in the Zambian Copperbelt and Lima were

used as a means to depict the transformations of the society. In Zambia, the accelerated

migration process was considered a result of the political independence and the repealing of

colonial constrains. The final outcome was read as the creation of a urban and industrial

population that abandons their old tribal identities to adopt modern and class-consciousness.

In Peru, the migration explosion was regarded as the popular response facing the state failure

36
to promote economic development. The final outcome has been read as the democratic

transformation of the traditional, exclusive and hierarchical Criolla republic (desborde

popular) or the rise of a popular capitalism that creates wealth despite the mercantile state

bureaucracy (otro sendero).

As is shown in chapter two, much of the debate on Zambia urbanization was shaped by the

work of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute on the Copperbelt. The posterior critiques to the

institute claim that the African experiences in general and the Copperbelt reality in particular

are more complex than the descriptions provided. Nevertheless, the researchers of the

Institute were conscious of the networks and linkages of villages, mining compounds, and

towns into a broader socioeconomic field of interactions, and they produced methodological

tools for case and situational analysis in urban contexts (Trangberg Hansen, 1997: 30).

However, the key issue is the general interpretation of the Zambian society implicit in these

works. Ferguson (1990a, 1990b, 1994, 1999) argues that these works were embodied in the

"modernist narrative" of the "colonial liberalism".

What was the case in Peru? Firstly, neither the desborde popular nor the otro sendero were

individual proposals but collective crystallization of ways to understand the transformations

of the Peruvian society. The IEP joined diverse social scientists with the programmatic

objective of analyze and debate the Peruvian reality and, finally, to formulate strategies to

promote a social change (Matos Mar, 1983)26. We suggest that the proposal of the desborde

popular is not one entirely new but one that was generated and shared by a group of

progressive leftist academics. In addition, this reading of the Peruvian transformation is a

modernist view with a clear political valuation.

Anthropologists and social scientists were concerned with the links between cities and rural

communities (Altamirano, 1977; 1984; 1985; Golte and Adams, 1987). Indeed, urban

37
research started when the anthropologists understood that the economic (remittances),

political (mobile leaders), cultural (language or music), social (migrant organizations) and

demographic (migration and alliances) reproduction of the peasant communities has been

reached beyond its geographic boundaries (Castillo, 2000).

The studies highlighted the social networks --kinship and home fellowship-- that linked the

migrants to their communities of origin and allowed them a better adaptation to the urban

life. Thus, at a first level the explanations focused on the social and cultural reproduction of

the peasant community in the city. This process of mutual influence between the community

and the city is called "the rural urbanization and the urban ruralization" (Cotler, 1983). At

this level there was a sharp opposition between the modern and the tradition. Moreover,

tradition and modernity were not used as timeless concepts with specific contents but

relational categories defined by the context (Fuenzalida, 1970). Researchers of peasant

communities in Peru were quite aware to this situation. Trying to understand rural

communities, the anthropologists moved from static and holistic ethnographies --using the

timeless ethnographic present-- to dynamic urban links (Altamirano, 1980).

But at a second level migrations were read as the break of the stratified society. Thus,

political discourses about the meaning of the changes in course were built. These discourses

share three characteristics: a) the migratory process has broke the old structures of

domination; b) in this process has been created a new man, the cholo27 who; c) builds a more

modern society.

Effectively, it was regarded that the massive migrations destroyed the old system in the

countryside and the traditional order in the city 28. The migrations put end the mestizo

domination of the traditional hacienda and challenged the caste division between indios and

mestizos. In the cities they demolished the illusion of the white and aristocratic Criolla

38
republic. The first massive migrations in 1940 had a more assimilatory shape but after 1970

they represented a breaking point. The desborde popular states that the implicit project of

assimilation for the development of the nation has been critically modified by the

spontaneous development of the popular sectors (Matos Mar, 1984).

In the countryside the indio gives place to the cholo, a competitive and prestigious man

attached to the agriculture any more. A mobile man that displaces the mestizos from

commerce and service activities, and find their final expression in the cities of Huancayo and

Chimbote. In the capital the old Limenian is replaced by the new Limenian, a migrant

descendant who despite the official culture and values impose new dynamics and styles. This

process has been called the Andinization of the city (Matos Mar, 1984), the chicha culture

(Matos Mar, 1984), the cholificación process (Quijano, 1980; Cotler, 1983; Nugent, 1992) or

the informal society (de Soto, 1989).

