Oldal 40 [40]
THE MODERN PERU: WESTERN, INDIGENOUS OR MESTIZO
With Herrera, history becomes providential again. Like many other previous
authors, Herrera saw in the Inca Empire a moment of preparation of the
Andes to receive the Gospel (preparatio evangelica) and it was the Spaniards
who fulfilled the task imposed by God: “Peru already needed baptism: Spain
extended its vigorous arms to receive in them peoples to be offered to the
Church” and thus created “the new Peru, the Spanish and Christian Peru”?
The last sentence summarizes Herrera’s conception of the country’s
historical trajectory. Peru is a Spanish and Christian country located in South
America.
This quote has been manipulated by conservative and nationalist historians
that want to see Bartolomé Herrera as their standard-bearer in the promotion
of a nominally integrated Peruvian nation guided by Creoles. In reality, a new
country made up of Spaniards and Indians does not imply an equal merger.
Herrera deeply rejected the idea of considering Indians as equals, because for
him intelligence was the gift that makes the difference between those who
belong to a society with all rights and those who simply do not. According
to Herrera, Indians lacked understanding and, therefore, they could not be
citizens.
Thus, Herrera changed the terms of the discussion: independence was a
process of maturation that leads to the emancipation of a colony that can
now live without the tutelage of a metropolis. Moreover, in an argument that
would also be developed later by conservative historians,* Herrera denied the
colonial character of the Spanish dominion stating that the Spanish overseas
territories were kingdoms of the Spanish commonwealth rather than colonies
and thus
we were a part of the great nation that ruled the kingdom of Spain and the Indies.
It was therefore necessary that we were not patriotic for not loving that nation that
was our homeland, or that government that was our government.’
In this way, Herrera opened the door to revaluing the Spanish image of Peru
and the Peruvian nation at a time when the influence of northern and central
European and Protestant modernity was increasing at the expense of the
Hispanic legacy and Catholicism with which the Peruvian dominant social
sectors had identified for three centuries. This vision, politically conservative,
continued its course in Peruvian historiography (especially, in Lima historical
have more similarity and more links with each other than with the rest of the human race”.
Bartolomé Herrera, Escritos y discursos, Lima, Biblioteca de la Republica, 1929-1934, Tome
I, 77; Tome II, 106-107.
Herrera, Ibid, Tome I, 74—76 (Emphasis in the original).
For instance, see Fausto Alvarado Dodero, Virreinato o colonia. Historia conceptual.
Espana-Pert. Siglos XVI, XVII y XVII, Lima, Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Pert, 2013.
° Herrera, Ibid, Tome I, 92.
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