Nugent. States and Secrecy

DAVID NUGENTEmory University

States, secrecy, subversives:APRA and political fantasy in mid-20th-century Peru

A B S T R A C TDuring the regime of Manuel Odra (194856), stateofficials in the northern Peruvian Andes came tobelieve that their efforts to govern were beingsystematically thwarted by APRA, an outlawedpolitical party forced underground by governmentrepression. Officials concluded that the party hadelaborated a subterranean political apparatus ofremarkable scope and power, one that was largelyinvisible to the naked eye. I draw on officials fearsof a dark and dangerous counterstate tocross-examine the literature on state formation.State theory has been predicated on theinevitability of state power, which makes it difficultto account for state crisis and also to grasp thehighly contingent nature of successful efforts torule. Much can be learned about state formation byexamining moments in which political rule falters orfails, for it is then that the lineaments of power andcontrol that otherwise remain masked becomevisible. [state formation, secrecy, APRA, Peru, crisis]

In this work, I am concerned with the forces that variously promoteor undermine state formationwhich I take to be a cultural pro-cess, rooted in violence, that seeks to normalize and legitimize theorganized political subjection of large-scale societies. My approachto this problem is somewhat unconventional: I find it useful to ana-

lyze the formation of states through the lens of crisis. Although many au-thors acknowledge the fragility of rule and the contingency of state forms(Roseberry 1994; Sayer 1994),most analysts of the state concern themselveswith contexts in which organized political subjection has in some sensebeen accomplished (cf. Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Ferguson andGupta 2002;Hansen and Stepputat 2001; Joseph and Nugent 1994; Scott 1998). Theirmain concern is with the formation and the operation of functioningpolities.1

As will become apparent in the pages that follow, I have benefited enor-mously from this body of work and draw extensively on its insights. Indeed,it would be difficult to overstate the importance of this scholarship, eitherto the present analysis or to the study of the state more generally. Even so,I argue that much can also be learned about state formation by examin-ing contexts in which political rule falters or fails, for it is, arguably, duringthese moments that the lineaments of power and control that otherwiseremain masked become visible. One of my central goals in this work is toseize on thesemoments of transparency to try to see the state differently byexamining failed efforts to normalize and legitimize political rule.

My analysis is situated in a regional and national context wellsuited to the study of political crisis. I focus on Amazonasanagrarian region (and administrative department) in the northern Pe-ruvian Andescirca 1950. In this remote department, the regionalrepresentatives of the national government then in power (the mili-tary dictatorship of General Manuel Odra [194856]) sought to con-tain the threat posed by the Popular American Revolutionary Alliance(APRA), a radical political party with broad support among the gen-eral population. For reasons I discuss below, during the Odra dicta-torship, Amazonas experienced what government officials considered to

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 681702, ISSN 0094-0496, onlineISSN 1548-1425. C 2010 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01278.x

American Ethnologist Volume 37 Number 4 November 2010

be a crisis of rule; the political authorities of this regioncame to view their regime as incapable of carrying out eventhe most basic of government functions. They were beingprevented fromdoing so, they believed, by APRAthe partythat they themselves had forced underground by means ofthe most brutal repression. In accounting for the failure oftheir own efforts to govern, officials attributed to APRA asubterranean party apparatus with all the powers of statethat their own regime lackedand then some. Indeed, thepolitical authorities came to view their administration as apale imitation of a sophisticated, complex state structure lo-cated somewhere deep underground. Although they couldnot actually see the subterranean party state to which theyattributed such power and influence, they were certain itwas there. But because APRA insisted on remaining hiddenfrom viewon remaining precisely where government of-ficials had left itthe authorities could not actually find it.As a result, they were left to imagine the contours of theirinvisible enemy.

Analyzing the relationship between the crisis of rulethat the political authorities experienced during the Odradictatorship and their projection of a dark and dangerouscounterstate that was largely invisible to the naked eye ismy second goal in this article. In so doing, I engage thescholarly literature that regards the state as a mystifica-tion, a fetish, an effect of more fundamental sociopoliticalforces (Abrams 1988; Aretxaga 2003; Coronil 1997; Mitchell1999; Taussig 1992; Trouillot 2001). My analysis differs fromexisting scholarship, however, in one respect. The major-ity of scholars agree that the state effect has no specific ornecessary institutional referent and focus instead on re-orderings of time, space, personhood, and sociality thatnormalize and legitimize political rule (Stoler 2002). Inmost work on the state effect, it is nonetheless clear thatinstitutional processes with the ability to coerce and com-pel are centrally involved in this process of reordering. Inthe case I discuss here, however, it is not the presence butthe absence, or rather the breakdown, of coercive institu-tional processes that forms the context in which the (under-ground) state is conjured into being. Only as governmentofficials confront the failure of their own state do they imag-ine another into existenceone far more powerful thantheirs, lying hidden, deep beneath the surface, menacingthe existing order of things.

I first discuss the significance of the developmentsoutlined here for the broader literature on states andstate formation. I then turn to a more detailed consid-eration of the processes that generated Peruvian author-ities conviction that their regime had been put at graverisk by a dangerous, malevolent shadow state. I focusmy analysis on two crisesof power/knowledge and ofperformance/representationthat formed the context inwhich people sought to make sense of what was going onaround them.

State formation

In recent decades, a group of unusually insightful and in-fluential scholars in multiple disciplines have devoted theirenergies to understanding the peculiar nature of that col-lective illusion known as the state.2 The overwhelmingemphasis of their research has been on understanding howstates work their magic (cf. Coronil 1997; Taussig 1997)on understanding the processes by which states come tobe accepted as real, powerful, and all-pervasive elementsof the social world. The Great Arch: English State Formationas Cultural Revolution, by historical sociologists Philip Cor-rigan and Derek Sayer (1985), is among the most sophisti-cated and influential works to grapple with this problem. AsMax Weber did before them (cf. 1960), Corrigan and Sayer(1985:7) emphasize that the state is not a thing but, rather,a claim to authority, to legitimacy. As such, it is not only ameans by which one group of people subjugate another butalso a process by which they seek to conceal that they havedone so. This process of concealment, Corrigan and Sayerargue, is deeply cultural. It relies on what they call moralregulation:

Out of the vast range of human social capacitiespossible ways in which social life could be livedstateactivities more or less forcibly encourage some whilesuppressing,marginalizing, eroding, undermining oth-ers . . . We call this moral regulation: a project of nor-malizing, rendering natural, taken for granted, in aword obvious, what are in fact ontological and episte-mological premises of a particular . . . form of social or-der. [Corrigan and Sayer 1985:4; see also Corrigan 1981]

State claims to authority and legitimacy are, indeed,grounded in culture, Corrigan and Sayer suggest, but theyare violent claims nonetheless. Only by systematically un-dermining and delegitimating alternative constructions ofmorality and society can states aspire to make their own as-sertions collectively shared (or at least tolerated). Corriganand Sayer (1985:6) thus invoke Emile Durkheims notion ofa collective conscience, but they anchor his conception inpoliticsin struggles over conflicting moral visions of so-ciocultural order.

Although Corrigan and Sayer acknowledge that controlof themeans of physical violence plays a crucial role in stateformation, in The Great Arch they emphasize the immensematerial weight given to . . . cultural forms by the . . . rou-tines and rituals of state (1985:5). In other words, the abil-ity to regulate the moral domain is critically dependent onthe iterative dimension to state activities. As they put it,

States, if the pun be forgiven, state; the arcane ritualsof a court of law, the formulae of royal assent to an Actof Parliament, visits of school inspectors are all state-ments. They define, in great detail, acceptable forms

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States, secrecy, subversives American Ethnologist

and images of social activity and individual and col-lective identity; they regulate, in empirically specifi-able ways . . . very much . . . of social life. Indeed, inthis sense the State never stops talking. [Corrigan andSayer 1985:3]

Through its capacity to state, the state seeks to establish it-self as the sole, legitimate authority and ultimate arbiter re-garding what may be considered true, proper, acceptable,and desirable (Corrigan and Sayer 1985:10; see also Bour-dieu 1999). To the extent that they become authoritative,Corrigan and Sayer (1985:10) suggest, the states unendingiterative productionsits everyday bureaucratic routines,its formulaic documentary practices, and its magnificentpublic ritualsestablish for it a seemingly neutral, objec-tive vantage point that stands above or outside the so-cial order, watching, preserving, safeguarding.3

In The Great Arch, Corrigan and Sayer seek to under-stand long-term continuities in the forms and rituals ofruleto grasp how (peculiarly English) state forms endureover a period of centuries. Other scholars have also shownan equally strong interest in the cultural dimensions topolitical legitimation in state contexts. They too have in-vestigated the role of iterative practicesfrom the imple-mentation of routine, bureaucratic procedures (Herzfeld1992) to the production and circulation of official govern-ment discourse (Navaro-Yashin 2007; Trouillot 2001) andthe staging of elaborate political performance (Kapferer1988; Taylor 1997)in establishing the authority of the stateand in generating state effects. Anthropologists, in partic-ular, have tended to focus on ethnographically observabledimensions to the processes by which states come to be ac-cepted as real.

