A town with a Budweiser House and a Schafferer Museum, where traditional dishes include brennsuppe and Wurst sausages, where polkas and mazurkas are danced to the sound of an accordion, and whose inhabitants sport blonde hair while greeting you with “willkommen”, can only be located in Germany or Austria. Only? Well, no—because the place we are going to talk about is indeed nestled between mountains, but not the Alps—rather, some much farther away: the Peruvian Andes. It has a name that almost sounds like a Sumerian demon, Pozuzo, and its great peculiarity, indeed, is that it is inhabited by descendants of German immigrants.

Pozuzo was founded in the mid-16th century in a historical context that we will explore later. Of course, it did not arise out of nowhere. In the region where it is located—the province of Oxapampa, in the department of Pasco—there were already indigenous settlements belonging to various cultures.

Some were native, like the Amuesha people, who speak an Arawakan language and originate from the Amazon jungle. Today, they are spread across fifty communities in Pasco, Junín, and Huánuco, living on the edge of the high mountains, known as the Peruvian Yunga.

Pozuzo German Immigrants Peru
The convent of Santa Rosa de Ocopa. Credit: Miguelcrux / Wikimedia Commons

Others were invaders, such as the Inca, who expanded militarily into this region during the reign of Túpac Yupanqui, continuing the campaigns initiated by his father, Pachacútec. It is worth mentioning that when he attempted to conquer the area near the jungle, he was interrupted by the rebellion of the Colla kingdom, forcing him to divert his forces to suppress it. Nevertheless, a portion of the land remained under Inca control, forming the Antisuyo, one of the four administrative divisions of the Inca Empire. Archaeological remains in the form of stone tools and ceramics bear witness to the presence of both the Incas and the Amueshas.

However, Pozuzo itself is first mentioned during the late colonial period, in 1711, when the first Franciscans arrived to evangelize the indigenous groups—such as the Panatahuas, the Huanucos, and the aforementioned Amueshas—who had remained somewhat on the margins of Spanish colonization, as noted by Huamán Poma de Ayala.

This isolation persisted despite the intense mining activity that led to the founding of the town of Pasco in 1578. In fact, Cerro de Pasco would take over from Potosí when the latter’s silver deposits began to decline in the second half of the 18th century, earning it the title of Royal City of Mines.

Pozuzo German Immigrants Peru
19th-century painting of Juan Santos confronting the Franciscans. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The fact is that the religious missionaries were successful in their mission. In 1725, they founded the Santa Rosa de Ocopa Convent in Concepción (Junín) as a seminary for missionaries assigned to preach in the jungle. Five years later, in Oxapampa, two settlements of converted native Christians were already under their guidance: Asunción de Pozuzo and Nuestra Señora del Carmen de Tillingo (Pozuzo was—and still is—the name of the river that irrigated that region). Everything seemed to be going well, but in other parts of the viceroyalty, uprisings had begun to emerge as early as 1720—eventually totaling more than a hundred by the end of the century—and that idyllic valley could not remain untouched.

Sparked by the authorities’ lack of empathy in enforcing the laws, the most serious of these uprisings was Túpac Amaru’s in 1780. However, earlier, in 1742, the region witnessed the rebellion of the messianic leader Juan Santos Atahualpa, a well-educated mestizo who worked for the Franciscans in the Chanchamayo salt mines. Accused of murder, he proclaimed himself a descendant of the last Sapa Inca, Atahualpa (even adopting his name). He led an army aiming to restore the Tahuantinsuyo, reviving the ancient way of life, with the only novelty being the replacement of traditional Andean religion with Christianity—which he claimed to represent as the son of Christ and the God of America.

His forces numbered about two thousand men, most of them from the jungle regions—Asháninkas, Shipibo-Conibo, Yanesha, Amages, Piros, Mochobos, Siriminche, among others. This, combined with the fact that his activities were centered in the nearby Gran Pajonal (a plateau between Ucayali, Junín, and Pasco), instilled fear in the Pozuzo region, as people worried he might come looking for more indigenous recruits to strengthen his army. The governor therefore ordered the evacuation of the population from that region to San Antonio de Cuchero (present-day Tingo María), now part of the province of Padre Abad.

This happened in 1753—the rebellion lasted until 1756—and although some of Pozuzo’s natives returned on their own, between the change in environment and the inadequate logistics for supplying provisions, most fell ill and perished. As a result, the Pozuzo valley was left semi-depopulated, and it remained so until the mid-19th century. By then, Peru had gained independence, and waves of immigrants seeking a new life had begun to arrive. While the country had previously been a land of opportunity almost exclusively for Spaniards, from that point on, nationalities diversified.