This is the step from indio to cholo, from peasant to informal, and this shift has been

regarded as a revolutionary transformation of the Peruvian society. This was seen as the

popular and spontaneous liberation movement from the oligarchic society (Matos Mar,

1984) and from the mercantilist state (de Soto, 1989). We argue that these versions are

modernist views of the rural-urban migrations because they state that the migrants are

building a more modern nation: against a caste society they oppose a horizontal and

democratic society, and against mercantile economic forms they oppose a popular

capitalistic economy inspired by the competence and innovation values.

In addition, these are modernist versions written in a modernist style. Firstly, there is

necessarily the essentialization of the characters: the "aggressive and mobile" cholo is

differentiated from the "well-educated" mestizo and the "servile and weakwilled" indio

(Cotler, 1983: 200). Secondly, once the characters are defined it is possible to identify who is

39
the motor of the transformation: the cholo, the informal. This young and aggressive man,

with his work and virile attitudes 29, is able to challenge and transform traditional society.

Thirdly, the descriptions of this subterranean, authentic, and ever changing movement that

fusses traditions in a adaptive and creative process of the everyday survival (Matos Mar,

1984) have its roots in indigenist works30 but also in the marxist descriptions of the European

industrial revolution. In what Berman (1988: chapter 2) has called "all that is solid melts into

air"31. The rural-urban migrations are the history of a positive and revolutionary explosion

where Lima is the epicenter. And these migrants, coming from the Perú profundo, have

forced the state for the reformulation of conditions for the constitution of the future state

legitimacy and national authority.

4.4. Modernization, Nationalism and State Power.

Our main argument is that the rural-urban migratory phenomenon in developing countries

should be understood in the context of the construction of the nation-state. Since early years

local elites have made efforts to build national identities 32, however, these new attempts are

embodied in a modernization and industrialization attempt made from the state. They are

expression, firstly, of complex and lasting alliances built over urban class interests with clear

national projects although authoritarians and implemented from the state 33. Secondly, and

even more importantly, it is not only the period of the state expansion –including education,

health, military, tax, and transport systems—but also the era of national identity

construction34. Thus, it is not surprising that the creation of national characters 35 and state art

promotion36 (García Canclini, 1995).

In other words, the decades from the forties to the sixties are the efforts of the central state to

assimilate the migrants within an industrial an urban economy and within a national project

of modernity. This vertical and relatively stable modernization failed completely with the

40
collapse of the industrialization37 and populist models. The state, unable to offer a legitimate

and inclusive order, reacts with violence 38 and, then, with indifference and impotence. The

masses of migrants cannot continue to be conducted through official channels. In Peru,

migrants occupy informally the city and the economy and popular icons replace the official

cultural symbols.

In Peru and Zambia, we are facing the re-structuration of the relationship between society

and state. Following Ferguson's critics to anti politics machine (Ferguson, 1990c) the process

could be described as the rise and decline of the state bureaucracy development. Ferguson

develops the concept of unintended outcomes. It does not matter that the declared goals of

development projects in Lesotho failed, the important fact is they succeed in entrenching

power of the governing classes in the capital (Maseru). The project failed in that it did not

transform crop farming or livestock keeping, but built a road to link the province (Thaba-

Tseka) more strongly with the capital; did not bring about decentralization or popular

participation, but did give the government of Lesotho a much stronger presence in the area

(taxmen, post office, police station, immigration control office, agricultural services, health

officials, nutrition officers, etc.) and with this it helped the government to gain control over

opposition strongholds in the mountains.

The situation described by Ferguson shares similarities with the state formation process in

Europe: centralization and monopoly of violence, subordination of local powers, increasing

economic imbalance favoring urban sectors, regional and economic integration (including

roads, common currency, post offices, justice administration, and other services), and a

major boost for cultural homogeneity (namely, creation of language, symbols and history in

common). A historical process caused by the interaction of élite interests, local responses,

and unintended consequences. Then, it is pertinent to ask if his critiques go directly to

development attempts or to the capitalist model in general and to development as a mean

41
used by an anonymous apparatus of control. Moreover, it is pertinent to ask if a reasonable

progress movement --necessarily implicit in the idea of development-- could be traced.

