Contemporary Patterns of Migration in the Central Andes

a high degree of population mobility characterizes demographic phenomena in most Latin American countries has become a routine statement. That such movements exercise a pervasive influence on the economic, political and demographic structures of both receiving and sending areas is similarly commonplace. Paradoxically, however, the exact dimensions of these movements in recent periods are still largely unknown in many countries while discussions of the manner of their impact on the various aforementioned structures border on the speculative (Martine, 1975). Widespread migration and population redistribution in Central Andean regions during the recent decades has provoked serious concern over the social, environmental, and biological consequences (UNESCO, 1975). Lima, Peru, illustrates some of these concerns. Migrants to the city of Lima have increased that city's population from 600,000 in 1940 to 4 million in 1970, severely straining, and occasionally overwhelming, the capacity to provide essential services to the hundreds of thousands moving to the city and to the new towns or pueblos jovenes springing up in the outlying desert where water and other resources are in short supply. Many problems plague these crowded settlements: infant malnutrition and unemployment are among the most frequent (Graham and Adrianzen, 1972; ONEC, 1972). The size and extent of the city, the demands for space, water, and food, and also the economic, political, and social characteristics of the inhabitants change. Migration today is indeed a process with widespread ramifications. Short-term population movement and flow of resources, both large-scale and small, among ecozones at varying altitudes was a pattern of population-environment interaction that had been characteristic of Andean peoples for centuries before the European conquest; this is the vertical model of Andean economy discussed by Murra (1972). The arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century caused a catastrophic disruption to the Andean