REINVENTING THE CITY OF THE KINGS:

POSTCOLONIAL MODERNIZATIONS OF LIMA, 1845-1930

By

JUAN CARLOS CALLIRGOS

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2007

1
© 2007 Juan Carlos Callirgos

2
To Themis, Sebas, and Juanjo

3
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Research for this study was possible thanks to an International Dissertation Research

Fellowship granted by the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew

W. Mellon Foundation and a McLaughlin Dissertation Fellowship granted by the University of

Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Preliminary research was conducted thanks to a

Preliminary Research Award by the University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies and

a Hanger Research Award granted by the Department of History at the University of Florida. The

Comisión Fulbright del Perú, the Institute for International Education, and the Department of

History at the University of Florida, provided the financial assistance that allowed me to leave

Peru to pursue graduate studies at the University of Florida. Finally, A Doctoral Teaching

Award granted by the University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies allowed me to

return to the U.S. to finish and defend this study. My immense gratitude goes to all those

institutions and their staffs.

This study is dedicated to my family. I thank Themis, my wife, for her company and

encouragement, for making my life rewarding, and for her wisdom, which does not cease to

amaze me. I thank my two sons, Sebastián and Juan José, for their precious growth and

quotidian love. The three of them give me more joy, pride, and hope than words may ever be

able to express. This study has been part of their lives for too long a period of time, so this is for

them.

This study is also a tribute to my parents, Yolanda and Humberto, for all the sacrifices

they have made to give their children opportunities they could not enjoy, and because each of

them has a personal way of providing unconditional love and support. Cecilia and Silvia, my

sisters, have been an inspiring presence throughout my life, and have always been there when I

needed them most.

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 My gratitude goes to all the combinations of Callirgos-Zavala, Patroni, Vargas-Callirgos,

Callirgos-Bernos, Castellanos-del Portal, Castellanos-Abarca, Castellanos-Lugón, and Verano-

Coca, who are my family’s indispensable network in Lima. Gainesville became home to our

family thanks to the company and support of some extraordinary friends who I want to thank: the

Osorio-Thurners, Alemán-León, Dutkas, Gianelli-Dutkas, and Pelegrina-Gómez de la Torre have

all enriched our lives and become our extended families forever.

I have a personal debt with surgeons Albert Rhoton and Patrick Antonelli at Shands

Hospital at the University of Florida, who took care of me and my family when I faced a difficult

health problem. I will always thank and admire them.

My students of anthropology at the Universidad Católica del Perú have shown great

patience and tolerance for my obsessions on history and have been an immense motivation for

this study.

I want to express my gratitude to professors Kathryn Burns, Maria Todorova, and Luise

White, at the University of Florida, for their memorable and intellectually stimulating seminars.

Dr. White, in particular, has taught me invaluable lessons on Africa and history.

I am particularly grateful to Dr. Mark Thurner, my advisor, who has been a splendid

professor and friend throughout these years. His intellectual merits –the extraordinary

combination of abundant archival and ethnographic research on Latin America, a solid

theoretical formation, and an unyielding drive for theory— have been tremendously influential

on me, as have his qualities as a person.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4

LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................8

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................................................10

ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................11

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION: POSTCOLONIAL REINVENTIONS OF THE “CITY OF THE

KINGS” ..................................................................................................................................12

Dismounting Pizarro: Postcolonial Anxieties over History....................................................12

History, the Nation and the Postcolonial City ........................................................................20
Historicizing History and National Identity Through Urban Transformations ......................36

2 MODERNIZING THE MODERN .........................................................................................61

A New History for a New Nation: A Trajan’s Column in the Plaza de la Constitución .......61
Already and Not Yet Modern: An Ambiguous Synecdoche for Peru ....................................68
A (Fenced-In) Liberator, the Signs of the Zodiac, and Christopher Columbus .....................74
A Republican “Palace of Pizarro” ..........................................................................................82
The Universal Language of Peruanidad/Civilización.............................................................91
“A(nother) Garden to Aromatize the Capital”........................................................................96
The Modern Demolition of the Modern ...............................................................................102

3 THE TIME OF THE NATION AND THE TIME OF CAPITAL .......................................114

A Republican Penitentiary for a Republican Society ...........................................................114

“Silence, Obedience and Labor” Outside the Penitentiary’s Walls......................................124
A National Exposition in the International Time of Capital.................................................139
At The Same Time: The Time of the Nation and the Time of Capital.................................144

4 “ETHNIC THERAPEUTICS”: THE APPEARANCE OF RACE IN SOCIOLOGICAL

THOUGHT AFTER THE WAR OF THE PACIFIC ...........................................................154

Education: The Scientific Formation of a Virile Population ................................................177

The Nation’s Wombs: Women, Race, and the Disappearance of the Private Sphere ..........189
Radical Therapy for a Sick Organism ..................................................................................196

5 MAPPING THE PROLETARIAT AND THE WRETCHED (1895-1910).........................199

Peeping into Enemy Territory: The Literary Construction of the Poor’s Habitats...............199

6
 Making a Respectable Working Class..................................................................................214

6 OPENING THE CITY (1895-1910).....................................................................................229

Modern Transformations, Modern Discomforts...................................................................249

7 A NEO MODERN CITY (1919-1930).................................................................................264

The Discourse of Discourse: The Multiple Pasts of the Patria Nueva.................................265

Concrete Discourses: A Lima Nueva for a Patria Nueva .....................................................282
A New Modern Gesture to Forget ........................................................................................302

8 UNFINAL REFLECTIONS .................................................................................................310

Parading History ...................................................................................................................310

History on Every Corner.......................................................................................................316
Postcolonial Modernizations, Postcolonial Denials .............................................................317

LIST OF REFERENCES.............................................................................................................321

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................343

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

1-1 Pizarro Monument. Removed on April 26, 2003..............................................................60

1-2 Pizarro Plaza and monument before removal. Graffiti reads: “Pizarro mass murderer
the Tawantinsuyo repudiates you”.....................................................................................60

2-1 Plaza de la Constitución – featuring Monument to Bolívar unfenced .............................108

2-2 Fenced liberator ...............................................................................................................108

2-3 Entrance to the reformed Alameda de los Descalzos.......................................................109

2-4 Reformed Alameda de los Descalzos ..............................................................................109

2-5 Columbus monument at the Alameda de Acho ...............................................................110

2-6 Plaza Mayor – Government Palace to the left (1860)......................................................110

2-7 Government Palace, 1879 ................................................................................................111

2-8 Dos de Mayo Plaza ..........................................................................................................112

2-9 Dos de Mayo Hospital (Under construction) ...................................................................113

2-10 Dos de Mayo Hospital. Front Building...........................................................................113

3-1 Paz Soldán’s blueprint for the Penitentiary .....................................................................147

3-2 Commemorative coins for the inauguration of the penitentiary (1862) ..........................147

3-3 Penitentiary’s façade........................................................................................................148

3-4 Radial Pavillion in Lima Penitentiary..............................................................................149

3-5 Unreformed Plaza Mayor, 1860.......................................................................................149

3-6 Reformed Plaza Mayor, 1872 ..........................................................................................150

3-7 Exposition Compound under construction, 1871.............................................................150

3-8 Exposition Park under construction, 1871 .......................................................................151

3-9 Presidential “kiosk,” Exposition Compound ...................................................................151

3-10 Presidential kiosk – postcard ...........................................................................................152

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3-11 “Bizantine” Pavilion ........................................................................................................152

3-12 Bizantine Pavillion (later used as headquarters for Zoo).................................................153

3-13 Pedro Ruiz Gallo’s Clock ................................................................................................153

6-1 Instituto Municipal de Higiene ........................................................................................260

6-2 Paseo 9 de Diciembre, with Columbus Monument .........................................................260

6-3 Paseo 9 de Diciembre.......................................................................................................261

6-4 Avenida La Colmena .......................................................................................................261

6-5 Lima’s Plaza de Armas after 1901 reforms .....................................................................262

6-6 Monument to San Martín .................................................................................................262

6-7 Bolognesi Monument.......................................................................................................263

6-8 Plaza Bolognesi................................................................................................................263

7-1 Leguía Avenue .................................................................................................................306

7-2 Leuro Development .........................................................................................................306

7-3 Archbishop’s Palace.........................................................................................................307

7-4 Panteón de los Próceres ...................................................................................................307

7-5 Manco Capac Monument.................................................................................................308

7-6 Museo Nacional de Arqueología .....................................................................................308

7-7 Plaza San Martín ..............................................................................................................309

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 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AHML Archivo Histórico de la Municipalidad de Lima Metropolitana

AGN Archivo General de la Nación.

AGN, R-J Archivo General de la Nación. Justicia.

AGN, OL Oficios de Prefecturas.

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 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School
of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

REINVENTING THE CITY OF THE KINGS: POSTCOLONIAL MODERNIZATIONS OF

LIMA, 1845-1930
By

Juan Carlos Callirgos

May 2007

Chair: Mark Thurner

Major: History

This study analyzes the postcolonial processes of modernization of the city of Lima,

during three key historical periods: the mid-nineteenth century --usually known as the “era of

guano”-- the late nineteenth and early twentieth century --post War of the Pacific-- and the 1920s

--the “Oncenio de Leguía.” It historicizes the conceptions of the city and the plans to reform it, to

understand how Peruvians imagined modernity and progress and attempted to create viable

images of their nation. This study proposes that Lima became the center of preoccupations for

postcolonial elites who attempted to make it a laboratory for the society they wanted to create for

their country at large. The study thus explores how “modernity,” “progress,” and “the nation”

was vicariously understood and debated by politicians, planners, engineers, criminologists,

hygienists, intellectuals, and the population at large.

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 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: POSTCOLONIAL REINVENTIONS OF THE “CITY OF THE KINGS”

Dismounting Pizarro: Postcolonial Anxieties over History

Limeños woke up on April 26, 2003, to learn that Francisco Pizarro was absent without

leave. In an unannounced measure, the Mayor of Lima, Luis Castañeda, had withdrawn the

statue of the Spanish conquistador of the Inca Empire and founder of the city at two o’clock in

the morning from a plaza located on a corner adjacent to Lima’s main square. The Mayor clearly

did not want opposition, but could anticipate a fiery debate on such an act. Indeed, the removal

of the statue of an equestrian, intrepid Pizarro would revive the heated controversy among

politicians, intellectuals and common citizens that followed the 1997 city approval of the

removal of this monument of Pizarro-the conqueror, and its replacement with a new depiction of

Pizarro-the founder (Figures 1-1 and 1-2).

It was an architect and member of the city council, who had proposed such a change in

1997. Santiago Agurto argued that Pizarro’s plaza damaged the monumental environment of the

central Plaza de Armas, that the statue depicted Pizarro as an aggressive, fierce conquistador

“ready to murder and enslave Indians”—, and that Pizarro himself, having carried out an

ignominious, condemnable conquest, was unworthy of an homage from the descendants of “our

Peruvian ancestors.” Agurto described Pizarro as a “pitiless, cruel conquistador that imposed on

Peru… the empire of Spain’s interests and customs,” considered unfortunate that Peruvians, “all

of us mestizos,” had forgotten the “holocaust” suffered by our “maternal ancestors,” and urged

fellow nationals to “recuperate our dignity, our identity and culture.” Finally, Agurto argued that

“monuments were erected to the memory of beneficial acts or persons,” and that no country

erected monuments to “people who remind damages or offenses to its people.” Indeed, France

12
had not erected a monument to Julius Caesar, nor Mexico, “our American brother,” to Spanish

conqueror Hernán Cortés. 1

Agurto’s historical arguments departed from the conception that Peru existed well before

Pizarro’s arrival to South America: it had been the Incas who unified the nation, and who were,

therefore, fellow Peruvians. While the Incas could be Peruvianized by Agurto, the Spanish

conquistadores, headed by Pizarro, had imposed a foreign, illegitimate rule over Peru and were

anti-Peruvian. Agurto recognized that the conquest, at the same time, had brought a new,

mestizo, nation into existence: reproducing a common, gendered trope on the conquest,

miscegenation and the nation, Agurto called Indians the “maternal ancestors” of a nation

homogeneously composed of “all of us mestizos.” In spite of his argument’s ambiguities on

what the nation is and how it was made up, Agurto assumed that there is one identity and one

culture authentically Peruvian, which Peruvians have to recuperate to regain their dignity.

The proposal received immediate support from scholars, politicians, and neighbors who

considered Pizarro “a bloody, ignorant, inhuman, ambitious, genocidal, and tyrant pig raiser,” 2

“the first mass murderer of our history, and the great destructor of our glorious culture of the

Incas,” 3 and “responsible for the murder of millions of our relatives and ancestors.” 4 In a typical

fashion, an editorial for the removal of the statue divided Peru’s history in two, before and after

Pizarro’s conquest. Projecting contemporary values into the past, the editorial described the

Tawantinsuyo as “a solidly constituted state, efficiently organized with a communitarian,

1
Santiago Agurto, “Propuesta para cambiar la actual estatua de Francisco Pizarro y remodelar la plazuela de su
nombre,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto (Lima: Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal, 1997),
14-6.
2
“Por fin sacarán a Fco. Pizarro de su pedestal: aplausos a los regidores,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago
Agurto, 62-9.
3
Genaro Ledesma, “No más monumentos a Pizarro,”in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 108-9. My
emphasis.
4
Javier Lajo, “A propósito de la erradicación de la estatua: despizarremos al Perú,” Quechuanetwork.org
(http://www.quechuanetwork.org/news_template.cfm?news_id=748&lang=s) (2003).

13
collectivist government… a confederate state: multinational, multicultural, and multilingual.”

Inca Peru (“El Perú Incaico”) is seen as the time when we were powerful, developed, and

wealthy. Peru was a well organized nation; resources were abundant and justly distributed. In

short: Peru was a world power until brutally conquered by illiterate, cruel Spaniards who

transformed it to what it is today.

At the same time, however, the editorial reproduced widespread paternalist –typically

indigenista— images of the Indians, stating that the Spaniards “took advantage of the innocent

conscience… of the aborigines.” The Spanish conquest is regarded as a decisive and crushing

event that explains all future developments: Spaniards “introduced foreign customs and

traditions” unsuited for Peruvian reality, “destroyed the knowledge and high technology known

in the Incanato… and denigrated the Inkas, sanctioning that they were animals similar to man.” 5

Peru’s “glorious” epoch had come to an end at the hands of Pizarro and his cohort, who

imprinted the country’s future with those features that characterize today’s Peru: injustice,

exclusion, and poverty.

Others signaled that Pizarro had “murdered Atahualpa, perpetrating regicide and deicide,

because the Inca was an Emperor-God,” 6 in addition committing “murder, kidnapping, pillage,

extortion, vandalism, genocide, and more crimes for which he… deserved the death penalty.” 7

This sixteenth-century war and human-rights criminal clearly could not receive any mercy, as he

“was not motivated by a noble purpose: his main drive was pillage, personal ambition, fed by a

low human nature contaminated by hatred.” 8 Unable to place Pizarro in death row, a newspaper

reader proposed not only to remove the monument, but to melt it and throw its bronze to the

5
“Por fin sacarán a Fco. Pizarro.”
6
Felipe Buendía, “¿Aún Pizarro espada en mano?,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 137-8.
7
Tomás Cáceres, “¿Desmontar a Pizarro?,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 125-6
8
Ibid., 126.

14
ocean in a public ceremony. 9 To complete Pizarro’s public sentence, some equaled having a

monument to honor Pizarro to erecting a monument to Adolf Hitler in Tel Aviv. 10

But Pizarro was to find active supporters who described him as the real founder of the

nation. Sharing Agurto’s view of the country as one composed by “all of us mestizos,”

opponents to the statue’s removal regarded the conquistador as the “founder of mestizaje,” 11 and,

therefore, the originator of “authentic” Peruanidad. A philosopher praised Pizarro for naming

the capital city of Lima after the Three Wise Men, “the white king, the “cholo” king, and the

black king, as a symbol of the encounter of three races,” 12 and urged honoring the man who had

made it possible to unite two civilizations, forming an integrated country. Others claimed that

Peruvians “ought to take advantage of our two rich heritages… Indians and Spaniards are our

first parents; the legacy of both is the fatherland,” 13 because “the white adventurer and the

emperor Indian, the victor and the vanquished are our blood.” 14 Taking the argument forward, a

historian remarked that Pizarro had conquered an Empire which had also subdued and dominated

other groups: the Incas and the Spaniards had both been conquerors and had created powerful

Empires, which signaled Peru’s historical grandeur. Indeed, this historian asked to erect a

monument to Pachacútec, “the greatest of the Inca monarchs” –considered the Inca who

extended the Empire’s possessions to its greatest dimensions—next to Pizarro’s. After all,

“Pizarro and Pachacútec do not exclude, but complement each other in an integral (indo-

9
Ibid.. 126. The same idea is expressed by Javier Lajo. Lajo, Javier “¿Pizarro fundó el Perú? Se debe fondear esas
estatua de marras,” Quechuanetwork.org
(http://www.quechuanetwork.org/news_template.cfm?news_id=747&lang=s) (2003).
10
“Por fin sacarán a Fco. Pizarro.”
11
Carlos Neuhaus “¿Otra mudanza para Francisco Pizarro?,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 50-
1.
12
Aurelio Miró Quesada, “Lima y Pizarro,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 161-3.
13
José Antonio del Busto, “En torno al monumento a Pizarro,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto,
158-60.
14
Carlos Orellana, “Pizarro y los sentimientos de culpa,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 101-
102.

15
Hispanic) view of the history of Peru.” 15 While a commentator praised Pizarro for the

remarkable feat of conquest, “an achievement that is part of Peruvians proud heritage,” 16 another

highlighted that Peruvians could well be proud of both, Inca and Spanish glorious pasts, which in

turn produced the harmonious blend we call modern Peru: “the most harmonious constellation of

peoples that exalts the history of human solidarity. Pizarro has created the Hispanic miracle of

South America, which still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.” 17

All of Pizarro advocates shared the conception that the nation is the biological and

cultural result of the conquest led by Pizarro. Some, however, took a paradoxical stand,

celebrating the conquest for “connecting us profoundly and definitely with Western Greco-

Roman-Christian culture… thus forming Peruvians in the most intimate aspects of family

sentiments, citizen affirmation, the essential juridical order, and even in the way we ethically and

spiritually conceive life itself.” 18 A noted attorney and legal historian remarked that he did “not

repudiate the conquest: I celebrate it, because it is from that event –undoubtedly harsh, as every

other conquest— that derive my language, my religion, my insertion in the Western world.” 19

Pizarro would, thus be the person who allowed for “modernity” to come to “our coasts.”

internationally noted writer Mario Vargas Llosa projected his values into the past, stating that

along with Pizarro came “the tongue of Cervantes, Western culture, Greece and Rome,

Christianity, the Renaissance, Enlightenment, the Rights of Men, the future democratic and

15
Ibid.
16
Miguel Cruchaga, “Expresan su desacuerdo con cambios de estatua,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago
Agurto, p.36.
17
Enrique Chirinos Soto, “Pizarro: Conquistador y fundador,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto,
103-5.
18
Hugo Guerra, “La estatua de Pizarro,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 41-3.
19
Fernando de Trazegnies, “Un Pizarro Light,” in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 70-3.

