THE MORALITY OF MODERNITY AND THE TRAVAILS OF TRADITION - NATIONHOOD AND THE SUBALTERN IN NORTHERN PERU

This paper examines the process by which the Peruvian nation-state con solidated control in Chachapoyas, a peripheral section of the national space in the northern sierra. The focus is on a key period of state e xpansion, circa 1930, when subaltern groups coalesced into a broad pol itical movement that seized power from the local elite. This movement: (1) eliminated racial designations from pubic discourse; (2) subsumed them within a national order of moral classification based on notions of citizenship and nationhood; and (3) embraced the cultural values o f modernity and the institutions of the nation-state. Subaltern groups embraced modernity and nationhood as powerful forces of emancipation due to historical peculiarities of postcolonial Peru. Prior to 1930 lo cal elite groups strongly wedded to notions of aristocratic sovereignt y and inherent racial difference used the local apparatus of state to reproduce privilege and inequality. Subaltern groups responded by maki ng common cause among racial groups denigrated within the cultural log ic of aristocratic sovereignty, by combining all into a single non-rac ial category (el pueblo, or 'the people') derived from the rhetoric of popular sovereignty, and by appealing to the central state to establi sh the strong institutional presence necessary to safeguard the consti tutional rights and protections of el pueblo.