Oldal 37 [37]
FRANCISCO QUIROZ CHUECA
however, is that the creation of an autonomous state and a modern nation
has peculiarities in Peru affecting the conception of the Peruvian national
identity and, therefore, the particular components that determine the content
of the idea of a Peruvian nation and the historical discourse that this nation
projected as support of its own existence and mission.
One of the most important variables is precisely the colonial legacy that
creates ethno-cultural, regional, economic, and social differences. For
centuries the country cultivated internal distinctions that are reflected both
in the regulations and social practices, and even in the image of its common
history.
The idea of the nation and the orientation of the historiography mirror
the difficulties intellectuals in the capital city, Lima, faced when trying to
conceive a restricted nation presented as inclusive of ethno-cultural sectors
and regions of the country. More than a common history, a nation such as
the one forged in independent Peru seeks to impose its versions of the past as
common to all inhabitants of the country.
In a megadiverse country such as Peru, the result is the reproduction ofthe
prejudiced and ethnocentric tendencies of the hegemonic culture. Therefore,
the colonial fact and the need to sustain a nominally egalitarian political and
social regime end up shaping the content of Peruvian historiography and the
idea of the nation in modern Peru.
THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERUVIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
The permanent struggle between historical guidelines has been one of the
central features of Peruvian historiography since its dawn in the sixteenth
century (or even from before).
Colonialism and the transition toward an independent Republic affected
the conceptions of Peruvian history. By independence in 1820-1826, the two
historical paradigms created in previous centuries were still in force, which
reflected the discrepancies Lima and provincial intellectuals held about the
country and its historical destiny: a) the Incan, encomendero, and Andean
model created in the seventeenth century by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,
and b) the Western, White, and Creole Lima model created by Pedro Peralta
Barnuevo in the eighteenth century.’
These models of interpretation of Peruvian history remained in force, but
with some alterations as in the eighteenth century the version of the Inca
Garcilaso dela Vega gave rise to a utopian revival of the Inca Empire and, on the
! Francisco Quiroz Chueca: De la patria a la naciôn. Historiografia peruana desde Garcilaso
hasta la era del guano, Lima, Asamblea Nacional de Rectores, 2012.
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