16
liberal culture, which is as essential and irreplaceable a component of peruanidad as is the Inca

Empire.” 20

As in the need to justify Pizarro’s “regicide,” a commentator made use of contemporary

conflicts with neighboring Ecuador, reminding readers that, by favoring “Ecuadorian” Quito

over Cusco, Atahualpa had been a traitor to “Peru:” Atahualpa was not “a little angel…but a

cruel illegitimate despot who committed atrocities in Cusco.” 21 Pizarro thus appeared as a

patriot savior who reestablished Peru’s hegemony in South America…

Name-calling could not be absent from such an impassionate confrontation. The statue

supporters were called “modern Felipillos,” 22 after the Indian collaborator/translator of Pizarro,

while Agurto’s faction was regarded as “schizophrenic,” and was accused of having brought

Peruvians back to those “awkward times of neo-indigenista versus hispanófila, from which

emerged some dangerous disintegration forces against authentic Peruanidad throughout this

century.” 23 Poignantly, Pizarro defenders suggested that Agurto’s proposal for a new, benign

representation of Pizarro was influenced by the United States’ taste for political correction,

labeling the proposed statue a “light Pizarro:” “now that it is fashionable to drink beer without

alcohol, eat cholesterol free butter, and zero-calorie sweets… (somebody wants) a light

Pizarro.” 24 In a bold fashion, both factions accused each other of being disloyal to Peru, either

by acting in a similar way as the Indian who “betrayed” his “race,” or by denying Hispanic

contributions to Peruvian racial and cultural stocks.

Five years after the ceasefire, when no one expected the move, a new Mayor finally

removed Pizarro, announcing the transformation of Pizarro’s Plaza into a new Plaza de la

20
Mario Vargas Llosa, “Los hispanicidas,” El País, 2003.
21
Manuel Camino, in Descabalgando a Pizarro, ed. Santiago Agurto, 76-7.
22
“Por fin sacarán a Fco. Pizarro.”
23
Hugo Guerra, “La estatua.”
24
Fernando de Trazegnies, “Un Pizarro Light.”

17
Peruanidad, to celebrate Peru’s history and heritage(s). The measure, according to Lima’s

Mayor Luis Castañeda was “aimed at emphasizing our identity… no country in the world has

erected a monument to its conqueror.” 25 Castañeda declared that the new Plaza would be

appropriate for today’s Lima, a city where the Peru of “todas las sangres” (all bloods) gathered,

adding that Pizarro’s monument could only be a symbol of Lima Antigua (old Lima), a city

“populated exclusively by Peruvians of Spanish heritage.” Modeled after Mexico’s Plaza de las

Tres Culturas, the plaza was to be a representation of Peru’s integration, without victors nor

vanquished; in fact, without Pizarro or any reference to historical breaks, but symbolizing

“history” as a continuity from which Peruvians could attain a sense of reconciliation and

harmony. Crowned by the flags of the Inca Empire, Lima, and Peru, to represent the historical

epochs of the Incas, the Viceroyalty, and the Republic, the new plaza will not make debates

about history cease. In fact, many have voiced their opposition to the flag of the Inca Empire,

not only on the grounds that it was created just in the nineteen-sixties, but because it is identical

to the banner of the International Gay movement, and therefore unsuited to represent “our”

imperial, and, obviously virile, Incas.

Ironies apart, the opposing views stated in the controversy were anything but new, as

participants recycled long-standing debates about Peru’s history and the complexion of the

national community. The debate on Pizarro’s Plaza and monument was historical in many ways.

Participants debated on the veracity of Pizarro’s depiction, analyzing, for instance, the mounted

cavalier’s clothing –according to Agurto, unsuited for the time of the conquest— and the shape

of the horse –which, he argued, looked more like a polo stallion than a Spanish conquistador’s

horse. Agurto added that the statue –made in 1915- did not really depict Pizarro, but a French

gothic king, and that it had been given to Mexico as a representation of Hernán Cortés before
25
“Apoyan “desalojo” de Pizarro,” La República, April 28, 2003.

18
making its way to Lima in the early 1940s as Francisco Pizarro. Although his arguments over

empirical data raised objections, it was the significance of “conquest,” as well as the narratives

of Peru’s history which prompted a great number of energetic responses. Was Pizarro the

founder of Peru, or its destroyer? In fact, where do the origins of the nation lay? The storm over

Pizarro’s monument is proof that the past is very well alive and carrying strong emotional

burdens in Peru, as discourses related to its national identity keep failing to become the

hegemonic “guiding fictions” from which to articulate the never ending anxieties over the

philosophical, political, profoundly historical, and ultimately unanswerable questions of who we

are as Peruvians and what the country is. 26

Although this debate can only be accounted for through the written records of

newspapers in which we find the authorized voices of lettered people, one can safely assume that

the arguments were also reproduced in school classes and street talk. 27 After all, monuments are

erected in public places to instruct history to the masses, more so in Peru, where history books

are hardly read outside academic circles. This history study that focuses on a time period more

readily considered “historical” –perhaps because its study demands confronting yellowing papers

found in archives and specialized collections— starts with events that only happened a few years

ago precisely because it centers its attention to the processes by which “history” was made public

and concrete, therefore, open to public contestation, on the streets and plazas of the capital of

Peru.

26
The notion of “guiding fictions” comes from Nicolas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993).
27
Apart from debates in newspapers, the removal of the statue was profusely debated in the World Wide Web.

19
 The city made to be Spain’s bastion of colonial domination was the object of multiple

transformations during the second half of the “long nineteenth century” 28 –some of them, much

alike the twenty-first century transformation of Pizarro’s plaza into the Plaza de la Peruanidad,

were modest, some drastic or pretentious—, but all of them guided by the assumption that it had

to symbolize the nation. This study focuses on Lima as a concrete expression of discourses on

the nation and modernity. The continuous reinventions of Lima, and the ways in which Lima

was debated, imagined, represented, and envisaged, embody ongoing postcolonial anxieties

about Peru’s national identity, particularly, elites’ ambivalence about modernity and the

complexion of the national community. In short, my study will historicize the conflicting

conceptions of the city to understand how Peruvian elites have imagined modernity and progress

and attempted to create viable images of their nation.

History, the Nation and the Postcolonial City

The anxieties and ambiguities of the discursive formations on Peru’s history, as well as

the soul searching processes on Peruvian identity did not begin at the end of the twentieth

century. In fact, San Martin’s 1821 declaration of independence in Lima’s main square —“From

this moment Peru is free and independent, for the general will of the peoples…”— already

contained some of the paradoxes of the Janus-faced entity we call the nation; at once, the

declaration gave birth to a new creature that pre-existed its own inauguration, which “from that

moment” was to be free and independent. The formation of nation states around the globe were,

indeed, processes of creation of new/old nations. As Benedict Anderson argues, nations are

28
The long 19th century refers to the period 1780-1930 in Peruvian historiography. Deborah Poole labels this period
“the Andean postcolonial,” Deborah Poole, Vison, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image
World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

20
cultural artifacts that sprung from the Enlightenment. 29 The death of the king, the repository of a

sovereignty that derived from divinity, gave rise to a conception of sovereignty as residing on the

horizontal community of the nation. Former subjects of sacred monarchs who ruled “by some

form of cosmological (divine) dispensation,” 30 would now belong to a conceptual abstraction

imagined as a fellowship of equal citizens. The new nations would inherit their jurisdictions and

administrative apparatuses from the monarchies or colonies they superseded, but now imagined

under the novel notion of the sovereign nation.

The adjustment “from subjects to citizens” could not be automatic. San Martin’s famous

1821 decree ordering that “in the future the aborigines shall not be called Indians or natives; they

are children and citizens of Peru and they shall be known as Peruvians” is a clear example of the

new nations’ task. 31 Driven by the homogenizing, enlightened, liberal impulse for assimilation,

elites had to make “ex-colonial subjects into republican citizens with a national future.” 32 The

name “Indian” had been a colonial legal and fiscal category that established a distinctive set of

obligations and privileges granted by the crown. Following ideologies of national formation

influenced by classical liberal theory that carried the fundamental premise of a community made

up of equals, elite criollos, themselves newly “Peruvians” –including San Martin, a native of

today’s Argentina— abolished all colonial categories to form a fresh community of citizens. Ex-

colonial subjects were no longer to be “children” of the King, but of Peru, and were to assume

the abstract and individualistic category of “citizens.” San Martin’s words can easily resonate in

the ears of European historians who may remember Massimo d’Azeglio’s significant statement

29
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:
Verso, 1991).
30
Ibid,, 36.
31
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente (La Plata: Universidad Nacional de la Plata, 1950), 67. Decree issued
on August 27, 1822.
32
Mark Thurner, “Peruvian Genealogies of History and Nation,” in Mark Thurner and Andrés Guerrero, After
Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

21
in the first parliamentary session of unified Italy: “We have made Italy; all that remains is to

make Italians,” or who may be familiar with the nineteenth century broad processes of French

national unification and modernization which, to Eugene Weber, meant to transform “peasants

into Frenchmen.” 33 Indeed, Italians, Frenchmen, and Peruvians, all had to be made out of

peasants, subjects, and Indians by dissolving pre-existing identities and by forging a sense of

brotherhood under the loving aegis of the nation. San Martin’s first words, “in the future…,”

express the mission creoles had to undertake, and indicates that by 1921, Indians were Peruvians

to be, ex-colonial subjects potentially Peruvian, or Peruvians that simply did not know they were

Peruvians. Peru had been made; patriot Creoles now had to make Peruvians. 34

But, how could Peruvians be made? How could a national community be developed and

the aegis of the nation extended to include all potential Peruvians? Anderson has not been alone

in his claim that nations are cultural artifacts that are imagined. New bibliography has remarked

that nations are symbolic, imaginary representations that should be studied as part of the realm of

culture. 35 Nations are not only matters of political theory, but, fundamentally, aesthetic,

rhetorical conceptions; it is though routines, customs, and artistic expressions that nations are

expressed, for they forge the notion of, and promote the sense of belonging to, a horizontal

33
Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1979).
34
The official newspaper of the Peruvian Republic, Los Andes Libres, also expressed this need in 1821, stating that
“a patriotic education is necessary for a patria to exist,” Quoted by Mónica Ricketts, “El teatro en Lima: tribuna
política y termómetro de civilización, 1820-1828,” in La independencia del Perú. De los Borbones a Bolívar, ed.
Scarlett O’Phelan (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2001), 440.
35
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983); Balibar, Etienne, and Immanuel Wallerstein,
Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London and New York: Verso, 1992); Clifford Geertz, ed. Old Societies
and New States: the Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963); Ernest
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism
since 1780: Program, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Elie Kedourie, Nationalism
(London: Hutchison, 1960); Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verso, 1997); Anthony
Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates
About Ethnicity and Nationalism (Hanover: University Press of New England 2000) and, The Antiquity of Nations
(Cambridge: Polity, 2004); Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the
Politics of Nationalism (London: Methuen, 1977).

22
brotherhood to which “sons” owe loyalty and devotion. 36 It is, therefore, through the labors of

literati, historians, journalists, teachers, and artists, as well as the efforts of new state

bureaucracies, that nations are imagined. The nation, however, cannot afford to be imagined in

plural, but as a singular, discrete entity that has a peculiar character and a unique history. Hugh

Seton-Watson has highlighted the role of the state in developing a form of “official nationalism,”

through the formation of an intelligentsia dedicated to the creation of official art and culture. 37

In the foundational moments that followed the “death of the king,” nations had to be relatively

quickly invented, and its representations and traditions fixed. As Mauricio Tenorio Trillo

acutely observes, nationalist discourses usually allude to the notion of the nation’s “soul;” but

that invisible essence has to be depicted and acquire concreteness and tangibility to exist. 38 The

abstract, invisible entity named nation can only become national through artistic, poetic acts of

representation directed to generate the emotional effect of revealing the nation’s shared

character.

Indeed, nations have emblems, flags, and anthems as “sacred” symbols, as well as

liturgical rituals that promote togetherness. But the horizontal community of the nation is

located in a soil that is also nationalized through geographical iconography, maps, monuments

and buildings. While Benedict Anderson insightfully highlighted how maps shaped the ways in

which colonial and postcolonial states imagined their dominions, and underscored the role of

museums in the creation of images of the nature of the human beings they united, his classic

work on nationalism notoriously left architecture, urban planning, and monuments unanalyzed.

Architecture and urban planning have been instrumental in projects to give shape to the imagined

36
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. The invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983).
37
Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States.
38
Tenorio Trillo, Mauricio, “Essaying the History of National Images,” in After Spanish Rule, ed. Mark Thurner and
Andrés Guerrero.

23
national space, to symbolize and create the national culture. The mythical concept of the nation

is promoted as the personification of the common soul of all citizens, and as the natural unity of

territory, state, and the people. The national rearrangement of the built environment of the city,

particularly of the capital city, its public buildings and open spaces, has been the center of efforts

to make the dominance of new states public, that is, to provide states with a concrete and

material appearance to endow new regimes with legitimacy, and thus express a vision of political

power that new elites want to demonstrate. 39 The city’s morphology is not only arranged to

make the new epistemology of power symbolized and visible, but also to reform the sociability

and shape citizens according to new, national principles. Monuments not only transform the

urban space, but, along with the spaces that host them, become tangible shrines for the

veneration of national memorable events and persons in order to generate loyalty to the nation

and instill national values.

This does not mean, indeed, that the preoccupation for urban planning and architectural

design was a consequence of the rise of nations. Recent bibliography has focused on urban

planning and design as important tools for political and social projects in both colonial and

postcolonial settings, examining, for instance the role of urban planning and architectural design

as a cornerstone of French colonialism. 40 Not only have they highlighted its role in the

consolidation of colonial power, but they have added complexity to the understanding of the

colonial enterprise by paying attention to the ways in which the colonizers redefined and

39
Win Blockmans, “Reshaping Cities: The Staging of Political Transformation,” Journal of Urban History, 30, no.
1 (2003): 7-20.
40
Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1991), and, “Tradition in the Service of Modernity,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois
World, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Nezar
AlSayyad, ed. Forms of Dominance in the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise (Aldershot:
Avebury, 1992); Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and
Literature (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996); Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontation:
Algiers under Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

24
reinvented the stubbornly persistent traditions of the colonized. Other authors have explored

diverse attempts to create a national identity through the use of urban design and architecture. 41

These studies not only underscore the symbolic role of architectural imagery, but they also

discuss the problems of forging images of the nation in postcolonial situations.

Thus, nations also become by the erection of monuments and buildings, as both configure

the nations “face” by providing the nation with historical images available to the broad public.

Undoubtedly, history is the most appropriate means for the production of images for collective

cohesion and the forging of a sense of nation-ness. Asking the rhetorical, but fundamental

question “which is a people’s character?,” Italian philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce

provided a potent answer: “Its history, all of its history, and nothing but its history.” 42 Indeed,

new nations –which, as we have seen, pre-existed their own foundations— required history and

“nothing but history.” It is no coincidence that the first chairs of history were founded in the

early nineteenth century, after the “death of the king” and the appearance of nations. 43 The rise

of a new, impersonal historical subject, the nation –“the people”—, transformed history from a

courtly discipline to instruct princes on their dynastical pasts into the academic discipline to

41
James Holson, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1989); Lawrence Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Spiro
Kostof, “His Majesty the Pick; the Aesthetics of Demolition,” in Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space, ed.
Zeynep Çelik, Diane Favro and Richard Ingersoll (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994); Carl Schorske,
Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998);
Janet Berry Hess, “Imagining Architecture: The Structure of Nationalism in Accra, Ghana,” Africa Today, 47, no. 2
(2000): 35-56, and Art and Architecture in Postcolonial Africa (Jefferson: McFarland, 2006); David Gordon, “From
Noblesse Oblige to Nationalism: Elite Involvement in Planning Canada’s Capital,” Journal of Urban History, 28, no.
1 (2001): 3-34; Win Blockmans, “Reshaping Cities: The Staging of Political Transformation,” Journal of Urban
History, 30, no. 1 (2003): 7-20; Keith Eggener, “Contrasting Images of Identity in the Post-War Mexican
Architecture of Luis Barragán and Juan O’Gorman,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 9, no. 1 (2000).
42
Benedetto Croce, Teoría e historia de la historiografía (Buenos Aires: Imán, 1953).
43
Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1973), 136. The “death of the king” is a phrase coined by Jacques Ranciere to name the
formation of France’s national being. Jacques Ranciere, The Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).

25
provide nations usable narrations of themselves. 44 In order to become a “community of fate,” as

Austro-Hungarian Marxist labeled it, or a “unity of fate,” as it was referred to by Spanish Fascist

falangista Antonio Primo de Rivera, the nation requires a history. 45

If it is clear that the nation created history, it could well be argued that it is history that

creates the nation. The nation’s “soul” and “spiritual principle,” Ernest Renan wrote, is

constituted by two things “which in truth are but one,”

one lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich
legacy of memories; the other is present- day consent, the desire to live together,
the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an
undivided form. Man, Gentlemen, does not improvise. The nation, like the
individual, is the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice, and
devotion. Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors
have made us what we are. 46

Renan acutely highlights that “the desire to live together” and “the possession in

common of a rich legacy of memories,” “in truth are but one;” because the sense of the common

possession of a past –“the fact of sharing, in the past, a glorious heritage and regrets”— makes

members of the nation develop the desire to live together: history underwrites contemporary

commitments.

