Radicals: Resistance and Protest in Colonial Malaya

RADICALS

Resistance and Protest in Colonial Malaya

Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied

National University of Singapore

NIU PRESS / DeKalb

Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb 60115

© 2015 by Northern Illinois University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

978-0-87580-492-7 (paper)

978-1-60909-182-8 (ebook)

Book design by Shaun Allshouse

Cover design by Yuni Dorr

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aljunied, Syed Muhd. Khairudin, 1976- author

Radicals : resistance and protest in colonial Malaya / Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-87580-492-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60909-182-8 (ebook)

1. Anti-imperialist movements—Malaysia. I. Title.

DS596.6.A45 2015

959.5’104—dc23

2015001762

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Glossary

Illustrations

Note on Terminology

Introduction: Radicals as History

Chapter One: Of Martyrs, Memories, and Modernities

Chapter Two: The Awakened Generation

Chapter Three: Perjuangan under the Flag of the Rising Sun

Chapter Four: An Age of Ferment and Experimentation

Chapter Five: Muslim Activists and Malay Women Mobilized

Chapter Six: Resistance behind Bars

Conclusion: The Radical Legacy

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been completed without the help of family members, friends, colleagues, teachers, critics, skeptics, café owners, archivists, and librarians. Its birth can be traced to a somewhat inauspicious event: the oral defense of my doctoral dissertation some years ago. I had jotted down some of the most difficult would-be questions from the examiners. The preparation took me days and cost me sleep, perhaps too much for a thesis that went a little beyond three hundred pages and took me two years to write. I expected the first query to be the most complex one. And yet, the question that was posed to me was something so elementary, and yet so consequential, that it would occupy my mind in the years to come. You have passed. Now tell us about the book that you will be writing the moment you leave this room. I had to think of something smart enough to avoid sounding silly. The idea that came to my mind at that moment was totally spontaneous, though it reflected my long-standing fascination with marginalized groups in society: The Malay Radicals.

So the first word of thanks must go to Timothy Harper, who urged me to set out on that fortuitous pathway in search of the stories of the defeated and the little people in Southeast Asian pasts who sought to change their destiny by engaging in popular politics and social activism. Tim, Raj Brown, and William Clarence-Smith have all been very supportive of my work ever since I joined academe. Two mentors and close friends, Timothy Barnard and Maurizio Peleggi, gave me useful advice on questions relating to the writing of alternative histories and kept me on track in striking a just balance between theory and empiricism. Jim Collins gave me much-needed impetus to write a book proposal and not just let scraps of paper and notes pile up on my table.

I have also incurred numerous debts to friends scattered across a few continents, who have shaped this book in their own ways. Azharuddin Mohd Dali at Universiti Malaya shared some useful documents relating to British policies and convened a seminar for me to share my initial thoughts. Wan Zawawi, at the University of Brunei, gave me valuable insights about how to frame my study to include perspectives from anthropology at a time when the book project was totally vague and unstructured. Amrita Malhi and Khoo Gaik Cheng invited me to deliver a keynote address on Colonial Imprisonment at the Australian National University. The substance of that talk became part of this book. Joseph Camilleri, the kindest person I have known in my life, appointed me as Honorary Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne. While based temporarily in that beautiful city, I met esteemed academics such as Sven Schottmann, Maila Stivens, and Joel Kahn who questioned me about my presumptions regarding Southeast Asian resistance movements and politics. The families of Encik Hasim and Sophiandy Sopali made my time in Melbourne very memorable.

Jean-Louis Margolin at the University of Provence arranged for a workshop on colonial penology, which crystallized some of my ideas when I was going in circles and confusing directions. Torsten Tschacher made possible a trip to the University of Heidelberg, where I discussed the role of public spaces in the diffusion of radical ideas. Johan Lindquist, Joshua Barker, and Erik Harms put together a wonderful workshop at Yale University on Figures of Modernity in Southeast Asia, a meeting of minds that permitted me to speak to some specialists about my interests in radicalism and anticolonialism. And, of course, I am grateful to Karen Barkey for accepting me into the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University, as a Fulbright Visiting Professor during the last stages of revisions.

