Oldal 38 [38]
THE MODERN PERU: WESTERN, INDIGENOUS OR MESTIZO
other hand, Peralta’s paradigm was modified by Peruvian Creole intellectuals
in their periodical Mercurio Peruano (1791-1795) as part of their process of
self-identification after a great rebellion that shook the colonial regime in
1780. Indeed, Creole intellectuals generated an idea of themselves as the true
representatives of the Peruvian nation as part of the Spanish Empire and with
more affinities to the Creoles of other parts of Hispanic America and even to
peninsular Spaniards than with their fellow Indians, Mestizo, and castes.’
It was the Jesuit Juan Pablo Viscardo Guzman who first formulated a
coherent version of the Peruvian history that sustained political separation
from Spain and his arguments would be central in the emergence of the new
interpretative models of Peruvian history after independence. His Carta a los
españoles americanos (London, 1799, in French) contains a short “history” of
Peru pointing toward independence. His narrative recounts the events from
the conquest to the late eighteenth century, showing in a continuous line the
Spanish role in the New World which he understands as extremely negative.’
His enlightened and pactist vision allowed him to see that Spain had failed to
comply with the “colonial pact” with the Creoles as heirs of the conquerors
who had reached maturity and should have been emancipated from their
“mother” (the Bourbon dynasty) due to her tyrannical attitudes in taking
away the privileges Creole elites held at least from the seventeenth century.*
The political break with Spain generated debates around the cultural
paradigms that the new country should have in order to create the foundations
of the Peruvian nation. In particular, the hesitation to enter Western
modernity generated controversies between Catholics and Hispanists and,
on the other hand, supporters of Western progress linked to the Protestant
traditions of northern and central Europe when evaluating the Spanish
legacy in the formation of Peruvian nationality. While England and France
represented progress, Spain was seen as an unsuccessful country wedded to
outdated traditions.
There was a long period of searching for what it meant to be Peruvian
in different areas of culture and knowledge. This was a complicated task
in a multicultural country such as Peru because it implied a high degree
of intellectual violence in the effort to impose a version of history that set
aside this multiple local legacy and, rather, privileged the Western as the
2 In fact, the prevalent historical vision in the Mercurio Peruano was the imperial version
penned by the Catalan oidor of the Royal audiencia of Lima Ambrosio Cerdan de Landa y
Simón Pontero (1793).
On Viscardo’s philosophical conceptions see Maria Luisa Rivara de Tuesta: Filosofia e
historia de las ideas en el Peru, Lima, Fondo de Cultura Econémica, 2000, Tome II, 64—65;
and David Brading: The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the
Liberal State 1492-1867, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 535-540.
Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmän: Obra completa, Lima, Ediciones del Congreso del Perü,
1998, Tome I, 211, and Tome II, 382.
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