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DAVID NUGENTEmory University
States, secrecy, subversives:APRA and political fantasy in
mid-20th-century Peru
A B S T R A C TDuring the regime of Manuel Odra (194856),
stateofficials in the northern Peruvian Andes came tobelieve that
their efforts to govern were beingsystematically thwarted by APRA,
an outlawedpolitical party forced underground by
governmentrepression. Officials concluded that the party
hadelaborated a subterranean political apparatus ofremarkable scope
and power, one that was largelyinvisible to the naked eye. I draw
on officials fearsof a dark and dangerous counterstate
tocross-examine the literature on state formation.State theory has
been predicated on theinevitability of state power, which makes it
difficultto account for state crisis and also to grasp thehighly
contingent nature of successful efforts torule. Much can be learned
about state formation byexamining moments in which political rule
falters orfails, for it is then that the lineaments of power
andcontrol that otherwise remain masked becomevisible. [state
formation, secrecy, APRA, Peru, crisis]
In this work, I am concerned with the forces that variously
promoteor undermine state formationwhich I take to be a cultural
pro-cess, rooted in violence, that seeks to normalize and
legitimize theorganized political subjection of large-scale
societies. My approachto this problem is somewhat unconventional: I
find it useful to ana-
lyze the formation of states through the lens of crisis.
Although many au-thors acknowledge the fragility of rule and the
contingency of state forms(Roseberry 1994; Sayer 1994),most
analysts of the state concern themselveswith contexts in which
organized political subjection has in some sensebeen accomplished
(cf. Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Ferguson andGupta 2002;Hansen and
Stepputat 2001; Joseph and Nugent 1994; Scott 1998). Theirmain
concern is with the formation and the operation of
functioningpolities.1
As will become apparent in the pages that follow, I have
benefited enor-mously from this body of work and draw extensively
on its insights. Indeed,it would be difficult to overstate the
importance of this scholarship, eitherto the present analysis or to
the study of the state more generally. Even so,I argue that much
can also be learned about state formation by examin-ing contexts in
which political rule falters or fails, for it is, arguably,
duringthese moments that the lineaments of power and control that
otherwiseremain masked become visible. One of my central goals in
this work is toseize on thesemoments of transparency to try to see
the state differently byexamining failed efforts to normalize and
legitimize political rule.
My analysis is situated in a regional and national context
wellsuited to the study of political crisis. I focus on
Amazonasanagrarian region (and administrative department) in the
northern Pe-ruvian Andescirca 1950. In this remote department, the
regionalrepresentatives of the national government then in power
(the mili-tary dictatorship of General Manuel Odra [194856]) sought
to con-tain the threat posed by the Popular American Revolutionary
Alliance(APRA), a radical political party with broad support among
the gen-eral population. For reasons I discuss below, during the
Odra dicta-torship, Amazonas experienced what government officials
considered to
AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 681702, ISSN
0094-0496, onlineISSN 1548-1425. C 2010 by the American
Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI:
10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01278.x
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American Ethnologist Volume 37 Number 4 November 2010
be a crisis of rule; the political authorities of this
regioncame to view their regime as incapable of carrying out
eventhe most basic of government functions. They were
beingprevented fromdoing so, they believed, by APRAthe partythat
they themselves had forced underground by means ofthe most brutal
repression. In accounting for the failure oftheir own efforts to
govern, officials attributed to APRA asubterranean party apparatus
with all the powers of statethat their own regime lackedand then
some. Indeed, thepolitical authorities came to view their
administration as apale imitation of a sophisticated, complex state
structure lo-cated somewhere deep underground. Although they
couldnot actually see the subterranean party state to which
theyattributed such power and influence, they were certain itwas
there. But because APRA insisted on remaining hiddenfrom viewon
remaining precisely where government of-ficials had left itthe
authorities could not actually find it.As a result, they were left
to imagine the contours of theirinvisible enemy.
Analyzing the relationship between the crisis of rulethat the
political authorities experienced during the Odradictatorship and
their projection of a dark and dangerouscounterstate that was
largely invisible to the naked eye ismy second goal in this
article. In so doing, I engage thescholarly literature that regards
the state as a mystifica-tion, a fetish, an effect of more
fundamental sociopoliticalforces (Abrams 1988; Aretxaga 2003;
Coronil 1997; Mitchell1999; Taussig 1992; Trouillot 2001). My
analysis differs fromexisting scholarship, however, in one respect.
The major-ity of scholars agree that the state effect has no
specific ornecessary institutional referent and focus instead on
re-orderings of time, space, personhood, and sociality
thatnormalize and legitimize political rule (Stoler 2002). Inmost
work on the state effect, it is nonetheless clear thatinstitutional
processes with the ability to coerce and com-pel are centrally
involved in this process of reordering. Inthe case I discuss here,
however, it is not the presence butthe absence, or rather the
breakdown, of coercive institu-tional processes that forms the
context in which the (under-ground) state is conjured into being.
Only as governmentofficials confront the failure of their own state
do they imag-ine another into existenceone far more powerful
thantheirs, lying hidden, deep beneath the surface, menacingthe
existing order of things.
I first discuss the significance of the developmentsoutlined
here for the broader literature on states andstate formation. I
then turn to a more detailed consid-eration of the processes that
generated Peruvian author-ities conviction that their regime had
been put at graverisk by a dangerous, malevolent shadow state. I
focusmy analysis on two crisesof power/knowledge and
ofperformance/representationthat formed the context inwhich people
sought to make sense of what was going onaround them.
State formation
In recent decades, a group of unusually insightful and
in-fluential scholars in multiple disciplines have devoted
theirenergies to understanding the peculiar nature of that
col-lective illusion known as the state.2 The overwhelmingemphasis
of their research has been on understanding howstates work their
magic (cf. Coronil 1997; Taussig 1997)on understanding the
processes by which states come tobe accepted as real, powerful, and
all-pervasive elementsof the social world. The Great Arch: English
State Formationas Cultural Revolution, by historical sociologists
Philip Cor-rigan and Derek Sayer (1985), is among the most
sophisti-cated and influential works to grapple with this problem.
AsMax Weber did before them (cf. 1960), Corrigan and Sayer(1985:7)
emphasize that the state is not a thing but, rather,a claim to
authority, to legitimacy. As such, it is not only ameans by which
one group of people subjugate another butalso a process by which
they seek to conceal that they havedone so. This process of
concealment, Corrigan and Sayerargue, is deeply cultural. It relies
on what they call moralregulation:
Out of the vast range of human social capacitiespossible ways in
which social life could be livedstateactivities more or less
forcibly encourage some whilesuppressing,marginalizing, eroding,
undermining oth-ers . . . We call this moral regulation: a project
of nor-malizing, rendering natural, taken for granted, in aword
obvious, what are in fact ontological and episte-mological premises
of a particular . . . form of social or-der. [Corrigan and Sayer
1985:4; see also Corrigan 1981]
State claims to authority and legitimacy are, indeed,grounded in
culture, Corrigan and Sayer suggest, but theyare violent claims
nonetheless. Only by systematically un-dermining and delegitimating
alternative constructions ofmorality and society can states aspire
to make their own as-sertions collectively shared (or at least
tolerated). Corriganand Sayer (1985:6) thus invoke Emile Durkheims
notion ofa collective conscience, but they anchor his conception
inpoliticsin struggles over conflicting moral visions of
so-ciocultural order.
Although Corrigan and Sayer acknowledge that controlof themeans
of physical violence plays a crucial role in stateformation, in The
Great Arch they emphasize the immensematerial weight given to . . .
cultural forms by the . . . rou-tines and rituals of state
(1985:5). In other words, the abil-ity to regulate the moral domain
is critically dependent onthe iterative dimension to state
activities. As they put it,
States, if the pun be forgiven, state; the arcane ritualsof a
court of law, the formulae of royal assent to an Actof Parliament,
visits of school inspectors are all state-ments. They define, in
great detail, acceptable forms
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and images of social activity and individual and col-lective
identity; they regulate, in empirically specifi-able ways . . .
very much . . . of social life. Indeed, inthis sense the State
never stops talking. [Corrigan andSayer 1985:3]
Through its capacity to state, the state seeks to establish
it-self as the sole, legitimate authority and ultimate arbiter
re-garding what may be considered true, proper, acceptable,and
desirable (Corrigan and Sayer 1985:10; see also Bour-dieu 1999). To
the extent that they become authoritative,Corrigan and Sayer
(1985:10) suggest, the states unendingiterative productionsits
everyday bureaucratic routines,its formulaic documentary practices,
and its magnificentpublic ritualsestablish for it a seemingly
neutral, objec-tive vantage point that stands above or outside the
so-cial order, watching, preserving, safeguarding.3
In The Great Arch, Corrigan and Sayer seek to under-stand
long-term continuities in the forms and rituals ofruleto grasp how
(peculiarly English) state forms endureover a period of centuries.
Other scholars have also shownan equally strong interest in the
cultural dimensions topolitical legitimation in state contexts.
They too have in-vestigated the role of iterative practicesfrom the
imple-mentation of routine, bureaucratic procedures (Herzfeld1992)
to the production and circulation of official govern-ment discourse
(Navaro-Yashin 2007; Trouillot 2001) andthe staging of elaborate
political performance (Kapferer1988; Taylor 1997)in establishing
the authority of the stateand in generating state effects.