Colleagues, friends, and reviewers helped in many ways. It would take too many pages to list them all, but I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Jan van der Putten and Maznah Mohamad for sparing much of their energies to provide comments on different chapters of the book. Kamaludeen Nasir was a sharp interlocutor and a sounding board for the book, always willing to offer different perspectives, frustratingly unsettling my own assumptions and pointing out some relevant works. Erik Holmberg read the entire text in its raw form and offered many valuable comments for improvement. His attentiveness to details and breadth of knowledge never fail to impress me. Nick Sim, Nur Faatihah, and Oummar Nor Amman were excellent research assistants. Loh Kah Seng commented on and polished some chapters, while constantly reminding me to always be true to being a real historian and not try to be something else. Ermin Sinanovic, Faizal Yahya, Mark Lim, and Derek Heng kept my spirits alive even during their busiest moments, urging me just to get my work done. Eunice Lau and Rashad Green allowed me to sublet their beautiful apartments in uptown Manhattan, where many of the loose ends of this book were tied up.

The staff at NIU Press gave me excellent guidance that saw the manuscript to completion based on the excellent suggestions made by the two anonymous reviewers. And, of course, I am deeply grateful to the Department of Malay Studies of the National University of Singapore for providing me with so much space and time to travel to several archives and libraries, and to attend workshops and conferences, when I was running the last lap toward the completion of this book.

Parts of this book have appeared elsewhere in significantly different versions as articles in Postcolonial Studies, Journal of Social History, and the Journal of Historical Sociology. I wish to thank the publishers of these journals for allowing me to reprint them here. I wish to also thank the Malaysian National Archives for permission to reproduce the photos in this book.

It would have been impossible for me to finish this book without the patience and understanding of my family. Parents, in-laws, brothers, and sisters were always there when I needed them most. My six children, Inshirah, Fatihah, Yusuf, Muhammad, Yasin, and Furqan endured the periodic absence of their father during my trips overseas and when I was thinking hard about words and more words. Above all, Marlina has been supportive of me since we got married many years ago, remaining by my side, listening to my endless talk about history, enduring my late-night writing habits and oftentimes illogical ramblings about dead people and weird folks. This book is for her.

