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A Reappraisal of the Role of the Regional Associations in Lima, Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Fred Jongkind
Affiliation:
Center for Latin American Research and Documentation, Amsterdam

Extract

The city of Lima resembles other Latin American capitals in having drawn very heavily in recent decades on rural migration, but is peculiar in the extraordinarily large number, running perhaps into the thousands, of associations formed by migrants on the basis of common regional origin. These associations have been the subject of investigation by the American anthropologists Mangin and Doughty, and also by a number of Peruvian scholars. These studies are based on the familiar theory of a rural-urban continuum with close integration at the rural pole and a syndrome of anomie at the urban pole. They postulate that the regional associations create solidarity among rural migrants in the city and enable them to foster modernization in the regions from which they came. In this article it will be argued that these postulates cannot survive the test of empirical criticism.

Type
Urban Systems
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1974

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References

The field work for this investigation took place between March 1969 and June 1970 and was subsidized by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (NFATR) in The Hague, Holland. I wish to express my thanks to Dr. A. J. F. Köbben (University of Amsterdam) and Dr. H. Hoetink (University of Puerto Rico) who facilitated this subsidy and who contributed their scientific insight to the investigation. During the field work stage the staff and students of the Programa de Ciencias Sociales de la Unicersidad Católica (in Lima) lent me their valuable co-operation. I owe special thanks to the Director of Radio Agricultura in Lima who put all the publicity materials of the clubs at my disposal; without these materials this study would not have been possible in the present form. I am also very grateful to Dr. Codina of the Centro de Investigaciones por Muestro, of the Peruvian Ministry of Labour, who helped facilitate the processing of the results of the Encuesta de Hogares. I am indebted to Adriaan van Oss who was of great help in preparing the English text of this article. Finally I should like to thank all those persons who, with great dedication and patience, and often in the small hours of the night, have told me about the life in their clubs.

1 For population data see the article by Richard Morse, elsewhere in this number.

2 Mangin, W., ‘The role of regional associations in the adaptation of rural population in Peru’, Sociology (1959), Vol. 9, pp. 2336.Google Scholar

3 Doughty, P. L., ‘La cultura del regionalismo en la vida urbana de Lima, Perü, América Indigena 4e trimeslre (1969) Vol. XXIX, 4, pp. 949–81.Google Scholar The passages here cited refer to the English version: ‘Behind the back of the city. Provincial life in Lima, Peru’, in Mangin, W. (ed.), Peasants in Cities (Boston, 1970), pp. 3046.Google Scholar

4 Cotler, J., Estructura social y urbanizatión: algunas notas comparativas (Lima, Instituto Estudios Peruanos, 1967), p. 15.Google ScholarIdem., La mecánica de la dominicación interna y del cambio social en el Perú’, América Latina, año 11, 1 (1968), p. 98.Google ScholarQuijano, A., La emergencia del grupo ‘cholo’ y sus implicaciones en la sociedad peruana, s.f. (Lima), pp. 66–7.Google ScholarEscobar, G., ‘Sicaya, una comunidad mestiza de la sierra central del Peru’, Estudios sobre la cultura actual del Perú, UNMS, (ed.) (Lima, 1964), pp. 196–7.Google ScholarMartinez, H., ‘Las migraciones internas en el Perú’, Aportes, 10, 1968, p. 152.Google ScholarMontoya, R., ‘La migration interna en el Peru, un caso concreto’, America Latina, año 10, 4 (1967), pp. 96–7.Google Scholar

5 I shall not refer further to the Peruvian studies, since they are concerned only indirectly with the regional associations and tend to reiterate the Mangin thesis.

6 Cornelius' term (p. 111) for the persistence of institutions, values and behaviour patterns transferred from the rural areas, which are supposed to form an integrative framework in the new urban environment otherwise characterized by anomie, personal and social dislocation, conflict, etc., as a result of the deculturalizing effects of migration. See for this ‘country in the city’ view: Cornelius, W. Jr., ‘The political sociology of cityward migration in Latin America: Toward empirical theory’, in Rabinovitz, F. F. and Trueblood, F. M. (eds.), Latin America urban research (Beverly Hills, 1971), pp. 95147.Google ScholarMorse, R. M., ‘Recent research on Latin American urbanization: a selective survey with commentary’, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1965), p. 50.Google ScholarBenet, F., ‘Sociology uncertain: the ideology of the ruralurban continuum’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1963), pp. 810.CrossRefGoogle ScholarMangin, W., ‘Latin American squatter settlements: a problem and a solution’, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1967), pp. 80–2.Google Scholar