Anthropologists, in partic-ular, have tended to focus on
ethnographically observabledimensions to the processes by which
states come to be ac-cepted as real.
The work of James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta offersa case in
point. In an exemplary article entitled, Spatial-izing States:
Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Gov-ernmentality (2002),
Ferguson and Gupta offer a fasci-nating analysis of hitherto
unappreciated aspects of stateformation. Arguing that the scholarly
literature has not at-tended sufficiently to the ways that states
come to be imag-ined, they ask, How is it that people come to
experiencethe state as an entity with certain spatial
characteristicsand properties? Through what images, metaphors, and
rep-resentational practices does the state come to be under-stood
as a concrete, overarching, spatially encompassingreality? Through
specific sets of metaphors and practices,states represent
themselves as reified entities (Fergusonand Gupta 2002:981982).
Among the most important ofthese metaphors, they suggest, are
verticality (the ideathat the state is above society) and
encompassment (thenotion that the state encompasses many
localities).4 Toconvey how the state comes to be imagined as above
andbeyond, Ferguson and Gupta present a fine-grained,
thickdescription and analysis of everyday bureaucratic routine
the mundane practices [that] often slip below the thresh-old of
discursivity, but profoundly alter how bodies are ori-ented, how
lives are lived, and how subjects are formed(2002:984). They show
how verticality and encompassmentare reproduced in the course of
peoples ordinary encoun-ters with state administration. Like
Corrigan and Sayer,they are ultimately concerned with how the
processes theyidentify contribute to the legitimation of rulehow
theseprocesses help states secure their legitimacy . . .
natural-ize their authority . . . and represent themselves as
superiorto, and encompassing of, other institutions and centers
ofpower (Ferguson and Gupta 2002:982).
Other scholars concerned with how states come to beimagined as
natural and real parts of the social environ-ment have focused more
directly on the role of discur-sive practices. A case in point is
Yael Navaro-Yashin (2007),who builds on Corrigan and Sayers notion
of moral reg-ulation to consider the ways in which states structure
af-fect (see also Stoler 2002). Noting that state-like
structuresmake themselves evident to the persons who inhabit
theirdomains in the form of materialities (2007:94)and
thatdocuments are among the primary paraphernalia of mod-ern states
. . . are its material culture (2007:84)Navaro-Yashin explores the
role of official documentary practices instatecraft.5 The document
(or letter), she observes, is anemblematic site for the operation
of . . . statecraft (Navaro-Yashin 2007:84). This is because
papers, especially writtenand official documentation bear the
symbolism of perma-nence . . . Printed, handwritten, and/or signed
documenta-tion carries the image of proof, stability and
durability. Inmost legal transactions . . . documents which include
writ-ing in them are reference for truth or authenticity
(Navaro-Yashin 2007:84).
Among the ways that states never stop talking (cf.Corrigan and
Sayer) is through their endless production andcirculation of
documents. Navaro-Yashin shows how peo-ples everyday encounters
with the entire domain of officialdocumentary practicesnot only
identity cards and pass-ports but also drivers licenses, gas bills,
and parking permitremindersplay a crucial role in conjuring the
state intobeing. These encounters, she argues, confront people
withwhat appears to be a real, durable, all-pervasive structure
ofsurveillance and regulationone that threatens to intrudeitself on
them at any time. Indeed, so powerful is the auraof authenticity
and the implicit demand for accountabilityembodied in these
documents that they have the ability togenerate themost intense
forms of affect, especially amongthose living in the margins of the
state. Official state doc-uments, Navaro-Yashin argues, act as
state fetishes.6 Theyare phantasmatic objects with affective
energies which areexperienced as real (Navaro-Yashin 2007:81). How
impor-tant are official documentary practices to the crafting
ofstates? If documents seem more benign than the police,I would
argue that from the point of view of the affects
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they generate amongst those who deal with them, espe-cially
frommarginal positions, they are not (Navaro-Yashin2007:83).
Other scholars have focused more systematically onthe role of
fantasy and performance in constructing statesas real, powerful,
and all-pervasive elements of the socialworld. Among the most
influential to explore these realmsis Diana Taylor, in her book
Disappearing Acts: Spectaclesof Gender and Nationalism in
Argentinas Dirty War (1997).Taylors original and penetrating
analysis draws on perfor-mance theory to show how the armed forces
transformedArgentina into a vast theater of operations for the
cleans-ing of the social body and the formation of the state.
Shefocuses, in particular, on the militarys violent reorganiza-tion
of the visible and invisible realms of Argentine society.The
assault on the former sought to make public and pri-vate space
available for inspection, as it were, to make itwholly transparent
to the military gaze. The armed forcesemployed strategies intended
to convey to the general pop-ulation the existence of a general
state of surveillance fromwhich citizens could not escapemuch like
Jeremy Ben-thams Panopticon (Taylor 1997:96). From this
all-seeingvantage point, the military sought to rid society of the
vari-ous social ills that plagued it.
The armed forces also sought to demonstrate theirmastery over
the invisible realmsaid to have been peo-pled by dangerous
subversives who posed a dire threat tothe social body. Members of
the armed forces wore dis-guises, carried volumes by Marx and Freud
[to masquer-ade as intellectuals], and penetrated the hidden
spacesassociatedwith subversion (Taylor 1997:97).Military
forcesdidmore, however, than simply penetrate the underground.They
also appropriated it. The armed forces establishedan entire series
of secret detention centers and concen-tration camps, where the
most horrific forms of torturewere carried out. These centers came
to be inhabited bythose detained in carefully staged public
exhibitions ofpowerneighborhood sweeps, house-to-house searches,and
spectacular public kidnappings. Detainees subse-quently reappeared
in publicin the form of horribly mu-tilated corpsesleaving no doubt
about the armed forcestotal mastery of the visible and invisible
realms alike.
Taylor brilliantly shows how fear is made to em-anate through
the public sphere, rippling through newspa-per headlines, magazine
covers, films, ads and TV spots(1997:x). In her analysis, it is
terrorand its ability to pro-duce observed and felt effectsthat
connects widely sep-arated and disparate events, scenes, and
discourses, inte-grating them into a single, overarching presence.
Terror isthus the force that animates the state, the force that
makesit seem (monstrously) real and foreboding. Although clearlynot
accepted as legitimate, the stateand its new social to-pography,
its new definitions of citizenship, its new hierar-
chical levelsis nonetheless regarded as frighteningly
andirrationally present.
In a now-famous article, Philip Abrams argues thatthe state is
not the reality which stands behind the maskof political practice.
It is itself the mask which preventsour seeing political practice
as it is (1988:58). The path-breaking scholarship discussed above
may be thought of asrevealing the complex processes by which that
mask ismade and remade. Important though this work is, here
Iexplore a different issue. I examine what transpires whenthe mask
of the state is unmade. My interest is in the pro-cesses
responsible for the dissipation of the magic of thestate (Coronil
1997; Taussig 1997): for the erosion in au-thenticity of its
discursive products (Navaro-Yashin 2007),the emptiness of its
performances, and the hollowness of itsproclamations (Taylor 1997).
My concern is with the statesfailure to separate itself from
society, with its inability tomaintain clear and discrete
hierarchical levels (Ferguson2004; Mitchell 1999), with the
breakdown of verticality andencompassment effects (Ferguson
andGupta 2002), with itsinability to show its mastery over the
visible or invisible do-main (Taylor 1997).
In an important and insightful analysis, Begona Aretx-aga has
argued that the state [does not] lose its mystify-ing power when it
is unmasked as being an effect of powerrather than the unified
agent it appeared to be (2000:43).Bringing to light the interiority
of the state, she says,does not necessarily dispel its magical
power (Aretxaga2000:43). To the contrary. Such revelations seem to
augmentthemagic of the state by triggering an endless
proliferationof discourses about the state in themost diverse areas
of so-cial life (Aretxaga 2000:43).
It is, indeed, true that revelations concerning the mis-deeds,
the corruption, the malfeasance of government of-ficials rarely
demystify the state (cf. Masco 2010). This ishardly surprising,
however, when one considers that themagic that the state performs
does not operate at the levelof reflection and understanding. The
state is not a creatureof thought but, rather, of experience and
emotion (Aretx-aga 2003; Stoler 2002). People learn (or unlearn)
the statethrough endless everyday encounters (cf. Joseph and
Nu-gent 1994) with its institutions and personnel, with the formand
content of official discourses, with carefully scriptedpublic
performances, both great and small. Because theseare the domains in
which the state is made, they must alsobe the realms in which it is
unmade.
In the pages that follow, I present a case in which thestate is
unmasked and does lose its mystifying power. Con-tra Aretxaga, I
argue that what counts is the manner inwhich the state is unmasked
and who does the unmasking.First, however, I provide background
information about thebroader field of political and economic forces
in which ef-forts at governance unfolded in mid-20th-century
Peru.
