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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 While England and France represented progress, Spain was seen as an unsuccessful country wedded to outdated traditions.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. + 37 +
