Oldal 46 [46]
THE MODERN PERU: WESTERN, INDIGENOUS OR MESTIZO
that was becoming increasingly difficult to control. Indeed, Belaunde openly
placed himself on the side of the doctrine of the "sovereignty of intelligence"
of Bartolomé Herrera as the answer to the dilemma of the validity of
democracy in the country. Here, Belaunde affirmed that practice and science
had demonstrated "the lies of the revolution" and "had dispelled many of
the illusions of exaggerated democracy because of the absurdity of political
egalitarianism in a people, like ours, of such a complicated structure.” The
solution was the formation of an intellectual oligarchy of men of position,
talent, and virtue to guide an ethnically mixed people.” That is, “real” Peru
was a racially White country.
Father Vargas Ugarte was the creator of the new conservative version of the
Peruvian history. To begin with, echoing the demands of Bartolomé Herrera,
the focus of the interests of historiography had to be Peru from the time of the
European conquest. Vargas Ugarte stated that the historical course of Peru
should begin “with the study of the Conquest, enjoyable and interesting and
with which, logically, the real Peru begins, born of the fusion of two races, the
conqueror and the conquered.”"®
In effect, the extensive and fruitful work of Vargas Ugarte began with the
European conquest and covered all the time of the Spanish rule, Independence
and the Republic. Vargas Ugarte provided a significant account of the history
of the formation of the Peruvian nation as a Mestizo one led to its civilizing
ends by a White, Western, and Christian elite. This version of Peruvian
national history became “official” since it worked for the political, social and
cultural interests of the Peruvian oligarchy.
Thus, the idea that crosses the conservative and nationalist Peruvian
historiography is linked in this way to the postulates of Juan Pablo Viscardo
y Guzman about the maturity of the American Creole, going through
modifications made by the priest Bartolomé Herrera in mid-nineteenth
century in the sense that independence had to be understood as a natural
process of emancipation. Already in the twentieth century, it was highlighted
that the country was Mestizo and led by a White, Western and Christian
elite (mostly from the capital city, Lima) and this would be the main idea that
prevailed in Peruvian historiography until the advent of a historiography with
different social protagonists and authors since the decade of 1960.
Victor Andrés Belaunde: Meditaciones peruanas, in Obras completas. Primera serie El
Proyecto Nacional, Lima, Comisién Nacional del Centenario de Victor Andrés Belaunde,
1987, Tome II, 100-101, 128.
Rubén Vargas Ugarte: Manual de estudios peruanistas, Lima, Libreria Studium, 1951, 19¬
20, 27.