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States, secrecy, subversives American Ethnologist
National and global context
Among the most interesting questions raised by the
mid-20th-century crisis of rule in Amazonas is that concern-ing the
conditions of possibility of state formationthepolitical, economic,
and sociocultural conditions that var-iously enable or disable
efforts to govern. State activitieseverywhere seek to order and
discipline populations (thatmay or may not be coterminous with the
spatial bound-aries of the polity) in relation to the extraction of
wealthand the accumulation of capital. On the one hand, these
or-dering activities are based on a classificatory discourse
thatdifferentiates the population into subgroups (citizens,
sub-versives, aliens, men, women, races, castes, etc.) and thatacts
as a grid or template for deciding how resources, priv-ileges,
rights, and obligations will be distributed. On theother hand,
state ordering activities take place in the con-text of a broader
field of interstate relations (which involverelations between
regionally or globally hegemonic polities[like the United States]
and their client states) and globalaccumulation practices (which
undergo crises, reorganiza-tion, expansion, and contraction). This
broader field hasmuch to dowith howeffectively a state is able to
establish itsclassificatory grid authoritativelyand also themeans
withwhich and the ends toward which it seeks to do so.
The mid-20th-century struggle between APRA andthe Peruvian
government was the outgrowth of sweepingchanges in the global
economy that dated from the secondindustrial revolution, the
reorganization of capital that oc-curred in its wake, and the
rising importance of the UnitedStates on the world scene. Beginning
in the late 19th cen-tury, the crisis in and reorganization of
North Atlantic capi-talism resulted in new laboring people, social
doctrines, re-ligious dogmas, political ideologies, and investment
capitalpouring into Peru at an unprecedented rate. At this
samemoment, Peru was recovering from a prolonged period ofpolitical
and economic turmoil and was seeking to reinte-grate itself into
global circuits of commodity production.7
The result was the formation of a series of plantation en-claves
along the Pacific coast and mining enclaves in theAndes Mountains,
which were involved in export produc-tion for the world market.
From 1900 onward, Peru became increasingly depen-dent onU.S.
capital, which flowed intomultiple branches ofthe national economy
(petroleum, mining, textile produc-tion, railroads, and coastal
agriculture). Peru also borrowedheavily during this period, and by
1929 the country owed$100 million to U.S. banks. These
relationships deepenedPerus commitment to a path of export-led,
world-market-driven development and away from any form of
economicnationalism or efforts at autonomous internal growth.
By the time of the Great Depression (1929), uneven de-velopment
had accentuated long-standing geographic di-visions within the
national economy. Perus coastal desert
regionthe scene of large-scale agro-export activities andalso
the location of the countrys largest citiesbecame themost dynamic
sector of the economy, whereas its feudal-like sierra remained
largely stagnant. This process of dif-ferentiation undermined a
pre-Depression political alliancebetween the aristocratic elites of
the highlands and coastalelite groups.8 As the coastal region was
thrust into a newposition of national prominence, its agro-export
elites cameto dominate national politics, and they severed their
tieswith the aristocratic elites of the highlands, who
foundthemselves excluded from important positions of
politicalpower.
The highland and coastal elites were themselves di-vided. In the
sierra, the exceptionally rugged topographytended to make each
region something of a world unto it-self, where aristocratic landed
families battled each otherfor control (see Nugent 1997; Taylor
1986). The greater dy-namism of the coast generated two factions
among its elite:a landholding faction involved in the production
and exportof primary agricultural goods (sugar and cotton) and
em-ploying a large labor force, and a commercial and
financialfaction, whose activities were centered in Perus large
urbancenters. These two factions found it increasingly difficult
tocoordinate their interests.
Despite their differences, however, these feuding fac-tions
found it necessary to work together as unequal part-ners in
administering the state apparatus, and they werecareful to exclude
their highland counterparts from impor-tant positions of state
power. Only in the local adminis-tration of the state apparatus in
the remote Andean re-gions where they exercised influence did the
establishedpowers of the coast find it necessary to involve the
sierraelite.
State administration was thus a strained affair involv-ing
competing elite factions, whose opposed interests anddiffering
agendas reflected their relative positions within adifferentiated
national economy. Their problems were notlimited to internal elite
struggles. The same processes thathad led to the fragmentation of
the elite had also producedan increasingly urbanized national
population with an ex-tensive underclass and a well-organized labor
movement.Besides fighting among themselves, the elite faced the
ad-ditional dilemma of how to maintain control over the
stateapparatus in the face of serious threats from below.
Theirinability to resolve this problem led to a whole series of
mil-itary takeovers and to civilian regimes that came to
powerthrough the endorsement of the armed forces. Whether onor
behind the throne, the military kept a careful watch overnational
affairs, containing radical challenges, maintainingan uneasy peace
between competing elite factions, and pre-serving the
international, export orientation of the nationaleconomy.
The main challenge to the status quo came froman opposition
partyAPRAa coalition of middle- and
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American Ethnologist Volume 37 Number 4 November 2010
lower-class groups that was able to transcend the kinds
ofeconomic and geographic fault lines that divided the elite.In its
early, radical incarnation, the party advocated the
na-tionalization of land and industry. APRA also sought to
es-tablish a broad, participatory democracy in which the ru-ral and
urban laboring classes, grouped into cooperativesbased onproduction
units, would play key decision-makingroles in national life.
By 1949, APRA had been organizing among Perus sub-altern groups
for two decades and had put down deep roots.Although it had been
illegal virtually since its founding (in1930), the party had
established a structure of widely dis-persed, hierarchically
ordered cells throughout much of thecountry. APRA also had a very
large and deeply devoted fol-lowing and controlled much of the
electorate.9 Althoughthe party could not generally run its own
candidates, otherparties seeking the presidency or important
congressionalposts were compelled to form pacts with APRA, whichhad
the most efficient mechanism for turning out thevote.
The formation of one such pact, in 1945, had led toAPRAs
legalization, and had allowed it to form part of acoalition
government. In October of 1948, however, afterradical party
elements joined forces with disaffected mili-tary officers in a
failed coup attempt, General Manuel Odraseized control of the
government. The Odra regime com-mitted itself to the total
eradication of APRA and unleasheda campaign of brutal repression
against the party. Towardthat end, the Odra government in Lima
assigned new per-sonnel to key government positions in Amazonas.
Odra re-placed the civilian prefect (the highest-ranking member
ofthe executive branch of government) with a military officerwhom
Odra knew to be deeply committed to the eradica-tion of APRA. The
military regime followed the same proce-dure with the departmental
heads of the Guardia Civil (na-tional police), the Polica
Investigativa del Peru (PIP; secretpolice), the army, the Superior
Court of Justice, and thema-jor government ministries. In certain
instances, the Odragovernment went further and replaced some of the
supportstaff of these government offices with personnel known tobe
fully committed to the campaign against the subversives.It was in
the context of this war on the party that the crisisof rule
unfolded.
Confronting political crisisThe Apristas were always very
organized. They had[party] cells everywhere, where they trained
their fol-lowers and planned their activities. We were never ableto
find their cells, or to discover how [Apristas in differ-ent parts
of the region] communicated with each other.We never understood how
they managed to deceive somany people with their lies. But it
cannot be deniedthat the Apristas were [also] very disciplined,
that theywere totally committed to the party cause. They were
true fanatics. This is what made [APRA] different [fromother
parties]. This is why it always survived.
Mariano Iberico Torres, Congressional Deputy,195662
In April of 1949, Sr. Manuel Alberto Lopez, prefect ofAmazonas,
sent a series of frantic, codedmessages to his su-periors in Lima,
the national capital. Using the same crude,numerical encryption
technique to which he had increas-ingly had recourse locally (to
communicate safely with thefew government officials he could still
trust), the prefectpleaded with the national government for
assistance. Hisregime was beset on all sides, he explained, by the
followersof APRAthe terrorist political party that sought to
seizecontrol of the government, nationalize land and industry,and
establish workers cooperatives in all branches of theeconomy.10
Sr. Lopez explained that his administrationwas in gravedanger.
APRAs terrorists, he claimed, were everywhere. Thepartys fanatics
were to be found in large numbers in virtu-ally all walks of
private life. As a result, he was surroundedby a veritable sea of
subversives. Equally alarming, how-ever, was that the followers of
the Party of the People (asAPRA called itself) had lodged
themselves deeply within thestate apparatus. For example, in
reporting to the centralgovernment about the presence of Apristas
among the re-gions teachers, he said, I have confirmed that the
teachersin service in the Province[s] of [Amazonas] are
unquestion-ing propagandists of APRA, who work shamelessly
againstthe present Regime, blindly obeying the instructions of
theirsuperiors [in the Party] . . . disobeying the regulations of
the[Ministry] of Education . . . and betraying their sacred dutyto
form the next generation of patriotic citizens.11
But the prefects suspicions about the loyalty of the re-gions
public servants were not limited to teachers, whowere scattered
about the countryside in small, rural schools.He expressed equally
grave doubts about the trustwor-thiness of virtually all the
government functionaries whoworked in the rural districts. They
were not only teachersbut also governors, justices of the peace,
and mayorsthepersonnel who were responsible for the day-to-day
man-agement of political life and who interacted with the
popu-lation on an ongoing basis. According to Sr. Lopez, the
ma-jority of individuals who occupied all these posts belongedto
the Party of the People (see Nugent n.d.:ch. 6).
