Encyclopedia of the Incas

combined archival research with visits to archaeological sites. Garcilaso retained
his popularity among historians such as William Prescott, who, in his Conquest
of Peru (1847) characterized the Inca government as mildly despotic.
Given the utopian nature of Garcilaso’s chronicle, other writers of the mid-to-
late^ nineteenth century saw similarities between the Inca Empire and real or
imagined socialist states. The Peruvian intellectual José Carlos Mariátegui even
applied this idea to contemporary Peruvian politics, asserting that this form of
organization was deeply rooted in the Andean past.
Ideas like those espoused by Mariátegui underlay the emergence in the
twentieth century of the Indigenista movement, which celebrated and promoted
indigenous values and styles in art, literature, politics, and the social sciences.
Anthropology in Peru and in other Andean countries was born under the
influence of Indigenismo. Because this movement blamed the large land-owners
for the poverty of the Indians, the idea of agrarian reform became pervasive,
spurred on in part by guerrilla movements promoted by Cuba. President
Fernando Belaúnde Terry made a minor attempt at agrarian reform during his
first administration, but he was ousted in 1968 in a military coup d’etat led by
General Juan Velasco Alvarado.
The Velasco regime initiated a more radical agrarian reform than that
envisioned by Belaúnde, disenfranchising virtually completely the agrarian
aristocracy whose power rested on enormous land holdings. Together with
agrarian reform, many other reforms were carried out that increased state control
of production and labor. Nationalism played a dominant role in this movement,
supported by images derived from historical and mythic Indian figures, such as
Túpac Amaru II and Inkarrí. In tune with such sentiments in support of
indigenous peoples—who were now officially designated campesinos (peasants)
by the Velasco administration—Quechua, the lingua franca of the Inca Empire,
was made an official language of Peru.
As the decades passed, many of the reforms carried out during the 1970s
proved to be ineffective in dealing with the changes taking place in Peru and the
world. By the mid-1990s, neoliberalism had begun to replace socialism. Many
agricultural cooperatives founded during the Velasco regime were dismantled
and the associates were given the opportunity to privatize small parcels of land.
When Alejandro Toledo came to power as president of Peru, in 2001, symbols
associated with Tahuantinsuyu were resurrected. Toledo was sworn-in as
president not only in Congress, but also at Machu Picchu.