PEACE CORPS

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Potato planting in Chijnaya: a farmer turns the soil highabove the communal ‘-- ,., ,,, ‘-.,-’-’ ,.., ,... ‘, “y .- “-’.,
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10” L,W.
spread the word that Alfred was not
to be trusted.
A tramaction involving the rental
of a hotel thermal bath complex in
nearby Cbancos triggered the final
crisis.
The
ExpuKxon
Many Volunteers had become interested
in and worked on tbe rehabilitation
of the tourist installation. Alfred
served as architect, project engineer,
and foreman, and it was he who took
the lead in arranging for joint Peace
COrps-VIcOs community management
of the thermal baths and hotel.
“ln sbon run terms? the Cornell
Pem Report says, “theprovisions (for
joint management) may well have
placed the Vices community in a more
precarious financial position than it
would othewise have occupied?’
~ls sentiment, compounded by the
long standing personal fldges and
enmities built up over a 17-month
period, precipitated a community
meeting. The wife of a local official
and a P.N.1.P.A. administrator provoked
tbe community to challenge
Alfred and the other Volunteers.
“The many mistakes in social relations
the Volunteers made came home to
roost,” stat= the report, “M those
Vicosinos wbo had lost something at
the bands of tbe Volunteers demanded
action against them. Despite the efforts
of a member of tie Peace Corps
staff wbo had many friends and a long
acquaintance with Vices, the Cornell
coordinator, and the P.N.l,P.A, Uma
headquarter, the Volunteem were expelled
from Vices by community decision
in March, 1964?
TWO weeks later the Vicosinos for.
mal[y petitioned to have Anita and
other Volunteer teachers return. The
report says that Anita was “the one
person who had already achieved a
positive and notable impact? She became
the model for later Vices re-
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quesk for Volunteem. Most of the
others in the original woup were =ked
to remain in Chances.
The repon calls tbe decision to
expel the Volunteers a “highly significant
and an important experience for
the former serfs of Vices.”
“Few, andpossibly no other similar
rural Indian population or Matizo
townsmen in tbe Peruvian And-,
would risk expelfing from is midst a
body of persons enjoying the high
prestige that Peace Corps Volunteers
had in the Callej6n Valley;’ the repom
concludes.
“The fact that the VICOS ex-serfs
were able to make such a decision at
all, even though they did so under the
manipulation of anti-American atitators
and without a full comprehension
of the nature of the expulsion, reflected
the great social distance these Indians
have traveled since their days of
serfdom.”