The prefects doubts, however, extended far beyond thelower rungs
of the government apparatus. He was equallyconvinced that a large
but unknown number of higher-ranking government officials were
secretly Apristas. Theyincluded provincial judges and members of
the superiorcourt aswell as officials in theBureau of TaxCollection
(Cajade Depositos y Consignaciones, the forerunner of the Na-tional
Bank) and the Department of Public Works (Junta de
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Obras Publicas). Sr. Lopezs doubts about the loyalty of
thedepartments public servants extended to key personnel
invirtually every government ministry in the region (see Nu-gent
n.d.:ch. 6).
By what means the Apristas had managed to infiltratehis
administration so thoroughly the prefect could not say,for he had
erected multiple defenses to protect the statefrom the party.
Furthermore, his regime had been vigilantabout maintaining these
defenses. Despite these efforts,however, APRA had overcome all the
barriers he had placedin its path. As a result, he said, the Party
of the People waspoised to seize control of the region on a moments
notice.Even the forces of orderthe Guardia Civilwere not tobe
trusted. They were only feigning loyalty to the govern-ment, Sr.
Lopez claimed, biding their time, waiting for themoment to
strike:
The political authorities [of Amazonas], who have theobligation
to maintain order and preserve the prestigeof the existing
Government, cannot count on the assis-tance of the . . . police
force . . . The greater part of thatforce is made up of
sympathizers or members of APRA,who for the time being simply
disguise their member-ship [in the party], waiting for the moment
to arrivewhen they can operate [openly] as opponents of the
ex-isting Regime.12
It was clear from his messages that the prefect was ina state of
near panic about APRA. Indeed, it was for thisreason that he
appealed to Lima for reinforcements. And,although he had failed to
prevent the subversives from in-filtrating his regime, Sr. Lopez
was determined to make upfor his mistake by identifying all
Apristas in the entire re-gion and removing them not only from
government employbut also from society in general. He faced one
major prob-lem, however, in doing so. All party members went
abouttheir daily affairs in disguise, as it were, masquerading
asnormal, law-abiding citizens. It being so very difficult to
dis-tinguish friend from foe by ordinary means, the prefect
hadlearned to distrust outward appearances. The truth aboutthe
party, he and other government authorities believed,was concealed
from view. It would therefore be necessaryto dig beneath the
surface of things to root out APRA at itscorewhich Sr. Lopez was
deeply committed to doing. In-deed, the prefect and his
administration were on high alert,in a state of extreme readiness.
The difficulty was that theydid not know exactly who or what they
were looking for.
Although the Apristas found it prudent to conceal theirtrue
natures and their actual identities in their everydayinteractions
with society at large, the signs of APRAs im-portanceweremany, and
the evidence of its profound influ-ence incontrovertible. Perhaps
the clearest indication of thesupport the party enjoyed, and the
power it exercised, wasthe ease with which APRA evaded the
governments effortsto contain it. After an initial round of
success, the forces of
orderthe prefecture, the Guardia Civil, and the PIPhadbeen
stymied inmost of their efforts to apprehend Apristas.Nor had they
been able to control the partys undergroundactivities. Moreover,
government officials had come to re-alize, they had not even been
able to gather accurate in-telligence about APRA. It was as if the
Party of the Peoplewas aware of the authorities everymove in
advance. Armedwith this knowledge, it seemed, the terrorists were
ableto make themselves invisible whenever danger threatened.As a
result, despite the governments long familiarity withAPRA, and
despite its having struggled against APRA foralmost two decades,
the party remained something of anenigmaunknowable, unreachable,
unfathomable.
On numerous occasions, for example, the authoritieshad sought to
apprehend and arrest Apristas and to disruptparty activities.
Oneway they had done sowas through anti-APRA police raids. After
meticulous planning, and actingon the most reliable of information,
both the Guardia Civiland the PIP had attempted to surprise groups
of subversivesduring the clandestine, nocturnal meetings that APRA
wasrumored to hold with great frequency. The forces of orderhad
been frustrated, however, almost every time. With dis-turbing
regularity, the Party of the People seemed to haveknown of the
authorities intentions. With few exceptions,the Apristas had been
able to avoid capture.13
Whereas APRA had succeeded in remaining largely il-legible to
the authorities, the reverse was not the case. In-deed, the party
seemed able to read the government likean open book. It was a
common occurrence, for exam-ple, for the people of Chachapoyas
(capital of the depart-ment of Amazonas) to awaken in the morning,
take tothe streets, and discover that APRA had been very busythe
previous night. At times, the populace would findfreshly printed
handbills, covered with party propaganda,slipped under every door
in the city. At other times, peoplewould encounter APRA slogans
(APRA is Peace; APRA isBrotherhood) painted in large letters in
prominent pub-lic placeslocales that were, in theory, being
patrolledby the police. On still other occasions, they would
learnthat party propaganda sheets had been nailed to the verydoor
of the prefecture or the Guardia Civil headquarterslocations that
were protected by armed guards around theclock.14
The degree of planning, preparation, and coordinationnecessary
to carry out these tasks gave credence to therumors that were
circulating widely through Chachapoyasthat the party continued to
hold its regular undergroundmeetings in secret cells throughout the
city.15 Everyoneknew, of course, that the authorities had been
stymied intheir efforts to discover when or where the meetings
tookplace, or evenwho attended them.Whatwas clear, however,was that
Apristas were able to roam through the streets,striking at will. It
was equally clear that the police were pow-erless to catch the
subversives.
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American Ethnologist Volume 37 Number 4 November 2010
It was not just the inability to apprehend Apristas or tocontrol
their nighttime activities, however, that troubled Sr.Lopez. His
regime was also finding it increasingly difficultto carry out even
the most basic of governing functionsespecially those concerning
conscription, taxation, and theadministration of justice. Behind
all of these difficulties, theprefect was certain that he saw the
hand of APRA.
Despite making repeated sweeps through the country-side, for
example, the Guardia Civil were finding it impos-sible to locate
enough military conscripts to serve in thearmy. They were having
equal difficulty finding the laborconscripts required for the
governments numerous publicworks projects. The party had long since
stated its opposi-tion to conscription of all kinds, and the
prefect had directevidence, some going back years, that Apristas
were seekingto interfere with the governments efforts to locate
laborers(Nugent n.d.:ch. 6; see also N. 17).
Similarly, the personnel of the Caja de Depositos
yConsignaciones, who were responsible for collecting ruralexcise
taxes (the departments singlemost important sourceof tax revenue),
were complaining bitterly about their in-ability to control the
growing problem of contraband trade.Here, as well, APRA appeared to
be the cause of the govern-ments problems. The party had long
declared excise taxesto be an abuse of all the laboring poor and
had encour-aged people to trade on the black market. The prefect
hadreports that Apristas were actually offering people adviceabout
how they could avoid the personnel of the caja and,thus, avoid
paying their taxes.16
Even the governors of the rural districts (who were theprefects
personal appointees), and the mayors and justicesof the peace
whoworked alongside them, were finding theirnormal administrative
duties more and more difficult tocarry out.17 Governors and
justices of the peace, for exam-ple, often found themselves unable
to locate the witnessesand suspects called to appear in large
numbers before thesuperior court of Amazonas. Similarly, governors
and may-ors found that their efforts to call out the district
populationto repair roads and bridges were met with growing (if
pas-sive) resistance. People never defied the authorities. Theywere
simply not at homewhen the authorities came calling.Or such large
numbers would resistand would offer thesame, unimpeachable excuse
for not complying (e.g., theircropswere failing)that the
authorities found it impossibleto force them. The prefect received
a steady stream of corre-spondence fromhis district-level
subalterns explainingwhythey were unable to comply with their
administrative tasks.It was not uncommon for these personnel to
claim that, ac-cording to what they had been told, APRA was
inciting thelocal populace to resist government authority.18
Such reports were anything but difficult to believe. TheParty of
the People had declared itself deeply opposed to themultiple ways
that district-level functionaries like the gov-ernor coerced the
people under their jurisdiction and had
characterized all of the obligations they imposed as
thinlydisguised forms of exploitation and abuse. APRA arguedthat
members of the indigenous populationwho bore thebrunt of these
policieswere saddled with all the duties ofcitizenship but none of
its rights. The basic injustice of thisstate of affairs, the party
said, was intolerable. It was this sit-uation that the Apristas had
vowed to change.
The authoritieswere deeply alarmed by the partys abil-ity to
survive and even thrive in conditions of such extremerepression.
Government officials were equally concernedabout APRAs success in
undermining so many key gov-ernment functions. It seemed nothing
short of miraculousthat party members, forced to operate in secret,
beyondthe gaze of the authorities, could defy every effort to
ap-prehend them. It seemed equally miraculous that a perse-cuted
political movement, driven underground, proscribedfor decades by
the national government, could be so ef-fective in thwarting the
authorities efforts to govern. Es-pecially alarming was the partys
seeming ability to con-found the government in so many different
administrativedomains, in town and country alike, at the same time.
In-deed, the prefect often found himself confronted with re-ports
of APRAs subversion from all over the department onthe very same
day. From one rural community, he wouldreceive a report that APRA
slogans had appeared overnighton the public buildings surrounding
the central plaza. Fromanother, he would learn that the Guardia
Civil had locatedonly a fraction of the number of labor conscripts
neededfor public works. From yet another, he would hear that
wit-nesses called to testify before the superior court could notbe
located. And in Chachapoyas itself, he would discoverthat APRA had
once again littered the streets with propa-ganda.19
Government officials thus found themselves con-fronted on a
continual basis with the most alarming evi-dence of the partys
powers. At the same time, they had beenfrustrated in all their
efforts to gather the intelligence thatwould reveal to
themhowAPRAwasmanaging to do all thatit did. Indeed, the
authorities were confronted with majorgaps in their understanding
of the party and its membersgaps that they considered crippling.