The work of James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta offersa case in point. In an exemplary article entitled, Spatial-izing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Gov-ernmentality (2002), Ferguson and Gupta offer a fasci-nating analysis of hitherto unappreciated aspects of stateformation. Arguing that the scholarly literature has not at-tended sufficiently to the ways that states come to be imag-ined, they ask, How is it that people come to experiencethe state as an entity with certain spatial characteristicsand properties? Through what images, metaphors, and rep-resentational practices does the state come to be under-stood as a concrete, overarching, spatially encompassingreality? Through specific sets of metaphors and practices,states represent themselves as reified entities (Fergusonand Gupta 2002:981982). Among the most important ofthese metaphors, they suggest, are verticality (the ideathat the state is above society) and encompassment (thenotion that the state encompasses many localities).4 Toconvey how the state comes to be imagined as above andbeyond, Ferguson and Gupta present a fine-grained, thickdescription and analysis of everyday bureaucratic routine

the mundane practices [that] often slip below the thresh-old of discursivity, but profoundly alter how bodies are ori-ented, how lives are lived, and how subjects are formed(2002:984). They show how verticality and encompassmentare reproduced in the course of peoples ordinary encoun-ters with state administration. Like Corrigan and Sayer,they are ultimately concerned with how the processes theyidentify contribute to the legitimation of rulehow theseprocesses help states secure their legitimacy . . . natural-ize their authority . . . and represent themselves as superiorto, and encompassing of, other institutions and centers ofpower (Ferguson and Gupta 2002:982).

Other scholars concerned with how states come to beimagined as natural and real parts of the social environ-ment have focused more directly on the role of discur-sive practices. A case in point is Yael Navaro-Yashin (2007),who builds on Corrigan and Sayers notion of moral reg-ulation to consider the ways in which states structure af-fect (see also Stoler 2002). Noting that state-like structuresmake themselves evident to the persons who inhabit theirdomains in the form of materialities (2007:94)and thatdocuments are among the primary paraphernalia of mod-ern states . . . are its material culture (2007:84)Navaro-Yashin explores the role of official documentary practices instatecraft.5 The document (or letter), she observes, is anemblematic site for the operation of . . . statecraft (Navaro-Yashin 2007:84). This is because papers, especially writtenand official documentation bear the symbolism of perma-nence . . . Printed, handwritten, and/or signed documenta-tion carries the image of proof, stability and durability. Inmost legal transactions . . . documents which include writ-ing in them are reference for truth or authenticity (Navaro-Yashin 2007:84).

Among the ways that states never stop talking (cf.Corrigan and Sayer) is through their endless production andcirculation of documents. Navaro-Yashin shows how peo-ples everyday encounters with the entire domain of officialdocumentary practicesnot only identity cards and pass-ports but also drivers licenses, gas bills, and parking permitremindersplay a crucial role in conjuring the state intobeing. These encounters, she argues, confront people withwhat appears to be a real, durable, all-pervasive structure ofsurveillance and regulationone that threatens to intrudeitself on them at any time. Indeed, so powerful is the auraof authenticity and the implicit demand for accountabilityembodied in these documents that they have the ability togenerate themost intense forms of affect, especially amongthose living in the margins of the state. Official state doc-uments, Navaro-Yashin argues, act as state fetishes.6 Theyare phantasmatic objects with affective energies which areexperienced as real (Navaro-Yashin 2007:81). How impor-tant are official documentary practices to the crafting ofstates? If documents seem more benign than the police,I would argue that from the point of view of the affects

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they generate amongst those who deal with them, espe-cially frommarginal positions, they are not (Navaro-Yashin2007:83).

Other scholars have focused more systematically onthe role of fantasy and performance in constructing statesas real, powerful, and all-pervasive elements of the socialworld. Among the most influential to explore these realmsis Diana Taylor, in her book Disappearing Acts: Spectaclesof Gender and Nationalism in Argentinas Dirty War (1997).Taylors original and penetrating analysis draws on perfor-mance theory to show how the armed forces transformedArgentina into a vast theater of operations for the cleans-ing of the social body and the formation of the state. Shefocuses, in particular, on the militarys violent reorganiza-tion of the visible and invisible realms of Argentine society.The assault on the former sought to make public and pri-vate space available for inspection, as it were, to make itwholly transparent to the military gaze. The armed forcesemployed strategies intended to convey to the general pop-ulation the existence of a general state of surveillance fromwhich citizens could not escapemuch like Jeremy Ben-thams Panopticon (Taylor 1997:96). From this all-seeingvantage point, the military sought to rid society of the vari-ous social ills that plagued it.

The armed forces also sought to demonstrate theirmastery over the invisible realmsaid to have been peo-pled by dangerous subversives who posed a dire threat tothe social body. Members of the armed forces wore dis-guises, carried volumes by Marx and Freud [to masquer-ade as intellectuals], and penetrated the hidden spacesassociatedwith subversion (Taylor 1997:97).Military forcesdidmore, however, than simply penetrate the underground.They also appropriated it. The armed forces establishedan entire series of secret detention centers and concen-tration camps, where the most horrific forms of torturewere carried out. These centers came to be inhabited bythose detained in carefully staged public exhibitions ofpowerneighborhood sweeps, house-to-house searches,and spectacular public kidnappings. Detainees subse-quently reappeared in publicin the form of horribly mu-tilated corpsesleaving no doubt about the armed forcestotal mastery of the visible and invisible realms alike.

Taylor brilliantly shows how fear is made to em-anate through the public sphere, rippling through newspa-per headlines, magazine covers, films, ads and TV spots(1997:x). In her analysis, it is terrorand its ability to pro-duce observed and felt effectsthat connects widely sep-arated and disparate events, scenes, and discourses, inte-grating them into a single, overarching presence. Terror isthus the force that animates the state, the force that makesit seem (monstrously) real and foreboding. Although clearlynot accepted as legitimate, the stateand its new social to-pography, its new definitions of citizenship, its new hierar-

chical levelsis nonetheless regarded as frighteningly andirrationally present.

In a now-famous article, Philip Abrams argues thatthe state is not the reality which stands behind the maskof political practice. It is itself the mask which preventsour seeing political practice as it is (1988:58). The path-breaking scholarship discussed above may be thought of asrevealing the complex processes by which that mask ismade and remade. Important though this work is, here Iexplore a different issue. I examine what transpires whenthe mask of the state is unmade. My interest is in the pro-cesses responsible for the dissipation of the magic of thestate (Coronil 1997; Taussig 1997): for the erosion in au-thenticity of its discursive products (Navaro-Yashin 2007),the emptiness of its performances, and the hollowness of itsproclamations (Taylor 1997). My concern is with the statesfailure to separate itself from society, with its inability tomaintain clear and discrete hierarchical levels (Ferguson2004; Mitchell 1999), with the breakdown of verticality andencompassment effects (Ferguson andGupta 2002), with itsinability to show its mastery over the visible or invisible do-main (Taylor 1997).

In an important and insightful analysis, Begona Aretx-aga has argued that the state [does not] lose its mystify-ing power when it is unmasked as being an effect of powerrather than the unified agent it appeared to be (2000:43).Bringing to light the interiority of the state, she says,does not necessarily dispel its magical power (Aretxaga2000:43). To the contrary. Such revelations seem to augmentthemagic of the state by triggering an endless proliferationof discourses about the state in themost diverse areas of so-cial life (Aretxaga 2000:43).

It is, indeed, true that revelations concerning the mis-deeds, the corruption, the malfeasance of government of-ficials rarely demystify the state (cf. Masco 2010). This ishardly surprising, however, when one considers that themagic that the state performs does not operate at the levelof reflection and understanding. The state is not a creatureof thought but, rather, of experience and emotion (Aretx-aga 2003; Stoler 2002). People learn (or unlearn) the statethrough endless everyday encounters (cf. Joseph and Nu-gent 1994) with its institutions and personnel, with the formand content of official discourses, with carefully scriptedpublic performances, both great and small. Because theseare the domains in which the state is made, they must alsobe the realms in which it is unmade.

In the pages that follow, I present a case in which thestate is unmasked and does lose its mystifying power. Con-tra Aretxaga, I argue that what counts is the manner inwhich the state is unmasked and who does the unmasking.First, however, I provide background information about thebroader field of political and economic forces in which ef-forts at governance unfolded in mid-20th-century Peru.

