A Case of Neo-Feudalism: La Convención, Peru

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Abstract
The province of La Convención, department of Cuzco, in Peru became familiar to citizens of the outside world in the early 1960s, when it was the scene of the most important peasant movement of that period in Peru, and probably in the whole of South America. This might legitimately attract the attention of the social historian. At the same time La Convención is a special version of a more general phenomenon, which ought also to interest the economic historian. It is ‘frontier territory’ in the American sense of the word, i.e. it belongs to the large zone of undeveloped land on the eastern edge of the Andes (the western edge of the Amazon basin) which has come under settlement and cultivation in recent decades, mainly for the cultivation of cash crops for the world market, but also for other economic purposes. Along the Andean slopes there are a number of such regions, into which, in their different ways, landlords and entrepreneurs penetrate with estates and trade, peasants in search of land and freedom. Mostly they are Indian peasants from the highlands, and the socio-economic background of the sierra and altiplano determines to some extent the forms of the new economy which take shape on the semi-tropical and tropical eastern slopes. These vary considerably, as we can tell by the various available monographs.

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