History provides the master line of the nation in order to develop a homogeneous national

identity. For that reason, the history of the nation attempts to be a singular master line that

highlights certain events and obliterates others. A nation needs a history, not histories. The

nation is bound together not by the past itself –not by “all history,” as Croce had stated, but by

the story of that past made by holding on to some events and by letting go of others. As Renan

44
Jaques Ranciere, The Names of History; Mark Thurner, “Una historia peruana para el pueblo peruano. De la
genealogía fundacional de Sebastián Lorente,” Lorente, Sebastián, Escritos Fundacionales. Compilación y estudio
introductorio: Mark Thurner (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2005).
45
Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (Minneapolis and London: University of
Minnesota Press, 2000). Primo de Rivera’s quote comes from Tomás Pérez, Nación, identidad nacional y otros
mitos nacionalistas (Oviedo: Ediciones Nobel, 1999).
46
Renan, Ernest, “What is a Nation?,” in Becoming National: A Reader, ed. Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny,
1996. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 41-55.

26
famously added, what we forget makes us the nation that we are. A shared amnesia, a collective

capacity to forget, allows for the forging of a “gathering of men bond by a common error about

their origin,” as Albert Mousset ingeniously defined the nation. 47 To forget antagonisms a nation

requires an official history that monopolizes the interpretation of the past. National history is a

collective drama that provides elements to nationalist liturgy, promoting a sense of communion

among the children of the nation, the dead and the living, and history itself becomes the sacred

past of the sacred nation. Nations, thus, rest on historiographical fictions made official. But

official history is not only disseminated in textbooks. History, more so in Clio’s century, was an

activity restricted, erudite, with a limited capacity to disseminate. Other means (literature, the

press, theater, paintings, and monuments) are utilized as a historicist iconography to carry that

erudite image to the great public in the pedagogical effort to forge the national community.

New nations’ predicaments derive from the vital but conflicting need to forge the national

self by imagining the past and the future in simultaneous— an ambivalence San Martín’s

foundational decrees already expressed—. The need to break with the past to mark their

difference with pre-existing political entities, to symbolically launch a viable new beginning,

coexisted with the need to establish the essential continuity of the nation from immemorial times.

Additionally, European and American nations had to become nations in a simultaneously

forming international community. Nations were to become distinct communities –different from

the societies they superseded, and different to one another— but, at the same time, had to be

recognizably “national” among other nations. The tension between the drive for attaining

uniqueness and the mandates of universality and cosmopolitanism, of course, has been worked

out differently in different nations, but becoming national also meant to become part of the rising

modern world. The task of transforming peasants and ex-subjects of monarchies and Empires
47
Quoted in Tomás Pérez, Nación, identidad nacional y otros mitos nacionalistas, 123.

27
into citizens implied making them citizens not only of the nation states, but also citizens of the

modern world, forging a culture based on what were perceived as universal values.

As Marshall Berman argues, the mandates of modernity were also felt by monarchies

such as the Russian, who erected Saint Petersburg as a “window to Europe” to signify Russian’s

participation in the modern world. As a result, Berman states, there developed a polarity

between modern, cosmopolitan, Enlightened, secular Petersburg, and traditional, pure, sacred

Moscow; the former to be Russia’s head, the latter its heart. 48 Russian’s nineteenth-century bi-

polar development could not be a viable model for postcolonial nation-states, which had to

remake their capital cities –which were inherited from decapitated monarchies or Empires— to

make them, at once, their “hearts” and “heads.” As Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo argues, the

construction of national images was an intricate phenomenon undertaken in reference to other

national images as much as in reference to local characteristics. 49

Having branched out of a decaying Empire, Latin American new nations’ efforts to craft

images of themselves were framed by those dichotomies. Their senses of nation-ness were to be

forged, of course, opposing the immediate past of Spanish imperial rule, to promote a sense of

belonging to unique national communities and, at the same time, to insert themselves as part of

the modern international community. The mandates of modernity imposed grand-scale cultural

transformations to reform habits and eradicate traditions regarded as backward and uncivilized

and not proper to the new national community and modern civilization, and aimed at instilling

new habits that would allow the nation to compete in the universal community.

48
Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1982).
49
Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Mexico at the World’s Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1996).

28
 These post-colonial dilemmas have not received the attention they deserve. In fact,

nineteenth-century modernization efforts in Latin America have been mostly regarded as

“cosmetic” attempts to mimic European powers of the time, mostly France, England, and the

United States. 50 Modernity was thus “imported” and “imposed,” as elites “believed that

“progress” meant to recreate their nations as closely as possible to their European and North

American models.” 51 Latin American elites’ drive to “ape” Europe –which was mainly

expressed in the attempt to make capital cities a “copy” of Paris— 52 was part of elites’ new

subjugation to rising neo-colonial empires: elites’ imitated “foreign” doctrines –like liberalism

and positivism–, built state’s institutions and experimented with new technologies of power –

such as the penitentiary—modeled after European ones, and copied “foreign” aesthetic models,

in their efforts to become an intermediary class in the neo-colonial exploitation of their countries,

and to preserve colonial forms of domination that benefited them. 53 As such, Bradford Burns

refers to urban transformations in nineteenth-century Latin America as attempts to build

European “façades.” Similarly, Jeffrey Needell sees the transformations of late-nineteenth-

century Rio de Janeiro as part of an ongoing colonial relationship (the neo-colonial order), a

50
Jorge Hardoy, “Theory and Practice of Urban Planning in Europe, 1850-1930: Its Transfer to Latin America,” in
Rethinking the Latin American City, ed. Richard Morse and Jorge Hardoy (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson
Center Press, 1992); Tulio Halperin Donghi, “The Cities of Spanish America, 1825-1914: Economic and Social
Aspects,” in Urbanization in the Americas: The Background in Comparative Perspective, ed. Woodrow Borah,
Jorge Hardoy, and Gilbert Stelter (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1980).
51
Bradford Burns, The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980).
52
Jeffrey Needell, A Tropical Belle Epoque (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
53
Stanley Stein and Barbara Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic Dependence in
Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970). For dependentista views of Peruvian elites, see Ernesto
Yepes, Perú 1820-1920: un siglo de desarrollo Capitalista (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1972); Heraclio
Bonilla and Karen Spalding “La Independencia en el Perú: las palabras y los hechos,” in La Independencia en el
Perú, ed. Heraclio Bonilla (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1972); Heraclio Bonilla, Guano y burgesía en el
Perú (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1974), and, “El problema nacional y colonial del Perú en el contexto de
la Guerra del Pacífico,” in Un siglo a la deriva: Ensayos sobre el Perú, Bolivia y la guerra (Lima: Instituto de
Estudios Peruanos, 1980); Luís Pásara, Derecho y sociedad en el Perú (Lima: El Virrey, 1988); Julio Cotler,
Clases, estado y nación en el Perú (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1978); Javier Tantaleán, Política
económico-financiera y la formación del estado: Siglo XIX (Lima: CEDEP, 1983); Similar essentialist views of
Peruvian elites were expressed in Sebastián Salazar Bondy Lima la Horrible (Lima: Populibros Peruanos, 1964).

29
“Frenchification” used to reinforce and legitimate traditional hierarchical relations. In cases, the

modernizing projects to transform capital cities has been regarded as elites’ efforts to create a

European environment for their own, transforming their neighborhoods to “easily imagine

themselves in Europe,” while ignoring the poor and leaving lower class sectors of the city

untouched: “elites constructed public spaces directed towards themselves and the foreign

tourists, diplomats, and businessmen…public spaces graced by Parisian reform were ipso facto,

not intended for the unsightly poor.” 54 Removed from national realities, according to this train

of thought, elites sold out their countries to the neo-colonial powers, all the while managing to

hold on to the privileges they inherited from the Spanish colonial era. European ideals and

models, however, could not successfully materialize and remained unsuitable for Latin American

realities and can still be regarded as “misplaced.” 55

For the city of Lima, Gabriel Ramón’s study about urban reforms in Lima during the

second half of the nineteenth century follows the same master line: they were part of Latin

America’s economical and political subordination to England in what has been called the “neo

colonial pact.” The new republics had to comply with the role assigned by the new metropolis,

and elites adopted political systems and cultural traits to strengthen their relationships with

England. The influence, better yet, “imperative,” of the metropolis was felt regarding the notions

of progress and the proceedings to attain it; urban transformations were part of a larger process

of subjection dictated from abroad. 56

54
Both quotes come from Jeffrey Needell, “Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires: Public Space and Public
Consciousness in Fin-de-Siecle Latin America,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37, no. 3. (1995): 538-
9.
55
Roberto Schwartz, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture (London: Verso, 1992).
56
Gabriel Ramón, La muralla y los callejones; Intervención urbana y proyecto politico en Lima durante la segunda
mitad del siglo XIX (Lima: SIDEA y PromPerú, 1999).

30
 Referring to nineteenth-century projects of modernization in Peru, Peruvian lawyer and

law historian Fernando de Trazegnies argued they were examples of a “traditional

modernization” –that is, half-hearted efforts at modernization, constrained by autocratic and

aristocratic values, which buttressed, under the guise of cosmetic modernity, the social structures

and hierarchies inherited from Spanish colonialism. De Trazegnies made a contrast between

European capitalist modernization, which to his eyes was “promoted from below,” and Peru’s

traditional modernization, which “preserves an aristocratic social environment” because it was

promoted “from above by the leading social class.” 57 De Trazegnies’ approach has been

followed by historians of the penitentiary, 58 mental institutions, 59 and of Lima’s processes of

modernization. 60 This approach to the projects of modernization of Lima, or other Latin

American cities, is part of a narrative of Latin American exceptionalism that characterizes the

region as unable to fulfill the promises of European modernity.

Departing from a sociological, monolithic idealization of modernity, which highlights the

modern ideals of equality and democracy, but obliterates the contradictions of modernity and the

modern drives for social control, normalization, and discipline, these authors state it only fully

developed in Europe, thus tend to reduce these projects to “efforts to make things change so that,

57
Fernando de Trazegnies, La idea del derecho en el Perú republicano del siglo XIX (Lima: Pontificia Universidad
Católica del Perú, 1979), and “La genealogía del derecho peruano,” in Pensamiento político peruano, ed. Adrianzén,
Alberto (Lima: DESCO, 1987).
58
See Carlos Aguirre, “La Penitenciaría de Lima y la modernización de la justicia penal en el siglo XIX,” in
Mundos interiores: Lima 1850-1950, ed. Panfichi, Aldo and Felipe Portocarrero (Lima: Universidad del Pacífico,
1995); Ricardo Savatore, and Carlos Aguirre ed., The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on
Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830-1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996).
59
See Augusto Ruiz, “Medicina mental y modernización, 1850-1900, in Mundos interiores, and Psiquiátras y locos:
entre la modernización contra los andes y el nuevo proyecto de modernidad. Perú: 1850-1930 (Lima: Pasado y
Presente, 1994).
60
Ramón, Gabriel, La muralla y los callejones.

31
as a result, everything remains the same.” 61 Augusto Ruiz’s history of Lima’s mental

institutions, for instance, considers that the projects to reform mental asylums were marked by

two opposing tendencies: a “modern,” humanitarian, philanthropic tendency expressed in the

desires to improve the patients’ conditions following the new medical tendencies developed in

Europe and the United States, and a “traditional” inclination derived from colonial times,

expressed in the desires for discipline and control. The plans to reform mental institutions are

thus depicted as schizophrenic and destined to fail. Interestingly, the disciplinary aspects of

modernity are not recognized as such by this view of the modernizing efforts, but are attributed

to restraints inherited from colonial times. 62

Indeed, neo-Marxist and dependentista historians and sociologists have criticized the

region’s elites for not being sufficiently modern, liberal, or nationalistic, and for stubbornly cling

to their colonial positions of hierarchy. Vincent Peloso and Barbara Tenenbaum, for instance,

argue that the peculiarity of nineteenth-century Latin American liberalism was the contradiction

between the ideals of equality and the Creole elites’ need to limit the political participation of the

majority of the population in order to keep the economic and social order that benefited them.

Despite the regional variety, the authors argue that some basic convictions were shared by Latin

American liberal elites: faith in representative government, the need of separate branches of

government, the need to preserve human liberty, and stimulate economic activity. The ideal

political system was the republic, whose body of laws should be universally applied to all the

inhabitants of the state. Nevertheless, the authors argue, the application of this doctrine could

61
This poignant phrase belongs to Alberto Flores Galindo, “Independencia y clases sociales,” Independencia y
revolución: 1780-1840 (Lima: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 1987), 123. It is part of his criticism to the dominant
trope in Peruvian historiography, which has been crafted and followed by historians and sociologists of both
conservative and leftist affiliations.
62
For an exception see Majluf’s path breaking work on sculpture and public space: Natalia Majluf, Escultura y
espacio público. Lima, 1850-1879 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1994).

32
not be complete: Latin American liberals, wanting to preserve the exclusionary privileges

inherited from colonial times were unable to accomplish their liberal ideals, and thus reduced the

liberal utopia to an attempt to expand political participation of the masses (specially the urban

plebe), without allowing them full access to power. 63 Again, this perspective seems to idealize

European liberalism, as if only in Latin America had liberalism met with the desire to control

and exclude, lower class people. These views assume an unambiguous and ahistorical notion of

liberalism and as politically and economically inclusive and progressive, and which allowed

universal “full access to power,” which was allegedly misapplied in Latin America because of

elite’s desires to maintain the privileges they enjoyed in colonial times. Liberalism, identified as

an egalitarian discourse, could not be applied in a profoundly hierarchical society headed by

elites not willing to give up their status, and was “stillborn” in Latin America. 64

Perhaps inadvertently, this scholarship assumes an unambiguous and romanticized view

of European modernity (and liberalism) as socially, politically and economically inclusive, in

contrast to which Latin America can only be perceived as an aberration or deviation. Given a

conceptual opposition between tradition and modernity, any political system or mode of thinking

that does not conform to the assumed “ideal type” of modernity or liberalism necessarily appears

to be the expression of “traditionalist encrustations.” As a result, Latin America is perceived as a

63
Vincent Peloso and Barbara Tenenbaum, eds., Liberals, Politics & Power: State Formation in Nineteenth-Century
Latin America (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1996).
64
Florencia Mallon, “Economic Liberalism: Where We Are and Where We Need to Go,” in Guiding the Invisible
Hand: Economic Liberalism and the State in Latin American History, ed. Joseph Love and Nils Jacobsen (New
York: Praeger, 1988).

33
“bastard” offspring of Europe, unable to rid itself from its “colonial legacy,” and who can only

be defined by its “absences” and “failures.” 65

The narrative of exceptionalism has also been deployed to analyze nation-ness in Latin

America and Peru. Departing from the conception that modern (that is European) nation-states

resulted from revolutions lead by national bourgeoisies, dependentista scholars have concluded

that Latin American revolutions of independence were political events by which a privileged, but

not bourgeois, Creole elite controlled the administrative systems of the ex-colonial states without

forging new nations. According to influential Argentine historian Tulio Halperin, the

revolutionaries were not rebels, but “heirs of a fallen power” who used the political-

administrative colonial patrimony to serve their interests. 66 Referring to Peru, Heraclio Bonilla

and Karen Spalding argued that “political Independence from Spain, thus, left the very

foundations of Peruvian society, which had developed and solidified throughout 300 years of

colonial life, intact.” 67 More recently, Nelson Manrique has repeated that, after independence

was achieved, “for most creoles the problem was how to take possession of the mechanisms of

power that Spaniards and colonial bureaucracy used, not to remove them.” 68 In short, Latin

American Creole elites did not constitute a “truly leading bourgeoisie,” which made them unable

to create “true” nations. Their will to hold on to the power inherited from colonialism made then

unwilling to change the societies they now controlled. Bonilla and José Matos Mar synthesized

this view, stating that “in contrast to the authentic bourgeois revolutions of eighteen- and

65
See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000). His criticism includes the original orientation of the Subaltern Studies group. For
a discussion on this view of history in Africa, see Mahmood Mandami, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa
and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996). For similar criticisms of Peruvian
historiography, see Magdalena Chocano, “Ucronía y frustración en la conciencia histórica peruana,” Márgenes.
Encuentro y debate, no. 2 (1987); Alberto Flores Galindo, “La imagen y el espejo: la historiografía peruana 1910-
1986,” in Márgenes, no. 4 (1988), and Guillermo Rochabrún, “Ser historiador en el Perú,” Márgenes, no. 7 (1991).
66
Tulio Halperin Donhi, Historia contemporánea de América Latina (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1986), 90.
67
Heraclio Bonilla and Karen Spalding, “La Indepedencia en el Perú,” 15.
68
Nelson Manrique, Enciclopedia Temática del Perú: Sociedad (Lima: El Comercio, 2004), 14-15.

34
nineteenth- century Europe, Independence in Peru was only a military and political event,

leaving the bases of the colonial system unchanged.” 69

In their efforts to oppose previous narratives of Peruvian history, which depicted Peru as

a unified and harmonious national entity, neo-Marxist historians and sociologists proposed that

Peru, quite simply, was not a nation. Their influential view of Peruvian elites as a traditional,

anti-national group that in essence sold their countries out to the new Empires of England, in the

nineteenth century, and the United States, in the twentieth century, produced a historical

narrative marked by absences, anomalies, unfulfilled promises, and lost opportunities.

Narratives dominated by the themes of “lack” and “inadequacy,” that derive, as Dipesh

Chakrabarty poignantly states, from the conception of “Europe” –or an ahistorical, ideal view of

it—as “the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories.”70 In short: denouncers of ongoing

colonialism seem to be trapped by the epistemological colonialism of modernity.

It is interesting to note that there exist two differing dependentista views of Latin

American modernization. While sharing the perception that modernization was cosmetically

imported from abroad, and not the result of internal developments –such as the formation of

European national bourgeoisies—, and that the region ended its ties with the Spanish Empire

only to become dependent on new Imperialisms, historians and sociologists, for the most part,

have lamented the absence of “true modernity” in the region. In a more anthropological vein –

perhaps influenced by Robert Redfield’s 1930’s writings on the transformations of “folk”

societies 71—, Bradford Burns laments Latin American elites’ imposition of “foreign patterns on

their fledging nations,” thus destroying the “folk” societies and thus the opportunity to create

69
Heraclio Bonilla and José Matos Mar, “Presentación,” in La Independencia en el Perú, ed. Heraclio Bonilla
(Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1972), 11.
70
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, .27.
71
See Robert Redfield, Yucatán, una cultura en transición (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1944); and, El
mundo primitivo y sus transformaciones (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1953).

35
“autochthonous” nations. While the sociological dependentista view idealizes European

modernity, and considers it as universally “applicable,” the anthropological perspective regards

modernity as a European development unsuitable for the region’s singular “reality.”