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National and global context

Among the most interesting questions raised by the mid-20th-century crisis of rule in Amazonas is that concern-ing the conditions of possibility of state formationthepolitical, economic, and sociocultural conditions that var-iously enable or disable efforts to govern. State activitieseverywhere seek to order and discipline populations (thatmay or may not be coterminous with the spatial bound-aries of the polity) in relation to the extraction of wealthand the accumulation of capital. On the one hand, these or-dering activities are based on a classificatory discourse thatdifferentiates the population into subgroups (citizens, sub-versives, aliens, men, women, races, castes, etc.) and thatacts as a grid or template for deciding how resources, priv-ileges, rights, and obligations will be distributed. On theother hand, state ordering activities take place in the con-text of a broader field of interstate relations (which involverelations between regionally or globally hegemonic polities[like the United States] and their client states) and globalaccumulation practices (which undergo crises, reorganiza-tion, expansion, and contraction). This broader field hasmuch to dowith howeffectively a state is able to establish itsclassificatory grid authoritativelyand also themeans withwhich and the ends toward which it seeks to do so.

The mid-20th-century struggle between APRA andthe Peruvian government was the outgrowth of sweepingchanges in the global economy that dated from the secondindustrial revolution, the reorganization of capital that oc-curred in its wake, and the rising importance of the UnitedStates on the world scene. Beginning in the late 19th cen-tury, the crisis in and reorganization of North Atlantic capi-talism resulted in new laboring people, social doctrines, re-ligious dogmas, political ideologies, and investment capitalpouring into Peru at an unprecedented rate. At this samemoment, Peru was recovering from a prolonged period ofpolitical and economic turmoil and was seeking to reinte-grate itself into global circuits of commodity production.7

The result was the formation of a series of plantation en-claves along the Pacific coast and mining enclaves in theAndes Mountains, which were involved in export produc-tion for the world market.

From 1900 onward, Peru became increasingly depen-dent onU.S. capital, which flowed intomultiple branches ofthe national economy (petroleum, mining, textile produc-tion, railroads, and coastal agriculture). Peru also borrowedheavily during this period, and by 1929 the country owed$100 million to U.S. banks. These relationships deepenedPerus commitment to a path of export-led, world-market-driven development and away from any form of economicnationalism or efforts at autonomous internal growth.

By the time of the Great Depression (1929), uneven de-velopment had accentuated long-standing geographic di-visions within the national economy. Perus coastal desert

regionthe scene of large-scale agro-export activities andalso the location of the countrys largest citiesbecame themost dynamic sector of the economy, whereas its feudal-like sierra remained largely stagnant. This process of dif-ferentiation undermined a pre-Depression political alliancebetween the aristocratic elites of the highlands and coastalelite groups.8 As the coastal region was thrust into a newposition of national prominence, its agro-export elites cameto dominate national politics, and they severed their tieswith the aristocratic elites of the highlands, who foundthemselves excluded from important positions of politicalpower.

The highland and coastal elites were themselves di-vided. In the sierra, the exceptionally rugged topographytended to make each region something of a world unto it-self, where aristocratic landed families battled each otherfor control (see Nugent 1997; Taylor 1986). The greater dy-namism of the coast generated two factions among its elite:a landholding faction involved in the production and exportof primary agricultural goods (sugar and cotton) and em-ploying a large labor force, and a commercial and financialfaction, whose activities were centered in Perus large urbancenters. These two factions found it increasingly difficult tocoordinate their interests.

Despite their differences, however, these feuding fac-tions found it necessary to work together as unequal part-ners in administering the state apparatus, and they werecareful to exclude their highland counterparts from impor-tant positions of state power. Only in the local adminis-tration of the state apparatus in the remote Andean re-gions where they exercised influence did the establishedpowers of the coast find it necessary to involve the sierraelite.

State administration was thus a strained affair involv-ing competing elite factions, whose opposed interests anddiffering agendas reflected their relative positions within adifferentiated national economy. Their problems were notlimited to internal elite struggles. The same processes thathad led to the fragmentation of the elite had also producedan increasingly urbanized national population with an ex-tensive underclass and a well-organized labor movement.Besides fighting among themselves, the elite faced the ad-ditional dilemma of how to maintain control over the stateapparatus in the face of serious threats from below. Theirinability to resolve this problem led to a whole series of mil-itary takeovers and to civilian regimes that came to powerthrough the endorsement of the armed forces. Whether onor behind the throne, the military kept a careful watch overnational affairs, containing radical challenges, maintainingan uneasy peace between competing elite factions, and pre-serving the international, export orientation of the nationaleconomy.

The main challenge to the status quo came froman opposition partyAPRAa coalition of middle- and

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lower-class groups that was able to transcend the kinds ofeconomic and geographic fault lines that divided the elite.In its early, radical incarnation, the party advocated the na-tionalization of land and industry. APRA also sought to es-tablish a broad, participatory democracy in which the ru-ral and urban laboring classes, grouped into cooperativesbased onproduction units, would play key decision-makingroles in national life.

By 1949, APRA had been organizing among Perus sub-altern groups for two decades and had put down deep roots.Although it had been illegal virtually since its founding (in1930), the party had established a structure of widely dis-persed, hierarchically ordered cells throughout much of thecountry. APRA also had a very large and deeply devoted fol-lowing and controlled much of the electorate.9 Althoughthe party could not generally run its own candidates, otherparties seeking the presidency or important congressionalposts were compelled to form pacts with APRA, whichhad the most efficient mechanism for turning out thevote.

The formation of one such pact, in 1945, had led toAPRAs legalization, and had allowed it to form part of acoalition government. In October of 1948, however, afterradical party elements joined forces with disaffected mili-tary officers in a failed coup attempt, General Manuel Odraseized control of the government. The Odra regime com-mitted itself to the total eradication of APRA and unleasheda campaign of brutal repression against the party. Towardthat end, the Odra government in Lima assigned new per-sonnel to key government positions in Amazonas. Odra re-placed the civilian prefect (the highest-ranking member ofthe executive branch of government) with a military officerwhom Odra knew to be deeply committed to the eradica-tion of APRA. The military regime followed the same proce-dure with the departmental heads of the Guardia Civil (na-tional police), the Polica Investigativa del Peru (PIP; secretpolice), the army, the Superior Court of Justice, and thema-jor government ministries. In certain instances, the Odragovernment went further and replaced some of the supportstaff of these government offices with personnel known tobe fully committed to the campaign against the subversives.It was in the context of this war on the party that the crisisof rule unfolded.

Confronting political crisisThe Apristas were always very organized. They had[party] cells everywhere, where they trained their fol-lowers and planned their activities. We were never ableto find their cells, or to discover how [Apristas in differ-ent parts of the region] communicated with each other.We never understood how they managed to deceive somany people with their lies. But it cannot be deniedthat the Apristas were [also] very disciplined, that theywere totally committed to the party cause. They were

true fanatics. This is what made [APRA] different [fromother parties]. This is why it always survived.

Mariano Iberico Torres, Congressional Deputy,195662

In April of 1949, Sr. Manuel Alberto Lopez, prefect ofAmazonas, sent a series of frantic, codedmessages to his su-periors in Lima, the national capital. Using the same crude,numerical encryption technique to which he had increas-ingly had recourse locally (to communicate safely with thefew government officials he could still trust), the prefectpleaded with the national government for assistance. Hisregime was beset on all sides, he explained, by the followersof APRAthe terrorist political party that sought to seizecontrol of the government, nationalize land and industry,and establish workers cooperatives in all branches of theeconomy.10

Sr. Lopez explained that his administrationwas in gravedanger. APRAs terrorists, he claimed, were everywhere. Thepartys fanatics were to be found in large numbers in virtu-ally all walks of private life. As a result, he was surroundedby a veritable sea of subversives. Equally alarming, how-ever, was that the followers of the Party of the People (asAPRA called itself) had lodged themselves deeply within thestate apparatus. For example, in reporting to the centralgovernment about the presence of Apristas among the re-gions teachers, he said, I have confirmed that the teachersin service in the Province[s] of [Amazonas] are unquestion-ing propagandists of APRA, who work shamelessly againstthe present Regime, blindly obeying the instructions of theirsuperiors [in the Party] . . . disobeying the regulations of the[Ministry] of Education . . . and betraying their sacred dutyto form the next generation of patriotic citizens.11

But the prefects suspicions about the loyalty of the re-gions public servants were not limited to teachers, whowere scattered about the countryside in small, rural schools.He expressed equally grave doubts about the trustwor-thiness of virtually all the government functionaries whoworked in the rural districts. They were not only teachersbut also governors, justices of the peace, and mayorsthepersonnel who were responsible for the day-to-day man-agement of political life and who interacted with the popu-lation on an ongoing basis. According to Sr. Lopez, the ma-jority of individuals who occupied all these posts belongedto the Party of the People (see Nugent n.d.:ch. 6).