Pozuzo German Immigrants Peru
The Peruvian department of Pasco. Credit: Huhsunqu / Wikimedia Commons

To illustrate, by 1857, half of Lima’s population was foreign, drawn by the booming guano industry. When the guano boom ended, so did the high immigration rate, but a significant influx persisted—especially of Chinese and Italians, who accounted for sixty percent of all foreigners. Immigrants of other origins were statistically much fewer, with Ecuadorians, Germans, and Britons making up the next largest groups in that order.

Immigration was not only declared free from the very beginning (San Martín, 1821) but was also encouraged by granting nationality after five years; Bolívar reduced it to three in 1823, and Salaverry later eliminated the time requirements altogether. In 1853, based on a law passed in 1849 by President Ramón Castilla y Marquesado, it was decided to repopulate the jungle regions, for which Germans were chosen, while the entry of Chinese immigrants was prohibited. There was no plan to colonize with indigenous people, who were considered indolent workers, nor with criollos, for whom agricultural and commercial labor was deemed inappropriate for their status.

Moreover, neighboring countries were not considered either; they had to be Europeans because their superior knowledge in industry and technology would bring progress, it was said. However, the project ended disastrously, with a thousand immigrants, half of whom perished, while the survivors were exploited until only a dozen remained, eventually dispersing to Moyobamba, Tarapoto, and Tocache. Three years later, a second attempt was made, this time involving private contractors. The one assigned to Pozuzo was the German baron Kuno Damian Freiherr Schutz von Holzhausen.

He was a Hessian aristocrat who had emigrated to the U.S. and settled in Texas. Seeing that his compatriots tended to forget their customs in that new territory, he thought they would fare better in Hispanic America—specifically Chile, where the climate was more similar to Germany’s, and German immigrant communities had already been established. So, he packed his bags and set off. To do so, he had to stop in Lima, where he befriended the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Juan Manuel Tirado.

It was Tirado who convinced him to stay and bring his compatriots to Peru, as there was a project to build a railway line leading to an Amazon tributary, thus connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. These were still prosperous times, thanks to the guano industry. Von Holzhausen was enthusiastic about the idea and agreed. The first contract stipulated that he would be paid thirty pesos for each settler he brought to Peru, but everything was suspended when a revolution ousted President Rufino Echenique in favor of Castilla.

Pozuzo German Immigrants Peru
A ship decorates Pozuzo’s Plaza de Armas in memory of the first settlers. Credit: Ibrehaut / Wikimedia Commons

Nevertheless, the incoming government revived the plan for a third attempt. Von Holzhausen committed to bringing in ten thousand settlers over a six-year period. The conditions offered by the Peruvian government included covering travel expenses from Europe, opening a road to facilitate their journey overland, paying fifteen pesos to each individual over fifteen years old, and distributing land parcels to those who settled, with tax exemptions and the right to become property owners. Additionally, they would be provided with food for six months and other services such as healthcare, education, etc. In exchange, they were required to practice the Catholic faith and demonstrate good conduct.

The baron published the corresponding advertisement in the German press, which received significant attention in the Rhineland and especially in Tyrol, where some Benedictines saw an opportunity to escape poverty for certain villages and convinced two hundred fifty-seven people. They were joined by a hundred Prussians, and they all set sail from the port of Antwerp aboard the cargo ship Norton. During the Atlantic crossing, twenty-three couples were married. Months later, they disembarked in El Callao, underwent quarantine, and began the second leg of their journey, crossing the Andes.

Some died along the way, but finally, in July 1859, about one hundred seventy settlers reached their destination. A municipal government was elected, and land was distributed (with the Huancabamba River dividing the Tyrolean and Prussian zones). According to the Peruvian government, the colony prospered at an astonishing rate, and the first harvests were so abundant that there was no longer a need to send them supplies. Other sources, however, claim the opposite—that the people of Pozuzo barely survived, abandoned to their fate and forgotten.

That did not prevent a second wave of immigrants from arriving in 1868—just over three hundred of the initially planned five hundred. Although their destination was meant to be Mayro, they chose to stay because the rains had made the route impassable. In fact, in the following decades and up until World War II, there was continued German emigration to Peru, though settlers established themselves elsewhere, such as in Satipo, Villa Rica, Huancayo, Trujillo, and Chiclayo. Today, there are approximately a quarter of a million Peruvians of German descent.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on October 8, 2018: Pozuzo, la curiosa historia de una colonia germana en los Andes peruanos

SOURCES

Fabián Novak Talavera, Las relaciones entre el Perú y Alemania, 1828-2003

Guillermo Godbersen, La inmigración alemana en el Perú

Manuel Torres Marín, Así nos vio la Novara. Impresiones austriacas sobre Chile y el Perú en 1859

Fernando Mires, La rebelión permanente. Las revoluciones sociales en América Latina

Arturo Enrique de la Torre y López, Juan Santos Atahualpa

Touristische Routen, Cidade de Pozuzo

Wikipedia, Pozuzo

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