Historicizing History and National Identity Through Urban Transformations

This study systematically examines three key historical moments in which Limeño elites

experimented, on an unparalleled scale, with urban transformations, projects of modernization,

and social reform/control, in effect physically and socially restructuring and re-signifying a city

that had symbolized the permanence of the colonial past, and as such had to be reinvented as the

new face of a civilized, modernizing nation. These key moments are the guano era (1845-

1870s), the turn of the century, or Post-War-of-the-Pacific period (mid 1890s-1910), and the

Leguía “Oncenio” (1919-1930). These were not only moments of economic prosperity and

relative political stability, but were, in many senses, foundational; the first two marked the end of

intense, all-encompassing crises, while the Leguía regime was intended to be a widely

recognized break with the past, and was ambitiously denominated the “Patria Nueva.” The three

were moments of profound institutional changes, and of redefinition of the terms of integration

of the country into the world market.

My study begins with the ways in which the foundational postcolonial images of Lima

were established in the 1850s, when Lima was object of physical transformations and Limeño

intellectuals published sociological and literary elaborations of the city. Peru had proved unable

to achieve a stable national state until the prosperity of guano provided the conditions to solidify

the “Lima state” under the leadership of President Ramón Castilla, thus bringing an end to the

post-independence “caudillo era.” 72 The 1850s opened a period of intense discussion about

72
Paul Gootenberg, Between Silver and Guano: Commercial Policy and the State in Postindependence Peru
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

36
Peru’s national character and, social, cultural, and economic future. 73 Influenced by

universalistic “enlightened liberal” ideals, and with a strong desire to participate in the world

economy and nation-state system, Lima’s liberal elites seemed to believe that true nationhood

and economic progress could only be achieved by eliminating the legacy of Spain’s colonial

despotism. The new nation’s identity was to be forged opposing the immediate past of Spanish

colonialism, which was now repudiated, and constructed as an obscure, oppressive epoch.

Enlightened Limeños sought to define themselves as modern, and attempted to found a new

community based on reason, science, and political freedom, which could be part of the civilized

world. The prosperity of guano and the political stability achieved after the turbulent and

socially dislocating “caudillo era,” helped to consolidate an optimistic view of the country’s

future. Peru’s potential for development was sustained in its immense natural wealth, which was

not taken advantage of by the indolent, incapable Spanish colonialism. The Creole elite had to

maintain peace and order, develop scientific knowledge about its territory, build adequate

infrastructure, promote foreign investment and immigration, and promote new values through

education.

The nation’s new beginning was promising, but imposed an enormous mission to Limeño

elites who had consolidated their political and military dominion over the country after the defeat

of the Confederación Perú-Boliviana. The projects of state formation and nation building

strengthened Lima’s hegemony: a central idea in these comprehensive processes of restructuring

of the state and society was to make of Lima a torch to irradiate the metropolitan light of

civilization and modernity into the entire uncivilized postcolonial nation. The task, considering

73
Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República del Perú, 6th. edition (Lima: Editorial Universitaria, 1969); Paul
Gootenberg, Between Silver and Guano, and, Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in Peru’s ‘Fictitious
Prosperity’ of Guano (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One
Divided (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997); Deborah Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity.

37
that Lima had been the capital of Peru’s viceroyalty, and a stronghold of Spanish dominance in

South America, required a comprehensive social, political, physical, and cultural transformation.

Lima became the privileged site of experimentation with modernity, the city where the new

citizens of the nation were to be formed, and where a new Peruvian culture had to be invented.

While the nation’s capital became the place where task of building a national future

occurred, Limeño elites were also eager to engage in commercial activities with the consolidating

new world economic powers, and were fervent believers of the need to promote the immigration

of investors and of capable, European workers into what they perceived as a vast and rich, but

depopulated territory. Elites perceived that their decaying capital city, which had lost the

splendor of the early colonial times after the Bourbon creation of the viceroyalties of Nueva

Granada, and especially Rio de la Plata, and after the turbulent years of the Independence and

caudillo wars, offered a miserable sight to visitors.

The physical reform of the city became one of the essential objectives for the

consolidation of the new regime and the constitution of the national community, its history and

future. The need to transform the city into a symbol of the new nation had been felt early by

liberator José de San Martín himself. The “Protector” decreed the replacement of Lima’s

colonial title, “The City of the Kings,” for the more appropriately national “The Heroic and

Valiant City of the Free.” 74 The viceregal city, founded on a date near epiphany, had received its

name after the three Wise Men of Egypt, but its name was way too kingly for the new republican

taste. In a similar republican vein, the old Colegio del Príncipe, dedicated to the instruction of

74
According to a report of the Ministry of Government published by the Gaceta de Gobierno de Lima
Independiente, it was José de la Riva Agüero, then president of the Departamento de Lima, who suggested San
Martín to change the name of the city to la “Heroica y Esforzada Ciudad de los Libres,” The decree was issued by
San Martín on October 12, 1821. Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 209. A document signed by Riva
Aguero on October 12, 1821 communicating the Municipality the new denomination “decreed by the Protector” is at
the AHML, Presidencia del Departamento, 1821-1823, doc.3. The Municipality’s assembly used the denomination
for the first time on October 23, 1821. A copy of the session’s transcript is in Fernando Gamio, La Municipalidad de
Lima y la Emancipación de 1821 (Lima: Municipalidad de Lima, 2005), 288.

38
the sons of the curacas, was re-baptized as the “Colegio de la Libertad.” 75 The Plaza de la

Inquisición, which hosted the now abominable Catholic tribunal, would become the “Plaza de la

Constitución;” 76 and even Lima’s main square’s neutral name of “Plaza Mayor” was transformed

into the new “Plaza de la Independencia.” 77 The Real Felipe Castle in Callao (Lima’s port),

received the name of “Castillo de la Independencia,” its bulwarks, previously known as

baluartes “del Rey,” and “de la Reina,” were transformed into “Manco Cápac,” and “la

Patria.” 78 The royal inscriptions on Lima’s gateways, constructed as a Bourbon attempt to

reaffirm their dynastic presence in the city, were removed and replaced with references to “Dios

y la Patria,” as to announce the advent or a new civic religion. 79

In spite of their symbolism, these early republican gestures were modest in scope. The

prosperity and the social and political stability of the guano era allowed for more comprehensive

projects of renomination and transformation to make it the ultimate symbol of modernity and

civilization. In 1861 the municipality of Lima decided to rename the streets and public spaces of

Peru’s capital city. The streets of the viceregal “City of the Kings” had hitherto been named and

renamed by tradition after eminent residents, memorable events, or commercial establishments,

without the direct intervention of the city authorities. As a result of the new cultural politics of

renomination, Lima became a map for, and inscribed memory of, the nation as streets, parks, and

plazas both reproduced the national geography –receiving the names of departamentos,

provinces, and rivers–, and indexed national events and heroes –battles, key dates, and founding

75
Mark Thurner, “Una historia peruana para el pueblo peruano.”
76
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 549. Decree issued on July 6, 1822 by Bernardo Monteagudo.
77
Gabriel Ramón, La muralla y los callejones.
78
Mark Thurner, “Una historia peruana para el pueblo peruano.”
79
Manuel Fuentes, Lima: Apuntes históricos, estadísticos, administrativos, comerciales y de costumbres (Paris:
Librería de Fermín Didot, hnos e hijos, 1867), 9.

39
fathers, including those of the founding Inca Manco Cápac, and the last, conquered Inca,

Atahualpa. 80

Other projects were part of a more intensive “Peruvianization” of Lima. Key buildings

and public spaces should now symbolize the new order and instill the republican values and

national loyalty. Buildings of state institutions, in particular the “government palace,” located in

Lima’s main square, had to express the state’s ascendancy over the country and its citizens, and

show the rupture vis-à-vis the colonial past. Their design not only had to be functional to the

buildings’ purposes, but had to fulfill the pedagogical, national aims. The rigid aesthetics of the

neoclassical and, in cases, the neo-renaissantist styles were adopted as a way to conform to

“universal” architectural standards and to the modern values they expressed, which elites wanted

to promote: cleanliness, simplicity, discipline, and solidity. The baroque’s winding, tortuous

lines were despised for symbolizing the obscurity of colonial times. By stripping the city of its

colonial symbols, Lima could be transformed into a “heroic and valiant city of the free,” that is, a

republican model for the nation, and a respected capital of a modern, civilized country for

foreigners’ consumption.

The rupture with Spanish colonialism was expressed in monuments erected in strategic

places of the city. As early as 1822, plans for new monuments to celebrate the rise of the new

nation were issued. Limeños, however, would have to wait until the 1850s to see the first of such

public sanctuaries in place. The monument to liberator Bolivar marked year one of the new

nation and no effort was spared to make it grandiose: authorities were convinced that no

economy could be made to symbolize the national community, and that the monument had to

worthy of the Liberator, of his feat, and of the country. Elites also erected a monument to another

80
Juan Bromley, Las Viejas Calles de Lima (Lima: Municipalidad de Lima Metropolitana, 2005).

40
founder: Christopher Columbus, who, not being a Spaniard, could be honored as a figure that

brought “civilization” to the New World.

Public spaces also had to conform to new (inter)national standards. The use of streets and

plazas was regulated to avoid chaos and to fortify the presence of the state. The construction of a

new Central Market was intended to end the traditional use of plazas as vending fairs. New and

renewed promenades and parks would not only transform the environment, but also eradicate and

replace Limeños’ unenlightened habits of socialization, public manners, and customs. Along

with a growing preoccupation for the city’s ornato, elites attempted to regulate and standardize

public behavior, taste, and traditions. The infrastructure of streets, promenades and plazas had to

have evident indications of where to sit, where to stand, where to direct the gaze. Having been

inherited from colonial times, and therefore perceived as barbaric or backward, Limeños leisure

activities as well as entertainment activities had to be modified. Elites attacked such “barbaric”

festivities as carnivals and religious processions, and promoted “high culture” entertainment,

such as opera and the taste for classical music. The musical bands of the military corps, for

instance, played Viennese waltzes, pieces of opera, along with patriotic marches to entertain

crowds in parks and plazas during weekends. Opera and theater companies were given

subventions and incentives to come to Lima, with the condition to lower their prices and thus

give poor Limeños the chance to refine and cultivate their taste.

Public space was defined as “sacred” space that belonged to the national community. As

such, it was declared that the state had the right and the duty to care of it and regulate its use.

Campaigns were launched to clean streets of vendors, beggars, vagrants, gamblers, alcoholics;

but also to improve the sanitary condition of an unhealthy city that did not have a domiciliary

water and sewage system, and which did not count with a centralized, efficient service of

41
garbage disposal or street cleansing. While provisions were made to provide those services, the

notion that public space was sacred had to be inculcated in the masses: a good citizen had to

venerate it and collaborate with state institutions to its beautification and preservation. The

houses façades, for instance, had to be painted and kept clean. The old, crumbling city’s layout

was considered unsanitary: its narrow streets colluded with Lima’s humid weather impeding the

circulation of winds and produced an undesired accumulation of noxious air that weakened the

bodies and minds of Limeños. The old streets, narrow, unpaved, and gashed by ditches,

contributed to the general unhealthy environment of the city, most importantly, it was believed

that narrow streets had the effect of narrowing Limeños minds. New streets, paseos, and parks

were carefully designed to provide for open space were the inhabitants of the city could

socialize, entertain themselves, and breathe healthy air.

The growing preoccupation with the sanitary conditions of the city combined with the

perception that its population was stagnant. To put a remedy on Lima’s demographic problems,

experts recommended hygienic measures, such as exercises, the cleaning of rooms, baths, and

hygiene of clothes, food and beverages. Hygiene was taught at schools, since elites considered

that it was through education that the population would modify their unsanitary habits.

Plans were made to thoroughly restructure the educational system and make it

appropriate for the country’s new needs. The first law of education (1850) declared that

education was a guarantee for freedom and republican regeneration, but also for order and

progress. New educational establishments were opened by state and private initiatives for pupils

of all walks of life. To cover for the absence of educators imbued with new pedagogic methods

and with state-of-the-art knowledge, foreign teachers were hired, many of which were in charge

of instructing new teachers. Not only were the lower classes targeted by these educational plans

42
and policies of control: elites perceived that their own habits had to be reformed, and that the

development of the country demanded the acquisition of inexistent capacities in science and

technology. Outstanding university students of different fields of the arts and sciences were

encouraged to continue studies abroad, receiving stipends from the state in exchange for their

future efforts to use acquired knowledge and experience in Peru. The specialized knowledge

required for the reformation of new public buildings and public spaces –for their design and

construction— was not to be found in Peru either. Foreign architects and engineers were hired

abroad and brought into the country, and contests for the design of monuments and buildings

were entirely organized in Europe.

The reform of Limeño habits demanded the increase of the state’s vigilance over public

spaces and the population, as well as the reorganization of the mechanisms of coercion. A new

Penal Code was enacted and a new police force was organized, as the institutions of the state

launched a campaign to eradicate the vices of vagrancy, alcoholism, and gambling. Vigilance

systems were put in effect, to gather information on the population –residence, occupation,

nationality—; a new literary genre was born: the report on the living conditions of the

population. Experts of different disciplines, criminologists, hygienists, architects, engineers,

along with journalists, produced detailed “knowledge” on the population, describing and

classifying it in order to design a rationalized administration of it. A medico-legal-police

machine was put in place to assess and classify the population, to diagnose its maladies, and plan

its reform and moralization. Most maladies were attributed to the legacy of coloniaje, but elites

also anticipated that certain social problems would arise from progress and industrialization and

aimed to prevent them.

43
 By the 1870s, the notion of what was public enlarged and penetrated into every aspect of

the population’s lives. If streets, plazas, and open spaces were hitherto considered as part of the

state jurisdiction, but the houses’ insides were left to the will and care of their proprietors,

positivistic preoccupation for social development and the construction of a stable, orderly nation,

eliminated the notion of a private sphere. The state had now jurisdiction to inspect the most

intimate details of the population, as their bodies themselves belonged to the nation. Individual

liberty, it was thought, had to be put aside. Since it was the mission of a strengthened central

government to guide the nation toward progress, no restrictions to the institutions of the state

were recognized. The promotion of the values of discipline, self control, vigor, hard work, and

respect for norms was also thought as instrumental to the development of a new economy: new

industries demanded the formation of a disciplined, reliable, obedient proletariat, subdued to the

new conceptions of time, work, and authority.

Along with the pedagogy of public space and the reformation of the educational system, a

new penitentiary was built to fulfill the aspirations of the new “civitas.” The penitentiary, which

opened in 1862 and was modeled after Philadelphia’s panopticon, was the largest, most

imposing, and costly edifice of nineteenth-century Lima. It was made to host prisoners from the

entire nation, and was intended to, at once, exert a moral influence on the population,

demonstrate Peru’s achievement of civilization, and reform criminals into hardworking, law-

abiding citizens. Prisoners would be instructed in a trade in the penitentiary’s workshops, and

their reeducation was to be guided by the simple principles of the institution’s motto: “silence,

obedience, labor.” More than a site for the reclusion of inmates, the Penitentiary was a social

laboratory for the society elites wanted to forge: one ruled by the progressive severity of the state

and formed by docile, obedient, and hardworking bodies/citizens. At once, the penitentiary was

44
an example of modernity, and had an exemplary intention for the population modernizing elites

wanted to civilize.

Lima was thus reformed to construct the future of the nation. The historical narrative that

Peruvianized the Incas, constructing the Inca Empire as the glorious past of the nation, and

which despised the immediate past of the obscure, oppressive, and backward colonial era, found

its way into history textbooks but could not find a physical expression in a city that was

refounded as modern as the nation had to become. 81 Enlightened, liberal projects of

transformation intended to construct a functional society for contemporary world, which meant a

new beginning that could not make use of traditions, styles or aesthetic references from the

colonial or pre-colonial past. Lima was at the center of such efforts, as Peruvian modernizing

elites of the mid-nineteenth century struggled to make a fresh, new, national start from tabula

rasa. These foundational attempts were deeply anti-historicist, or at least showed elites’ desire

to mark the rupture with the past as a way to pave the nation’s route to future and history.

Examining the way European writers portrayed Spanish America during the years

preceding the revolutions of Independence, Mary Louise Pratt has argued that America was

reinvented by Europeans in the nineteenth century as “a world whose history was the one about

to begin.” 82 Peruvian elites confronted the essential predicament of creating a new national

community out of the shambles of a decaying colonial power that had lost all international

prestige. National identity was necessarily constructed in opposition to Spanish “backward”

colonialism, especially by the mid-nineteenth century, when it was clear that Peru’s future was to

be republican. This meant that the colonial past could not be the usable past of the nation. The

81
For an analysis of Peru’s foundational mid-nineteenth century historical narratives that Peruvianized the Incas to
provide the nation with a glorious classical era comparable to that being constructed by Europeans, see Mark
Thurner, “Peruvian Genealogies of History and Nation.”
82
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 126.

45
past era of the Incas was indeed constructed as magnificent; as the usable past that signaled

Peru’s grandiose future, and Creole elites spoke of “our ancestors” the Incas while lamenting the

fate of the “miserable” contemporary Indians. The mandates derived from the need to be part of

contemporary, modern world, however, predominated in Lima’s early processes of reinvention,

as elites “transculturated” –selected and invented from– European perspectives, styles and

aesthetics as they strove to create images of their nations.

The transformations of the city, however, were not uncontested. Along with the changes

appeared a romantic, nostalgic view of the old, colonial city and its traditions and local flavor.

The lamentations about the vanishing “typical” Lima, that were expressed in incomparable terms

in José Galvez’s Una Lima que se va in 1921, would have its origins in the mid nineteenth

century by certain Limeños –even liberals like Ricardo Palma— and foreign visitors as well.

Most importantly, the absence of local references meant that the desired symbolism of the

physical reshaping of the city could not always be interpreted as first intended. Designed to

signify civilization and the national community, monuments and public spaces soon had to be

fenced and protected against misuses, vandalism, and robbery. The renomination of public space

did not make Limeños abandon the old designations. Elites’ projects, which were limited by the

state’s inefficacy and weakness, and restrained by the end of the guano prosperity, could not

install a hegemonic culture fundamentally because it could not converse in an understandable

rhetoric to all Limeños, much the less to Peru’s predominantly rural, Indian population.