Abbreviations

AFPFL—Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League

API—Angkatan Pemuda Insaf

ASAS 50—Angkatan Sasterawan 50

AWAS—Angkatan Wanita Sedar

BATAS—Barisan Tani SeMalaya

BKM—Barisan Kebangsaan Melayu

FMS—Federated Malay States

GERAM—Gerakan Angkatan Muda

HM—Hizbul Muslimin

IMP—Independence of Malaya Party

KMM—Kesatuan Melayu Muda

KMS—Kesatuan Melayu Singapura

KRIS—Kesatuan Rakyat Indonesia Merdeka

LEPIR—Lembaga Pendidikan Rakyat

MAS—Malay Administrative Service

MATA—Majlis Agama Tertinggi Se-Malaya

MCA—Malayan Chinese Association

MCP—Malayan Communist Party

MEC—Malay Education Council

MIC—Malayan Indian Congress

MMA—Malayan Military Administration

MPAJA—Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army

MPM—Majlis Pelajaran Melayu

MWWA—Malay Women’s Welfare Association

PAS—Parti Islam Se-Malaysia

PERAM—Pemuda Radikal Melayu

PERPEMAS—Pusat Perekonomian Melayu Se-Malaya

PETA—Pembela Tanahair

PKI—Partai Komunis Indonesia

PKM—Parti Komunis Malaya

PKMM—Persatuan Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya

PMFTU—Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions

PMIP—Pan-Malayan Islamic Party

PMS—Persatuan Melayu Selangor

PNI—Partai Nasional Indonesia

PRM—Parti Rakyat Malaya

PUTERA—Pusat Tenaga Rakyat

PUTERA-AMCJA—Pusat Tenaga Rakyat-All-Malaya Council of Joint Action

SITC—Sultan Idris Training College

SS—Straits Settlements

UMNO—United Malays National Organization

UMS—Unfederated Malay States

Glossary

adat—custom

Alam Melayu—Malay World

bangsa—race

bangsawan—Malay opera

cita-cita perjuangan—spirit and the ambitions of struggle

hajjis—Muslims who have gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca

hartal—voluntary closing of schools and places of business

Jawi Peranakan—locally born Muslims from mixed marriages

kafir—infidels

kampung—village

kebangsaan—nationalism

kerajaan—kingship

kesatuan—unity

kesedaran—consciousness

Melayu Raya—a union of Singapore, Malaya, and Indonesia

merdeka—freedom

nama—status

negeri—state

orang asli—indigenous peoples

orang-orang besar—noble men

penghulu —village head

penglipur lara—storytellers

rakyat—commoners

sandiwara—dramas

suratkhabar—newspapers

syariah—Islamic ethical code

Tanah Melayu—Malay Land

tanah pusaka—ancestral relic

ulamas—religious scholars

ummah—worldwide Muslim community

warisan—legacy

Illustrations

Figures

Figure 1: Aerial view of Pudu Prison, Kuala Lumpur, prior to its complete demolition, 20 December 2011

Figure 2: Ahmad Boestamam, secretary of Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM), during a meeting at Beranang, Selangor, 17 November 1946

Figure 3: Dr. Burhanuddin during his visit to Tanjung Ipoh, 1 December 1946

Figure 4: AWAS, API, and GERAM demonstration held in Malacca, 22 December 1946

Figure 5: Mass gathering organized by PKMM, Rembau, Negeri Sembilan, 8 November 1946

Figure 6: Malay radicals in Tanjung Beruas Prison, 11 February 1951

Tables

Table 1: Kesatuan Melayu Muda’s Founding Members and Their Backgrounds

Table 2: PKMM membership (including API and AWAS) in 1947

Note on Terminology

This book uses the term Malaya because this was Malaysia’s name prior to the establishment of the Malaysian Federation in 1963. I use the spellings Johore and Malacca (instead of Johor and Melaka) as they were used in the time period covered in this study.

Introduction

Radicals as History

› The night of 21 June 2010 was an unusual and memorable one for many Malaysians. For many hours, a large crowd of onlookers had gathered in the darkness to watch bulldozers demolish a 300-meter wall of Kuala Lumpur’s century-old Pudu Prison. The wall was adorned with what was reportedly the world’s longest mural, which had been painted by former inmates of the prison. The onlookers’ attempts to salvage pieces of the rubble as souvenirs bore testimony to the symbolic importance of one of the oldest colonial buildings in Malaysia’s capital city. In fact, in the weeks leading up to the day of demolition, battle lines were drawn between developers and conservationists advocating diametrically opposed views of the value of the prison. Real estate speculators and urban planners argued that the removal of the complex was necessary to make way for commercial buildings and hotels, as well as to solve traffic problems in the area. All of these efforts are part of Kuala Lumpur’s ongoing project to transform itself into a financial hub and a model world city that will grow out of its own past.¹

These arguments for the complete removal of the prison from the city landscape were met with objections, primarily from former radicals who were once political prisoners and from heritage activists who contended that Pudu Prison was one of Malaysia’s historical landmarks. Granted, the prison confined and hanged criminals and drug offenders; but to pull down a building that was closely associated with the country’s independence movement would erase the physical reminder of some of the most important people and events of Malaysia’s heritage and nationhood.² The eventual destruction of Pudu Prison after weeks of protests indicates that Malaysia is a nation that has yet to come to terms with its colonial inheritance. Moreover, the controversy surrounding the prison’s destruction reveals the divisions in public opinion in Malaysia today between those who wish to commemorate and celebrate the radicals versus those who might prefer that they be forgotten.

Not all radicals were makers of history, just as those who made history were not all radicals. In the pages that follow, I aim to tell the story of a group of radical Malay men and women in colonial Malaya who once formed part of the inmate population of Pudu Prison. These Malay radicals were people from ordinary social backgrounds who chose to oppose foreign rule of their homeland, knowing full well that by embarking on this path of resistance, they risked imprisonment or death. Their ranks included teachers, journalists, intellectuals, housewives, peasants, preachers, and youths. They formed, led, and contributed to the founding of political parties, grassroots organizations, unions, newspapers, periodicals, and schools that spread their ideas nationwide in the aftermath of the Great Depression, when colonialism was at its height and evident in all areas of life in their country. But when their efforts to uproot foreign dominance faltered in the face of the sanctions the state imposed upon them, some of these radicals chose to take up arms, while others engaged in aggressive protests to uphold their rights. Some died fighting to regain their nation’s liberty. Hundreds were incarcerated and lived to resist colonialism until their country attained its independence in August 1957. All of these Malay radicals were devoted to becoming free men and to claiming their right to be treated as equals in a world riddled with prejudice and contradictions.