There are positions that --e.g. Inmanuel Wallerstein (1979)-- assert an overall human decline

since 1400; others --e.g. Francis Fukuyama (1992)-- trace a visible humankind progress and;

more fashionable ones --inspired either by Foucault (1980)-- state the impossibility of the

knowledge, the unintelligibility of the history and the cultural particularity of each situation.

Ferguson (1990c) and Escobar (1995), clearly related with the last posture, argue that local

resistances are rising in many parts of the Third World against the excluding and destructive

Western notion of progress.

4.5. Redefinition of State, Civil Society and Democracy.

Evelina Dagnino (1998) indicates that in the Latin American political discourse 39 the

centrality of the state has been replaced by the idea of democracy. After the defeat of the

armed strategy, the arena of political struggle was no longer the capture of the state.

Democracy becomes the unifying concept for fight against authoritarian states in all the

fronts: from political and human freedom to better economic conditions, to women rights

and to ethnic and linguistic identities.

This reconceptualization was the result of global changes in the social theory but also of the

specific Latin America context convulsed by increasing social movements. Thus, new actors

and new movements --not possible to encapsulate in the rigid correspondence of class

interest-- put in agenda the "discovery" of civil society. The resistance against authoritarian

states took shape through the increasing organization of civil society. This original feature

fostered a view that radically opposed civil society and the state. Moreover, from this point

42
was short the step the mythification of the civil society "…as a virtuous pole against an evil

state." (Dagnino, 1998: 41).

Demythifying the alleged contestatory nature of urban movements, Jelin argues that they

invariably approached the state in terms of specific demands. "Insofar as their demands were

met by the authoritarian state, they rapidly lost their belligerence and potentially oppositional

character." (Jelin, 1998: 413, n. 1). Thus, facing the failure of the teleological versions

describing the history of migration as the history of democratization, some (Degregori et al.,

1986) celebrates "civil society", "citizenship" and the revival of formal democracy while

downplaying the wider economic and social crisis (Ferguson, 1999: 14-15).

In Peru, academics trying to understand the changing panorama of the 1980s moved from a

statist view of politics40 to an emphasis in an autonomous civil society. But the "…

intellectual enthusiasm generated by the new forms of collective expression in the 1980s is

now a thing of the past." (Jelin, 1998: 405). The political democratization --inaugurated with

the Belaunde’s government of transition in the 1980-- did not automatically produce a

strengthened civil society, a culture of citizenship, and a sense of social responsibility. The

extreme poverty and the political violence of the decade of the 1980s create non-participants

in the political community through exclusion and choice respectively.

In a recent article Patricia Ames (2000) notes that the communities that have experienced

catastrophically the effects of the war now show renewed efforts in their struggle for

education. She suggests that education is being regarded as a means to leave poverty,

marginalization and high vulnerability experienced during the political violence. But, she

argues that an unintended outcome of political violence is the integration of these

populations (first with the forced displacements, then with the state intervention and public

investments, and, finally, with the return migration).

43
What we have are more complex processes that cannot be read in a single and progressive

movement of modernization. There is not a single pattern of cholo migrant with democratic

desires and free-market values. Many migrants (women and men) later reproduce

clientelistic relationships, many of the popular movements do not claim to be against the

state or its reformulation but simply to be incorporated in its structure, and many of these

active entrepreneurs use familiar ties to explode the labor force. Political violence could have

produced the same results of longitudinal integration with the cities of the coast that the

previous migrations but it is difficult to label the later of "democratic" or "revolutionary".

Many of these revolutionary migrants and authentic representative of the Perú profundo has

been the electoral force in the three period government of Alberto Fujimori, one of the most

questioned and repressive regimes of the Peruvian history.