7 Compare for example Lewis, O., ‘Urbanization without breakdown: a case study‘, Scientific Monthly 75 (July, 1952), pp. 3141.Google ScholarButterworth, D. S., ‘A study of the urbanization process among Mixtec migrants from Tilaltongo in Mexico City’, América Indigena, 22, No. 3 (1962), pp. 257–74 and Mangin's article (see note 2). The English title of Doughty's article, as well as that of the reader by Mangin in which the article appears, is telling (see note 3).Google Scholar

8 Various unofficial subdivisions exist below the level of district, called variously, barrio, fundo, estancia, caserio, anexo, etc. In this paper, all these subdivisions are included under the heading ‘anexos’. At the time of the 1961 census, Peru was divided into 23 departments, 144 provinces, 1491 districts and 78274 anexos. See Censo, 1961, Centros poblados, tomo 1, Direction Nacional de Estadistica y Censos (Lima, 1966), p. VI.Google Scholar The data presented in this article are based on 238 completed interviews, conducted in 9 departmental clubs, 6 provincial, 19 districtal and 12 anexal associations. For a more complete treatment of the way in which clubs and members were selected for this sample, see Jongkind, C. F., ‘La supuesta funcionalidad de los clubes regionales en Lima, Perú’, Boletin de Estudios Latinoamericano, Centro de Estudios y Documentation Latinoamericanos (CEDLA), Universidad de Amsterdam, niimero 11, enero de 1971, pp. 112.Google Scholar

9 The detailed tables on which the figures in this article are based can be found in my article, op. cit., and in my doctoral dissertation: ‘Clubs Regionale in Lima, Peru’ (Incidentele Publicaties, no. 3, CEDLA, Amsterdam, 1974).

10 At the time of the investigation 43 Peruvian soles were equivalent of U.S. $1.

11 The age of an association does not necessarily coincide with the number of years in which it has been active. In general, an association prospers in its first years and subsequently declines or disappears only to be reactivated after a certain period by a small group of enthusiastic countrymen. The club presidents, when asked about the date of origin, almost always referred to the date of the club's first inception. It can also occur that a competing association is founded which presumes to represent the same region as an already existing association, and that it later takes the name of the first association if this no longer functions actively. The situation can be rather complex considering that regional associations daily come into being, disappear, split up and merge. The case of the district clubs in this respect is particularly confusing, so that the age of these clubs as given by the club presidents can only be regarded as a maximum estimate of years of activity.

12 Ancash, , Apurimac, Ayacucho and Junin.Google Scholar

13 Doughty arrives at this figure in the following manner. He postulates that in these departments every district has five regional clubs in the capital. These departments have a total of 423 districts, and consequently 2115 clubs, both districtal and annexal. According to Doughty, these clubs have on the average 64 members. The four departments have a total of 46 departmental and provincial clubs each with an average of 332 members. Multiplying and adding, Doughty arrives at a total of 150,622 members which js 52 per cent of the 287,151 migrants from the four departments who were counted in Lima in the Census of 1961 (Doughty, p. 34).

14 Encuesta de hogares, Centro de Investigaciones por Muestro (CISM) (Ministerio de Trabajo y Comunidades, Lima, 1968).Google Scholar

15 I found that district and annexal clubs stood in a numerical relationship of three to two. Applying this relationship to Doughty's 2115 district and anexal clubs, we arrive at a distribution of 1269 district, and 846 anexal associations. Supposing that the four departments have five departmental clubs (Ayacucho has two), we arrive at 41 provincial clubs. Multiplication of this total by the average membership figures gives a total of 37,538 regional clubmembers in Lima. This is about 13 per cent of the migrant population from the four departments. This percentage seems more consistent with the estimate of CISM, based on migrants from all parts of Peru (including, then, those departments whose migrants have established relatively few regional associations in the capital). Taking these figures, those of CISM and data obtained in a large number of interviews into account, I would assume that 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the migrant population in Lima considers itself part of a regional association.

16 Doughty, , op. cit., p. 42.Google Scholar

17 Mangin, , op. cit., p. 29.Google Scholar

18 Doughty, , op. cit., pp. 30–1.Google Scholar