The prefects doubts, however, extended far beyond thelower rungs of the government apparatus. He was equallyconvinced that a large but unknown number of higher-ranking government officials were secretly Apristas. Theyincluded provincial judges and members of the superiorcourt aswell as officials in theBureau of TaxCollection (Cajade Depositos y Consignaciones, the forerunner of the Na-tional Bank) and the Department of Public Works (Junta de

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Obras Publicas). Sr. Lopezs doubts about the loyalty of thedepartments public servants extended to key personnel invirtually every government ministry in the region (see Nu-gent n.d.:ch. 6).

By what means the Apristas had managed to infiltratehis administration so thoroughly the prefect could not say,for he had erected multiple defenses to protect the statefrom the party. Furthermore, his regime had been vigilantabout maintaining these defenses. Despite these efforts,however, APRA had overcome all the barriers he had placedin its path. As a result, he said, the Party of the People waspoised to seize control of the region on a moments notice.Even the forces of orderthe Guardia Civilwere not tobe trusted. They were only feigning loyalty to the govern-ment, Sr. Lopez claimed, biding their time, waiting for themoment to strike:

The political authorities [of Amazonas], who have theobligation to maintain order and preserve the prestigeof the existing Government, cannot count on the assis-tance of the . . . police force . . . The greater part of thatforce is made up of sympathizers or members of APRA,who for the time being simply disguise their member-ship [in the party], waiting for the moment to arrivewhen they can operate [openly] as opponents of the ex-isting Regime.12

It was clear from his messages that the prefect was ina state of near panic about APRA. Indeed, it was for thisreason that he appealed to Lima for reinforcements. And,although he had failed to prevent the subversives from in-filtrating his regime, Sr. Lopez was determined to make upfor his mistake by identifying all Apristas in the entire re-gion and removing them not only from government employbut also from society in general. He faced one major prob-lem, however, in doing so. All party members went abouttheir daily affairs in disguise, as it were, masquerading asnormal, law-abiding citizens. It being so very difficult to dis-tinguish friend from foe by ordinary means, the prefect hadlearned to distrust outward appearances. The truth aboutthe party, he and other government authorities believed,was concealed from view. It would therefore be necessaryto dig beneath the surface of things to root out APRA at itscorewhich Sr. Lopez was deeply committed to doing. In-deed, the prefect and his administration were on high alert,in a state of extreme readiness. The difficulty was that theydid not know exactly who or what they were looking for.

Although the Apristas found it prudent to conceal theirtrue natures and their actual identities in their everydayinteractions with society at large, the signs of APRAs im-portanceweremany, and the evidence of its profound influ-ence incontrovertible. Perhaps the clearest indication of thesupport the party enjoyed, and the power it exercised, wasthe ease with which APRA evaded the governments effortsto contain it. After an initial round of success, the forces of

orderthe prefecture, the Guardia Civil, and the PIPhadbeen stymied inmost of their efforts to apprehend Apristas.Nor had they been able to control the partys undergroundactivities. Moreover, government officials had come to re-alize, they had not even been able to gather accurate in-telligence about APRA. It was as if the Party of the Peoplewas aware of the authorities everymove in advance. Armedwith this knowledge, it seemed, the terrorists were ableto make themselves invisible whenever danger threatened.As a result, despite the governments long familiarity withAPRA, and despite its having struggled against APRA foralmost two decades, the party remained something of anenigmaunknowable, unreachable, unfathomable.

On numerous occasions, for example, the authoritieshad sought to apprehend and arrest Apristas and to disruptparty activities. Oneway they had done sowas through anti-APRA police raids. After meticulous planning, and actingon the most reliable of information, both the Guardia Civiland the PIP had attempted to surprise groups of subversivesduring the clandestine, nocturnal meetings that APRA wasrumored to hold with great frequency. The forces of orderhad been frustrated, however, almost every time. With dis-turbing regularity, the Party of the People seemed to haveknown of the authorities intentions. With few exceptions,the Apristas had been able to avoid capture.13

Whereas APRA had succeeded in remaining largely il-legible to the authorities, the reverse was not the case. In-deed, the party seemed able to read the government likean open book. It was a common occurrence, for exam-ple, for the people of Chachapoyas (capital of the depart-ment of Amazonas) to awaken in the morning, take tothe streets, and discover that APRA had been very busythe previous night. At times, the populace would findfreshly printed handbills, covered with party propaganda,slipped under every door in the city. At other times, peoplewould encounter APRA slogans (APRA is Peace; APRA isBrotherhood) painted in large letters in prominent pub-lic placeslocales that were, in theory, being patrolledby the police. On still other occasions, they would learnthat party propaganda sheets had been nailed to the verydoor of the prefecture or the Guardia Civil headquarterslocations that were protected by armed guards around theclock.14

The degree of planning, preparation, and coordinationnecessary to carry out these tasks gave credence to therumors that were circulating widely through Chachapoyasthat the party continued to hold its regular undergroundmeetings in secret cells throughout the city.15 Everyoneknew, of course, that the authorities had been stymied intheir efforts to discover when or where the meetings tookplace, or evenwho attended them.Whatwas clear, however,was that Apristas were able to roam through the streets,striking at will. It was equally clear that the police were pow-erless to catch the subversives.

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It was not just the inability to apprehend Apristas or tocontrol their nighttime activities, however, that troubled Sr.Lopez. His regime was also finding it increasingly difficultto carry out even the most basic of governing functionsespecially those concerning conscription, taxation, and theadministration of justice. Behind all of these difficulties, theprefect was certain that he saw the hand of APRA.

Despite making repeated sweeps through the country-side, for example, the Guardia Civil were finding it impos-sible to locate enough military conscripts to serve in thearmy. They were having equal difficulty finding the laborconscripts required for the governments numerous publicworks projects. The party had long since stated its opposi-tion to conscription of all kinds, and the prefect had directevidence, some going back years, that Apristas were seekingto interfere with the governments efforts to locate laborers(Nugent n.d.:ch. 6; see also N. 17).

Similarly, the personnel of the Caja de Depositos yConsignaciones, who were responsible for collecting ruralexcise taxes (the departments singlemost important sourceof tax revenue), were complaining bitterly about their in-ability to control the growing problem of contraband trade.Here, as well, APRA appeared to be the cause of the govern-ments problems. The party had long declared excise taxesto be an abuse of all the laboring poor and had encour-aged people to trade on the black market. The prefect hadreports that Apristas were actually offering people adviceabout how they could avoid the personnel of the caja and,thus, avoid paying their taxes.16

Even the governors of the rural districts (who were theprefects personal appointees), and the mayors and justicesof the peace whoworked alongside them, were finding theirnormal administrative duties more and more difficult tocarry out.17 Governors and justices of the peace, for exam-ple, often found themselves unable to locate the witnessesand suspects called to appear in large numbers before thesuperior court of Amazonas. Similarly, governors and may-ors found that their efforts to call out the district populationto repair roads and bridges were met with growing (if pas-sive) resistance. People never defied the authorities. Theywere simply not at homewhen the authorities came calling.Or such large numbers would resistand would offer thesame, unimpeachable excuse for not complying (e.g., theircropswere failing)that the authorities found it impossibleto force them. The prefect received a steady stream of corre-spondence fromhis district-level subalterns explainingwhythey were unable to comply with their administrative tasks.It was not uncommon for these personnel to claim that, ac-cording to what they had been told, APRA was inciting thelocal populace to resist government authority.18

Such reports were anything but difficult to believe. TheParty of the People had declared itself deeply opposed to themultiple ways that district-level functionaries like the gov-ernor coerced the people under their jurisdiction and had

characterized all of the obligations they imposed as thinlydisguised forms of exploitation and abuse. APRA arguedthat members of the indigenous populationwho bore thebrunt of these policieswere saddled with all the duties ofcitizenship but none of its rights. The basic injustice of thisstate of affairs, the party said, was intolerable. It was this sit-uation that the Apristas had vowed to change.

The authoritieswere deeply alarmed by the partys abil-ity to survive and even thrive in conditions of such extremerepression. Government officials were equally concernedabout APRAs success in undermining so many key gov-ernment functions. It seemed nothing short of miraculousthat party members, forced to operate in secret, beyondthe gaze of the authorities, could defy every effort to ap-prehend them. It seemed equally miraculous that a perse-cuted political movement, driven underground, proscribedfor decades by the national government, could be so ef-fective in thwarting the authorities efforts to govern. Es-pecially alarming was the partys seeming ability to con-found the government in so many different administrativedomains, in town and country alike, at the same time. In-deed, the prefect often found himself confronted with re-ports of APRAs subversion from all over the department onthe very same day. From one rural community, he wouldreceive a report that APRA slogans had appeared overnighton the public buildings surrounding the central plaza. Fromanother, he would learn that the Guardia Civil had locatedonly a fraction of the number of labor conscripts neededfor public works. From yet another, he would hear that wit-nesses called to testify before the superior court could notbe located. And in Chachapoyas itself, he would discoverthat APRA had once again littered the streets with propa-ganda.19

Government officials thus found themselves con-fronted on a continual basis with the most alarming evi-dence of the partys powers. At the same time, they had beenfrustrated in all their efforts to gather the intelligence thatwould reveal to themhowAPRAwasmanaging to do all thatit did. Indeed, the authorities were confronted with majorgaps in their understanding of the party and its membersgaps that they considered crippling. Believing that the verysurvival of their regime was at stake, they had struggledmightily to fill in these gaps. But they had failed.