Again, like many examples in the history, we are facing the disencounter between initial

collective hopes and final frustrating outcomes. The hopefulness independence in Zambia

--with its growing economy impulsed by the copper exploitation that moved Zambia into one

of the most urbanized countries in Africa-- turned into a huge disappointment with the

economic crises, copper exploitation collapse, general unemployment, land insecurity and

futility of "the back to the land" promise, and a repressive uniparty rule of Kennet Kaunda

replaced by an even worse government leaded by the ex mine unionist Frederick Chiluba

(The Economist, 1999b).

In Peru, the "democratic transformation" of the society --impelled by the massive migrations

to the capital-- has very narrow limits. After a decade of terrorist violence there is evidence

of returning migration, however, not for the rural attraction but for lack of opportunities in

the city. The destroyed institutional channels have been replaced by the personal and

political distribution of resources of a central uni-party rule. In a context of massive

44
underemployment and poverty, the big Latin American cities, that until recent times

goverments and peasants imagined as the advance of modernization, nowadays are the caotic

scenaries of black markets where multitudes try to survive under archaic forms of

exploitation, or in the solidarity networks, or in the violence (García Canclini, 1995: 16-18).

We support the idea that migrations are not a single and voluntaristic phenomenon but

population movements with diverse meanings and different outcomes. They are the cause as

well the consequence of broader factors, and under no cases should they be read as a linear

process from traditional to modern societies.

While theorists in the 1930s were pre-occupied with economic cycles, in post-Second World

times they were concerned with economic growth and, after the depression in the 1970s and

1980s, with its limits (Macmillan, 1993: 689-690). Thus, in connection with the migratory

phenomenon, the historical fashions have moved from: a) the theorization of the migrants as

reserve army used by the capitalism system accordingly the cycles of expansion and

contraction (Middleton, 1980) to; b) explanations of migrations as a pushing factor for

industrialization and to the necessity of understand the subsequent strategies of urban

adaptation, to c) more recent emphasis on "over urbanization" 41 and "urban bias". Clearly,

Ferguson is part of the last generation, a skeptic of the continuos growth.

We argue that all interpretations of social reality are embodied in historical trends and,

contrary to post-modern positions, it is not possible to establish a "meta-narrative" which can

judge all previous works. The major merit of the modernist interpretations is that --beyond

the explanations of rural-urban migration-- they served as point of reflection and search for

the national reality. Maybe, like Lucien Febvre, we must say: "historian, the one who

knows? No, the one who searches" (Febvre, 1950: v).

45
SUMMARY.

1. The main objective of this dissertation is to apply James Ferguson's analysis of the

history of migration in the Zambian Copperbelt in order to understand a similar process

in Peru. The basic idea in Ferguson's argument is that the traditional historiography has

regarded the migration movements in the Copperbelt as a repetition of the European

experience during the Industrial Revolution. As a consequence, Ferguson argues, the

common academic wisdom: a) hides and simplifies a more rich reality and; b) it tells

more about an ideal view of the modernization of the society than about the process they

are trying to describe.

2. The Zambian Copperbelt and Lima are paradigmatic cases. The rural-urban migration in

the Copperbelt has been regarded in the social sciences as the paradigmatic case of

"social change" and "urbanization". The Copperbelt was considered as the symbol of the

"emerging Africa" not for its mine richness, industrial potential and fast social change

but because it was regarded to represent a new era. The cities in the Copperbelt, unlike

other African cities, were "modern" ones. On the other hand, the massive rural-urban

migrations to Lima are representative expression of the urban explosion in Latin

America. This migrant movement was regarded as a revolutionary transformation of the

country, the abolition of the traditional political structure and the emergence of a modern

society.

3. Modernization, modernism and modernity are three interrelated but different concepts.

Modernization refers to the technological changes that made possible the industrial

revolution. It also refers to the belief, best exposed in the modernization theory of the

1940s, that the bottleneck for economic growth is the lack of physical capital.

46
 Modernism are the discourses or narratives constructed over this technological process.

These narratives have in common a linear vision of the history. In this linear view it is

possible to move forward and backward and to classify something as modern and

something as traditional. Modernity is the whole experience initiated in Western Europe

five centuries ago. It implies the expansion of the capitalism, the development of a

formal rationality, the establishment the representative democracy and the creation of

new artistic forms. In addition, modernity has the implicit promise of individual freedom

and political legitimacy.