The end of the guano boom was followed by an event that still marks Peru’s historical

anxieties. The War of the Pacific (1879-1883) is probably the event most studied by scholars,

46
and, along with “conquest,” the one most present in popular imagination. 83 Part of this sense of

trauma comes from the fact that Chilean forces occupied Lima between 1881 and 1883, not only

leaving a sense of defeat, decay and impotence, but forcing an “institutional reordering of

society.” 84 The war produced doubts about Creole’s competence to lead the nation to progress,

and even about Creole’s racial makeup. Indeed, anarchist thinker Manuel Gonzalez Prada

inaugurated a criticism to Limeño elites that would influence generations to come: to him, the

defeat was the direct responsibility of Lima’s “plutocracy” whose mentality was still colonial

(Gonzalez Prada stated that every “white” man was like “a Pizarro, a Valverde, or an Areche”),

and who had been unable to create a real, unified nation. 85 Three years before, in 1905, José de

la Riva Agüero, one of Peru’s most prolific “reactionary” historians, argued that the defeat of

Peru in the war of the Pacific had been caused by the absence of a leading class that could unify

and guide the nation after independence. 86 The defeat of the war of the Pacific produced a

historiography dominated by ucronia, that is, by reflections of what should have happened but

never occurred –marked by a sense of “historical frustration”—, and a sociology that

predominantly compared Peru’s society with an ideal of modernity to lament the country’s

83
According to Alberto Flores Galindo, Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the wars of Independence, and the war
of the Pacific are the three topics most studied by Peruvian historians. Alberto Flores Galindo, “La imagen y el
espejo.”
84
See Heraclio Bonilla “El problema nacional y colonial del Perú,” Un siglo a la deriva; and, Guano y burguesía.
85
Manuel Gonzalez Prada, Horas de Lucha (Lima: El Progreso Literario, 1908). Gonzalez Prada is referring to
Pizarro, the conquistador, priest Valverde, who accompanied Pizarro and played a major role in Atahualpa’s capture,
and Antonio Areche, Visitador General del Perú who was in charge of the crown’s troops who defeated Tupac
Amaru’s rebellion in 1782.
86
José de la Riva Agüero, Carácter de la literatura del Perú independiente (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica
del Perú, 1965) (1905). The characterization of Riva Agüero as reactionary is not gratuitous: it was Riva Agüero
himself who proclaimed not to be conservative, but reactionary. See Luís Alberto Sanchez, Conservador, no,
reaccionario, si: notas sobre la vida, obra y proyecciones de don José de la Riva-Agüero y Osma, Marqués de
Montealegre y Aulestia (Lima: Mosca Azul, 1985).

47
“unfulfilled promises,” and “lost” decades or centuries: the type of social thought that still

dominates Peruvian imagination. 87

Some thinkers echoed Chilean nationalist discourses elaborated after and during after

Lima’s occupation, which portrayed Limeños as effeminate, uncivilized, and racially impure and

inferior. 88 Racist conceptions against the Indians that had spurred attempts to improve their

“decadent race” through miscegenation with white Europeans, were now directed towards

Creoles: intellectuals like Hildebrando Fuentes, Juan de Arona, Clemente Palma, and Javier

Prado, stated that Peruvian Creoles –sometimes referred to as “whites”— were “a lethargic race,

of poor blood and muscular vigor, indolent, vicious, who surrenders to pleasure and courtesan

customs,” who needed to receive the vigor, intellect, scientific spirit, serenity, and energy of

“Germanic” race. 89

The economic expansion based on the development of exports and substantial foreign

investment in production by the end of the century, gave rise to a vital period of modernization

and recuperation after the generalized postwar crisis. Positivism’s modernizing impetus, well

synthesized in its motto “order and progress,” combined with the need to rebuild the national

pride, as new modernizing elites reinitiated the mission of remaking Lima to lead the nation in

the path of modernity and civilization. The drive of modernization of the late-nineteenth century

and early twentieth century followed similar principles of the earlier period, but acquired more

intensity: a sense of greater urgency to achieve progress through the development of industries

87
Note that the separation of historiography and sociological thought is somewhat arbitrary: most Peruvian
historiography is in fact sociological history. For criticisms of this dominant approach to Peru’s society and history
see Magdalena Chocano, “Ucronía y frustración”; Alberto Flores Galindo, “La imagen y el espejo: la historiografía
peruana;” and, Guillermo Rochabún, “Ser historiador.”
88
For an analysis of Chilean nationalist discourses during and after Lima’s occupation, see Carmen Mc Evoy,
““Bella Lima ya tiemblas llorosa del triunfador chileno en poder”: una aproximación a los elementos de género en el
discurso nacionalista chileno,” in El hechizo de las imágenes: Estatus social y etnicidad en la historia peruana, ed.
Narda Henríquez (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2000).
89
Javier Prado, Estado social del Perú durante la dominación española (Lima: Imprenta de El Diario Judicial, por
M. Agois, 1894).

48
and through cultural transformations dominated Limeño elites, who felt that the achievements of

the previous era had been meager, that country had not realized its destiny, and that it had fallen

backwards in comparison to other South American nations; a feeling underscored by the defeat

against Chile.

The feeling that neither Independence nor the guano wealth had made Peru develop its

magnificent potential merged with the optimistic sense that the country had a new opportunity:

the new political stability and economic growth allowed for a new beginning in a country

generously blessed with natural resources but which still lacked the proper infrastructure and

human capacity. Along with the preoccupation for developing the required abilities and talents

for industrial expansion, the concern for the development of a national identity became an

obsession: the defeat of the war was attributed to the country’s divides and the absence of an

integrated national community.

As Renan acutely observed, for the construction of a national memory “grieves are of

more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.” 90 The war

provided the nation with new symbols of heroism, and with a sense of victimization readily

available for the construction of a historical narrative of moral triumph. Contrasted with the

leaders of the Independence movements, the new heroes had the fundamental advantage of being

unquestionably “Peruvian.” While a monument to honor Bolivar appeared in Lima thirty-five

years after the consolidation of Peru’s independence, and San Martin was only immortalized in

bronze only a century after the Declaration of Independence, a plan to construct a shrine to honor

Colonels Francisco Bolognesi and Alfonso Ugarte, as well as Admiral Miguel Grau, was

executed rapidly, and new plazas and avenues soon received their names and monuments. Those

three figures not only represented courage and heroism, but incarnated the drive to struggle in the
90
Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?,” 41-55.

49
most unfavorable conditions. The country’s post-war conditions were indeed most unfavorable,

and the new heroes’ image was instrumental for the new efforts for unification, reconstruction

and development.

Lima was experiencing a process of rapid demographic growth. The central city’s

demographic density alarmed authorities and experts, and plans were made to regulate and

control its future expansion. A new avenue that connected the capital with the neighboring town

of Magdalena opened new areas for the city’s development. The new neighborhoods were

carefully planned to include open areas for recreation, and wide streets to allow for the

circulation of new means of transportation: automobiles, urban railways and tramways. New

technologies marked the development of the growing city, but also altered the old center, as

electricity was introduced, and key avenues were enlarged and turned into boulevards that

became new commercial and financial centers. French architectural styles, such as the Art

Nouveau dominated in the new public and private buildings, and the design of streets and

boulevards followed the principles of Baron Georges Eugene Hausmann remodeling of Paris,

although by the early twentieth century Buenos Aires had become the emblematic South

American intermediary of the “capital of the nineteenth century.” Other influences were also felt

in these projects of renewal. The renovation of the symbolic Plaza de Armas in 1901, carried out

by the municipal administration of Federico Elguera, however, as well as the design of Lima’s

first horse race track, followed English standards.

In contrast to the old city, new neighborhoods were designed to segregate the population

according to their social class. The barrios obreros, located in areas adjacent to the increasing

industries, were designed to provide for inexpensive, comfortable and hygienic housing to the

new proletariat. These designs followed the recommendations made by engineers, architects,

50
and hygienists that carefully studied the living conditions of the poor. Their reports expressed the

growing concern about the influence of the habitat on the morality of the population, and they

unanimously claimed that a disciplined, restrained workforce could not be formed if

contemporary unsanitary living conditions were maintained. Supported by state and municipal

legislation, experts penetrated into the private spheres of the population –which were

increasingly defined as the state’s jurisdiction— and detailed the physical and sanitary conditions

of the houses and how Limeños occupied them, prepared their meals, slept, and raised their

children. Following positivist ideas that privileged the common welfare over individual liberties,

experts believed that state agencies’ authority had to be exercised not only in the urban network,

on the streets or houses’ façades, but in the interior of houses as well. It was believed that

houses had to be rationally designed to avoid crowding and to provide beneficial air and light;

their decorations had to please the eye, but not distract. The housing conditions of the lower

classes scandalized experts, who compared the houses of the poor to “caves from prehistoric

epochs,” 91 whose unpleasant, depressing environment, argued the experts, made workers prefer

to go to bars or socialize outdoors, where they acquired vices and “demoralizing” habits. Some

experts also argued that poor houses were centers of corruption and misery because workers did

not have the desire to improve their living conditions. In words of leading engineer Santiago

Basurco: “they only seek to have as much money as possible to spend in alcohol…” 92

Reports expressed that the environment had a pernicious influence on the habits and

moral of a population whose race was naturally inclined to excesses and idleness. Experts

expressed that “Indians’” pusillanimous temper, and “blacks’” proclivity towards vice and

91
Santiago Basurco and Leonidas Avendaño, “Higiene de la habitación. Informe emitido por la comisión nombrada
por el gobierno para estudiar las condiciones sanitarias de las casas de vecindad,” Boletín del Ministerio de
Fomento. Dirección de Salubridad Pública, 3, no. 4-5 (1907): 84
92
Santiago Basurco, “Construcción de casas higiénicas para obreros,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento. Dirección
de Obras Públicas, 1, no. 2 (1905): 63.

51
anarchy, were at the same time expressed in and reinforced by their living conditions. In some

cases, experts also criticized the housing conditions of wealthier Limeños, stating that they too

lacked hygiene and buttressed “white” Creole’s racial disposition towards inaction and

hedonism. Improving the living conditions of the population, following the mandates of modern

hygiene, was an essential duty of the state to avoid further “degeneration of the race.” The

“improvement of the race” became an obsession of modernizing elites. All plans for intervention

on the city’s infrastructure, and the population’s education and habits, were colored by a racialist

rhetoric in which an environmental, Lamarckian notion of race dominated social thought of

experts: changes would not only better the living conditions of contemporary population, but

improvements would also be transmitted to future generations. 93

The creation of a numerous, virile, and vigorous population demanded profound changes

in the educational system. The main objective of the new Law of Education of 1901 was to

promote more practical individuals, inclined towards sciences and economic activities. It was

stated that education in Peru had not been really transformed since colonial times, still placing its

emphasis on the development of memory and on the humanities: students were inclined to

become lawyers and poets, and not towards more practical, useful, and development-oriented

careers. The education of the lower classes also had to help develop an entrepreneurial spirit,

and prepare children in productive trades. While Lima’s university schools of medicine,

engineering, and agriculture received special attention from the state, a new School of Arts and

Trades was created to train the “hijos del pueblo” in trades such as printing, carpentry, and

construction.

93
For an explanation of environmental, Lamarckian conceptions of race, see Nancy Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics:
Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

52
 A new proletariat also aroused from growing industries. New unions, most of them

dominated by anarchist figures, were part of the civilizing drive of the modernizing elite.

Workers launched campaigns to educate themselves, and to reform their habits. Through

“temperance” campaigns they could claim that they were part of civilization. In fact, workers’

speakers claimed that they were more modern, civilized, and patriotic than Limeño elites, who

could not rid themselves of their seigniorial, essentially non-bourgeois culture.

Primary education became compulsory, as the authority of parents could not be greater

than that of the state. The education of women also acquired unprecedented importance. If

males’ education was inclined to productive activities, the education of females was centered or

reproductive ones. Women’s bodies had to be developed in a healthy manner because they were

the sites where the reproduction of the population and race took place. The emphasis on the

physical education of men was placed on the development of strength, virility, disciplined

bodies. The physical education of women had one main objective: to make future mothers apt to

bear healthy citizens for the nation. The principles of hygiene were to be taught at schools, but

girls received additional courses on healthy pregnancies and puericultura, the care of infants.

Women’s bodies thus became a privileged field of state intervention. A new Hospital de

Maternidad was erected to control pregnancies and deliveries; a decree mandated that pregnant

women had to register in the Maternidad, to be closely monitored by physicians. Doctors

recommended that pregnant women should not pay attention to any advice given by non-

professionals, in particular, should not to listen to their own mothers, who could only transmit

deficient knowledge based on superstition. Doctors inspected women’s bodies in detail, and

reported about their abilities to be good mothers.

53
 The aims to create of an orderly, hygienic environment, and the formation of disciplined,

rational individuals, were expressed in continuous campaigns against popular customs,

recreational activities, and lifestyles. The so-called “social question” captured the attention of

reform-minded politicians, planners, engineers, criminologists, and hygienists: an army of

reformers attempted to organize, clean, and educate a city they diagnosed as chaotic, decrepit,

and unsanitary, and inhabited by a languid population whose beliefs and customs were absurd

and barbaric. Some of these experts, however, believed that the condition of Lima and its

population was in many ways better than those of industrialized cities: these specialists –most of

whom had studied in Europe— stated that “progress” carried its own dangers, producing social

maladies yet unknown to Lima. The view of modernity and progress was ambiguous even for

Federico Elguera, the emblematic lawyer, literati, and journalist who became Lima’s Mayor in

1901 and who is widely known for promoting and leading a radical transformation of the city.

Elguera’s fascination for modernity was mitigated by his fears that old ways of sociability were

being replaced by impoverished impersonal relations that produced solitude.

During this period, Lima experienced a remarkable transformation. Not only did the city

grow at an unprecedented pace; but new spaces and technologies radically transformed the life of

Limeños, producing anxieties and uncertainties. The installation of electricity could be praised

for its magical effects on the city, but newspapers reported on accidents on a daily basis.

Changes brought uncertainty for Limeños who saw their environment and basis for subsistence

alter rapidly, demanding rapid adaptations. Some members of the elites also worried about the

emergence of a monotonous city undistinguishable from other modern cities in the world. While

some praised the transformation of Lima in a “modern and commercial city, with large and

54
rectilinear avenues . . . and uniform houses of monotonous simplicity,” 94 others angrily

complained about “the modern uproar and the pretentious vulgarity of the new buildings,” as

well as the “artificial and dangerous” foreign influences that were making Lima lose its

particular flavor and identity. 95

The Leguía regime known as the Oncenio (1919-1930) was intended to be a widely

recognized break with the past, and was ambitiously denominated the “Patria Nueva.” Augusto

Bernardino Leguía, a sagacious politician and entrepreneur, led a modernization process that

included social, economic, political, and administrative reforms, sustained by an economic

bonanza based on foreign investment and loans. After Leguia’s rupture with the civilista party

that had taken him to power for a first period between 1908 and 1912, he declared that his main

political objective was to “not only to liquidate the old state of affairs, but also to detain the

advance of communism.” Leguía felt that the old civilista “aristocracy” had proven unable to

lead Peru to progress and that a coalition between capital and labor, along with strong state

intervention in the economy, could both enhance modernization and attend to the new social

demands of a growing middle class and proletariat.

Leguía’s economic policies generated a greater demand for labor in construction and

other services, which in turn promoted a wave of rural migrants into Lima: the city’s

demographic growth acquired dramatic dimensions, as the population raised from an estimate

106,000 inhabitants in 1900 to 376,500 in 1931. New economic activities appeared, and social

changes went along. Leguía promoted the intensification of the participation of U.S. capital and

technicians in Peru’s economy: having worked for a U.S. insurance company in New York,

Leguía admired North American “practical” and entrepreneurial spirit and believed Peruvians

94
Francisco García Calderón, Le Perou Contemporain: Etude Sociale (Paris: Dujarric et Cio. Editeurs, 1907), 11.
95
José de la Riva Agüero, La Historia en el Perú. Tesis para el doctorado en Letras (Lima: Imprenta Nacional de
Federico Barrionuevo, 1910), 221.

55
would benefit by using it as a model. This practical man’s modernist impulses merged with a

special interest in Peru’s history and national identity. His regime gave unprecedented support to

historical and archaeological research and purchased private collections to create Peru’s first

modern archaeological museums.

By the 1920s historical narratives were changing the perception of the past. Nineteenth-

century historical discourses had been predominantly anti-Hispanic –perhaps because the new

nation’s identity had to be forged in opposition to the colonial past from which it had emerged.

Anti-Hispanism was also reinforced by Spain’s occupation of Peru’s guano islands between

1864 and 1866, a campaign that was responded by a coalition Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.

The Combate del 2 de Mayo that took place in Callao and which sealed Spain’s defeat, was

immediately conceived as Peru’s second independence: a new plaza and monument to

immortalize Peru’s triumph was inaugurated in 1874, in Peru standards, a record six years later.

Anti-Hispanic sentiments are expressed by the fact that Peru did not have complete diplomatic

relationships with Spain until 1923.

By the 1910s, and especially the 1920s, however, a combination of factors allowed for

the elaboration of a historical narrative that reconciled the nation with its colonial past and Spain.

The War of the Pacific had created another “other” in opposition to which Peru’s identity was to

be forged. Chile appeared as a closer and more dangerous “other,” displacing Spain as an

oppositional figure. By the 1920s several international events had radically altered historical and

sociological thought: the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), the World War I, and the Russian

Revolution. The atrocities of World War I had produced a sequel of pessimism throughout

Europe, as confidence on progress was severely undermined, and some voices crafted a critical

56
narrative of modernity, stating that “the decline of the West” was inevitable. 96 The triumph of

the Bolshevik revolution, and the rise of labor movements throughout the world produced

feelings of anxiety in the West; the fact that the Russian communist regime had declared itself to

be atheist only increased fears among Peru’s elites, most of whom defined themselves as

Catholic. The Mexican revolution promoted a renovation of indigenista discourses, but, at the

same time, became an example of the violence and instability that could also occur in Peru if

social and political transformations were not enacted: reformation was to be made from above, in

order to avoid revolution from below.

Nineteenth century historiography, with some notable exceptions, had constructed the

Inca Empire as the usable, glorious past that provided the nation with an Imperial pedigree.