Believing that the verysurvival of their regime was at stake, they
had struggledmightily to fill in these gaps. But they had
failed.
In the absence of reliable information that would haveanswered
the many weighty questions they had aboutAPRA, the authorities were
compelled to provide answersof their own. In other words,
government officials were leftto make inferences about
APRAinferences that would ex-plain why the authorities were unable
to do away withor even rein in the subversive movement despite its
dis-turbingly radical and extremist nature. The less the
author-ities actually knew, the more they were compelled to
imag-ine. And imagine they did. Facedwithmounting evidence oftheir
own impotence, and of the terrorists ability to thwart
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States, secrecy, subversives American Ethnologist
the governments every plan and achieve the partys everygoal, the
authorities let their imaginations run wild. Theybegan to indulge
in the darkest of fantasies about APRA.
Sr. Lopez and the regions other high-ranking officialsconcluded
that APRAs seemingly miraculous abilities wereenabled in large part
by a party structure of exceptionalcomplexity and sophisticationone
that spanned the en-tire department and was able to organize and
coordinatethe subversives activities in great detail.20 The
authoritieswere also convinced, however, that such a party
structurealone would not be enough to confound them. Only if itwas
staffed by a deeply fanatical membership that had gonethrough an
intensive process of indoctrination would APRAbe capable of such
amazing feats. What was both confus-ing and alarming to consider,
however, was how this po-litical structure could orchestrate party
affairs with suchsuccess, efficiency, and secrecy. It was equally
alarming toconsider how APRA could produce such fanaticism in
itsmemberswhat the process of indoctrination would con-sist of, who
would oversee it, where it would be carried out,andwhowould submit
themselves to it andwhy theywoulddo so. High-ranking government
officials speculated amongthemselves at length about these
questions.21 However, theyhad only fragmentary and often
contradictory bits of evi-dence to suggest answers.
Precisely because the Apristas did not expose them-selves to
visible scrutiny anywhere, government officials be-gan to see
evidence of the partys nefarious hand every-where, even in themost
seemingly innocent and innocuousof placeselementary schools, church
groups, volleyballteams.22 The authorities also began to suspect
everyone ofbeing an Aprista. It was not just the usual suspects,
like radi-cal teachers and impoverished Indian cultivators, that
cameunder suspicion but also the most unlikely of
candidatesschoolchildren, single mothers, policemen, and officers
ofthe superior court. Even staunchly conservative,
religiouslydevout members of the old landed elite came to be
viewedas suspect by the forces of order.23
In their desperation to distinguish wholesome fromdangerous
social elements, officials first insisted that every-one offer
proof of their loyalty to the military regimethatthey sign loyalty
oaths, swear (in writing, often before a no-tary public) that they
did not belong to the party, and con-stantly offer public
affirmations of their commitment to thestatus quo:
March 23, 1949
Sr. Prefect of the Department
With the present communication I am honored tomake you aware of
the following facts: In 1945, a po-litical movement of great
significance emerged in Peru,and believing that this movement
represented the best
hope for our country that had appeared until that time,I began
my life as a citizen by joining that Party, and Idid this with my
heart filled with patriotism and withthe fervor that is appropriate
to all young people; thiswas my goal and my ideal, and by joining
APRA I be-lieved that I had complied faithfully with my duty asa
citizen; but after years of struggle to make a living, Ihave come
to see that politics has its mirages, and con-vinced of this truth,
I wish you make known to yourhonorable Office that from this day
forward I separatemyself from the Party of the People [APRA], in
orderto dedicate myself to my own independent work, andthat I will
never again meddle in activities of a politicalnature.
Roberto Feijoo Ramos24
After insisting that everyone declare precisely wherethey stood
with respect to APRAby means of public testi-monials such as the
one abovegovernment officials thendiscounted the very declarations
they had insisted peo-ple make. As a result, people who had already
declaredtheir loyalty to the military regime found it necessary
torepeat themselves. Such was the case with Roberto FeijooRamos,
author of the renunciation just quoted. After hav-ing declared his
commitment to themilitary government inMarch of 1949, he found it
necessary to reiterate his com-mitment several months later:
May 21, 1949
Sr. Prefect
OnMarch 23rd of this year I had the honor of informingyou that I
had renounced my membership in the Partyof the People, guided as I
was by the desire to dedicatemyself in an honest and peaceful
manner to my pri-vate affairs, nonetheless making it clear, of
course, thatI would collaborate with the Government in
whatevermodest way that I could.
Despite the frank and honest declaration that I made atthat
time, on the 4th of this month I was taken com-pletely by surprise
when I was told to come to thecommissariat of the [secret police]
where, along witha number of other people, I was detained for ten
days.When I was finally released, I learned . . . that the orderto
detain me had come from Lima, which shows thatmy [earlier]
renunciation has not been taken into ac-count. It appears,
therefore, that I am still considereda Party member, in spite of
the fact that when I sepa-ratedmyself from APRA I did so ofmy own
free will andconviction, andwithout any outside party having
influ-enced me in any way.
Sr. Prefect, it is possible that my earlier renunciationwas sent
to the Direccion de Gobierno, the office to
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American Ethnologist Volume 37 Number 4 November 2010
which your own answers. I therefore humbly ask thatyou contact
that office, and add tomyfirst renunciationthe weight of this
present one, which I intend to rein-force the first renunciation,
so that I do not continue tofindmyself in situations like that
which I have outlinedabove.
As you are no doubt aware, the newspapers in Limaconstantly
report about public employees who have re-habilitated themselves by
renouncing their member-ship in the Party of the People. This being
the case, Ifind it odd that my own renunciation has served
fornothingnot even to keep me out of jail.
For all of this reasons, Sr. Prefect, I ask that you
pleaseaccept this new renuncia [renunciation], and that
youauthorize its publication in whatever local newspaperyou see
fit, or in the dailies of Lima, so that my deter-mination to leave
the Party is taken into account.
Roberto Feijoo Ramos25
Despite the apparent determination of people likeSr. Feijoo to
leave the party, and to employ state-endorsedmethods for doing so,
the police were never satisfied thattheywere being truthful. Sr.
Feijoo continued to be detainedintermittently over the next several
yearsalong with other(former?) party membersdespite their multiple
attemptsto rehabilitate themselves. No matter how hard he and
oth-ers tried, they were unable to convince the authorities
thatthey were being sincere, for the only means available
forswearing to the truth had come to be seen as unreliable.
In other words, no matter how loyal one professed tobe, no
matter how proper ones behavior, no matter howlaw-abiding one
appeared, the authoritieswere still left withdoubts. Indeed,
because the Apristas were seeking to de-ceive the government by
masquerading as ordinary citi-zens, the authorities came to view as
suspect the very act ofpresenting oneself as loyal, to view anyone
who presentedhim- or herself in these terms as potentially
subversive. Fur-thermore, government officials came to question the
truth-value of peoples declarations of loyalty, even though
theyinsisted that everyone offer them continuouslyor elsefind
themselves under suspicion of being Apristas.
Faced with the inability to distinguish friend from
foe,government officials came to see the state as being at risk
ofinfiltration by the most dangerous of social elements.
Ini-tially, the prefect responded by charging the heads of
gov-ernment offices with the important responsibility of
pa-trolling the (imaginary) frontier between state and soci-ety, to
ensure that the state enjoyed as much autonomyas possible.26 To
this end, the prefect told the heads ofthese government offices
that, in interacting with societyat large, they were to take a less
trusting attitude thanthey had in the past. In particular, they
were to scruti-nize with great care anyone who approached them
con-
cerning employment. In this way, they could help ensurethat the
state apparatus remained free of the influence ofAPRA:
My office has become aware of the fact that membersof the
Popular American Revolutionary Alliance (APRA)continue to attempt
to findwork in the Public Offices ofthis Department, taking
advantage of diverse means inorder to do so, without taking into
consideration thatmembership in the Party has been declared
illegal. Andbecause [the Apristas] only intention in doing so is
toundermine the operation of the offices where they seekto work, as
the supervisor of Public Administration inthis Department, I find
it necessary to direct your at-tention to this problem, and to ask
that you be sure totake it into consideration whenever you appoint
newpersonnel to work in the office at your command.27
This strategy to protect the state from APRA, however,was
fundamentally flawed. Although he did, indeed, chargehis subalterns
with the task of patrolling the boundarybetween state and society,
the prefect provided these offi-cials with no guidance for
distinguishing Apristas fromnon-Apristas in the process of doing
so.
Officials took to viewing everyone around them as apotential
threat, including one another. As a result, theybecame ever more
secretive about their deliberations andtheir decisions. Convinced
that it was dangerous to sendinformation by normal means, the
authorities began us-ing coded messages to communicate among
themselves.Initially, the use of code was restricted to matters of
ma-jor import. As time passed, and the authorities
becameincreasingly suspicious of those around them, they
usedencryption to communicate about a broader range ofissues.