4. Pre-colonial times in the current territory of Zambia were witness to complex migration

processes of different ethnic groups with diverse political structure because of political

changes and ecological responses. The importance of the Copperbelt started in 1920 with

the exploitation of the copper mines by English capitalists. The mineral exploitation

pushed rural-urban migrations in the zone and has been the main economic activity of

the country. After Independence in the 1960s, the mining revenues allow the government

to invest heavily in social programs and implemented an industrial model. Many

academics considered this phenomenon as the movement from a traditional to a modern

society. Since the mid-1970s, however, the urban standards has sharply declined with the

collapse of the economy and the political corruption. Ferguson argues that the traditional

historiography has failed in the understanding of the recent Copperbelt history because it

was more interested in an ideological debate than in describing the reality. It constructed

a common wisdom where the short-term labor migration was the characteristic of the

past and urban stabilization the characteristic of the present. Thus, farmers with tribal

identities have shifted to workers with urban, modern and class identities. This modernist

version of the Copperbelt history would have two major mistakes: a) a single typical

model of migration has never existed. Since the beginning many workers moved to the

cities with their families and stayed in them for all their life. In current times, mine

47
 workers do not lose their rural ties and continue returning to their villages; b) the terms

citizenship and tribalism are unable to capture more complex identities. The mine

worker lives cannot be grasped with fixed categories of "modern", "class-

consciousness", "urban identity" on the one hand and "traditional", "tribal identity" and

"localism" on the other.

5. The Peruvian rural-urban migration process has been shaped by the colonial order. It

created an administrative and ideological apparatus that divided the country into two

nations: Spaniards and Indians. Since the beggining the circulation between these groups

and the conformation of new ones challenged this ideal order. However, the country

continued thought in terms of two Perus: one "official" and centralized in Lima, the

other "deep and unknown" and isolated in the highlands. However, since the 1940s

massive migrations changed the rural condition of the country and reconfigured the

urban landscape. This transformation has to be explained by two influential works of the

1980s. One is the desborde popular. It is the elaboration of the progressive left

intellectuals and supports the idea that the migration process and the new configuration

should be read as the democratic assault and destruction of the aristocratic state by

organized indios who build a new chola identity. The other is the otro sendero. It is the

liberal proposal of a popular capitalism: creative migrants, who evading the state

bureaucracy have built their own wealthy. Departing from different sources the

conclusion is convergent: the modernization of the country has been built despite and

contrary to the state administration and a more democratic order is created as unintended

outcome.

6. The main urban studies in Peru are aware of the rural links; however, there is a political

reading of the rural-urban migrations. These political readings share three

characteristics: a) the migratory process has broke the old structures of domination; b) in

48
 this process has been created a new man, the cholo who; c) builds a more modern

society. We argue that these are modernist views of the rural-urban migrations because

they consider that the migrants are building a more modern nation. Against a caste

society they oppose a horizontal and democratic society, and against mercantile

economic forms they oppose a popular capitalistic economy inspired by the competence

and innovation values. In addition, these are modernist versions written in a modernist

style. Firstly, there is necessarily the essentialization of characters: the indio, the mestizo

and the cholo. Secondly, once defined the characters it is possible to identify who is the

motor of the transformation: the cholo, the informal who is able to transform the

traditional society. Thirdly, the descriptions of this subterranean, authentic, and ever

changing movement that fuses traditions in a adaptive and creative process of the

everyday survival have its roots in indigenist works but also in the descriptions of the

European industrial revolution. Thus, the rural-urban migrations are the history of a

positive and revolutionary explosion where Lima is the epicenter.

7. We argue that the same phenomenon could be understood as the re-structuration of the

relationship between society and state without necessity to turn to the traditional/modern

distinction. The decades from the forties to the sixties are the efforts of the central state

to assimilate the migrants within an industrial an urban economy and within a national

project of modernity. This vertical and relatively stable modernization failed completely

with the collapse of the industrialization and populist models. The state, unable to offer a

legitimate and inclusive order, reacts with violence and, then, with indifference and

impotence. The masses of migrants cannot continue been conducted through official

channels. The migrants occupy informally the city and the economy and popular icons

replace the official cultural symbols.