figure 1

Aerial view of Pudu Prison, Kuala Lumpur, prior to its complete demolition, 20 December 2011

This book takes a different path from previous influential treatments of the Malay radicals.³ It seeks to rescue the Malay radicals from the shadows of nationalist scholarship, ethnic and regional parochialisms, the moral orthodoxies of our time, and intellectual reification, by presenting them as neither heroes nor villains, but as productive people in history.⁴ That is to say, the Malay radicals were essentially a creative, constructive, and avant-garde constituent of Malayan life. They were men and women who responded to the blatant injustices of colonial rule and chose to stand up to it. In speaking truth to power and mobilizing their fellow men in the cause of oppositional politics and forms of disobedience, they helped lay bare the devices of colonialism. Their most enduring contributions rest with the creation of unexplored spaces and methods of resistance and the development of new vocabularies of liberation and freedom.

I do not seek to offer another straightforward collective biography of the Malay radicals. Such narratives have already been written with varying degrees of detail and accuracy. My objective is to bring to light the less charted and unanalyzed terrain of the experience of becoming and being radical—the radical experience, so to speak. Here, I am indebted to the work of Paul Cohen on the Boxer Rebellion in China. Cohen differentiates the experienced past from the historically constructed past, which consists primarily of a series of events that explains the logic behind human actions. In his words,

the past as actually lived, in short, consists of a continuum of different kinds of experience, at one end of which are experiences that, in terms of a given set of variables, are central, key, memorable, defining, and at the other end, experiences, often highly repetitive, that are of a more auxiliary or supportive sort. Another property of the lived past, one that profoundly colors all experience, is that it is outcome-blind.⁵

Any scholar who seeks to comprehend experiences as they were lived, according to Cohen, must be sensitive to the biographical consciousness, ideas, and motivations of the historical actors, to contingencies that were never realized, to emotions and anxieties, and to the limitations brought about by the realities of culture, society, and geography. The focus is on providing a rich and thick description of feelings and thoughts, motives and practices, adaptations and responses across space and time; and to tease out commonalities among them, rather than to narrate, in a precise manner, events and incidents. This, according to Cohen, is the task of an ethnographic historian.⁶

While agreeing with many aspects of Cohen’s delineation and interpretation of the experienced past, I find the drawing of a clear binary between that past and the one that is historically constructed to be problematic. Alternatively, it is my contention that the combination of the experienced and the historical, and the diachronic as well as the synchronic, can shed better light on the relationship between actors and contexts. To further this argument, I maintain that the radicals and their experiences in colonial Malaya can be understood in a more nuanced way by interrogating them alongside evolving local and global circumstances and by analyzing them through the lenses of a set of overarching and interconnected mobilizing concepts that were internalized, lived, and utilized in the course of their activism. I use the term mobilizing concepts to refer to a set of ideas, visions, and notions that the radicals used to reason and justify their advent, as thinking tools for them to make sense of the structures of domination inherent within their time and place, and as sources of motivation to induce them to surmount various challenges and problems that stood in their way. Mobilizing concepts, in that sense, are weapons and armor that the radicals employed to organize, strategize, protect, and consolidate themselves when menaced with the tentacles of the colonial state as they embarked upon the agonizing path toward independence.

The mobilizing concepts that I am concerned with are warisan (heritage), cita-cita perjuangan (spirit and the ambitions of struggle), kesedaran (consciousness), kesatuan (unity), kebangsaan (nationalism), Melayu Raya (a union of Singapore, Malaya, and Indonesia), and merdeka (freedom). These mobilizing concepts were born out of the confluence of the personal, social, structural, and ideational factors that shaped the Malay radicals. These processes included the onset of colonial rule, the memories of past struggles of local heroes, the alienation wrought by capitalism, the exposure to modern education and foreign migrants, and the influence of Islamic revivalism, third-world nationalism, and socialism. Other factors included the awareness of the excesses of traditional norms, the suffering that resulted from punitive actions by the colonial authorities, and rejection by the society at large for having radical visions and dreams. An ensemble rather than separate entities, these factors provided the social, political, and intellectual contexts that gave birth and meaning to these mobilizing concepts.