Spanish colonialism had been constructed following the lines of the “Black Legend,” as an

obscure era of foreign rule that had left a legacy of backwardness, which was emblematically

incarnated by the Indian population. “The Indian” had been reduced to servitude and vice by

Spanish colonialism, and constituted “our miserable indigenous race,” an obstacle to Peru’s

progress, but also an object for Creole’s national, civilizatory mission. In the 1920s, this

historical narrative was questioned by figures who attempted to reconcile the nation with its

colonial past. José de la Riva Aguero, for instance, maintained an Incaist indigenismo that

highlighted Inca dominance in South America, but added that the early Habsburg colonial era

also gave Peru a noble past of which Peruvians had to be proud. Riva Aguero’s Hispanista

discourse highlighted that Peru’s viceroyalty was the most important possession of the most

powerful Empire, and that the nation had to be proud of being the favorite son –“hijo

predilecto”— of Spain, our noble “Madre Patria.” Both, the Inca, and the colonial pasts gave

96
Oswald Spengler, La decadencia de occidente: bosquejo de una morfología de la historia universal (Madrid:
Espasa-Calpe, 1976) (1918).

57
Peru the “most authentic titles for predominance in South America.” Independence was

constructed by Riva Aguero as the result of a “growth crisis:” Peru had to leave the protective

bosom of its Spanish mother as grown-ups leave their parents’ home once they are ready for

autonomy.

The consolidation of Peruvian archaeology and the appearance of new middle-class

intellectuals –many of whom came from provinces— revitalized and reshaped an indigenista

historical perspective. Julio C. Tello, a physician and archaeologist who had been born in a

humble family in Huarochirí, and who became a Harvard graduate, crafted a discourse that

criticized Spanish colonialism for “destructing the foundations of our nationality.” “The

conquest” not only had removed the Indian’s progressive drive, but had caused a cataclysm that

destroyed the autochthonous Madre Patria, “our grand and only mother.”

The 1920s propitiated debates among different conceptions of the nation, elaborated from

dissimilar perspectives and to support diverse political projects. The Leguía regime, however,

made use of all of them, and promoted indigenismo, and hispanismo, while keeping the desire to

take the nation to modernity. Perhaps his practical spirit understood that history could be an

amorphous, but functional discourse on national identity, while the future had to be constructed

in more practical and coherent terms. Leguía considered himself to be the Indian’s redeemer; in

some occasions, however, his references to history were identical to Riva Aguero’s: highlighting

the role of our Madre Patria, Spain, in bequeathing Peru its constitutive character, race, language

and soul.

Leguía multiple uses of history were central in the celebrations of the Centennials of

Independence (1921), and the Battle of Ayacucho (1924). Leguía decided to use the occasions to

consolidate his regime and to publicize Peru in the world. The aim to make a great celebration

58
that would enlarge Peru’s international prestige spurred an unprecedented drive for the

transformation of Lima. In a few years, the city changed more than ever before. New avenues

opened areas for the city’s expansion, and new state and private buildings were erected following

diverse styles, most notably, a neo-colonial style that recovered the previously loathed baroque,

while a neo-pre-Hiapanic style recreated Tiahuanaco and Inca motifs. The neo-colonial found its

way in major public buildings and some elite mansions; the neo-pre-Hispanic style did not find

its way into many structures, but influenced monuments, decorations, furniture, and jewelry.

Both styles were cultivated by architects. In fact, the most important neo-colonial building,

Lima’s Archbishop’s Palace, and the most important neo-pre-Hispanic one, that of Peru’s

National Museum of Archaeology, were designed and constructed in simultaneous by the same

architect and inaugurated the same week, for the celebration of the Ayacucho battle, in 1924. To

make things more ironic, the architect who created both symbols of Peruanidad happened to be

Polish, one of the European architects hired in to promote the development of the field in Peru.

In what follows, I trace the projects of transformation of Lima and explore the language

of urbanism, exploring, in an ethnographic vein, how “modernity” was vicariously understood,

debated, and used by politicians, planners, engineers, criminologists, hygienists, intellectuals,

and the population in (and against) the re-foundational national projects. Perhaps more

poignantly, my study seeks to make visible the inherent tensions, ambivalence, and ironies of

such imaginings and deployments.

59
Figure 1-1. Pizarro Monument. Removed on April 26, 2003

Figure 1-2. Pizarro Plaza and monument before removal. Graffiti reads: “Pizarro mass murderer
the Tawantinsuyo repudiates you”

60
 CHAPTER 2
MODERNIZING THE MODERN

Although General José de San Martín had declared Peru’s independence on July 28,

1821, the new republican order was far from consolidated in the chaotic, unstable period that

followed the declaration. While Spanish forces held power in most of the interior until the late

1824 Ayacucho battle, the patriot government could hardly maintain control in the republic’s

postcolonial capital: the old City of the Kings was threatened by war, revolts, banditry, famine

and sickness. Commercial routes and the mercantile network that articulated Lima with interior

cities and mining centers remained interrupted. Royalist and patriot armies devastated nearby

haciendas, imposing quotas on hacendados or simply appropriating harvests and cattle, and

granting freedom to slaves willing to join their ranks. Maroons and bandits followed, as

mechanisms of control relaxed or disappeared altogether. The city was in the hand of

“montoneras;” troops of mounted men who razed the city and its hinterland, looting shops and

residences. Food scarcity appeared, producing massive hunger and sickness: prices of staple

goods soared. Horses and mules had to be slaughtered to cover for meat deficit, but that did not

prevent the appearance of death: outbursts of yellow fever and “vómito prieto” (dark vomit)

terrified Limeños. It is in the midst of anarchy and fear that Bernardo Monteagudo --long-time

friend and advisor to San Martín, whom the Supreme Protector had named Minister of War and

Navy, as well as Minister of State and Foreign Relations, and left in charge of Peru’s government

during his historic journey to Guayaquil to interview with Simón Bolívar-- decided that the new

republic needed a new history.

A New History for a New Nation: A Trajan’s Column in the Plaza de la Constitución

On July 6, 1822, Monteagudo decided that the plaza hitherto known as Plaza de la

Inquisición had to be officially renamed and known as the Plaza de la Constitución. The

61
building that had hosted the Holy Office had, by then, become house of the High Chamber of

Justice and site of the future Congress, charged with writing Peru’s first constitution. To

Monteagudo, the new Republican state should preserve the building as a concrete reminder of

the transition to the new republican epoch. Once an odious site “where so many victims have

groaned in pain under the empire of superstition and political tyranny,” it was now to be the

memorable place “where the High Chamber administrates justice, respecting laws that emanate

from nature” and where Peru’s first Congress would assemble. It was appropriate to preserve a

building where “the most illustrious patriots” had been imprisoned, to conserve “memory of the

causes and epoch of this change.” By virtue of its preservation and new use, the Inquisition

building was to symbolize the contrast between the dark era of Spanish colonialism and the just,

“natural” national order.

To accentuate the contrast, the plaza which in the past “many have approached trembling

with horror” now would offer a monument “whose magnificence will increase every year.”

Monteagudo ordered the erection of a monument modeled after Rome’s Trajan’s column,

crowned by an equestrian statue of Peru’s Protector and whose pedestal would have gold letters

showing the date of the Declaration of Independence. While the base of the column would

inscribe the date of the installation of the Constitutional Congress, the column itself would be

empty. Every year, a golden bronze ring with the inscription of the most memorable events of it

was to be added “for posterity, to find in them the history of the events that have influenced its

destiny.” 97 It is apparent that the project was important to Monteagudo, for the decree made

97
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente (La Plata: Universidad Nacional de la Plata, 1950), 549. Decree
issued on July 6, 1822.

62
clear that “in any circumstance, it is necessary to have the same degree of courage to undertake

what is important for Peru’s glory, as to sustain its liberty.” 98

Monteagudo had an acute sensitivity towards history. In 1809, and at the tender age of

nineteen, the Tucumeño had written a celebrated Incaist, patriot lampoon in which Atahualpa, the

unfortunate Inca sentenced to death by Pizarro in 1533, and Ferdinand VII, the Bourbon king of

Spain imprisoned by Napoleon Bonaparte’s army in 1808, maintained an improbable but

amicable dialog in the Champs Elisées. In this dialog the enlightened Ferdinand admits

America’s right to obtain freedom from a foreign rule that had brought ignorance, misery, and

degradation to Peru. 99 By 1822, Monteagudo had also founded the Sociedad Patriótica de

Lima, 100 enacted San Martin’s decree to organize Peru’s National Museum, 101 and prohibited the

exit of objects found in archaeological sites from Peru. If Spain had attempted to “erase all

vestige of the ancient civilization and grandeur,” the new Republic would preserve “the

venerable remains we still possess, produced by the art of the subjects of the ancient Inca

Empire.” 102

An acute observer of society, Monteagudo was aware of the urgency of the moment. A

fractured republic had emerged from the old colonial order, one in which “the diversity of

conditions and the multitude of castes, the strong aggression between them, the diametrically

different character of each of them… the difference in ideas, habits, customs, needs, and in the

ways to satisfy them, present a picture of hatred and irreconcilable interests, which threatens

98
Ibid.
99
Bernardo Monteagudo, “Diálogo entre Atahualpa y Fernando VII en los Campos Elíseos,” in Pensamiento
Político de la Emancipación (1790-1825), ed. José Luis Romero and Luis Alberto Romero (Caracas: Biblioteca
Ayacucho, 1977), vol. I, 64-71.
100
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 281. Decree issued on January 10, 1822.
101
See commentary by the Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 377.
102
Ibid., 377.

63
social existence,” as he would later express in his memoirs on Peru. 103 Monteagudo’s work as

head of the Juzgado de Secuestros, a court established in 1821 to prosecute royalist Spaniards,

which received accusations on alleged conspirators and fugitives, made him well aware that

forging a national identity was a harder task than giving birth to a political entity. In the twelve

bundles that gather the documents of the Juzgado, the term “Peruvian” is mentioned only twice.

When asked for their “patria” (fatherland), all of the accusers answered indicating their place of

birth, or defined themselves as “American,” “patriots,” “citizens,” or “limeños.” 104 The diverse

and fragmented society that surfaced after the oppressive and divisive era of Spanish colonialism

required a unifying myth that would forge a common “Peruvian” identity, that is, to create

citizens with “national consciousness.” To Monteagudo this unity could only be provided by a

demonstrative history.

To carry out the vital task of forging a sense of unity under the notion of national

belonging, Monteagudo believed the history of the new/old nation could not be confined to

lettered “Peruvians to be.” The Plaza and old building where the Holy Office had functioned

would become a walking scenario where spectators from all walks of life could behold the

sensations produced by the material remembrance of the triumph of “nature” and “reason” over

“tyranny” and “superstition.” The new Plaza would serve to recall the dark colonial past along

the lines of the “Black Legend” –an obscure era of illegitimate rule of arbitrariness, exploitation,

ignorance, and pain— and to envision the national future as an era of justice, heroism, progress,

and openness.

103
Bernardo Monteagudo, Memoria sobre los principios políticos que seguí en la administración del Perú y
acontecimientos posteriores a mi separación (Santiago: Imprenta Nacional, 1823), 18-19.
104
Alberto Flores Galindo, La ciudad sumergida. Aristocracia y plebe en Lima, 1760-1830 (Lima: Editorial
Horizonte, 1991), 173.

64
 All of these elements were to be symbolized by, and in, the Plaza and its monument

modeled on Trajan’s column. San Martin’s statue and the date of the declaration of Peru’s

independence inscribed in gold letters would mark the beginning of year one of the sovereign

era. The base would show the date of the installation of Congress not only to mark the

establishment of the rule of law, but to mark the birth of the new entity of the nation, one that

could not be created by the will of a single person, but only by “we, the People,” expressed by

Congress. The monument would thus embody the republican desire to displace royal

sovereignty towards the people represented, inscribing “the name of the people” to displace the

formerly hyper present “name of the king.” 105 The abstract concept of the nation had to be

promoted as the personification of the common soul of all citizens, as opposed to the monarch.

The symbols of the Ancien Régime, however, could not be entirely erased; the new era required

them to be kept alive, if only to transmit different meanings, as reminders of the colonial

“opprobrium.”

The “most memorable events” were to be successively inscribed on the empty column,

creating a sequence held together in, and by, the intelligible totality of the nation. They would

acquire meaning by their connection to one another, creating a larger system of signs, which in

turn would become a meaningful and instructive story/history. The emptiness of the column

expressed optimism about the future: the linear time of the nation was to be the vehicle of a

continuous, meaningful story of ascension to a high destiny that seemed plausible when

contrasted with an immediate past, allegedly characterized by caste separations, unreason,

backwardness, and suffering.

105
Mark Thurner, “Una historia peruana para el pueblo peruano. De la genealogía fundacional de Sebastián
Lorente,” in Lorente, Sebastián, Escritos fundacionales de historia peruana. Compilación y estudio introductorio by
Mark Thurner (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2005).

65
 Monteagudo’s Plaza de la Constitución and Trajan’s column was a public history of the

future, for the past was unreason “and the future alone was the time which they could envision as

that of the triumph of reason over unreason, perfect unity, redemption.” 106 To Monteagudo, the

history of the new nation was a blank page to be written on. Independence was to be inscribed to

signify the rupture, the passage towards history and posterity. On the other hand, the column

expressed the drive to place the nation in the universal time of nations, a new “contemporary”

epoch itself in the forming international community. Indeed, the use of Trajan’s column as a

model to represent Peru’s break with Spanish colonialism and the birth of the national

community was not fortuitous, for it claimed coevalness with the imagined community of

modern and international mankind. 107 By using Rome’s classical era as the symbolic source to

build Peru’s future shrine of history, Monteagudo was not simply expressing an impulse to

“copy” colonial powers to be, but ascribing to the “universal” values of reason, political

freedom, and national unity. And so, rather than locating the nation’s history in empty, secular

time, the nation’s Trajan clock would register the sacred temporal frame of a universal

contemporaneity whose upward spiral was founded on the republican appeal to ancient Rome. 108

The new Plaza would not only insert the nation in contemporaneity through the new/old,

ancient/modern historical references, however. Monteagudo’s design was also intended to

cleanse and reorder a Plaza that after the closure of the Inquisition Tribunal had been occupied

by an unwieldy mass of street vendors. The chaotic, unpleasant view of the Plaza “embarrassed

pedestrians.” Produce was scattered on the floor and filth agglomerated, producing disarray

106
Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1973).
107
The concept of coevalness comes from Johannes, Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its
Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
108
Mark Thurner, “Peruvian Genealogies of History and Nation,” in After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments
of the Americas, ed. Mark Thurner and Andrés Guerrero (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

66
“without any method or comfort.” 109 Monteagudo promptly ordered their removal, since to

allow vendors in the Plaza that would host the new Congress was a sacrilege. Indeed,

Monteagudo intended to promote new customs and habits among Lima’s population, for the new

nation needed not only a new history but virtuous citizens if it were to achieve progress and

civilization. To promote his ideals of cultural renovation, Monteagudo would reform all aspects

of the public sphere; in particular, however, the public areas of the city had to reordered and

disciplined. In a time in which the nation was emerging from Spanish colonialism, constructing

its sense of identity in opposition to that past, and trying to achieve progress and modernity, all

social disorders and maladies where judged to be colonial legacies to transcend. In short, the

new Plaza would also mark the advent of a republican civilizing mission. 110

Monteagudo’s plaza of history and order did not materialize, however. After meeting

with Bolivar in Guayaquil, San Martín retired to Europe. The task of liberating Peru from the

Spanish menace, and of administrating her territory, now fell into the hands of the Liberator from

Caracas. Monteagudo was forced to abandon Lima, exiled to Quito, only to return months later

to be the victim of an obscure assassination.111 The chaos and instability of the early postcolonial

years would last for decades. The long period of birth pangs characterized by caudillo wars that

would only end in the 1840s thanks to the more stable conditions granted by the wealth of guano,

placed Monteagudo’s project on hold. Nevertheless, his vision is illustrative of the postcolonial

predicaments Peruvian elites faced in the foundational moments after the fall of Spanish

colonialism.

109
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 517-8. Decree issued on June 18, 1822.
110
Monteagudo issued other decrees to order Lima’s public areas and change Limeños’ habits. A decree issued on
May 21, 1822, for instance, limited bell pealing to five minutes “unless they peal to honor a great event in favor of
Independence, for which they must last ten minutes.” Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 465.
111
The decree for Monteagudo’s exile was issued on December 6, 1822. He was named “enemy of the state.”
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 773.

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 In this chapter I explore how Limeño elites, buttressed by the unprecedented period of

political stability and economic growth of the 1840s and 1850s, revived Monteagudo’s project.

Like Monteagudo, mid-nineteenth century elites were convinced that a comprehensive

institutional reform of the state apparatus was insufficient to build a viable society, and they

chose Lima as the privileged site for pedagogical experiments for the formation of a new

national civitas.

Already and Not Yet Modern: An Ambiguous Synecdoche for Peru

The old, now national, capital city had it seemed seen nothing but disasters until the

1840s. The City of the Kings’ dominance over South America had suffered an earlier hard blow

with the eighteenth-century creation of the Viceroyalties of New Granada and Rio de la Plata.

The loss of the silver mines at Potosi and the rise of other urban centers like Buenos Aires led to

a decline in the importance of Lima in the empire. The Bourbon regime’s modest modernizations

of the city, the major work of which was the construction of Lima’s first cemetery in 1808, could

not stem the loss of much of the early colonial splendor and wealth of Lima. 112 The

Independence and caudillo wars furthered Lima’s decadence. The once powerful colonial

bureaucracy had not been entirely reformed, as the city was frequently occupied by, and in the

hands of, military troops and bandits, and without stable political or police authorities. 113 The

economic decadence and the absence of control mechanisms during the first twenty-five years of

Peru’s republican life combined to create a distressing, devastated view of the city’s

infrastructure and population. Swiss traveler Jacob von Tschudi described Lima in 1842 as a city

112
For a review of Bourbon urban reforms of Lima, see Gabriel Ramón, “Urbe y orden. Evidencias del reformismo
borbónico en el tejido limeño,” in El Perú en el siglo XVIII: La era borbónica, ed. Scarlett O’Phelan (Lima:
Instituto Riva Agüero, 1999), 295-324.
113
By the mid 1840s, Peru had had twenty different governments and operated under ten constitutions or charters.
Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República del Perú, 6th. edition (Lima: Editorial Universitaria, 1969), VI, 2644. Jorge
Pareja Paz-Soldán, Las constituciones del Perú (exposición crítica y textos) (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica,
1954), 83-85.