49
8. It is possible to establish a correspondence between the reconfiguration of society-state

relationship and the academic interests. Facing the collapse of the central state

development projects and the emergence of new social movements, social scientists have

moved from a statist view to a rediscovery of civil society and democracy as a political

arena. Finally, we argue that all interpretations of social reality are embodied in

historical trends and, contrary to post-modern positions, it is not possible to establish a

"meta-narrative" which can judge all previous works. The major merit of the modernist

interpretations is that --beyond the explanations of rural-urban migration-- they served as

a point of reflection and a search for the national reality.

50
NOTES

51
1
Bakewell (1993) shows that still in the extreme case of refugees, they are not passive recipients of aid programs but they
always have --although little-- space to negotiate and make decisions.
2
Hozelits, for instance, advise about a danger of over-urbanization and urbanization without industrialization. He "notes an
empirical regularity in the small ratio of industrial employment to urban population in developing countries, relative to
ratios observed historically in the now developed economies." (Lucas, 1997: 738). Moreover, it seems to contain a
important component of political instability. Effectively, it is widely held that rural-urban migration raises food prices and,
thus, increases urban revolutionary potential. Unemployed and low-income labors might convert their deprivation and
frustration in political upheaval.
3
Central is the Harrod-Domar model. It states the link between the growth of the capital stock on the one hand and the
growth of the output on the other. With right demand conditions, the model holds, the only bottleneck of growth is the lack
of physical capital. In brief, physical capital accumulation would the only ultimate source of economic growth and,
therefore, external loans a privileged way to provide it (Harberger: 1983).
4
For a summary of modernization theory and dependency see Hooggvelt (1997) or, from a more economist view, Meir
(1995).
5
Political in the Aristotelian meaning of what we want the public spheres of the people would be organized.
6
The slavery trade has profoundly influence the configuration of African kingdoms --the Yoruba and the Asande for
instance. Many of them were built over the Portuguese or British support, starting a human hunting chain that continue in
the ports of Liverpool and Bristol, and finished in the plantations of Brazil, Peru, the Caribbean, and USA. The Kwakiutl, a
rich fishery society of South West Canada, and their well-described potlatch (sumptuary consumption) were only possible
thanks the fur trade with French merchants. The horse culture of the American Indians in the plains is maybe the more
evident case of these reconfigurations started in 1400. (Wolf, 1982).
7
Both, Ferguson and Escobar elaborate their critiques about development as discourse over Foucault's relation between
knowledge and power. Foucault (1980) considers discourse as the group of rules that makes possible any statement. It says
what is possible to think and what is not over infinite and open ways to organize the reality. For power, Foucault refers to
the relation between individuals where one agent act in way such affects the actions of the other. The power describes those
relations where one agent is able to obtain that other made something that otherwise had not will do. In consequence, the
power is exercise over free subjects. The power operates to constrain or, in other way, to led the action in areas where are a
possible number of action courses opens to the agents in question. If the power consist in to set limits to open possibilities,
then, the true --the system of rules of a discourse)--is a power resource, is an inextricable relation between knowledge and
power. In brief, all discourse illuminates some aspects and hide others, says that something is true and something is false,
and it is discourse is produce by somebody and not by others. In this sense, following Foucault's ideas, systems could be
reformed but never could be built out power constrains. Power is an unavoidable constituent of the human relations.
8
3.3 percent during the 1980-1990 period.
9
See, for instance, the classical essay about African Industrial Revolution (Gluckman, 1961), urbanization and kinship