In the absence of reliable information that would haveanswered the many weighty questions they had aboutAPRA, the authorities were compelled to provide answersof their own. In other words, government officials were leftto make inferences about APRAinferences that would ex-plain why the authorities were unable to do away withor even rein in the subversive movement despite its dis-turbingly radical and extremist nature. The less the author-ities actually knew, the more they were compelled to imag-ine. And imagine they did. Facedwithmounting evidence oftheir own impotence, and of the terrorists ability to thwart

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the governments every plan and achieve the partys everygoal, the authorities let their imaginations run wild. Theybegan to indulge in the darkest of fantasies about APRA.

Sr. Lopez and the regions other high-ranking officialsconcluded that APRAs seemingly miraculous abilities wereenabled in large part by a party structure of exceptionalcomplexity and sophisticationone that spanned the en-tire department and was able to organize and coordinatethe subversives activities in great detail.20 The authoritieswere also convinced, however, that such a party structurealone would not be enough to confound them. Only if itwas staffed by a deeply fanatical membership that had gonethrough an intensive process of indoctrination would APRAbe capable of such amazing feats. What was both confus-ing and alarming to consider, however, was how this po-litical structure could orchestrate party affairs with suchsuccess, efficiency, and secrecy. It was equally alarming toconsider how APRA could produce such fanaticism in itsmemberswhat the process of indoctrination would con-sist of, who would oversee it, where it would be carried out,andwhowould submit themselves to it andwhy theywoulddo so. High-ranking government officials speculated amongthemselves at length about these questions.21 However, theyhad only fragmentary and often contradictory bits of evi-dence to suggest answers.

Precisely because the Apristas did not expose them-selves to visible scrutiny anywhere, government officials be-gan to see evidence of the partys nefarious hand every-where, even in themost seemingly innocent and innocuousof placeselementary schools, church groups, volleyballteams.22 The authorities also began to suspect everyone ofbeing an Aprista. It was not just the usual suspects, like radi-cal teachers and impoverished Indian cultivators, that cameunder suspicion but also the most unlikely of candidatesschoolchildren, single mothers, policemen, and officers ofthe superior court. Even staunchly conservative, religiouslydevout members of the old landed elite came to be viewedas suspect by the forces of order.23

In their desperation to distinguish wholesome fromdangerous social elements, officials first insisted that every-one offer proof of their loyalty to the military regimethatthey sign loyalty oaths, swear (in writing, often before a no-tary public) that they did not belong to the party, and con-stantly offer public affirmations of their commitment to thestatus quo:

March 23, 1949

Sr. Prefect of the Department

With the present communication I am honored tomake you aware of the following facts: In 1945, a po-litical movement of great significance emerged in Peru,and believing that this movement represented the best

hope for our country that had appeared until that time,I began my life as a citizen by joining that Party, and Idid this with my heart filled with patriotism and withthe fervor that is appropriate to all young people; thiswas my goal and my ideal, and by joining APRA I be-lieved that I had complied faithfully with my duty asa citizen; but after years of struggle to make a living, Ihave come to see that politics has its mirages, and con-vinced of this truth, I wish you make known to yourhonorable Office that from this day forward I separatemyself from the Party of the People [APRA], in orderto dedicate myself to my own independent work, andthat I will never again meddle in activities of a politicalnature.

Roberto Feijoo Ramos24

After insisting that everyone declare precisely wherethey stood with respect to APRAby means of public testi-monials such as the one abovegovernment officials thendiscounted the very declarations they had insisted peo-ple make. As a result, people who had already declaredtheir loyalty to the military regime found it necessary torepeat themselves. Such was the case with Roberto FeijooRamos, author of the renunciation just quoted. After hav-ing declared his commitment to themilitary government inMarch of 1949, he found it necessary to reiterate his com-mitment several months later:

May 21, 1949

Sr. Prefect

OnMarch 23rd of this year I had the honor of informingyou that I had renounced my membership in the Partyof the People, guided as I was by the desire to dedicatemyself in an honest and peaceful manner to my pri-vate affairs, nonetheless making it clear, of course, thatI would collaborate with the Government in whatevermodest way that I could.

Despite the frank and honest declaration that I made atthat time, on the 4th of this month I was taken com-pletely by surprise when I was told to come to thecommissariat of the [secret police] where, along witha number of other people, I was detained for ten days.When I was finally released, I learned . . . that the orderto detain me had come from Lima, which shows thatmy [earlier] renunciation has not been taken into ac-count. It appears, therefore, that I am still considereda Party member, in spite of the fact that when I sepa-ratedmyself from APRA I did so ofmy own free will andconviction, andwithout any outside party having influ-enced me in any way.

Sr. Prefect, it is possible that my earlier renunciationwas sent to the Direccion de Gobierno, the office to

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which your own answers. I therefore humbly ask thatyou contact that office, and add tomyfirst renunciationthe weight of this present one, which I intend to rein-force the first renunciation, so that I do not continue tofindmyself in situations like that which I have outlinedabove.

As you are no doubt aware, the newspapers in Limaconstantly report about public employees who have re-habilitated themselves by renouncing their member-ship in the Party of the People. This being the case, Ifind it odd that my own renunciation has served fornothingnot even to keep me out of jail.

For all of this reasons, Sr. Prefect, I ask that you pleaseaccept this new renuncia [renunciation], and that youauthorize its publication in whatever local newspaperyou see fit, or in the dailies of Lima, so that my deter-mination to leave the Party is taken into account.

Roberto Feijoo Ramos25

Despite the apparent determination of people likeSr. Feijoo to leave the party, and to employ state-endorsedmethods for doing so, the police were never satisfied thattheywere being truthful. Sr. Feijoo continued to be detainedintermittently over the next several yearsalong with other(former?) party membersdespite their multiple attemptsto rehabilitate themselves. No matter how hard he and oth-ers tried, they were unable to convince the authorities thatthey were being sincere, for the only means available forswearing to the truth had come to be seen as unreliable.

In other words, no matter how loyal one professed tobe, no matter how proper ones behavior, no matter howlaw-abiding one appeared, the authoritieswere still left withdoubts. Indeed, because the Apristas were seeking to de-ceive the government by masquerading as ordinary citi-zens, the authorities came to view as suspect the very act ofpresenting oneself as loyal, to view anyone who presentedhim- or herself in these terms as potentially subversive. Fur-thermore, government officials came to question the truth-value of peoples declarations of loyalty, even though theyinsisted that everyone offer them continuouslyor elsefind themselves under suspicion of being Apristas.

Faced with the inability to distinguish friend from foe,government officials came to see the state as being at risk ofinfiltration by the most dangerous of social elements. Ini-tially, the prefect responded by charging the heads of gov-ernment offices with the important responsibility of pa-trolling the (imaginary) frontier between state and soci-ety, to ensure that the state enjoyed as much autonomyas possible.26 To this end, the prefect told the heads ofthese government offices that, in interacting with societyat large, they were to take a less trusting attitude thanthey had in the past. In particular, they were to scruti-nize with great care anyone who approached them con-

cerning employment. In this way, they could help ensurethat the state apparatus remained free of the influence ofAPRA:

My office has become aware of the fact that membersof the Popular American Revolutionary Alliance (APRA)continue to attempt to findwork in the Public Offices ofthis Department, taking advantage of diverse means inorder to do so, without taking into consideration thatmembership in the Party has been declared illegal. Andbecause [the Apristas] only intention in doing so is toundermine the operation of the offices where they seekto work, as the supervisor of Public Administration inthis Department, I find it necessary to direct your at-tention to this problem, and to ask that you be sure totake it into consideration whenever you appoint newpersonnel to work in the office at your command.27

This strategy to protect the state from APRA, however,was fundamentally flawed. Although he did, indeed, chargehis subalterns with the task of patrolling the boundarybetween state and society, the prefect provided these offi-cials with no guidance for distinguishing Apristas fromnon-Apristas in the process of doing so.

Officials took to viewing everyone around them as apotential threat, including one another. As a result, theybecame ever more secretive about their deliberations andtheir decisions. Convinced that it was dangerous to sendinformation by normal means, the authorities began us-ing coded messages to communicate among themselves.Initially, the use of code was restricted to matters of ma-jor import. As time passed, and the authorities becameincreasingly suspicious of those around them, they usedencryption to communicate about a broader range ofissues.