68
whose population “has very considerably decreased since the declaration of independence. This

is sufficiently proved by the fact that several parts of the city are now totally uninhabited: the

houses falling to decay, and the gardens lying waste” 114 while to British official John Mc Gregor,

by 1845 in Lima “everything looks poor and devastated now, a pitiful change from the city’s

previous splendor and wealth… this appearance could be observed in the city, but also in its

inhabitants.” 115

Both Rolando Mellafe and Richard Morse have argued that Hispanic American cities

became “ruralized” during the turbulent years after Independence, as urban, bureaucratic

structures suffered decay and power flowed to the agrarian domain. 116 In Peru’s case, the

dissolution of the Confederación Perú-Boliviana in 1839 had left no doubt that the old colonial

capital was to be the center of power of the postcolonial republic. In the words of Peruvian

historian Jorge Basadre, the defeat of the Confederation had allowed Peru to enter a period of

“consolidation:” “Peru’s territorial future and its future as a nation-state were clear, as it was

clear who would be its ruling elite. Nationality was now to be defined from Lima.” 117 Ironically,

the caudillo era and the wars of the Confederación had proved that the city built by much hated

conquistadores to be the center of power and commerce of the South American colonies, was the

the only one that could hold the Republic together.

Limeño elites had earned an uncontested rule over Peru. This meant that they had to

organize a viable state, promote a sense of national community, and define Peru’s social and

114
J.J. von Tschudi, Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the
Primeval Forests (New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1854), 63.
115
John Mc Gregor, “Bosquejo general del Perú (1847)”, in Informes de los cónsules británicos, ed. Heraclio Bonilla
(Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos/ FLBIP), 163.
116
Rolando Mellafe, “La desruralización de la ciudad hispanoamericana en el siglo XIX,” in Historia y futuro de la
ciudad iberoamericana, ed. Solano, Francisco (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1985),75-
88; Richard Morse, “Latin American Intellectuals and the City, 1860-1940,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 10,
no. 2 (1978): 219-238.
117
Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República del Perú, 6th. edition (Lima: Editorial Universitaria, 1969), II, 191.

69
cultural future. The economic prosperity obtained through the exportation of guano allowed for

an all-encompassing restructuring of the state apparatus. The Ley de Organización Interior de la

República (1856) divided the territory in the political jurisdictions of departamentos and

provinces, and a new law established the roles of public functionaries. New Civil and Penal

Codes were enacted in 1852 and 1863, respectively. A new Gendarmerie Corps was created in

1855, and the military was reorganized and equipped, with new military schools. National

Censuses were taken in 1850, 1862, and 1876. Public finances were ordered –Peru had its first

national budget in 1846— and the state launched a campaign of public works to build necessary

infrastructure throughout the country. A stable political order –at least in Peruvian postcolonial

terms—and the restructuring of the state, however, could not be enough to solidify the new

state’s legitimacy. To deal with the multiple social fractures of Peruvian society, and to establish

the bases for the development of the modern, a more “civilized” republican society would have

to be created.

Like Monteagudo’s early and aborted example, multiple projects to transform Lima

during the guano era (1845-1870s) had all of these civilizing objectives in mind. Plans for urban

renovation did not only respond to demographic pressures, although the city’s population did

increase by almost fifty percent between 1792 and 1859 (from 63 thousand to around 94

thousand). The number of built squares remained almost identical (212 in 1859, compared to

211 in 1792) and the agricultural areas within the city walls remained unurbanized, as was the

case with other areas in the vicinity of Lima. 118 City planners would design projects for the

118
As Paul Gootenberg states, census numbers for nineteenth-century Peru must be handled with care. Numbers on
Lima, however, seem to be more reliable than those for the rest of the country. See Paul Gootenberg, “Population
and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru: Some Revisions,” Latin American Research Review, 26, no. 3 (1991): 109-
157. Numbers for Lima’s population and built squares come from Gabriel Ramón, La muralla y los callejones:
Intervención urbana y proyecto político durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX (Lima: SIDEA y Prom Perú, 1999),
30, 51.

70
city’s expansion into the extramural periphery, and officials and architects would also evaluate

the housing conditions of the population, but these preoccupations would climax later. For now,

perceived need was to reinvent Lima as a republican capital for the entire nation.

The guano era (1840s-1870s) was surely a time for optimism. Revenue from the export

sales of the natural bird dung fertilizer increased 757 percent between 1845 and 1853, allowing

for Peru’s impressive macroeconomic growth –on an average 9 percent annually beginning in the

1840s 119-- and for a corresponding increase in Peru’s national budget, from 5 million pesos in

1850 to 21 million pesos in 1861. 120 The Guano affluence allowed for the creation of an

“illusion” that Peru was poised at the doorstep of a hitherto elusive and remote modernity. As

Basadre stated, referring to the government of Ramón Castilla, an “air of grandeur” reigned

based on the feeling that the years of colonial isolation and stagnation had been left behind. 121

Indeed, foreign-exchange earnings from guano exports became so abundant that it was now

widely believed that Peru would erase the sorry legacies of its colonial past. An 1849 editorial of

the newly founded newspaper El Progreso, edited by the Club Progresista, expressed these

sentiments in typical fashion: “Peru is near that period of maturity and vigor that marks the peak

of a people’s life, a period based on order and the most solid foundations, which brings to social

life all the benefits man is entitled to have during his mansion on earth.” 122

If political independence had been obtained in the early 1820s, the riches of the trade

would permit the fulfillment of the Revolution’s promise of a new beginning under the auspices

of a rational and orderly administration. For the editors of El Progreso, then, Peru still needed to

119
Paul Gootenberg, Imaginar el desarrollo. Las ideas económicas en el Perú postcolonial (Lima: Instituto de
Estudios Peruanos, 1998). Shane Hunt, “Guano y crecimiento en el Perú del siglo XIX”. HISLA, Revista de historia
económica y social, 4 (1984): 35-92.
120
Carlos Contreras and Marcos Cueto, Historia del Perú contemporáneo (Lima: Red para el Desarrollo de las
Ciencias Sociales, 2000), 108-110.
121
Jorge Basadre, Jorge, Historia de la República.
122
El Progreso, July 28, 1849.

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completely remove colonial institutions and substitute them with a liberal administration that

“emanates from reason.” Indeed, the postcolonial period of caudillo rule and “anarchy” was now

interpreted to be the result of a social and regional fragmentation established during the

coloniaje, while Peru’s economic miseries were deemed to be a consequence of an incapable,

indolent colonialism that had failed to develop the country’s “infinite” natural resources. 123 This

was, therefore, a unique period to attain “real independence” from colonial times.

In 1860 Manuel Morales, Minister of the newly created Ministry of Public Works,

expressed a similar optimism in nearly identical terms:

A new period of welfare and fortune will begin for Peru. The precious and
infinite elements with which Providence has endowed our Republic will be able to
develop… Order and peace will take root with the reform of institutions… The
political convulsions that have shaken the country have not allowed most of our
peoples [pueblos] to benefit from civilization. It may be said that their inhabitants
remain almost in the same pitiful ignorance and abjection that was imposed on
them by the conquistadores. 124

With the aid of guano revenues Peru would now find its “natural destiny.” Filled with

optimism and flush with pesos, Limeño elites promptly launched a campaign to civilize the

ignorant and degraded pueblos of Peru. Civilization, as understood in these postcolonial years,

could only be attained by the Republic, despite the fact that in Peru’s case the instability of the

early post-independence years had prolonged the effects of colonialism. Morales’s reference to

the “backwardness” of the pueblos made it clear that civilization had to emanate from Lima, a

city where important elements of the Ancien Régime survived. Lima became, then, the

exemplary object of projects of nationalization and modernization, for it was the only city that

could define nationality and modernity for the rest of Peru.

123
“Las causas generales que han determinado la suerte del Perú,” El Progreso, July 28, 1849.
124
Memoria que el Ministro Estado en el Departamento de Obras Públicas y Policía presenta al Congreso
Ordinario de 1860 (Lima: Tipografía de Justo Montoya, 1860), 3- 7. My emphasis.

72
 The ambiguity of Lima as being “already” and at the same time “not yet” modern is made

clear in the works of one of the most prolific Limeño intellectuals of the nineteenth century:

Manuel Atanasio Fuentes. His Lima: apuntes históricos, descriptivos, estadísticos y de

costumbres, published in Paris in 1866 in simultaneous editions in French, English, and Spanish,

was written to prove to European readers that in the “short period of forty-two years” since the

end of colonial rule civilization had progressed mightily despite the post-independence period of

internal war. “The short periods of relief that Peru has enjoyed… have been enough to

extinguish those old [colonial] customs that could be used by our enemies and those who defame

us.” 125 Fuentes wants his book to correct the impression Europeans have gathered from

travelers’ accounts which depicted Peruvians as “savages” and Peru as a backward, barbaric, and

immoral society. While he admits that “it would be absurd to say that the American states are at

the same level of the ones in the Old World,” at the same time Fuentes asserts that “Lima’s

society has nothing to envy in the most advanced capital.” 126 Notably, Fuentes describes Lima

as an “advanced capital” to demonstrate that Peru and Peruvians have been unjustly exoticized

by misinformed Europeans. Lima’s civilized society now made it a convenient synecdoche for

the entire country, and so worthy as an active agent in the processes of transforming and

civilizing Peru. 127

The ambiguity which is so central to Fuentes’s text –that civilized Lima is both a model

and synecdoche for Peru at large-- will be an integral part of the modernizing projects to

transform Lima during the guano period and beyond. These projects would at once prove that

Lima –synecdochely, Peru— was already modern and but also the privileged site for

125
Fuentes, Manuel Lima: apuntes históricos, descriptivos, estadísticos y de costumbres (Paris: Librería de Firmin
Didot, 1867), iv.
126
Ibid, v.
127
Fuentes refers to Lima as a país (country) in several occasions. See, for instance his Estadística general de Lima
(Lima: Tipografía Nacional de M.N. Corpancho, 1858), 67.

73
interventions intended to make modern that which was not yet modern. In the mind of its elites,

then, Lima itself was divided, for a large part of its population’s cultural traits had to be

modernized. The lower sectors of Lima’s society were also part of the uncomfortable legacy of

colonial times; their Peruvianization and modernization not only was imperative per se, but

could serve as a trial case for the future mission of bringing the pueblos into the modern time of

the nation. Interventions in Lima, therefore, would be a crucial measure of Peru’s national

future.

A (Fenced-In) Liberator, the Signs of the Zodiac, and Christopher Columbus

By the mid-nineteenth century, modernizing projects in Lima would acquire renewed

vitality. New monuments and plazas, and changes in the nomenclature of streets and public

spaces would transform the face of the city and create a spatial narrative of the nation’s history.

Ironically enough, the same Plaza where Monteagudo ordered the erection of the Trajan’s

Column crowned by San Martín’s equestrian monument would now host Lima’s first monument:

an equestrian Bolívar. Growing suspicion about San Martín’s possible constitutional monarchist

inclinations had led liberal and republican Limeños to momentarily abandon plans to immortalize

his figure, and the political tide of opinion now favored the Caraqueño Liberator.

By 1825 Peru’s Congress changed the destiny of the Plaza, ordering the erection of a

Monument to the Liberator from Caracas “which will perpetuate the memory of the heroic events

with which he gave peace and freedom to Peru,” and named Deputy Pedro Pedemonte in charge

of establishing the first contacts with artists in Europe. 128 While the foundation stone was placed

on December 8 of that year –as part of the commemorations of the first anniversary of the Battle

of Ayacucho— by 1852 no monument had yet been constructed. The stability of the Peruvian

state would allow President José Echenique to revive the project. Echenique issued a Supreme

128
Decree issued on February 12, 1825. Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República, 2580-2581.

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Resolution which noted that the monument must be created “with artistic vein and peculiar

genius; it must aim at a certain future.” 129 A supplementary Resolution named Bartolomé

Herrera, who was about to depart to Rome to settle disputes with the Vatican, Plenipotentiary

Minister in Europe charged with commissioning a design that “must be approved by the Milan

Academy.” 130 Herrera announced an open competition for proposals for the design of the statue

and the pedestal, for which sixty four projects were presented. Adamo Tadolini was elected

finalist along with Filippo Guaccarini and Rinaldo Rinaldi. The equestrian statue presented by

Tadolini was chosen by Herrera along with seven members of the San Lucas Academy, although

the pedestal design of Guaccarini was preferred by the jury. 131 Tadolini was a renowned disciple

of Antonio Canova, the celebrated neoclassical sculptor who had created equestrian statues of

Spanish Bourbon Emperors Ferdinand I and Charles III, as well as wax molds for an equestrian

sculpture of Ferdinand VII with the help of his disciple. 132 He had also sculpted Napoleon with

the assistance of Tadolini, and so was intimately familiar with Napoleonic iconography.

Tadolini’s bronze statue of Bolivar followed the rules of neoclassical naturalism, and is clearly

inspired by Jacques Louis David’s painting of the Corsican crossing the Saint Bernard. The

statue was worked in plaster in the workshop of Antonio Canova in Rome and cast in Munich in

the Royal Foundation. The pedestal was completed in marble in Rome and included iron bass

relief plates representing the Battles of Junín and Ayacucho. 133

By December 1859, when the monument was inaugurated, the Peruvian state had paid

4824 pesos to Tadolini, 12113 pesos for the smelting, 5375 pesos for the marble pedestal, 800

129
“Con índole artística y peculiar genialidad y que apunte hacia un porvenir cierto.” Decree issued on October 5,
1852. José Gamarra, José, Obras de arte y turismo monumental: Bronces, estatuas (de pie y sentadas), bustos,
obeliscos (Lima: Ku, 1996), 39.
130
Alfonso Castrillón, “Escultura monumental y funeraria en el Perú,” in Escultura en el Perú, Colección de Arte y
Tesoros del Perú (Lima: Banco de Crédito, 1991), 329.
131
Rafael Pineda, Tenerani y Tadolini, los escultores de Bolívar (Caracas: Ernesto Armitano, 1973), 130.
132
Ibid., and Rafael Pineda, Las estatuas de Simón Bolívar en el mundo, Caracas: Centro Simón Bolívar, 1983.
133
José Gamarra, Obras de arte y turismo monumental, 39.

75
pesos for the iron bass relieves, 6730 pesos for the transport to Lima, and 5000 pesos to erect the

statue in the Plaza de la Constitución, which would be rebaptized as Plaza Bolívar. 134 The

enormous weight of the statue (10.6 tons) made it difficult to transport from the port of Callao to

its final destination. The Lima-Callao train (inaugurated in 1851) was used to carry the statue to

the San Juan de Dios rail station, and from there it was taken to the Plaza with the use of a

Decauville railway under the direction of Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, who had been using the

temporary rails for the construction of Lima’s new Penitentiary. 135 The project had also suffered

an alteration. According to the original specifications, the pedestal had to show an inscription on

its front reading: “To Simón Bolívar, Libertador. Erected in 1852 under the presidency of

General Echenique.” But because of delays the monument was inaugurated by Field Marshall

Ramón Castilla, who had overthrown Echenique in the “Liberal Revolution” of 1854. Now in

his second term of office, Castilla had the inscription changed to read thus: “To Simón Bolívar,

Libertador. The Peruvian Nation, year MDCCCLVIII.” If the projects of erection of monuments

and transformation of the urban sphere are revealing of an era’s transcendental ideals and

predicaments, they are also subject to more minor political appetites and desires for posterity,

like Echenique’s. Castilla’s choice was certainly more appropriately Republican, expressing the

spirit of the 1854-1855 liberal revolution against his predecessor.

No efforts or cost would be spared to construct the monument. In the end, the monument

to Bolivar cost the state 34841 pesos, not including the cost of the massive iron fence that would

keep the masses at a respectful distance, and its transportation and installation. Between October

1859 and December 1860, all public works in the relatively prosperous Department of Ica, for

134
For information on the costs of the monument, see Memoria que el Ministro de Estado en el Departamento de
Obras Públicas y Policía presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1860, Lima: Tipografía de Justo Montoya. 1860,
Mateo Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú: Obra Póstuma del D.D. Mateo Paz Soldán (Paris: Librería de Fermín Didot,
1862), vol. I, 297, and Alfonso Castrillón, “Escultura monumental,” 329.
135
Mateo Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, 298.

76
example, amounted to a meager 975 pesos, 136 while in 1858 all public works in the Department

of Ayacucho –the site of the final liberating battle— had cost a ludicrously low 250 pesos. 137

As Majluf states, the Bolívar monument was part of a larger project, for the Plaza was

entirely remade, new benches were installed, gardens rearranged, and the adjacent streets

repaved with flagstone. 138 (Figures 2-1 and 2-2.) With this project Limeño elites would not only

honor the memory of Bolívar and his deeds. The Plaza Bolivar –which forgetful Limeños still

called the Plaza de la Inquisición— was now made part of new historical narrative which

announced coevalness with the contemporary, modern world of nations. Like Monteagudo’s

unbuilt column and his forgotten Plaza de la Constitucion, the new statue of Bolivar was

neoclassical and the space around it cleaned, civilized, and its use regulated. The desire to

consolidate the national community through a built historical narrative had to “aim at a certain

future.” This meant, first, that the monument had to be made in Europe and, second, that it had

to be appreciated in Lima.

It is clear that the “Peruanization” or modernization of Lima was perceived as a crucial

endeavor that allowed no economy. Between October 1858 and December 1860, the state spent

85730 pesos in the flagstone paving of some of the capital’s streets; 5603 pesos in the erection of

Columbus’s statue; and 369000 pesos for the construction of the new Penitentiary. Lima’s

public works during that fourteen-month period cost 583616 pesos in a total budget of 664045

pesos for the public works of the whole country, that is, about eighty-eight percent of the entire

budget for the sector. 139 This was not peculiar, considering that, in 1857, Lima had received

341936 pesos of a total 401501 pesos budget for the entire country; eighty-five percent, without

136
Memoria que el Ministro de Estado, 1860.
137
Memoria que presenta al Congreso Extraordinario de 1858 el Ministro de Gobierno, Culto y Obras Públicas
(Lima: Tipografía Nacional, 1858).
138
Majluf, Natalia, Escultura y Espacio Público. Lima, 1850-1879 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1994).
139
Memoria que el Ministro de Estado, 1860.

