In Peru, there’s a book that speaks of indigenous legends where people rose up against feudal

lords, made offerings to the Inkan gods, professed a coming Indian renaissance but also a sun
covered in blood. Called the gospel of Indigenismo by some, it holds stories and prophecies that
told of Peru becoming an Indigenous country again. And this Indigenous gospel has defined
Peruvian identity for almost a century. This book is titled “Tempestad en los andes”. And it is no
ancient book; it was published just a century ago in 1927.

The author of this book is Luis E. Valcarcel. Born on Febuary 8th 1891, in Ilo district,
Moquegua, Valcarcel’s family would move to the city of Cusco in 1892 where he would then
attend the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad and study the Inkas and agrarian policy in
Peru. His education and activist work would connect him early-on to the Associación Pro-
Indigena, a humanitarian organization in Lima dedicated to protecting Indigenous legal rights.
He would then found, with other Cusqueño intellectuals, ”el grupo Resurgimiento” which was
dedicated to grassroots organizing in the cusqueño countryside under the ideas of the time:
Indigenismo, Socialism, aned Inkaismo. His scholarly and organizing work has gotten him
included in “La Escuela Cusqueña”, an informal title for the Indigenista scholars that permeated
Cusco like Jose Uriel Garcia, Luis Felipe Aguilar Paez, and Roberto Latorre Medina. In unlucky
twists of fate, Valcarcel would be arrested for a few months in 1927 for a prophetic speech he
would give in Arequipa, after which he would begin recede more towards scholarly work. And in
1930, the Socialist intellectual and close friend of Valcárcel, Jose Carlos Mariátegui, would die,
leaving Valcárcel marginalized by the ensuing political infighting and the then imposed Soviet
style orthodoxy. He would then go on to write 13 more books, hold high national academic
positions, and become the father of Peruvian anthropology. He then passed away in 1980 at the
old age of 96.

In his long life, Valcárcel’s guiding ideology would forever be Indigenismo, of which he
was on the most radical end. Indigenismo was the Latin American movement that sought to
reclaim Indigenous culture to integrate Indigenous peoples and create authentic forms of
nationhood.
In the early 20th century, the Peruvian elite either heavily romanticized old Spanish
culture, or festishized high French and coroporate American cultures. The Indigenistas criticized
the Latin American elite’s fixation on copying European culture because it stagnated art,
philosophy, social inclusion, and even economic development. In essence, this neo-colonial elite
betrayed the ideals of Latin American Independence to politically and culturally separate from
the Spanish empire. In the face of this, the indigenistas insisted on breaking with this
postcolonial colonial culture, to varying results in each country. And for the Indigenistas in Peru,
it was to primarily look back to the Inka civilization and, only occasionally, to the living
principles in the Quechua communities, known as ayllus, in the mountain countryside.

The book is divided into eleven main sections, each composed of a different genre from
essay to myth to narrative, aphorism to speech and more. Rather than pin the book down to one
genre, it is important to recognize the the radical injection that Valcarcel makes in Andean
literature. And true to his multi-layered writing, Valcarcel was influenced as much by European
philosophers and historians as the Latin American Indigenistas and his own anthropological
work on the Inkas. Some of these Europe, he was influenced by were Hippolyte Taine, Oswald
Spengler, Ludwig Gumplowicz, and Vladamir Lenin. And from Latin America, his influences
were the Peruvian writers José Carlos Mariátegui and Frederico More, José Vasconcelos from
Mexico, and Franz Tamayo from Bolivia.

One of the most important themes in Tempestad en los andes is the division between
Cusco and Lima. Following the assasination of Atauhaullpa, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro
travelled around the north of Tawantinsuyu and would found the new costal capital of Lima in
1535. Even after independence, Peru centralized power in Lima where industry and politics
would be syphoned from the “provincias” to Lima. This has led to theories of a Peruvian Internal
Colonialism, where inside Peru, a White Lima en la costa has a colonial relationship towards the
Indigenous and Mestizo “provincias” en la sierra. The book that influenced Valcarcel in this
matter was Federico More’s Lima contra Chile, Peru, y Bolivia. Alongside excoriating Lima’s
highly disproportionate power, More glorified the Andean mountains as the true seat of Peruvian
nationhood and culture. He would even go on to say

“Ser peruano es sinónimo de ser antilimeño, ser limeño es antítesis de ser

americano”

“To be Peruvian is synonymous to being anti-limeño. To be Limeño is the

antithesis to being American”

[Americano/America = the continent of the americas]. Valcarcel would narrow this to Cusco as
the embodiment of la sierra because of its history as the former Inkan capital.
This division was done in binary terms wher Cusco is the Indigenous, the historical, and
~~the masculine~~ and Lima is the colonial, the foreign, and ~~the feminine~~ (~~ooofff~~).
One of the problems of “Tempestad en los andes” is the uncritical acceptance of partiarchy and
machismo. The dominance of the masculine over the feminine is itself a colonial imposition
from spain, since the incas have a gender system based on reciprocity. While the
masculine/feminine binary is wrong, Lima’s image of itself as European and colonial is true.
Lima’s creation on the coast was strategic, since it allowed greater acess to international trade
and cultural imports from Spain. And during Indigenous uprisings, Lima has always been the
refuge for the white elite in the provinces to escape to. In contrast, Cusco has the unique identity
as the old Inca capital and has high repute with the native Quechua and even the White–Mestizo
elites who often assimilate themselves to Indigenous cusqueño culture.