As they sensed the party closing in around them, gov-ernment officials changed the codes on amore frequent ba-sis. They also experimented with different kinds of codes.They imposed extra surveillance on the personnel whohand delivered secret messages between government of-fices in Chachapoyas and on those who sent coded com-muniques by wire from the capital to the rural districts. Theauthorities decision to communicate in coded form, and torestrict the use of code to a select few, demonstrates theirsuspicion that the broader arena of government activity andcommunication within which their inner circle was embed-dedwas not autonomous of APRA influence but, rather, hadbeen infiltrated and contaminated by the party. The effortsof government officials to limit the flow of privileged in-formation to an inner circle of government confidants re-flects their fears about just how lacking in autonomy theseofficials considered the actually existing state to be. It alsoreflects their decision to surrender to APRA the outer do-main of the state and to reinscribe state boundaries furtherinwardto create a state within a state.

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Figure 1. Encrypted version of document. Used with permission of the Archivo Subprefectural del Cercado.

To the greatmisfortune of the authorities, however, thisattempt to redefine the limits of the state (Mitchell 1991,1999)to fix state boundaries so that they encompassedindividuals who were completely trustworthy and loyalwas deeply flawed. The reason was quite simple. High-ranking government officials could not be sure that someof the very individuals who had been entrusted to com-municate in coded form about APRA and its activities werenot themselves sympathetic to the partyorwould not takeactions that would protect Aprista clients, friends, or rela-tives.28

This problem was more than hypothetical. Consider,for example, the encrypted document shown in Figure 1(and decoded in Figure 2). In it, the prefect writes to asubprefectone of a dozen or so individuals with whomthe prefect communicated in code on a regular basis and,therefore, in theory, someone completely trustworthy. Thecontents of the message reveal the difficulties involved inseeking to shore up the sagging boundaries of the stateby means of encryption. Despite being in code, the com-munique did not help government officials establish a se-cure space of privileged information fromwhich they could

more effectively prosecute the war against the subversives.To the contrary; the document shows the authorities inabil-ity to accomplish these goals despite the attempted use ofsecrecy.

The document is as much an accusation as a commu-nication. It reveals that the subprefectone of relatively fewstate officials the prefect relied on to help lead the fightagainst APRAhad not been using his position as the pre-fect intended. Rather than persecute the subversives, thesubprefect had found it expedient to shelter a group ofApristas who were useful to him for political purposes.29 Allthe while, he had communicated in coded form on a regu-lar basis with the other members of the governments innercircle about the progress of the war against the Party of thePeople. But his behavior undermined government efforts toeffect a clear separation between state and subversive.

Despite the use of encryption, the efforts of state of-ficials to keep APRA from discovering government planswere to no avail; APRA remained opaque to the authori-ties, whereas it seemed that even the most secret of gov-ernment plans somehow leaked out to the subversives. In-deed, government officials remained utterly confounded by

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Figure 2. Decoded version of document. Used with permission of the Archivo Subprefectural del Cercado.

the Party of the People and seemed unable to make anyheadway whatsoever against the enemy. The police contin-ued to be ineffectual in apprehending Apristas in their noc-turnal meetings. Party members grew ever more daring inleaving public evidence of their nighttime sojourns throughthe streets of Chachapoyas. And government officials con-tinued to struggle with their administrative duties in thecountryside. In desperation, the prefect appealed (in code)to the national government for assistance. No one was to betrusted, he reported. Everyone was an Aprista.

Power/knowledge in crisis

What were the processes that led government officials toindulge in such dark fantasies? By the middle of 1949, thegovernment regime in Amazonas was in the midst of twointerrelated crises that together undermined peoples faithin the reality of the stateand that transferred some of thatfaith to APRA. One was a crisis of power/knowledge. Gov-

ernment officials went to elaborate lengths to see (APRA)like a state (cf. Scott 1998)to generate a comprehen-sive body of reliable information that would allow them toknow the Party of the People in every detail. Having doneso, the regime attempted to be like a stateto translatethis knowledge into power. Employing the intelligence ithad gathered as a guide, the government used its controlover the means of violence to attempt to eradicate APRA.Toward that end, government personnel surveilled, jailed,deported, and (in numerous cases) tortured. They closedmeetinghouses, dissolved organizations, and banned pub-lications. They eliminated all visible signs of the Party of thePeople. So broad and systematic was their assault on APRA,and so complete was the rout that the party appeared tohave suffered, that the authorities concluded they had de-stroyed themovementa victory that the Odra regime wasquick to announce to society at large. Indeed, the militarygovernment went so far as to claim to have been responsi-ble for the demise of APRA:

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Sr. Chief of Police.

I acknowledge receipt of your coded Oficio No. 4,[marked] Strictly Confidential [in which] you ask thisoffice to provide police headquarters with the Registerof themembers of the recently defunct Party of the Peo-ple . . . I am pleased to attach this list . . . and to con-gratulate the forces [of order] of this locality [plaza]for their splendid work in eliminating this dangerousthreat to the regime of . . . General Manuel A. Odra.30

The military government also began circulating aheroic narrative of eradication to explain how it had pre-vailed over the Apristasa narrative made up of exemplaryacts of bravery, loyalty, and sacrifice (as illustrated in the fol-lowing letter published in the Chachapoyas newspaper andsigned by 126 prominent citizens):

General Manuel A. Odra, President of the MilitaryJunta, and Director of Limas most important dailynewspapers (El Comercio, La Prensa, Vanguardia).

We, the undersigned, filled with patriotic fervor, andwith deep respect for our countrys legally formed insti-tutions, congratulate you with all sincerity for the bril-liant position you have taken in favor of the Country[Patria], in refusing to grant safe conduct [out of Peru]to the Terrorist Leader of the Aprista Sect, Victor RaulHaya de la Torre. We declare our steadfast support forand solidarity with our government, and with the hon-orable Military Men whomake up the Military Junta.31

Within short order, however, it became clear that theauthorities had been deceivedthat the war with the sub-versiveswas far fromover.Much to their dismay and embar-rassment, government officials discovered that they had notdestroyed the party but had simply driven it underground.In the face of intense repression, the Apristas had thoughtit prudent to conceal their identities, disguise their meetingplaces, and mask their communications. They temporarilysuspended all party activities that would have left a pub-lic mark andmade every effort to become indistinguishablefrom the rest of society. To the naive observer, the Party ofthe People appeared to have disappeared from the face ofthe earth.

It was at this moment, when the party had gone sofar underground as to make itself invisible to the author-ities, that the military declared definitive and final victoryover the subversives. In the very wake of the governmentscelebratory announcements, howeverwhile the author-ities were still flush with successthe Apristas began toreemerge from the shadows, thus flatly contradicting thegovernments claims. In so doing, APRA did something farmore damaging to the government than simply prove thatthe authorities had been mistaken. The party did far morethan show that government officials were not fully aware

of what was going on around them. APRA demonstratedthat the Odra regime was totally in the dark about theone problem it had devoted virtually all its energies toresolvingthe problem on which the very survival of theregime depended: the status of its war against the party.Making matters worse was that the authorities had noteven realized that they were in the dark. So completely de-luded were they about what was actually going on in Pe-ruvian society that they thought the war against the sub-versives was going splendidly. Once the party resurfaced,however, it became clear that while government officialshad been busy congratulating themselves for finally van-quishing the enemy, APRA had been quietly rebuilding itsstrength.

APRAs demonstration that the government had beenso deeply deluded about issues of such pressing concernundermined any pretensions the regime might have had tospeak in an authoritative and credible manner. The reap-pearance of APRA after the authorities had pronounced itdead made it clear that the government did not occupy aprivileged position of knowledge and understanding fromwhich it could manipulate and manage the social order. Tothe contrary, it became clear that the government was pro-foundlymisinformed and dangerously ignorant about whatwas going on under its very nose. The state seemed to behovering in a rarified space somewhere above society, at agreat distance from it rather than integrated with it. Fromsuch a distance, it appeared, the state was incapable of per-ceiving just how out of touch it actually was.

The disclosure that it knew so very little about a soci-ety that it claimed to know so well was deeply humiliatingfor the government. Once it was clear that the party livedon despite official claims to the contrary, the many talesof prowess, perseverance, and courage that the authoritieshad circulated in constructing their narrative of eradicationseemed ludicrous, pathetic, and laughableas did the gov-ernment itself. With the revelation that APRA had deceivedthe authorities, the heroes of this narrative became fools,the triumphs became defeats, and the victories turned intolosses.

The failure of the governments campaign againstAPRA, the public humiliation the dictatorship suffered atthe hands of the party, and the obviously delusional ten-dencies of the regime made it appear that there was a greatabsence at the center of Peruvian politicsjust where thereshould have been a powerful presence. This was an absencenot only of knowledge and understanding (about APRA,about society) but also of coordination and control (in gov-ernment efforts to eradicate the party). It was an absenceof unity and coherence (of the state apparatus itself) and ofcompetence and commitment (on the part of governmentofficials). The absence even extended to the effective use ofviolence; the authorities efforts to use force against the sub-versives were ultimately in vain, not least, the government

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came to realize, because these efforts were often directedagainst the wrong people.

