All Peruvianists can make good use of Pablo Macera’s Trabajos de historia. The four-volume publication is a collection of twenty-eight essays written between 1961 and 1976 by this prolific, Peruvian Marxist historian of great ability, energy, and broad interests. The first volume contains Macera’s theory of history, plus highly informative criticisms of past and current historiography and several essays on sources which provide guideposts for scholars working in the colonial period. Volumes II and III reproduce essays principally on the eighteenth century. The last volume offers two monograph-length studies, one on agricultural exports in the nineteenth century, the other on twentieth-century exploitation of guano.
Macera observes that in the post-World War II era the study of history in Peru had deteriorated in quality, vibrancy, and relevance. The social sciences began to attract the best students who produced superior work. The reinvigoration of the discipline began to occur about 1969, coinciding, Macera implies, with the coming of the revolution. In the process of comprehending Peru through history (historización), the need arises for a myth-model (ideología utópica), which provides an image of future social development. Marxism, Macera believes, is the truest and most universal model and particularly suitable for Peru. Due to several factors, Marxist historians in Peru have gained ascendancy since 1969: the general crisis of the Peruvian socioeconomic system; radicalization of the middle-class professionals, especially unemployed social scientists; and wider educational options for the masses.
Consequently, the great majority of Peruvian historians, in recent years, have approached their studies from a Marxist point of view. Found throughout the Peruvian university system, the Marxist historians are mainly interested in the republican period, but not to the exclusion of the colonial era. Most have shown a marked interest in rural Andean society. Macera, himself, has been in the forefront of this development, having founded the successful Seminario de Historia Rural Andina in 1975 at San Marcos University.
Four recurrent themes interact in this collection of essays: modernization, the Church, labor, and agricultural economy. The process of modernization of Peruvian society began in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Macera examines fundamental sociopolitical interactions in that period, including the changing style of linguistic expression, a challenge to religious orthodoxy, elementary education, secular art, the exchange of political ideas through journalism, and sexual practices. He devotes considerable attention to the Church’s attitude toward wealth and involvement in the economy. An ambiguous ecclesiastical economic policy resulted from the Church’s vacillation between two tendencies, primitive, universal Christianity and service to the European elite. The Church needed to engage in economic pursuits to finance its religious mission. The employment of temporal means for spiritual ends produced a permanent contradiction within the Church. Through essays in volumes II and III, Macera has done more to advance our understanding of the economic interests of the Church in colonial Peru than any other scholar.
Likewise, he has written the essentials of la historia laboral of Peru. Over several essays in volumes III and IV, Macera describes not only the operations of both coastal and sierra estates, but also of various labor systems, including the mita, black slavery, yanaconaje, enganche, Chinese bondage, arriendo, and jornalero labor. The scarcity of labor amid plentiful land gave rise to the saying “población es riqueza.” Indebtedness was the most common means of binding Indians to the land throughout Peru.
Macera argues that the hacienda, in addition to serving a political function in dominating the Indians, was also a prosperous, capitalistic, profit-oriented enterprise. This conclusion appears to be based on insufficient documentation, the operations of twelve Jesuit haciendas, 1760-1766. Outwardly capitalistic while inwardly feudal, the hacienda coordinated contradictory systems, reproducing on a small scale the general ambivalence of the whole, modern colonial system. Because Peru itself was a dependency, the Peruvian economy could not be exclusively capitalistic, but had to develop its own type of feudalism.
Macera raises more questions than he answers. His answers, however, provide clarifying insights into Peruvian societal relationships and are characteristically thorough. Those questions, still unanswered, point the way to profitable lines of inquiry. Criticisms which might be made diminish to insignificance before the breadth and consistent quality of these essays.
La imagen francesa del Perú, a welcome addition to Peruvian historiography, introduces the reader to French travelers’ accounts of Peru from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. France did not really discover the New World of Spain until the eighteenth century. Until then, most accounts were written by armchair travelers who plagiarized Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and indiscriminately mixed fact in fantasy in their descriptions.
This situation improved when the Spanish Bourbons allowed French scientific expeditions to enter Peru. Macera focuses on observations of Peruvian social and political conditions made by the French scientists. Charles Marie de la Condamine made the most extensive and worthwhile French contribution of Peruvian costumbrista literature in the eighteenth century. After independence as the numbers of French visitors grew, French understanding of Peruvian society increased in volume, sophistication, and sensitivity. Macera indicates that of these accounts the writings by Francis de Castenau and Paul Marcoy would be of greatest value to the social historian.
It is apparent that French literature on Peru lacked any writer comparable to William Hickling Prescott or Sir Clements Markham. With few notable exceptions, neither Peru nor France was particularly well served by the Gallic accounts of Peru.