Another main theme is the creation of new Andean myths to impel an Indigenous-led
Decolonization, moving power away from both Lima and the White corporate elite.
Decolonization, very simplistically, is the native people taking back control of the land and the
political power of their colonized country, so as to dismantle the political, economic, and social
institutions established by the colonizing power. As is the case, the Quechua and Aymara aren’t
Westerners, they have their own distinct forms of reasoning that is based on myths and collective
memory, and the majority don’t even speak Spanish. As such, Valcarcel ardently rejected most
European political ideas as incapable of speaking to Indigenous peoples.
One of the ideas he did accept, however, was Marxism. Valcarcel would be influenced by
the amauta José Carlos Mariátegui, the philosopher who brought Marxism to Peru and said that
Peruvian Marxism had to look back to the Inkas, rather than to the Soviet Union, as an model of
Communism constructed that could speak to the Quechua. In the 1920s, Peru’s economy was a
mix between growing capitalist industries in the cities and the established feudalism in the
countryside, known as gamonalismo. Under gamonalismo, Indigenous peasants lived as serfs to
the gamonales, who were authoritarian landlords who would own entire villages. What both
Valcárcel and Mariátegui agreed on was that the working class is deeply racialized with an
Indigenous peasant class who had its lands stolen by a White and Mestizo landholding class.
Many of the gamonales had titles since the beginning of Spanish colonialism, and other gained
them after Independence. And what both of them agreed on was that Peru could not be a true
nation unless gamonalismo was abolished and the land went back to the Indigenous peoples.
In the chapter “El problema indígena?”, Valcárcel reprints the speech he gave in
Arequipa that would then get him arrested. In the speech, he expressed his hope in the “New
Indian” of the 1920s, living in a Peru that was industrializing and globalizing. The symbol of the
New Indian also included a Messiah figure who would lead the Quechua and Aymara masses
like an Andean Spartacus. Influeced by Marxism, the Indigenous masses for Valcarcel became
the “Andean Proletariat,” and this Indigenous proletariat “sought its Lenin”. This didn’t mean he
wanted Lenin or any other European leader to swoop in and liberate Peru. Rather, the Indian
Proletariat would give birth to its own leader from the Indigenous countryside, give up social
vices such as alcoholism and submissiveness, and abolish the gamonales and have an
Indigenous-led government.
However, Valcarcel gave a prophetic view of a clash between the Indigenous and neo-
colonial elite and its institutions. In the section titled “El sol de sangre”, Valcárcel talks of a time
in the Andes where so much blood would be spilled, the sun itself would be tainted red and
purple. This is the myth of “Yawar Inti” or “The Blood Sun.” This Decolonization would be an
apocalyptic war between the Indigenous masses against the the colonial insitutions and it
preceded ideas such as those written by Franz Fanon by 34 years. In the middle would be the the
Mestizos, or mixed Indigenous-White Andeans, many of whome believe that they are no longer
Indigenous and closer to the colonial white elite because they’ve taken up European culture for
themselves. At one point, Valcarcel appeals to them by saying:

“Volved a la razón hombres de los dos mundos, Tú hombre “blanco”, mestizo

indefinible, contagiado de la soberbía europea, tu presunción de “civilizado” te
pierde. No confíes en las bocas inánimes de tus cañones y de tus fusiles de acero.
No te enorgullezcas de tu maquinaria que puede fallar.” (Read the Spanish)

“Return to reason men of two worlds. You, “white man”, undefiniable mestizo,
infected with European arrogance. You lose yourself at the presumption of being
“civilized”. Do not trust the in the lifeless steel mouths of your canons and rifles.
Do not pride yourself on your machinery which can always fail.”

But when will this extreme violence occur? ~~Btw Content Warning~~ It has been
argued as some writers have (like the little footnotes in here) that the prolonged violence had
already arrived with the internal war between Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian military from
1980 to 2000. In that 20 year civil war, a maoist insurgency revolted in Ayacucho, declaring the
presidential elections were illegitimate and only armed struggle could liberate Peru’s poor. Their
main areas of support came from the Indigenous peoples and poor Mestizos of the departments
of Ayacucho, Apurímac, and Huancavelica, whose support they gained by publically executing
corrupt local politicians and landlords in the Andean countryside. However, as the war moved
on, the Shining Path has developed a cult of violence against the majority non-Senderista
Indigenous population. Some of the worst instances resulted in the 1983 Lucanamarca massacre
where 63 Quechuas were ruthlessly killed, and in a 1993 massacre, 72 Ashaninkas and
Nomatsiguengas were killed across 8 communities in la valle de Tsiriari. The Peruvian army is
nowhere near blameless either, committing massacres such as that of Accomarca where 69
Quechuas were tortued and murdered, literally erasing a whole village off the map of Ayacucho.
According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report following the war, over 70
thousand Pervians had died, the majority of which were Indigenous peasants.
What was obvious was that both the Peruvian army and Sendero Luminoso had instituted
colonial tactics against Indigenous peoples, while each claiming to represent their best interests,
raising a sun of blood that continued 500 years of ongoing conquest.