(Bettison, 1961, Epstein 1981), social change and marriage stability (Mitchell, 1961), social networks (Mitchell, 1969),
political processes and organizations (Barnes, 1969, Harries-Jones, 1969), urban organizations (Epstein, 1969b), norms and
circulation of information (Epstein, 1969a), working relationships (Kapferer, 1969), the historical account of the creation of
Northern Rhodesia (Gann, 1958), or the general ethnography of the copper towns (Powdermaker, 1962) made by the only
non-British researcher.
10
This section follows the descriptions of Gann (1958), the first important historical account of Zambia and made under
requirement of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute for Social Research, and the modern political history of Burdette (1988).
11
In 1969, the government of Kennet Kaunda demanded 51 percent share in the mining assets owned by Anglo and RST,
created two joint venture companies. In 1973 the government extended its participation in the mines and took total control
of its management. In 1980 these companies were merged in the parastatal the Zambian Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd.
(ZCCM).
12
Despite the historical importance of the mines and the political power of the mining unions the Zambian government,
weighted by a huge external debt, has been pressed by the donors to implement a privatization program. Against its early
promises, the government of Frederick Chiluba has been unable to conduct a successful and transparent privatization.
According some estimates the delay in the privatization of the state copper mines has cost Zambia $1.7 billion (about half
the country’s annual GDP) (Bull, 1996, 1998; The Economist, 1999a, 199b).
13
With the First National Development Plan, the major part of the manufacturing sector was grouped around the huge
parastatal INDECO (Industrial Development Corporation).
14
Ferguson, 1994, 1992, 1990a, 1990b.
15
For a critique to the anthropological common sense of the tribe as an economy of subsistence, see Sahlins (1972).
16
Criollo could be translated as Creole. Nevertheless, it had a specific meaning, the descendant of Spaniards born in Peru.
By extension the term was used the local élite in opposition to Spain and with pretensions of national identity. Currently, the
term is used to describe an old fashioned urban culture anchored in the past. For this reason, it will be conserved the Spanish
name.
17
The colonial enterprise was not a Spanish project but one of the Castilian crown. That means that formally only subjects
of the kingdom of Castilla were allowed to travel to America. However, since the beginning arrived people not only from
other regions but "New Christians" --converted Jews and Muslims-- looking for evading the crescent intolerant Spanish
repression. The migrations of African, Chinese and Japanese were forced by the lack of labor force in the agro-export
plantations of the coast. Effectively, from a native population estimated between 6 and 10 millions at the Conquer times
there was a catastrophic decrease to no more than 2 millions due to, mainly, the microbiotic shock. Pre-Hispanic
demographic levels were only recovered in the decade of 1940s.
18
Aristocratic Republic. Name gave to the period between 1890 and 1920 when civil presidents --coming from the powerful
families controlling the guano, sugar, cotton, rubber and wool exports-- ruled the country.
19
Indigenous movement in politics, arts and literature leaded mestizo intellectuals claiming for the reemergence of the
ancient and authentic indigenous culture. For a critique review of indigenismo in literature see Vargas Llosa (1996).
20
Period between 1919 and 1930 of Augusto Leguía in the power.
21
Thus, Túpac Amaru II --leader of the most important indigenous rebellion during colonial times-- was the main symbol of
the new government. In addition, "campesino, el patrón no comerá más de tu pobreza" (farmer, the landlord will never eat
from your poverty again) was the slogan of the agrarian reform. This is an important change in the official discourse since
the peasants are called indios (a hierarchical ethnic category) any more but campesinos (a class or labor category).
22
The large state property system in the highlands.
23
Musical genre resulted of the fusion of huayno (musical style of the highlands) with Colombian cumbia and performed
with electronic instruments.
24