These mobilizing concepts pervade the writings and discourses of the radicals. They were manifested in the form of programs and activities, and were communicated to the masses from the birth of the Malay radicalist movement up to the eve of Malaysian independence and beyond. By analyzing the radical experience chronologically through the lenses of these mobilizing concepts and scrutinizing the ways in which these frames of reference were utilized and implemented, one may well break down the dichotomies of personal/political, local/global, colonized/colonizer, and religious/secular.⁷ In doing so, one can uncover new pathways and insights into the ways in which radical activists appropriated ideas and practices that came from both within and without their own societies.

One mobilizing concept that helps us to interrogate these dichotomies further is warisan, which means heritage. Warisan includes the objects, events, and ideas that have been handed down from generation to generation. The object that Malay radicals sought to recover was Melayu Raya—a union of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This was an imaginative geography that inflected the colonialists’ representations of space and territory in the Malay world.⁸

The Malay radicals saw the era of the precolonial Malay kingdoms as the golden age of Malay civilization. Like the memories of great wars and upheavals that become part and parcel of a community’s heritage, warisan includes events that were remembered through oral tradition and folklore. This notion of the warisan emphasizes the failed wars against foreign rulers exemplified in the battles fought by Dato’ Bahaman, Dol Said, and To’ Janggut, whose struggles were traced all the way back to prominent rulers of the Islamic world.

Yet while memories of these events evoked a sense of loss and defeat among the radicals, they also had the opposite effect of inspiring them to think through their perceptions of the past and to propound new ideas about the role of Islam and the relevance of new ideologies, of breaking the barrier between the religious and the secular. It is here that the mobilizing concept of cita-cita perjuangan (spirit and the ambitions of struggle) was an important core of the radical experience. As the vanguard of the dispossessed rakyat (commoners), the radicals saw themselves as representing the aspirations and concerns of the common folk. They were aware, however, that there was no turning back to the precolonial past. In charting their visions and aspirations for their nation’s future, the Malay radicals formulated the ideas of the kebangsaan (nationalism). Kebangsaan is a galvanizing identity that would aid in the resistance against the ills of colonialism and capitalism. Recognizing the limitations of the concept of bangsa (race), the Malay radicals fused the idea of Malay nationhood with Islam and socialism. The creative welding of socialist ideals with folk mythologies, while drawing from Islamic traditions and Western currents of thought, testifies to the fact that the Malay radicals were deeply aware of a variety of streams of thought beyond their own local context, redacting and presenting these ideas in ways that made them applicable for their own projects of resistance and mobilization.⁹

It follows, then, that the story of the radicals is also a story of contacts, interactions, and exchanges between the cultures of the colonized and the colonizers, rather than just a case of mutual antagonism between one another. Indeed, it was the coming of colonialism that brought about kesedaran (consciousness) among the Malay radicals. The sense that society was being stifled by the machinations of colonialism and its collaborators was critical to the radicalist experience. This was, ironically, a by-product of the colonial situation. But what were the factors that contributed to this consciousness? All of the radicals maintained that there was no single route to this. At the level of the family, the fact of being raised in a certain social context, whether rebellious or ultraloyalist, could spark an awareness of the contradictions of colonial rule. Meanwhile, the influence of reading and deep learning offered another route to political consciousness. The rise of literacy and the availability of books and newspapers during the colonial era fomented the realization of injustice, and this feeling of resentment was made more real through sojourns and travel in other areas of Malaya and beyond. Kesedaran was also a consequence of larger processes, such as urbanization and migration. The changes in the landscape, the arrival of foreign immigrants such as the Chinese and Indians, and the three years of Japanese rule during the war did much to inform the radicals (and the Malays in general) with the sense that they were about to be consigned to the margins of society and history.¹⁰

