Peru's Population: The historical evolution of discriminations and privileges

Authors

• Martina Neuburger Universidade de Santa Cruz do Sul/Santa Cruz do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil.
• Katrin Singer

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17058/redes.v23i1.11585

Abstract

The social and population structure of Peru is highly diverse and can only be understood via the emergence of social structures and the interdependence of socio-political processes in various spatial and temporal dimensions. The hierarchies already established within the Inca society were not broken during colonial times, but reproduced by the Spanish crown and superimposed with their own power structures. The systems of the feudal society, with serfdom and slavery, continue to have an effect today. The hierarchical relations between the different ethnosocial groups retain their potency via various forms of discrimination and racism in terms of access to land and income, education and social acceptance. By looking at two case studies, this essay identifies typical social structuring dynamics as the result of unequal power structures and postcolonial circumstances. The first example focuses on the Callejón de Huaylas in Ancash Department and the mechanisms of discrimination suffered by the rural Andean population in particular. The second example concentrates on the formerly German-Tyrolean settlement of Pozuzo in Pasco Department, where the European-origin population, as a privileged group, reconstructs its migrant identity as powerful, thus denying other attributions or hybridities. In both case studies ethnic attributions play an important role as differentiation category and legitimation strategy for the emergence of the presented inequalities.