Dancing music originated among the Latin American musicians in New York around the early 1970s.
25
The study was carried out by the ILD (Institute Liberty and Democracy). It is not merely anecdotal to note that Mario
Vargas Llosa forwarded the book and the cover page shows a painting of Fernando de Szyslo, perhaps the more
international Peruvian writer and painter respectively. The careful edition was entirely reviewed by Mario Ghibellini, a
young and successful writer. The book became a best seller in Latin America.
26
In the presentation to the first and second edition of the inaugural book of the "Perú Problema" series, of which the
desborde popular (Matos Mar, 1984) is the 21st, Matos Mar declares that the IEP: "…in addition to discuss the Peruvian
problematic, exchange experiences, evaluate first hand research and work interdisciplinarily, looks for to revalue ideas,
innovate methodologies and to make a critique effort that could reflect the new Latin American thought, free of the
unconditional copy of foreign models. There […] is intended to wake up concerns […] and open new perspectives that
allow to judge the current situation of Peru in a more accurate manner." (Matos Mar, 1983: 13, translation of the author).

27
"In opinion of the anthropologist Juan Ossio, the word cholo has a Quechua and Aymara origin, and appeared as chulu
in the Quechua vocabularies of the XVI and XVII centuries. The connotation of the term is the idea of mix. Chulu was
said to the cross of a big dog with a little one. The Spaniards and the indigenous chronicler Huamán Poma de Ayala
generalized this idea to the human beings and called cholos to who are inauthentic, to who alter the endogamy order of the
society. Humán Poma stated that in the world created by God each individual has a place that cannot transgress. The term
cholo was used pejoratively for whom broke that divine order and mixed with other races. By the end of the XVI century
the people call cholo to the individual born from the union of a Mestizo man and an Indian woman." (Paredes, 2000: 5).
28
It is equally possible to consider the rural-urban migrations as the consequence and not the cause of this socioeconomic
collapse. Changes in the orientation of the economy, increasingly inefficient traditional haciendas, modernization of the
agro-export plantations, and the diversification of the economic groups more link with the industry and financial sector
result in the break of the political alliance between the urban oligarchy and rural gamonales that for decades kept under
control large populations.
29
It is not until the work of Degregori; Lynch and Blondet (1986) that gender issues are included.
30
Specially the Valcárcel's prophetic descriptions of the telluric and Andean storm that will inaugurate a new society
(Vargas Llosa, 1996).
31
Or see the metaphor of the Golte and Adams' (1987) book, "The Troya horses of the invaders. Peasant strategies in the
conquer of the big Lima". It is the same idea of a subtle revolution.
32
In Peru, the revolt leaded by Túpac Amaru II is an example of the eruption of national movements that erupted in Latin
America from 1780 to 1825. He was part on the native elite and a prosperous merchant with thick network both in
government and indigenous spheres. The movement was not properly an independentist one. Túpac Amaru proposed an
autonomous nation ruled by local leaders and linked directly with the Spanish king and under the blessing of the Catholic
Church.
33

A notorious characteristic of the Latin America politics. For instance, the Oncenio de Leguía in Peru, the government of
Vargas in Brazil, the populist regime of Perón in Argentina, the military coalition in Chile, the one-party ruling in Mexico,
or the stable experiences in Colombia and Venezuela. But in Zambia, the twenty-seven Kenneth Kaunda's regime is the
extreme expression of nationalism, class equilibrium, and ideologies (the socialist state and, then, the humanist
constitution).
34

Likewise pan Latin American projects, as proposed in Darío’s poetry or in political movements as the APRA (American
Revolutionary Popular Alliance) or Pacto Andino.
35

Like the gaucho in Argentina, the garoto in Brazil, the roto in Chile, the cholo in Peru, or the charro in Mexico.
36

These years are the peak of Latin American film production and the exaltation of the Argentinean tango, the Peruvian valz,
the Brazilian bozza nova, or the Mexican rancheras.
37

The industry is thus unable to absorb the population that abandonds the agriculture. The migrants finds alternative jobs in
the informal sector of services and commerce (table 7).
38

The violent expulsion of land invaders in Lima or the political prohibition of opposition parties and repression in Zambia.
39

In her exploration of the relationship between culture and politics, Dagnino (1998) suggest that in the redefinition of role of
the state, democracy and civil society in the Latin American Left discourse is crucial the Gramsci's influence. Of course, it
is out of the scope of this dissertation to trace the impact of Gramsci in Peruvian social scientists.
40

"Under the heavy influence of Marxist structuralism, the state was conceived as a condensation of power relations and the
specific locus of domination in the society. As the privileged focus of attention in the analysis of politics and political
transformation, the state was considered to be the only decisive arena of power relations and, therefore, the only relevant
site and target of political struggle, in what came to be known as a statist view of politics. Latin American political culture
came to reinforce such a view, since a conception of a strong and interventionist state, since as historically linked to the
building of the nation and as the primary agent of social transformation, has been central to all versions of populism,
nationalist, and developmentalist projects, whether conservative or leftist." (Dagnino, 1998: 36).
41

As Goldstein points out: "… rural-to-urban migration […] results in increasing spatial polarization. To the extent that such
migration is not fully justified by economic developments in the city, it contributes to perpetuating massive urban poverty in
the midst of those locations which usually also represent the economic, cultural, social, political and most modern centers of
the nation." (Goldstein, 1983: 3).