Despite such dark prophecies, Valcárcel is described as an optimist, seeing the return of
Indigenous Andean culture as inevitable and it bringing a golden age as the Inka civilization had
once done. In his chapter “Ideario”, he opens up his radical Indigenista ideology saying “De los
Andes Irradirá otra vez la cultura”. The whole chapter is a list of proverbs and aphorisms based
on the Andean worldview and his own philosophical study. On one hand, he glorifies the
landscape for its natural beauty and the traditional deities, like the sun, the earth, and the
mountains as beings that the Quechuas show genuine love towards. Likewise, he sees the
introduction of European technology as part of Indigenous life. During the Inkan period, the
Indigenous peoples built architectural feats like stone acqueducts and the stone fortress of
Sacsayhuamán. And during the Republican period, they built the bridges, railroads, and worked
the machinery of the mines and factories alike. Though Valcárcel calls for the return to an
agarian Peru, he isn’t demanding the end to the car or the lightbulb. What he says is

“Podemos vivir en abudnancia y bienestar. No nos torturaban abismantes

inquietudes. La tierra excede, prolifíca y maternal, a nuestra necesidades
presentes y futuras” (204).

“We can live with abundance and wellbeing. We were not tortured by abysmal
worries. The land is surpasses, prolific and maternal, to our needs both present
and future.”

The ultimate purpose of “ideario” is to show how his Indigenismo places hope in an
Indigenous-led movement as a true expression of Peruvian culture against the neo-colonial
culture of the Spanish descendent elites. That is why Valcárcel declares Peru to be Indian,
Indigenous, Inka, Quechua-Aymara. It isn’t a far off declaration, however. People have names
like Flores and Espejo which are just translations of the quechua words T’ika and Q’espi, or they
have names like Condori, Mamani, and Choquehuanca. Places are named Apu-Rímac, Qanchis,
or Colquemarca that come from both Quechua and Aymara. And there are at least 8 million
speakers of Quechua with the majority of them still in Peru. And yet, this isn’t even accounting
for food. In these ways, Peru never stopped being Indigneous. But, with the history of
gamonalismo, and modern problems such industrial mining which displaces whole villages,
widespread proverty and illiteracy, language discrimination, and a lack of Indian representation,
Peru is still very far from realizing the ideals of Valcárcel’s Indigenous gospel.
 “Tempestad en los andes” has been the subject of sparse academic intrigue in Peru for
almost 100 years and it is still widely forgotten in Peruvian memory, and not yet translated to
English like many Peruvians texts. And this has been to the harm of understanding Quechua and
Aymara study across the western hemisphere. Many other sociological predictions-turned-
prophecies Valcarcel made would also come to pass later rather than in the immediate future that
he had believed. The taking back of land and abolishment of gamonlismo occurred with the Land
Reform act of 1969 under Gral. Juan Velasco Alvarado, and only after the tireless efforts of
Indigenous unionization by Quechuas such as Saturnino Huillca. And the re-indianization of
Peru would occur slowly and peacefully rather than as a violent army descending from the
mountains upon the capital. Nonetheless, it seems that Indians moving into the city would
become his greatest hope for Valcarcel’s Indian Decolonization. In the prologue to the second
edition of the book (1972), Valcarcel calims that the last bastion of colonialism was taken. A
million Indians had descended down the mountains and had taken the capital, without,
lightening, thunder, or arms. As the consciousness of Indigenismo had arrives in the 20s, so too
did the people arrive as “a thief in the night” would, mirroring the opening chapter of the book.

Chayqa, Tayta Inti paqarimuqtin, Inkaq churinmi, llapanku aswan hatun

llaqtapi tiyamurparinku!

(TRANS: Then, as the sun rose, all the children of the Inkas, had suddenly settled
in the capital city)

The Cholos and their Indian parents had become the Tempest of the Andes, arrived to Lima; now
moving on the inside.

And in the prologue for the book “La Revolución India”, Valcárcel had done what
Mariátegui had done for him by writing his prologue 4 decades earlier, this time for a true Indian
intellectual from Bolivia, Fausto Reinaga. Valcárcel had declared “La Revolución India” as a
prophectic call to Decolonization. With the rise of a new Indigenous intelligentsia with Fausto
Reinaga and the Indianization of Lima, Valcárcel said:

“Los antiindios se burlaron; pero ahora, lloran inconsolables la indianzación de su

Arcadia. La Revolución India está en marcha.”

“The antiindians mocked, but now wail inconsolably at the indinization of their
Arcadia. The Indian Revolution is marching forward.”

In times like these, such prophecies are only true when the acts behind them make them so. And
that is the epic tale of the Indigenista bible of Peru.