As they sensed the party closing in around them, gov-ernment
officials changed the codes on amore frequent ba-sis. They also
experimented with different kinds of codes.They imposed extra
surveillance on the personnel whohand delivered secret messages
between government of-fices in Chachapoyas and on those who sent
coded com-muniques by wire from the capital to the rural districts.
Theauthorities decision to communicate in coded form, and
torestrict the use of code to a select few, demonstrates
theirsuspicion that the broader arena of government activity
andcommunication within which their inner circle was embed-dedwas
not autonomous of APRA influence but, rather, hadbeen infiltrated
and contaminated by the party. The effortsof government officials
to limit the flow of privileged in-formation to an inner circle of
government confidants re-flects their fears about just how lacking
in autonomy theseofficials considered the actually existing state
to be. It alsoreflects their decision to surrender to APRA the
outer do-main of the state and to reinscribe state boundaries
furtherinwardto create a state within a state.
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States, secrecy, subversives American Ethnologist
Figure 1. Encrypted version of document. Used with permission of
the Archivo Subprefectural del Cercado.
To the greatmisfortune of the authorities, however, thisattempt
to redefine the limits of the state (Mitchell 1991,1999)to fix
state boundaries so that they encompassedindividuals who were
completely trustworthy and loyalwas deeply flawed. The reason was
quite simple. High-ranking government officials could not be sure
that someof the very individuals who had been entrusted to
com-municate in coded form about APRA and its activities werenot
themselves sympathetic to the partyorwould not takeactions that
would protect Aprista clients, friends, or rela-tives.28
This problem was more than hypothetical. Consider,for example,
the encrypted document shown in Figure 1(and decoded in Figure 2).
In it, the prefect writes to asubprefectone of a dozen or so
individuals with whomthe prefect communicated in code on a regular
basis and,therefore, in theory, someone completely trustworthy.
Thecontents of the message reveal the difficulties involved
inseeking to shore up the sagging boundaries of the stateby means
of encryption. Despite being in code, the com-munique did not help
government officials establish a se-cure space of privileged
information fromwhich they could
more effectively prosecute the war against the subversives.To
the contrary; the document shows the authorities inabil-ity to
accomplish these goals despite the attempted use ofsecrecy.
The document is as much an accusation as a commu-nication. It
reveals that the subprefectone of relatively fewstate officials the
prefect relied on to help lead the fightagainst APRAhad not been
using his position as the pre-fect intended. Rather than persecute
the subversives, thesubprefect had found it expedient to shelter a
group ofApristas who were useful to him for political purposes.29
Allthe while, he had communicated in coded form on a regu-lar basis
with the other members of the governments innercircle about the
progress of the war against the Party of thePeople. But his
behavior undermined government efforts toeffect a clear separation
between state and subversive.
Despite the use of encryption, the efforts of state of-ficials
to keep APRA from discovering government planswere to no avail;
APRA remained opaque to the authori-ties, whereas it seemed that
even the most secret of gov-ernment plans somehow leaked out to the
subversives. In-deed, government officials remained utterly
confounded by
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American Ethnologist Volume 37 Number 4 November 2010
Figure 2. Decoded version of document. Used with permission of
the Archivo Subprefectural del Cercado.
the Party of the People and seemed unable to make anyheadway
whatsoever against the enemy. The police contin-ued to be
ineffectual in apprehending Apristas in their noc-turnal meetings.
Party members grew ever more daring inleaving public evidence of
their nighttime sojourns throughthe streets of Chachapoyas. And
government officials con-tinued to struggle with their
administrative duties in thecountryside. In desperation, the
prefect appealed (in code)to the national government for
assistance. No one was to betrusted, he reported. Everyone was an
Aprista.
Power/knowledge in crisis
What were the processes that led government officials toindulge
in such dark fantasies? By the middle of 1949, thegovernment regime
in Amazonas was in the midst of twointerrelated crises that
together undermined peoples faithin the reality of the stateand
that transferred some of thatfaith to APRA. One was a crisis of
power/knowledge. Gov-
ernment officials went to elaborate lengths to see (APRA)like a
state (cf. Scott 1998)to generate a comprehen-sive body of reliable
information that would allow them toknow the Party of the People in
every detail. Having doneso, the regime attempted to be like a
stateto translatethis knowledge into power. Employing the
intelligence ithad gathered as a guide, the government used its
controlover the means of violence to attempt to eradicate
APRA.Toward that end, government personnel surveilled,
jailed,deported, and (in numerous cases) tortured. They
closedmeetinghouses, dissolved organizations, and banned
pub-lications. They eliminated all visible signs of the Party of
thePeople. So broad and systematic was their assault on APRA,and so
complete was the rout that the party appeared tohave suffered, that
the authorities concluded they had de-stroyed themovementa victory
that the Odra regime wasquick to announce to society at large.
Indeed, the militarygovernment went so far as to claim to have been
responsi-ble for the demise of APRA:
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States, secrecy, subversives American Ethnologist
Sr. Chief of Police.
I acknowledge receipt of your coded Oficio No. 4,[marked]
Strictly Confidential [in which] you ask thisoffice to provide
police headquarters with the Registerof themembers of the recently
defunct Party of the Peo-ple . . . I am pleased to attach this list
. . . and to con-gratulate the forces [of order] of this locality
[plaza]for their splendid work in eliminating this dangerousthreat
to the regime of . . . General Manuel A. Odra.30
The military government also began circulating aheroic narrative
of eradication to explain how it had pre-vailed over the Apristasa
narrative made up of exemplaryacts of bravery, loyalty, and
sacrifice (as illustrated in the fol-lowing letter published in the
Chachapoyas newspaper andsigned by 126 prominent citizens):
General Manuel A. Odra, President of the MilitaryJunta, and
Director of Limas most important dailynewspapers (El Comercio, La
Prensa, Vanguardia).
We, the undersigned, filled with patriotic fervor, andwith deep
respect for our countrys legally formed insti-tutions, congratulate
you with all sincerity for the bril-liant position you have taken
in favor of the Country[Patria], in refusing to grant safe conduct
[out of Peru]to the Terrorist Leader of the Aprista Sect, Victor
RaulHaya de la Torre. We declare our steadfast support forand
solidarity with our government, and with the hon-orable Military
Men whomake up the Military Junta.31
Within short order, however, it became clear that theauthorities
had been deceivedthat the war with the sub-versiveswas far
fromover.Much to their dismay and embar-rassment, government
officials discovered that they had notdestroyed the party but had
simply driven it underground.In the face of intense repression, the
Apristas had thoughtit prudent to conceal their identities,
disguise their meetingplaces, and mask their communications. They
temporarilysuspended all party activities that would have left a
pub-lic mark andmade every effort to become indistinguishablefrom
the rest of society. To the naive observer, the Party ofthe People
appeared to have disappeared from the face ofthe earth.
It was at this moment, when the party had gone sofar underground
as to make itself invisible to the author-ities, that the military
declared definitive and final victoryover the subversives. In the
very wake of the governmentscelebratory announcements, howeverwhile
the author-ities were still flush with successthe Apristas began
toreemerge from the shadows, thus flatly contradicting
thegovernments claims. In so doing, APRA did something farmore
damaging to the government than simply prove thatthe authorities
had been mistaken. The party did far morethan show that government
officials were not fully aware
of what was going on around them. APRA demonstratedthat the Odra
regime was totally in the dark about theone problem it had devoted
virtually all its energies toresolvingthe problem on which the very
survival of theregime depended: the status of its war against the
party.Making matters worse was that the authorities had noteven
realized that they were in the dark. So completely de-luded were
they about what was actually going on in Pe-ruvian society that
they thought the war against the sub-versives was going splendidly.
Once the party resurfaced,however, it became clear that while
government officialshad been busy congratulating themselves for
finally van-quishing the enemy, APRA had been quietly rebuilding
itsstrength.
APRAs demonstration that the government had beenso deeply
deluded about issues of such pressing concernundermined any
pretensions the regime might have had tospeak in an authoritative
and credible manner. The reap-pearance of APRA after the
authorities had pronounced itdead made it clear that the government
did not occupy aprivileged position of knowledge and understanding
fromwhich it could manipulate and manage the social order. Tothe
contrary, it became clear that the government was
pro-foundlymisinformed and dangerously ignorant about whatwas going
on under its very nose. The state seemed to behovering in a
rarified space somewhere above society, at agreat distance from it
rather than integrated with it. Fromsuch a distance, it appeared,
the state was incapable of per-ceiving just how out of touch it
actually was.
The disclosure that it knew so very little about a soci-ety that
it claimed to know so well was deeply humiliatingfor the
government. Once it was clear that the party livedon despite
official claims to the contrary, the many talesof prowess,
perseverance, and courage that the authoritieshad circulated in
constructing their narrative of eradicationseemed ludicrous,
pathetic, and laughableas did the gov-ernment itself. With the
revelation that APRA had deceivedthe authorities, the heroes of
this narrative became fools,the triumphs became defeats, and the
victories turned intolosses.
The failure of the governments campaign againstAPRA, the public
humiliation the dictatorship suffered atthe hands of the party, and
the obviously delusional ten-dencies of the regime made it appear
that there was a greatabsence at the center of Peruvian
politicsjust where thereshould have been a powerful presence. This
was an absencenot only of knowledge and understanding (about
APRA,about society) but also of coordination and control (in
gov-ernment efforts to eradicate the party). It was an absenceof
unity and coherence (of the state apparatus itself) and
ofcompetence and commitment (on the part of governmentofficials).