Kesatuan (unity), the idea that no people could achieve true independence unless they organized themselves to agitate as a unified nation, constitutes a third important mobilizing concept in shaping and explaining the radical experience. Unity is achieved less through ideological coherence or through adherence to a fixed dogma than through rallies, uniformed groups, organizations, trade union activism, and other coalitions. In this perspective, kesatuan was a process that encouraged respect for differing views and methodologies toward the achievement of complete independence, which testifies to the existence of a cosmopolitan outlook among the ranks of the Malay radicals.¹¹ Kesatuan is, however, not a perfect ideal but a reality filled with challenges and contradictions. Dissensions and divisions abounded despite claims of solidarity and attempts to unite disparate groups and personalities with varying temperaments. Betrayal and fallings-out between comrades in the ranks were commonplace. Differences in values, conflicting approaches, and defections often undermined the efforts to foster a spirit of unity in the ranks.

The last and no less important mobilizing concept, which is central to the organizing premise of this book, is merdeka (freedom). To be a Malay radical was to be acutely committed to the dissemination of the liberationist message and to the endurance of the hardships that were tied to the realization of that ultimate goal. The radicals introduced the idea of merdeka through the media of novels, newspapers, cell groups, and stage plays called bangsawan.¹² The spirit of struggle was not without peril. For many radicals, merdeka (freedom) entailed having to undergo bouts of hunger and starvation. If that experience was not challenging enough, the ordeals of arrests, interrogations, court trials, and hiding in the jungles added to the pains and penalties of choosing the radical path and delivering the message of merdeka. Ideally, no radical would yield if he or she had fully internalized the idea of freedom. More often than not, for those radicals who chose to give up the struggle, the paths out of radicalism emerged less from the policies of a foreign power than from the promises of wealth, status, and alternative merdeka manufactured and offered by the colonial-sponsored and aristocratic Malay elites.

It is clear that studying the radicals through the lenses of these mobilizing concepts compels the historian to consider the interconnections, relationships, contacts, and tensions that occurred at the individual, collective, ideational, political, economic, social, local, regional, and global levels in a given time and place. If one adopts such a wide angle of vision, more can be learned about how the elites and subaltern members of anticolonial movements were affected by the shifting contours of family life and society and the imposition of colonial systems of governance, and how the ideas they promoted influenced the societal and colonial institutions they sought to transform. Indeed, it is only when these mobilizing concepts and evolving contexts are juxtaposed, recognized as entwined, and placed within a given time, that one can understand the experiences of the radicals in colonial Malaya or elsewhere in their entirety and in the most comprehensive way possible. The radicals in Malaya afford such a perspective, much like other anticolonial movements in Southeast Asia. The personal, social, structural, and intellectual contexts in which these individuals and movements operated and the mobilizing concepts that governed their experiences compelled them to keep themselves attuned to regional and global developments, while simultaneously demonstrating a high degree of dynamism and commitment in their engagement with a whole array of problems and challenges.

We are now poised to ask: just who were the radicals in colonial Malaya, and what are the sources that can make them visible to the eye of the historian? One could perhaps start by listing a set of names and organizations that feature strongly in the imperial archive. Proceeding in this manner, which is so common among imperial historians, would mean that only those groups that entered the colonial imagination would be given pride of place in the story of Malay radicals, and it would also imply that all individuals and groups that populated the sociopolitical landscape of the country or promoted independence from colonial rule will be given due consideration. Little wonder then that much of the literature on radicals is trapped in the bureaucratic discourse and institutional concerns of the colonial states. In this literature, radicals are rendered largely as members of the literate class who were opposed to colonialism and the rule of white men.¹³

A way around this is to give primacy to the claims made by the Malay radicals themselves and to map out the coordinates of groups and personalities from within. The scores of memoirs written by and about prominent radicals point to the viability of this approach. Hitherto, local historians have cast doubts over the usefulness of these memoirs. This jaundiced approach to Malay sources in favor of the imperial archive has done much to perpetuate the colonial-era official marginalization of certain radicals. As Reynaldo Ileto has observed, the reliance of scholars upon colonial sources precludes any discussion of the workings of the popular indigenous mind and of the meanings that local actors gave to their actions, localities, and communities.¹⁴