The authorities inability to know, control, or effectivelypunish APRA made it seem that there was no there there,that is, that there was no functioning machinery of govern-ment, no coherent, ordered structure that was coordinat-ing the effort against the subversives. Instead, state activi-ties appeared to be a chaotic and incoherent assemblage ofsites, processes, and institutions. They seemed to be lackingany underlying, coordinating logic, and even to be workingat cross-purposes with one another.

Confrontedwithwhat seemed irrefutable proof that theparty was alive and well despite their best efforts to destroyit, the authorities were forced to consider why their cam-paign against the subversives had failed. Government of-ficials first developed doubts about the reliability of theirintelligence. That APRA continued to operate so effectivelyafter the government had eliminated all known sources ofsubversion led the authorities to conclude that they actuallyknew very little about the Party of the People: They couldnot statewith confidencewhowas a partymember andwhowas not, where the subversives held their meetings, whatthey decided at those meetings, how Apristas carried outtheir actions and left signs of their presence, and so on. Inshort, despite their best intelligence-gathering efforts, theauthorities came to regard the party as something of a blackbox, whose inner workings the government could not pen-etrate and whose appeal to the general population the au-thorities could not comprehend.

As the months wore on, and the Odra regime failed tomake significant progress against APRA, government offi-cials came to question more than just their intelligence. Itwas difficult to understand how the government could con-tinue to miss the subversives when its agents were every-where, on the lookout for any telltale sign of party activ-ity. Faced with one failed attempt after another, officialsradius of doubt began to expand beyond the realm ofinformation alone. The authorities also came to questionthe loyalty and commitment of the state functionaries thatgathered government intelligence and of the state secu-rity forces that used it in their (unsuccessful) efforts to ar-rest the Apristas. As doubts about the loyalty of their sub-alterns loomed ever larger in the minds of governmentofficials, the boundary between state and subversive be-gan to blur. Lacking reliable intelligence about who wasand was not an Aprista, the authorities found it impossi-ble to bring the boundary back into focus. Instead, theirvision became blurred in general. They came to view ev-eryone through suspecting eyesto regard themselves asmenaced on all sides, by unknown and unknowable so-cial elements who threatened to subsume the governingregime.

In short, the crisis of power/knowledge that unfoldedin the context of the failed campaign against the party

unleashed on the authorities a plague of fantasies (Zizek1997).32 Faced with the certain knowledge that they knewso little, government officials took to imaginingmuch. Theycame to regard everyone as a potential subversive and to seesigns of APRAs presence everywhere, in the most unlikelyplaces.

Performance/representation in crisis

The governments campaign against the Party of the Peoplewas not limited to jailing, deporting, and torturing Apristas.The authorities also waged war with the subversives in therealms of meaning, discourse, and display. It was in thesedomains that the Odra regime experienced a second cri-sis, one that deepened its sense of danger, desperation, andparanoia with respect to APRA. This second crisis was oneof performance/representation.

Upon seizing power, government officials had soughtto do battle with APRA to define what would be consideredlegitimate forms of economic, sociocultural, and politicalorder. Toward that end, they had imposed strict limits onwhat people could safely do and say, on what they couldclaim to be important and worthwhile ways to live. In thisway, the authorities sought to craft a new public sphereone that was unambiguously and uniformly supportive ofgovernment visions of proper order.

At the same time, officials sought to make both pub-lic and private life wholly visible and transparentto con-stantly reassure themselves that therewere no hidden pock-ets of subversion where alternative notions of social lifewere being articulated. Precisely because of this fear, in theOdra regimes new public domain, people were expectedto perform their loyalty and commitment continuously, notonly to government officials but also to one another. Theywere expected, for example, to turn out faithfully and to par-ticipate enthusiastically in all public political ritual. Failureto appear or to behave as expected by the authorities couldraise suspicions, which, in turn, could have disastrous con-sequences.

More important than public political ritual, however,was the realm of the everyday. The government looked tothe general populace to act out its loyalty not only duringrare moments of political pomp and circumstance but alsoon an ongoing, daily basis, in all walks of life. In short, theauthorities made it clear that people were to do nothing inword, print, or behavior that would betray any sympathywhatsoever with the subversive cause.

The populace quickly learned that anyonea friend,neighbor, enemy, even a complete strangercould reportsuspicious behavior to the authorities and that a single re-port was enough to launch an investigation by the forcesof order. In these circumstances, the regional population

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began to police itself. Anyone who wished to avoid suspi-cion began to sanitize his or her behavior, to act at all timesin ways that could only be regarded as wholly innocuousby any observer, hypothetical or real. People thus collec-tively conspired to hold one another in a set of ever-present,mutually interlocking gazes of conformity. In so doing, theywent to great lengths to appear as transparent, loyal, andlaw-abiding as possible.

In the aftermath of the Odra coup, social life thusquickly became akin to a vast drama (cf. Taylor 1997) butone with no single director, no defined parts, and no set di-alogue. In this drama, everyone was a player, willing or not,and everyone felt compelled to improvise lines that theyhoped would satisfy a director and audience they wouldnever see and whose reactions they could never be sure of.There were no agreed-on standards for judging the perfor-mances of the actors, and it was unclear whowas evaluatingthe performances. In other words, the populace found it-self performing everyday acts of allegiance to a hypotheticalaudience of fellow citizens and government officials whosefears people tried to anticipate and ameliorate.

In so doing, local people brought into being a novelform of imagined (non)community (Anderson 1991)onethat was a threat to their very existence. This collectivity wasrendered foreign or alien to its makers in the very act of itscreationa community to which they knew they did notbelong. It was simultaneously, however, one in which theyhad to feign membership at all times. If they were to avoidarrest and possible torture, people had to maintain them-selves in a state of constant alert about how others mightregard them and adjust their behavior and speech accord-ingly (cf. Skidmore 2004). This process of (non)communityformation had a powerful individuating and alienating dy-namic. Each time people strategized about how to avoida bad audience response, they did so on their ownassolitary individuals. This new anticollective isolated peo-ple, separated them from one another, and turned eachindividual into a potential threat to all otherseven as itpurported to do and be the opposite.

In their zeal to establish a public sphere that wouldseem unambiguously supportive of the military regime, theauthorities did not limit themselves to establishing strictlimits on what people could do or say. They also used theirextensive control over the media to bring into being newrepresentational forms in which novel imaginings of thestate, the subversives, and the public could be elaborated.As one might expect, during the dictatorship, media of allkinds were purged of any positive reference to the Party ofthe People. But the government did not restrict itself to de-monizing APRA in word and print. It also worked to give thedictatorship an air of authenticity it might otherwise havelacked.

Rather than go on endlessly about the virtues of theirown regime, government officials introduced a series of new

discursive forms that allowed the people to speak on thebehalf of the dictatorship. They included signed and nota-rized loyalty oaths, open letters of support to General Odra,and exposes. They also included letters written by the loyalmembers of the public to the political authorities revealingthe existence of subversive government officials whowereseeking to mask their membership in the party:

Sr. Prefect of the Department:

We the undersigned citizens and residents of this dis-trict present ourselves to you with complete respect toask [the following]:

That the present governor of this district . . . who is aperson who only pretends to be concerned with theprogress of this locale, be replaced . . . [The governor]is a known member of the outlawed Party of the Peo-ple, who uses his position to steal community lands . . .and [community] funds . . . and to propagandize for theParty, at the orders of his superiors . . .

Sr. Prefect, we bring these facts to the attention of youroffice and ask that you take whatever steps are neces-sary to free us from the tyranny of [the governor].

What we seek is Justice.33

The new discursive forms introduced by the militaryalso included formal renunciations of APRA affiliation (alsosigned before a notary) and a variety of testimonials (allcarefully notarized) in which both individuals and groupsswore their allegiance to the government:

Sr. Prefect of the Department:

I have the honor of addressing you in order to statethe following: that in my condition as a teacher, Di-rector of the Leimebamba School for Boys No. 133,fully conscious of the high purpose of forming the fu-ture citizens who are the hope of the Fatherland, mylabors were, are and will be only and exclusively tocarry out the mission that the State has given me andwithmymission as a catholic teacher, whose pedagogyis completely removed from any and all political ten-dencies, and is concerned only with the preparation ofcitizens of wholesome conscience who are capable ofcontributing to the true progress of our people. I alsodeclare to you, Sr. Prefect . . . that never did I belongnor do I belong to any political party, and least of allthe Aprista party . . . and that if someone has placedmyname on the party list I take this opportunity to presentto you mymost energetic protest.34

The authorities literally filled the airwaves and thenewspapers with these statements, in which the most di-verse social elementswere permitted to express to society at

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large their unconditional loyalty to the Odra regime. Mem-bers of citizens groups, labor unions, and social clubs wereallowed to so testify, as were those on sports teams, in pri-mary schools, and inmutual aid societies. Civil servants, In-dian peasants, and aristocratic landowners were all permit-ted to do the same. As in the examples I quote above, evenformer Apristas were given the opportunity to confess theerror of their former ways and to pledge their undying alle-giance to the military government.

