State, Communities and Citizens. The Demise of the State and the Organization of Peasant and Indigenous Communities In Peru: the Ronda Campesina

The point of departure of the text is, in the first place, that the modern state that was born with the new international order at the end of the Second World War doesn´t function, it does not fulfill its promises and obligations and, in the second place, that the particular citizens who live in Indian and peasant villages, are beginning to organize to defend themselves exactly against the state, that in its constitution promised to defend their civil and political rights.

Under the harsh conditions and the extreme eurocentrism and ethnocentrism of neoliberalism, earlier peaceful institutions have become institutions of defense of the Indian and peasant villages.

In the text, one such institution of defense of the villages is presented: the institution known as the "ronda campesina" that was born in the context of an extreme political and economic crisis in Peru in 1976, and since then has spread as a prairie fire, so that it now, some forty years later, is found in all of the 24 regions in Peru, and has become an important legal institution and a political force to be counted with, probably the first decidedly village institution to be present on a national level.