Oldal 43 [43]
OCR
FRANCISCO QUIROZ CHUECA THE CONSERVATIVE AND NATIONALIST HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY The establishment of the basis of a vision of Peruvian history that would become the “official” version of the country after the debacle of the War with Chile (1879-1883) corresponds to the Jesuit Rubén Vargas Ugarte. The war had devastated the country materially but also culturally. The previous export boom was replaced by a sharp and prolonged economic crisis accompanied by a bitter confirmation: the national self-esteem had been gouged by the defeat to a country that the dominant social sectors of Lima (and Peru in general) always considered as inferior. The country had to be rebuilt both materially and culturally. Historiography was called to meet the demands of this last aspect but the task had to be deferred due to the civil strife in which strongmen or caudillos dispute the political power believing themselves to be the saviors of the country that, in fact, they anarchized. Toward 1895 the civil war ended, inaugurating a period of a new primary-export economic boom and political stability at the expense of a huge reduction of citizenship by excluding the indigenous and rural majorities of the country from the political, social, and cultural system. This new oligarchic republic was controlled by old wealthy sectors (landowners and bankers) and new ones dedicated to mining, petroleum, agricultural exports, finance, and modern industry. Their exclusionary politics and social manners gave way to what is called the “aristocratic Republic” in Peruvian history (1895-1919). In this context, the dominant oligarchy sought to highlight positive aspects of Peruvian republican history in order to eliminate the negative image that national history had acquired after the war.'? The awkward task was to focus on the few moments when the country lived in social order rather than in the chaos attributed to the democratic norms rejected by a disillusioned oligarchy of the republican political system. Actually, the disappointment with the republican regime is common throughout Latin America at the turn of the century. New social actors were breaking into the political, social and cultural scene by questioning the hegemonic role of the oligarchy in these fields. Mesocratic, provincial, 8A radical anti-oligarchic leader, Manuel Gonzalez Prada launched a very sharp dart at the oligarchy in his famous speech at the Politeama theatre in Lima, collected in his book of essays Pajinas libres (1888), shortly after the war was over. In the presence of the President of the Republic of the time, Gonzalez Prada pointed directly to the situation of backwardness and exploitation in which the oligarchy kept the majority of the population of the country as the actual cause of the defeat in the war. Gonzalez Prada concluded his speech with a lapidary expression for the pre-war governments: “the history of former governments of Peru fits in three words: imbecility in action’. Manuel Gonzalez Prada, Ensayos 1885-1916, Lima, Universidad Ricardo Palma, Editorial Universitaria, 2009, 53-55, 57. s 42 e
