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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. + 39 +