The absence even extended to the effective use ofviolence; the
authorities efforts to use force against the sub-versives were
ultimately in vain, not least, the government
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came to realize, because these efforts were often
directedagainst the wrong people.
The authorities inability to know, control, or effectivelypunish
APRA made it seem that there was no there there,that is, that there
was no functioning machinery of govern-ment, no coherent, ordered
structure that was coordinat-ing the effort against the
subversives. Instead, state activi-ties appeared to be a chaotic
and incoherent assemblage ofsites, processes, and institutions.
They seemed to be lackingany underlying, coordinating logic, and
even to be workingat cross-purposes with one another.
Confrontedwithwhat seemed irrefutable proof that theparty was
alive and well despite their best efforts to destroyit, the
authorities were forced to consider why their cam-paign against the
subversives had failed. Government of-ficials first developed
doubts about the reliability of theirintelligence. That APRA
continued to operate so effectivelyafter the government had
eliminated all known sources ofsubversion led the authorities to
conclude that they actuallyknew very little about the Party of the
People: They couldnot statewith confidencewhowas a partymember
andwhowas not, where the subversives held their meetings, whatthey
decided at those meetings, how Apristas carried outtheir actions
and left signs of their presence, and so on. Inshort, despite their
best intelligence-gathering efforts, theauthorities came to regard
the party as something of a blackbox, whose inner workings the
government could not pen-etrate and whose appeal to the general
population the au-thorities could not comprehend.
As the months wore on, and the Odra regime failed tomake
significant progress against APRA, government offi-cials came to
question more than just their intelligence. Itwas difficult to
understand how the government could con-tinue to miss the
subversives when its agents were every-where, on the lookout for
any telltale sign of party activ-ity. Faced with one failed attempt
after another, officialsradius of doubt began to expand beyond the
realm ofinformation alone. The authorities also came to questionthe
loyalty and commitment of the state functionaries thatgathered
government intelligence and of the state secu-rity forces that used
it in their (unsuccessful) efforts to ar-rest the Apristas. As
doubts about the loyalty of their sub-alterns loomed ever larger in
the minds of governmentofficials, the boundary between state and
subversive be-gan to blur. Lacking reliable intelligence about who
wasand was not an Aprista, the authorities found it impossi-ble to
bring the boundary back into focus. Instead, theirvision became
blurred in general. They came to view ev-eryone through suspecting
eyesto regard themselves asmenaced on all sides, by unknown and
unknowable so-cial elements who threatened to subsume the
governingregime.
In short, the crisis of power/knowledge that unfoldedin the
context of the failed campaign against the party
unleashed on the authorities a plague of fantasies
(Zizek1997).32 Faced with the certain knowledge that they knewso
little, government officials took to imaginingmuch. Theycame to
regard everyone as a potential subversive and to seesigns of APRAs
presence everywhere, in the most unlikelyplaces.
Performance/representation in crisis
The governments campaign against the Party of the Peoplewas not
limited to jailing, deporting, and torturing Apristas.The
authorities also waged war with the subversives in therealms of
meaning, discourse, and display. It was in thesedomains that the
Odra regime experienced a second cri-sis, one that deepened its
sense of danger, desperation, andparanoia with respect to APRA.
This second crisis was oneof performance/representation.
Upon seizing power, government officials had soughtto do battle
with APRA to define what would be consideredlegitimate forms of
economic, sociocultural, and politicalorder. Toward that end, they
had imposed strict limits onwhat people could safely do and say, on
what they couldclaim to be important and worthwhile ways to live.
In thisway, the authorities sought to craft a new public sphereone
that was unambiguously and uniformly supportive ofgovernment
visions of proper order.
At the same time, officials sought to make both pub-lic and
private life wholly visible and transparentto con-stantly reassure
themselves that therewere no hidden pock-ets of subversion where
alternative notions of social lifewere being articulated. Precisely
because of this fear, in theOdra regimes new public domain, people
were expectedto perform their loyalty and commitment continuously,
notonly to government officials but also to one another. Theywere
expected, for example, to turn out faithfully and to par-ticipate
enthusiastically in all public political ritual. Failureto appear
or to behave as expected by the authorities couldraise suspicions,
which, in turn, could have disastrous con-sequences.
More important than public political ritual, however,was the
realm of the everyday. The government looked tothe general populace
to act out its loyalty not only duringrare moments of political
pomp and circumstance but alsoon an ongoing, daily basis, in all
walks of life. In short, theauthorities made it clear that people
were to do nothing inword, print, or behavior that would betray any
sympathywhatsoever with the subversive cause.
The populace quickly learned that anyonea friend,neighbor,
enemy, even a complete strangercould reportsuspicious behavior to
the authorities and that a single re-port was enough to launch an
investigation by the forcesof order. In these circumstances, the
regional population
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began to police itself. Anyone who wished to avoid suspi-cion
began to sanitize his or her behavior, to act at all timesin ways
that could only be regarded as wholly innocuousby any observer,
hypothetical or real. People thus collec-tively conspired to hold
one another in a set of ever-present,mutually interlocking gazes of
conformity. In so doing, theywent to great lengths to appear as
transparent, loyal, andlaw-abiding as possible.
In the aftermath of the Odra coup, social life thusquickly
became akin to a vast drama (cf. Taylor 1997) butone with no single
director, no defined parts, and no set di-alogue. In this drama,
everyone was a player, willing or not,and everyone felt compelled
to improvise lines that theyhoped would satisfy a director and
audience they wouldnever see and whose reactions they could never
be sure of.There were no agreed-on standards for judging the
perfor-mances of the actors, and it was unclear whowas
evaluatingthe performances. In other words, the populace found
it-self performing everyday acts of allegiance to a
hypotheticalaudience of fellow citizens and government officials
whosefears people tried to anticipate and ameliorate.
In so doing, local people brought into being a novelform of
imagined (non)community (Anderson 1991)onethat was a threat to
their very existence. This collectivity wasrendered foreign or
alien to its makers in the very act of itscreationa community to
which they knew they did notbelong. It was simultaneously, however,
one in which theyhad to feign membership at all times. If they were
to avoidarrest and possible torture, people had to maintain
them-selves in a state of constant alert about how others
mightregard them and adjust their behavior and speech accord-ingly
(cf. Skidmore 2004). This process of (non)communityformation had a
powerful individuating and alienating dy-namic. Each time people
strategized about how to avoida bad audience response, they did so
on their ownassolitary individuals. This new anticollective
isolated peo-ple, separated them from one another, and turned
eachindividual into a potential threat to all otherseven as
itpurported to do and be the opposite.
In their zeal to establish a public sphere that wouldseem
unambiguously supportive of the military regime, theauthorities did
not limit themselves to establishing strictlimits on what people
could do or say. They also used theirextensive control over the
media to bring into being newrepresentational forms in which novel
imaginings of thestate, the subversives, and the public could be
elaborated.As one might expect, during the dictatorship, media of
allkinds were purged of any positive reference to the Party ofthe
People. But the government did not restrict itself to de-monizing
APRA in word and print. It also worked to give thedictatorship an
air of authenticity it might otherwise havelacked.
Rather than go on endlessly about the virtues of theirown
regime, government officials introduced a series of new
discursive forms that allowed the people to speak on thebehalf
of the dictatorship. They included signed and nota-rized loyalty
oaths, open letters of support to General Odra,and exposes. They
also included letters written by the loyalmembers of the public to
the political authorities revealingthe existence of subversive
government officials whowereseeking to mask their membership in the
party:
Sr. Prefect of the Department:
We the undersigned citizens and residents of this dis-trict
present ourselves to you with complete respect toask [the
following]:
That the present governor of this district . . . who is aperson
who only pretends to be concerned with theprogress of this locale,
be replaced . . . [The governor]is a known member of the outlawed
Party of the Peo-ple, who uses his position to steal community
lands . . .and [community] funds . . . and to propagandize for
theParty, at the orders of his superiors . . .
Sr. Prefect, we bring these facts to the attention of youroffice
and ask that you take whatever steps are neces-sary to free us from
the tyranny of [the governor].
What we seek is Justice.33
The new discursive forms introduced by the militaryalso included
formal renunciations of APRA affiliation (alsosigned before a
notary) and a variety of testimonials (allcarefully notarized) in
which both individuals and groupsswore their allegiance to the
government:
Sr. Prefect of the Department:
I have the honor of addressing you in order to statethe
following: that in my condition as a teacher, Di-rector of the
Leimebamba School for Boys No. 133,fully conscious of the high
purpose of forming the fu-ture citizens who are the hope of the
Fatherland, mylabors were, are and will be only and exclusively
tocarry out the mission that the State has given me
andwithmymission as a catholic teacher, whose pedagogyis completely
removed from any and all political ten-dencies, and is concerned
only with the preparation ofcitizens of wholesome conscience who
are capable ofcontributing to the true progress of our people. I
alsodeclare to you, Sr. Prefect . . . that never did I belongnor do
I belong to any political party, and least of allthe Aprista party
. . . and that if someone has placedmyname on the party list I take
this opportunity to presentto you mymost energetic protest.34
The authorities literally filled the airwaves and thenewspapers
with these statements, in which the most di-verse social
elementswere permitted to express to society at
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large their unconditional loyalty to the Odra regime. Mem-bers
of citizens groups, labor unions, and social clubs wereallowed to
so testify, as were those on sports teams, in pri-mary schools, and
inmutual aid societies. Civil servants, In-dian peasants, and
aristocratic landowners were all permit-ted to do the same. As in
the examples I quote above, evenformer Apristas were given the
opportunity to confess theerror of their former ways and to pledge
their undying alle-giance to the military government.
