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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. +36 +
