The first volume, originally prepared as a thesis in anthropology for the University of San Marcos, was written by a man who, in addition to being one of Peru’s outstanding novelists, has a deep understanding of Andean culture. It consists of two largely independent parts—a perceptive report of six months’ field work in two isolated Castilian villages and an attempt to compare the structure and development of Spanish and Peruvian peasant communities. In describing the communities of Bermillo and La Muga (Zamora province, Spain), Arguedas has attempted to recreate the tone and style of life, rather than merely summarizing culture traits. He is particularly sensitive to the ways in which the inhabitants have been affected by the natural environment, political decisions made in Madrid, economic changes in Spain as a whole, and perhaps most important, the Spanish Civil War.
The expressed purpose of Arguedas’ study was to seek surviving forms of communal organization and other village traditions that might provide an insight into the background of the laws and regulations imposed upon Indian society in Peru after the Spanish conquest. He deals with this problem by comparing Spanish and Peruvian peasant societies, largely in his conclusions. Although primarily a rapid survey of major similarities and differences, his observations contain a number of tantalizing suggestions which could be followed up by ethnohistorical research tracing the processes of cultural fusion and change that occurred in Peru. The original object of Arguedas’ study was too broad, and the problems required too extensive historical investigation to be dealt with adequately in an ethnographic account. Still, readers will benefit from its suggestive ideas for further research, as well as from its vivid description of contemporary life in isolated areas of Castile.
The second volume is a reprint of a Peruvian study originally published in 1879-1880. It clearly illustrates both the accomplishments and the limitations of the Peruvian intellectual revival during the late nineteenth century. Torres Salamando pieced together extensive raw data from published documentary sources, but failed to consider unpublished archival materials. Consequently his work contains nothing new to contemporary historians and perpetuates certain misconceptions, as in his list of general censuses made among the Indian population during the colonial period. Except for its value as a document in Peruvian intellectual history, it is hard to understand why it was republished.