John Collier, Jr.

Cultural Energy

Lecture, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
September 19, 1987
A digital display of photographs published in Visual Anthropology Review - Vol 13, No. 2

What follows are short excerpts from the text of a talk given in the context of an exhibit and it is organized in terms of movement through that exhibit, a format that can only partially be reconstructed here. The images reproduced here include photographs from the exhibit as well as others that were felt to be related to the theme of the original talk. All photographs are courtesy of the Collier Family Collection. The full text can be found in VAR 13-2 pp. 48-67.

The Andes - "The Vicos Project," 1955
Then I went down to Peru to record a possibly revolutionary awakening being attempted through applied anthropology. Hacienda Vicos was an extensive landholding in a high Andean valley with some two hundred peon families. Vicos was the property of a charitable organization, which over the years has leased it to commercial operators. Like many colonial haciendas in the Andes it faced an uncertain future, possibly bankruptcy. Cornell, in cooperation with San Marcos University in Lima and an agency of the Peruvian government, leased the hacienda with an innovative plan to improve conditions for the Indian peons living there. As director of the Cornell-Peru Project, Dr . Allan Holmberg, became the hacendado, the "lord of the manor," of Hacienda Vicos – and of the peons that came with it.