The effect of this barrage of testimonial and confessionappeared
to be overwhelming. By waging war in the realmof discourse, the
authorities didmuch to create the image ofa public that was united
in its support of the military and inits rejection of APRA. The
implicationwas clear: In pursuingthe destruction of the terrorists,
themilitary was doing littlemore than obeying the will of the
people.
The success of the Odra regimes campaign againstAPRA in the
realms of performance and representation,however, proved to be as
short-lived and as illusory as itsoffensive in the realm of
power/knowledge did. Althoughindividual behavior, social
interaction, and discursive com-munication temporarily fell in line
with official expecta-tions, it soon became apparent that, in
producing such con-formity, government officials had done
littlemore than con-struct a mask behind which even they could not
see. Beforelong, evidencewas forthcoming from all quarters
thatmanyindividuals and groupswhohad sworn their
allegiancewereanything but loyal citizens. They were, in fact,
subversives(or party sympathizers), who were so committed to
APRAthat they sought to trade on the image of the patriotic
cit-izen to continue with their nefarious activities. In the
pro-cess, they had perjured themselves before the governmentand
before society at large.
The discovery that many people who had sworn pub-licly to be
part of the broad, anti-APRA consensus wereactually committed to
the overthrow of the Odra regimepresented government officials with
a real dilemma. Allow-ing such people to remain at liberty posed a
significantthreat to the government. At the same time, however,
theauthorities had no way of distinguishing those who trulywere
loyal from those who (mis)represented themselves inthese terms.
Already in the grip of quite paranoid fears, gov-ernment officials
responded to this dilemma in a way thatwas very damaging to the
image that the general popula-tion held of the regime. They
unleashed a new round of per-secution on the very individuals and
the very social groupsthat they had formerly claimed were part of
the anti-APRAconsensus. In other words, after insisting that
everyone de-clare precisely where they stood with respect to APRA
andafter attesting publicly to the truth-value of these
state-ments, government officials then discounted the very
dec-larations they had insisted people make. In this way, whathad
initially seemed like evidence of state strengththeOdra regimes
ability to compel the population to perform
rituals of loyaltyended up being regarded as a source
ofweakness.
As government officials reversed their position con-cerning the
status of those who claimed to support thedictatorship, the general
populace was witness to an oddadmission on the part of the
authoritiesthat what theyhad previously asserted to be true was, in
fact, false. Withthis admission, government officials did more than
simplyacknowledge that they had beenmisled. They also acknowl-edged
that both their methods for attesting to the truth andwhat was
asserted to be true on the basis of those methodswere wholly
lacking in credibility.
As government officials came to realize that they couldnot tell
friend from foe, they became increasingly suspi-cious and fearful
of those around them. In this context, bothgovernment officials and
the general population came tolose faith in the reliability of
public truth claimsmade aboutpeoples relationship to the Party of
the People. They cameto lose faith in the multiple forms of
publicly swearing tothe truth of that relationshiprepresentational
forms thatthe military had elaborated in its efforts to craft a
publicsphere that was free of the influence of APRA
(renuncias,oaths of loyalty, public letters of allegiance, etc.).
Indeed, theauthorities and the populace came to regard public
truthclaims as the opposite ofwhat they appeared to beaswaysof
concealing rather than revealing the truth. As, first, oneand,
then, another of these public truth claims came to beregarded as a
mechanism for disguising rather than expos-ing the truth, the loyal
public represented discursively bythe military regime, the basis
for its claim to represent analternative to APRA that was endorsed
by large numbers ofpeople, began to unravel, piece by piece. In
short, the lo-cal populace was witness to the states inability to
generateauthoritative accounts of social life. As a result, the
state ap-paratus experienced a deep and profound crisis of
perfor-mance/representation.
The quest for certainty
It was the impossibility of truly knowing or even identifyingthe
enemy that provoked such dark fantasies on the part ofthe
authorities. It was impossible, government officials hadlearned, to
distinguish subversive from loyal citizen on thebasis of visual
cues. Identifying the terrorists on the basisof their behavior had
proven equally difficult. It was alsofutile to trust peoples
professed beliefs or their overtly ex-pressed opinions about APRA
or about the military regime.On the basis of appearance, behavior,
and belief, one wouldbe forced to conclude that there were no
terrorists any-where. On the surface, everything appeared to be
calm. Andyet the authorities had what they considered
overwhelmingevidence that the subversives were everywhere, making
amockery of them before the general public, wreaking havocwith
their efforts to govern the region.
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In an effort to help his subalterns imagine the contoursof their
invisible enemy, in late April of 1949, the prefectcirculated a
very important but rather dated document toa select group of
government officials. These included theheads of the Guardia Civil
and the PIP, the president of thesuperior court, the subprefects
and judges of the regionsfive provinces, and the governors of the
departments manyrural districts.35 The prefect was at great pains
to restrict ac-cess to the memo to these officials alone, so in
addition tosending it in code he marked his communication Secretand
Confidential.
The dated document that the prefect circulated, whichone of his
subalterns had discovered in the archive of theprefecture only a
short time before, was entitled Organi-zacion del Comite Provincial
(Organization of the Provin-cial Committee). It had been seized
almost two decadesprior, in 1931, from a party member who was
carrying itfrom APRAs central committee in Lima to the partys
localmembership in Amazonas. It contained a description of
thestructure the local Apristas were to adhere to in
establishingthe party in Amazonas.
Regarded as being of only passing interest when itwas first
seized, the document had been filed away in thearchive of the
prefecture, where it had languished eversince. Faced with political
crisis in 1949, however, the pre-fect came to regard it as an
absolutely key piece of intelli-gence, for it appeared to answer
many of the governmentsmost pressing questions about APRA.
Furthermore, it did soin a way that confirmed the authorities worst
fears aboutthe enemy they faced.
Organizacion del Comite Provincial provided a de-tailed
description of APRAs underground party apparatus,and the prefect
asked that all those who received it reviewthe document with care
so that they would know what theywere up againstand alsowhat to
look for as they did battlewith the party. According to this
document, APRAs struc-ture was, indeed, extensive and elaborate. It
took the formof a nested hierarchy of cells. In some senses, the
structureof the party mimicked that of the state, for it
reproducedthe national territorial grid. Thus, (in theory) APRA
cells orcommittees had been established in each district,
province,and department in Peru and a national committee oversawthe
country as awhole. As Organizacion del Comite Provin-cial made
clear, however, the actual makeup of these cells,their manner of
operation, and the powers and responsibil-ities allotted to the
members of each reflected a degree ofspecialization and
differentiation that went far beyond thatof the formal state
apparatus.
APRA, it appeared, had organized itself into a seriesof
secretariats or ministries. In addition to a general sec-retariat,
there were also Ministries of the Interior, Defense,Organization,
Information, Economy, Discipline, Social As-sistance, and Peasant
and Indigenous Affairs. Some of thesewere further divided into
subsecretariats. The Ministry of
Information, for example, was divided into Subsecretariatsof the
Press, Mural Propaganda, and Culture and Sports.36
As these names suggested, each ministry was responsiblefor
attending to the affairs of particular subgroups or ac-tivities.
Furthermore, the prerogatives and responsibilitiesof each
secretariat were carefully spelled out. As Organi-zacion del Comite
Provincial explained, this meant thatparty secretaries were to be
on hand to provide people withkey services that they otherwise
lackedmedical care, legalhelp, occasional financial assistance, and
advice about howto deal with abusive political officials.
By drawing on this party structure, it seemed, APRAhad sought to
involve itself directly in the everyday lives ofthe
populationdespite being forced to operate in secret,beyond the gaze
of the legally constituted authorities. In-deed, according to
Organizacion del Comite Provincial,the party was to establish
secretaries for as many of its min-istries as possible in every
cell in the country, whether in aremote rural district or a large
urban center. This, in turn,suggested that the bureaucracy that the
party had gener-ated was considerably thicker than that of the
formal stateapparatus, whose representatives were sparsely
scatteredabout the national territory.
Organizacion del Comite Provincial provided the au-thorities
with something they desperately neededa kindof blueprint that
allowed them to imagine the contours oftheir underground adversary.
That they felt compelled torely on this document to provide
themwith such a blueprintreveals just how deep a crisis of
knowledge they were in. Asnoted above, between 1945 and 1948, the
Party of the Peo-ple had been entirely legal and had conducted most
of itsactivities out in the open. During this period, the partys
or-ganizational structure had been visible for all to see. Just
sixmonths into General Odras war on APRA, however, gov-ernment
authorities in Chachapoyas had come to believethat they could not
trust what they thought they knew aboutthe party, that APRAs public
presentation of self was not tobe taken at face value. Only a
document