The effect of this barrage of testimonial and confessionappeared to be overwhelming. By waging war in the realmof discourse, the authorities didmuch to create the image ofa public that was united in its support of the military and inits rejection of APRA. The implicationwas clear: In pursuingthe destruction of the terrorists, themilitary was doing littlemore than obeying the will of the people.

The success of the Odra regimes campaign againstAPRA in the realms of performance and representation,however, proved to be as short-lived and as illusory as itsoffensive in the realm of power/knowledge did. Althoughindividual behavior, social interaction, and discursive com-munication temporarily fell in line with official expecta-tions, it soon became apparent that, in producing such con-formity, government officials had done littlemore than con-struct a mask behind which even they could not see. Beforelong, evidencewas forthcoming from all quarters thatmanyindividuals and groupswhohad sworn their allegiancewereanything but loyal citizens. They were, in fact, subversives(or party sympathizers), who were so committed to APRAthat they sought to trade on the image of the patriotic cit-izen to continue with their nefarious activities. In the pro-cess, they had perjured themselves before the governmentand before society at large.

The discovery that many people who had sworn pub-licly to be part of the broad, anti-APRA consensus wereactually committed to the overthrow of the Odra regimepresented government officials with a real dilemma. Allow-ing such people to remain at liberty posed a significantthreat to the government. At the same time, however, theauthorities had no way of distinguishing those who trulywere loyal from those who (mis)represented themselves inthese terms. Already in the grip of quite paranoid fears, gov-ernment officials responded to this dilemma in a way thatwas very damaging to the image that the general popula-tion held of the regime. They unleashed a new round of per-secution on the very individuals and the very social groupsthat they had formerly claimed were part of the anti-APRAconsensus. In other words, after insisting that everyone de-clare precisely where they stood with respect to APRA andafter attesting publicly to the truth-value of these state-ments, government officials then discounted the very dec-larations they had insisted people make. In this way, whathad initially seemed like evidence of state strengththeOdra regimes ability to compel the population to perform

rituals of loyaltyended up being regarded as a source ofweakness.

As government officials reversed their position con-cerning the status of those who claimed to support thedictatorship, the general populace was witness to an oddadmission on the part of the authoritiesthat what theyhad previously asserted to be true was, in fact, false. Withthis admission, government officials did more than simplyacknowledge that they had beenmisled. They also acknowl-edged that both their methods for attesting to the truth andwhat was asserted to be true on the basis of those methodswere wholly lacking in credibility.

As government officials came to realize that they couldnot tell friend from foe, they became increasingly suspi-cious and fearful of those around them. In this context, bothgovernment officials and the general population came tolose faith in the reliability of public truth claimsmade aboutpeoples relationship to the Party of the People. They cameto lose faith in the multiple forms of publicly swearing tothe truth of that relationshiprepresentational forms thatthe military had elaborated in its efforts to craft a publicsphere that was free of the influence of APRA (renuncias,oaths of loyalty, public letters of allegiance, etc.). Indeed, theauthorities and the populace came to regard public truthclaims as the opposite ofwhat they appeared to beaswaysof concealing rather than revealing the truth. As, first, oneand, then, another of these public truth claims came to beregarded as a mechanism for disguising rather than expos-ing the truth, the loyal public represented discursively bythe military regime, the basis for its claim to represent analternative to APRA that was endorsed by large numbers ofpeople, began to unravel, piece by piece. In short, the lo-cal populace was witness to the states inability to generateauthoritative accounts of social life. As a result, the state ap-paratus experienced a deep and profound crisis of perfor-mance/representation.

The quest for certainty

It was the impossibility of truly knowing or even identifyingthe enemy that provoked such dark fantasies on the part ofthe authorities. It was impossible, government officials hadlearned, to distinguish subversive from loyal citizen on thebasis of visual cues. Identifying the terrorists on the basisof their behavior had proven equally difficult. It was alsofutile to trust peoples professed beliefs or their overtly ex-pressed opinions about APRA or about the military regime.On the basis of appearance, behavior, and belief, one wouldbe forced to conclude that there were no terrorists any-where. On the surface, everything appeared to be calm. Andyet the authorities had what they considered overwhelmingevidence that the subversives were everywhere, making amockery of them before the general public, wreaking havocwith their efforts to govern the region.

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In an effort to help his subalterns imagine the contoursof their invisible enemy, in late April of 1949, the prefectcirculated a very important but rather dated document toa select group of government officials. These included theheads of the Guardia Civil and the PIP, the president of thesuperior court, the subprefects and judges of the regionsfive provinces, and the governors of the departments manyrural districts.35 The prefect was at great pains to restrict ac-cess to the memo to these officials alone, so in addition tosending it in code he marked his communication Secretand Confidential.

The dated document that the prefect circulated, whichone of his subalterns had discovered in the archive of theprefecture only a short time before, was entitled Organi-zacion del Comite Provincial (Organization of the Provin-cial Committee). It had been seized almost two decadesprior, in 1931, from a party member who was carrying itfrom APRAs central committee in Lima to the partys localmembership in Amazonas. It contained a description of thestructure the local Apristas were to adhere to in establishingthe party in Amazonas.

Regarded as being of only passing interest when itwas first seized, the document had been filed away in thearchive of the prefecture, where it had languished eversince. Faced with political crisis in 1949, however, the pre-fect came to regard it as an absolutely key piece of intelli-gence, for it appeared to answer many of the governmentsmost pressing questions about APRA. Furthermore, it did soin a way that confirmed the authorities worst fears aboutthe enemy they faced.

Organizacion del Comite Provincial provided a de-tailed description of APRAs underground party apparatus,and the prefect asked that all those who received it reviewthe document with care so that they would know what theywere up againstand alsowhat to look for as they did battlewith the party. According to this document, APRAs struc-ture was, indeed, extensive and elaborate. It took the formof a nested hierarchy of cells. In some senses, the structureof the party mimicked that of the state, for it reproducedthe national territorial grid. Thus, (in theory) APRA cells orcommittees had been established in each district, province,and department in Peru and a national committee oversawthe country as awhole. As Organizacion del Comite Provin-cial made clear, however, the actual makeup of these cells,their manner of operation, and the powers and responsibil-ities allotted to the members of each reflected a degree ofspecialization and differentiation that went far beyond thatof the formal state apparatus.

APRA, it appeared, had organized itself into a seriesof secretariats or ministries. In addition to a general sec-retariat, there were also Ministries of the Interior, Defense,Organization, Information, Economy, Discipline, Social As-sistance, and Peasant and Indigenous Affairs. Some of thesewere further divided into subsecretariats. The Ministry of

Information, for example, was divided into Subsecretariatsof the Press, Mural Propaganda, and Culture and Sports.36

As these names suggested, each ministry was responsiblefor attending to the affairs of particular subgroups or ac-tivities. Furthermore, the prerogatives and responsibilitiesof each secretariat were carefully spelled out. As Organi-zacion del Comite Provincial explained, this meant thatparty secretaries were to be on hand to provide people withkey services that they otherwise lackedmedical care, legalhelp, occasional financial assistance, and advice about howto deal with abusive political officials.

By drawing on this party structure, it seemed, APRAhad sought to involve itself directly in the everyday lives ofthe populationdespite being forced to operate in secret,beyond the gaze of the legally constituted authorities. In-deed, according to Organizacion del Comite Provincial,the party was to establish secretaries for as many of its min-istries as possible in every cell in the country, whether in aremote rural district or a large urban center. This, in turn,suggested that the bureaucracy that the party had gener-ated was considerably thicker than that of the formal stateapparatus, whose representatives were sparsely scatteredabout the national territory.

Organizacion del Comite Provincial provided the au-thorities with something they desperately neededa kindof blueprint that allowed them to imagine the contours oftheir underground adversary. That they felt compelled torely on this document to provide themwith such a blueprintreveals just how deep a crisis of knowledge they were in. Asnoted above, between 1945 and 1948, the Party of the Peo-ple had been entirely legal and had conducted most of itsactivities out in the open. During this period, the partys or-ganizational structure had been visible for all to see. Just sixmonths into General Odras war on APRA, however, gov-ernment authorities in Chachapoyas had come to believethat they could not trust what they thought they knew aboutthe party, that APRAs public presentation of self was not tobe taken at face value. Only a document

Documents

Nugent. States and Secrecy