77
taking into account the 180,000 pesos spent in the construction of the penitentiary that year. 140

The effort to forge the national self by transforming the capital city of Lima overshadowed other

national urgencies as elites and the guano-rich state elevated Lima’s ascendancy over the country

to unprecedented levels. 141

The monument to Bolívar was soon followed by a dozen sculptures representing the signs

of the zodiac, and one monument to honor Christopher Columbus. As with the Bolívar

monument, these sculptures would serve to crown the renovation of public spaces; this time,

however, these spaces would be located in peripheral areas of the city. No documents are

available to reconstruct the complete history of these monuments, but it was Bartolomé Herrera

who made the arrangements for their construction during his 1852-53 sojourn in Rome. Herrera

was commissioned to obtain “12 statues of average size and merit, representing the months of the

year.” 142 The statues, made with Carrara marble in a classical style in Rome by less famous

Italian artists of the Canova School, were placed on the other bank of the Rímac River, along the

Alameda de los Descalzos –a promenade constructed in 1611 by the Viceroy Marquis de

Montesclaros, and rebuilt in 1770 by Viceroy Amat. It was an effort to civilize the area, which

showed signs of deterioration and of having been enveloped by wild brush. The symbolic value

of the renovation did not reside in the sculpted signs of the zodiac –indeed, they were placed

with no respect to the celestial and mensal order— but from the modern space in which they

stood. Before the statues had arrived in 1856, merchant Felipe Barreda was commissioned to

completely remodel the Alameda into a modern paseo or promenade. The promenade’s ground

was leveled and paved and fifty marble benches and one hundred iron vases were placed at

140
Memoria que presenta al Congreso Extraordinario de 1858.
141
Most Peruvians today blame Spanish colonialism for the centralismo Limeño –the concentration of bureaucracy
and expenditures in Lima. I propose that it is a postcolonial phenomenon.
142
Alfonso Castrillón, “Escultura monumental,” 334.

78
regular intervals. Green areas were transformed and placed under the care of a professional

gardener, Antonio Borsani; three thousand flowers and shrubs were planted, and its drainage

ditches were carefully channeled. 143 To complete the remodeling, iron fences were placed to

surround the park, and sixty gas lanterns purchased in Paris by Peru’s General Consul were

installed. 144

The remodeling ended on September 12, 1857, and the promenade was popularly

christened Alameda nueva to mark the difference with the Alameda vieja. The difference

between the old and the new Alameda de los Descalzos could not be more striking. Its spaces

were now regulated, as walkers, horse riders, and carriage conductors had individual paths, with

specific targets for directing the gaze and sitting. Indeed, Barreda turned in a proposal to make

sure that users respected his design. Those entering the Alameda riding horses on pedestrian

zones were to be penalized, and carriage conductors were to be fined it they caused harm to the

paseo. The proposal also recommended prohibitions for the general public: no pulling up of

flowers or fruits, no throwing fruit peels, etc. Dogs where prohibited, as well as small children

without “caretakers who may respond for the damages they may produce.” 145 “Nature” would

be disciplined and controlled too. The new space would mark the break with colonial times,

reinforce the presence of the state, and make Limeños part of the universal culture of civilization

(Figures 2-3 and 2-4).

The importance of these objectives can be measured by the funds spent on the project.

According to the Ministerio de Obras Públicas, the statues cost 50000 pesos; shipping from

Genoa to Callao cost another 3093 pesos, their transportation to the promenade 200 pesos, and

143
Natalia Majluf, Escultura y Espacio Público, 22-3.
144
Memoria que presenta al Congreso, 1858; Syra Alvarez, Historia del mobiliario urbano de Lima, 1535-1935
(Lima: Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, 2000), 13.
145
Proyecto de penas para la policía del paseo de la Alameda de los Descalzos, AHML, Municipalidad, doc.
Alamedas y paseos, 18/09/1857.

79
their erection 6000 pesos. The sixty posts and gas lanterns cost 1374 pesos, and the erection of

the iron fence, 11800 pesos. 146 We do not have information on the cost of the other elements

included in the project, but Fuentes quotes a report from the Ministerio del Interior that states

that the project had a total cost of 119047 pesos. 147 In contrast, the budget for public works in

the entire Department of Cusco amounted to 19927 pesos. 148

As for the Columbus monument, Herrera seemingly hired Salvatore Revelli in July, 1853

without announcing a competition for proposals. Revelli was a notorious sculptor who had

participated in the erection of a famous monument to Columbus in Genoa (inaugurated in 1862)

and who had the statue ready for shipment to Lima by 1855. 149 Because of a delay in the artist’s

payment, Limeños had to wait until 1860 to receive the monument, and it was inaugurated in

August of that year. The location for the monument was decided by Castilla’s government in a

Supreme Decree issued in May, 1859. Columbus would make his home on the Acho

Promenade, another park across the Rímac River which was also created by Viceroy Amat. It

too would be remodeled into a modern and elegant paseo for the edification of Limeños.

Rivelli’s Columbus was not a conqueror to be loathed, but an intrepid explorer and

scientist who had borne civilization to the continent; a universal character who had heralded

America’s entrance into the world. In a moment in which Peruvian and Latin American, as well

as European writers were reinventing America as a land with a new beginning, 150 Columbus

stood both as a proof that America was part of the civilized world and as a symbol of the

civilizational drive of the postcolonial elite. Located in an untidy peripheral park that was now

146
Memoria que presenta al Congreso, 1858.
147
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general, 661.
148
Memoria que presenta al Congreso, 1858.
149
Alfonso Castrillón, “Escultura monumental;” Rodrigo Gutiérrez, Rodrigo, Monumento conmemorativo y espacio
público en América Latina (Madrid: Cátedra, 2004).
150
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).

80
transformed into a civilized paseo, the statue was a symbol of the “already” and the “not yet”

modern. The statue was made in the neoclassical style, depicting Columbus in the act of

discovery, standing next to a seated naked female Indian who represents “America.” She kneels

and admires his fatherly figure. She also holds a cross and lets an arrow drop from her hand,

symbolizing her conversion to civilization and evangelization (Figure 2-5). The total cost of the

monument, according to Mateo Paz Soldán, brother of Mariano Felipe, who was in charge of the

erection of the pedestal and the statue, was 10000 pesos; the statue itself had cost 4609 pesos. 151

and the accounts of the Ministerio de Obras Públicas state that the erection of the monument

cost 5603 pesos. 152

As with the Descalzos promenade, this new paseo was aimed at providing Limeños with

an orderly space in which to spend their leisure time in a cultured, regulated, and supervised

way. The environment was to exert a pedagogical influence over the population. Limenos

would no longer be inspired by “nature” in the promenades but by the high culture transmitted by

the monuments and by the disciplined environment. The paseo would put Lima a la par with the

European metropolis, but it was also meant to express the epistemological shift from colonial to

republican times. To Anglo American traveler George Squier, who arrived in Peru in 1862, the

objective of transforming the Alameda de los Descalzos into a paseo comparable to parks in

other important cities had been achieved: “In every respect, this paseo is a tasteful and most

creditable work, worthy of any metropolis.” 153 Limeño elites, ever so attentive to foreigners’

judgments of themselves and their capital city, surely treasured Squier’s words. The regulation

of public space served to mark Lima’s entrance into modern world and to announce it to

151
Mateo Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, 297.
152
Memoria que presenta al Congreso, 1858.
153
George Squier, Peru Illustrated or Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (New York:
Hurst and Company, 1877).

81
foreigners. An 1852 editorial in a Limeño newspaper synthesized what the renovation of public

paseos meant at home:

Public paseos are barometers that indicate the culture of the pueblos, and are
called to exert a happy influence over the arts, and to promote the increase and
development of the relations. Every government should turn its protective
attention towards them, because the intelligent foreigner that visits a city for the
first time, judges its progress and its degree of civilization by its external
appearance. 154

The paseos would help transform and cultivate Limeños, promoting artistic sensibility

and better interpersonal relations, and they would also serve to improve the way foreigners

judged Lima. By looking at the civilized way Limeños spent their free time, the foreigners

would be convinced that they were already part of the civilized world. The paseos were also

exemplars of a new conception of public space, since it now “belonged to the nation” and so

should be regarded as a sacred space. An 1860 newspaper editorial expressed this sacred notion

of public space clearly:

An owner of a property may make use of its interior as he sees convenient. As for
the exterior, however, he may not do what he pleases; he has to submit himself to
the Civil Construction Code, which prescribes a degree of uniformity. Property
owners must understand that the public part of the city is sacred, and that it may
not be damaged at all. 155

A Republican “Palace of Pizarro”

By the mid-nineteenth century, the buildings of the most important state institutions were

not only remains from the colonial era; they offered a decadent view of that period. The

Republican government’s executive building, previously called “the Royal Palace of the

Viceroys,” now served as the presidential mansion and it housed the five ministries of the

executive power: International Relations and Public Instruction; Public Finances, Industry and

154
“Paseos públicos,” El Intérprete del pueblo, April 29, 1852. Quoted in Natalia Majluf, Escultura y espacio
público, 29.
155
“Crónica de la capital. Comisión de ornato público,” El Comercio, March 28, 1860. Quoted in Natalia Majluf,
Natalia, Escultura y espacio público, 29.

82
Commerce; Justice, Police and Public Works; War and Navy; and Government, Worship and

Charity. The Englishman Robert Proctor had visited Lima between 1823 and 1824 and was

struck by the building’s miserable appearance. While there were traces of a bygone grandeur,

the building looked more like a hovel than a palace, not only because it was old but because of

the unappealing shops crowded around its front steps:

It is an old plastered and unsightly edifice, of a reddish colour, with the principal
gate onto the Plaza and three other entrances into three separate streets, each of
which forms one side: shops of the lowest description such as those of our English
dealers in marine stores and old iron, occupy what may be termed the ground
floor of the two principal fronts of this building: hence the whole has an
appearance of wretchedness and poverty-struck grandeur. 156

By the mid-nineteenth century, the building’s appearance had not improved. On the

contrary, the passage of the years had furthered the process of deterioration. By 1854, Jacob von

Tschudi was appalled by the tasteless “palace,” especially by the small shops on its front, where

the most diverse and odd things were sold, including drugs and even dog-killing poisons:

It is a square building, and the front next the Plaza is disfigured by a long range of
shabby little shops (called La Rivera), in which drugs are sold… On the south the
building has no entrance and it presents the gloomy aspect of a jail… A few long
flag-staffs, fixed on the roof of the palace, do not add to the beauty of the edifice.
The interior of the building corresponds to the outward appearance, being at once
tasteless and mean. 157

The descriptions of local observers were similar. For example, it was hard for the

geographer, astronomer, and mathematician Mateo Paz Soldán (1862) to find anything

pleasurable in the building. Where Tschudi sees a building comparable to a jail, Paz Soldán sees

one that looks like a chicken coop whose interior was irregular:

The Government Palace is in front of the Botoneros portal, and it has a most
humble façade and with small shops called La Rivera, on top of which there is an
old and extravagant balcony difficult to describe… It is urgent to get rid of the

156
Robert Proctor, Narrative of a Journey Across the Cordillera de los Andes, and of a Residence in Lima, and
Other Parts of Peru, in the Years 1823 and 1824 (London: Archibald Constable and Co., 1825), 120-1.
157
J.J. von Tschudi, Travels in Peru, 52.

83
 balustrade or chicken coop in front of it and replace it with an elegant iron
fence… What we call Palace is a confusing, intricate, and heterogeneous
agglomeration of halls that are disproportionate in their dimensions, being of
different construction forms, and which make a real labyrinth. 158

For his part, Fuentes merely stressed that the building “preserves its primitive form,

which is undoubtedly far from what is convenient for the house of Peru’s government,” before

excusing himself for not providing a more detailed description: “we abstain from describing it

because our pen would resist making a sad and unpleasant depiction” 159 (Figures 2-6 and 2-7).

Limeño elites knew that the building, located in Lima’s main square, had to be transformed into a

national symbol of the new era both for the consumption of foreigners and Peruvians. The

palace should communicate the modern state’s ascendancy over the country and its citizens,

stress the rupture with colonial times, express the arrival of stability and prosperity, and be

comparable to similar buildings elsewhere in the world. For some, a future government palace

had to be constructed along classical Greek architectural patterns. Liberal and freemason novelist

Julián Manuel del Portillo expressed the idea in the newspaper El Comercio in 1843. In an

article entitled “Lima one hundred years from now,” Portillo imagines the future palace as a

“beautiful and majestic building, edified according to the style of the day, which I believe would

be more Greek than any other.” 160

On July 20, 1862, President Castilla issued a Supreme Resolution ordering the erection of

a new Government Palace along with a Palace for Congress. The project was assigned to the

French Architect Maximilian Mimey, who had been hired as Architect of the State and who with

Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán had drawn the blueprint for the new Penitentiary then under

construction. Mimey and Paz Soldán, Director of Public Works, would be in charge of the

158
Mateo Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, 291-2. Emphasis in the original.
159
Manuel Fuentes, Lima: apuntes históricos, 14.
160
Quoted by Natalia Majluf, Escultura y Espacio Público, 31.

84
project’s execution with a budget of 3.8 million pesos. 161 Castilla repeated his intentions in his

annual address to Congress, stating that his administration had decided to build a Palace of

Justice in the lot then occupied by the Santo Tomás military quarters, and to “demolish the house

of government.” 162 Castilla’s proposal was debated by Congress, since some deputies objected

to it on the grounds that the amount decreed by the executive exceeded the budget established by

Congress for public works and was, therefore, unconstitutional. Congress did not object to the

construction of the palaces, but considered the government had exceeded its attributions and was

therefore attempting to bypass its authority. Some, like Representative Loli, were clearly in

favor of the Government’s plan, however: “If this is about the construction of a palace, I agree

with the government. Instead of hurling millions into the ocean, it would be better to erect a

building adequate to the country, because the existing one is the house of a beggar in a

prosperous city.” 163

The Castilla regime, however, could not force Congress to approve the expenditures for

the project, and so the idea of a new palace had to wait another ten years to reappear, this time in

a proposal presented in the Senate. On September 13, 1872, the Senate debated a new proposal

presented by Senator García y García for the construction of two palaces, one for the Executive,

and the other for the Legislature. The proposal had been reviewed and approved by the Senate

Committee of Treasury and Public Works before heading to the full chamber. In the chamber,

however, some senators objected to the project on the grounds that it increased the Treasury’s

deficit. García y García explained that the cost for the construction of both buildings should not

161
Memoria que el Ministro de Gobierno, Policía y Obras Públicas presenta el Congreso Nacional de 1862 (Lima:
Imprenta de “La Epoca,” 1862).
162
“Mensaje que el Libertador Presidente de la República Gran Mariscal Ramón Castilla, dirige a la Legislatura
Ordinaria el 28 de julio de 1862,” Mensajes de los presidentes del Perú. Recopilación y notas por Pedro Ugarteche
y Evaristo San Cristóval.1821-1867 (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1943), vol. 1, 350.
163
Diario de Debates del Congreso Ordinario del año de 1860 (Lima: Tipografía de “El Comercio,” 1861).
Chamber of Deputies, September 10, 1862.

85
exceed three million sols, which would be obtained through the sale of the old Government

Palace, as well as the buildings of the Senate –none other than the old Inquisition building— the

Consulate Tribunal, the Guadalupe and Santo Tomás military quarters, and some lots that

belonged to the state along the Rímac River. These were “old buildings and lots that do not

benefit the state, and with their sale we will be able to construct new and useful buildings.” 164

García y García’s proposal generated a long and heated debate. Senators agreed that the

buildings were necessary, but some insisted on discussing the availability of funds for the

construction, the new location for the buildings, and the future of the lot occupied by the old

Government Palace.

The Government Palace occupied a central position on Lima’s Main Square or Plaza

Mayor. As in other Spanish American cities, the Main Square was the home of the most

important administrative, religious, and residential structures. Early postcolonial attempts to

mark the rupture with colonial times had not challenged the square’s preeminence. The Main

Square had been officially rebaptized Plaza de la Independencia –although Limeños still called it

Plaza Mayor— and the building that had once housed the Viceroys was now used by the

Presidents of the Republic. Now, however, only two senators insisted that the new Government

Palace should stand at the same central location. Senator La Fuente was one of them. Still, he

was certain that “the works are necessary, because the premises used today are not only old and

inadequate, but mar Lima’s and all the nation’s reputation.” 165 And when Senator Salazar

repeated that the Palace “must be located in Lima’s center,” 166 Senator Althaus replied that the

capital had to create “new centers.” Not only should the public buildings be relocated, but

164
Cámara de Senadores. Diario de los debates de la Legislatura de 1872, (Lima: Imprenta de “El Comercio,”
1872), 188.
165
Ibid., 189.
166
Ibid., 190.

86
commerce too should reach to the periphery of the city, where it could promote the construction

of new neighborhoods, which in turn would have the beneficial effect of making real estate and

housing prices fall. Althaus imagined a de-centered, republican city without a concentration of

public buildings and commerce, and he believed that relocation could be used to plan the city’s

growth. This plan became imaginable only in the early 1870s, when the (colonial) city’s walls

were being torn down and new areas being opened for development. In this debate at least, no

senator proposed to construct the government’s headquarters outside Lima.

Once senators had agreed that the Palace should be relocated within Lima, Senator

Calonge opposed the sale of the old government palace, on the grounds that the lot was located at

the city’s heart, and that it could well be used by the state to construct an elegant “pasage” –an

Anglicism— which would be, in Calonge’s words, “our capital’s best adornment… like those

that adorn almost all the capitals of foreign states,” and which would be surrounded by stores and

apartments that the state could profitably rent. 167 Calonge’s proposal was quickly supported by

Senator Vivanco: “our ancient and almost useless palace, once converted into a spacious and

elegant pasage, could become the best adornment for our capital.” 168

Some non-Limeño Senators proved hard to convince. Peru was experiencing some

financial difficulties –the guano boom was showing signs of going bust— and the project might

provoke a tax increase. Senator Alegre of the Department of Ancachs (later Hispanized as

“Ancash”) expressed that the country had more urgent needs, and that it would be difficult for

Senators from the provinces to face their constituents, who lived in a poverty that was unknown

to those who dwelled in Lima “where the nakedness of the poor and the tears of the unfortunate

do not reach their sight, nor hurt their ears.” Alegre complained that Lima’s opulence had made

167
Ibid., 188.
168
Ibid., 189.

87
her Senators insensitive to the poverty of the pueblos, and he contrasted the “wealthy” capital of

“salons and feasts” to the miserable pueblos where the “mournful complaints of the hungry and

the unprotected are heard.” The Senator’s words expressed anguish about the growing, Guano

Age distance between Lima and the interior provinces, a sentiment that would be voiced

repeatedly in the debates over public works projects in the capital. While Limeño Senators held

that the new projects would benefit the entire nation –for Lima was a synecdoche for Peru—

Alegre and others argued that these projects would merely increase the gap between the capital

and the nation, fomenting resentment in the interior, and undermining their own electoral bases.

Alegre complained that “the senators who stay in Lima do not know or understand how painful it

will be for us when we return to our respective provinces. You do not know how we will be

received by the pueblos once they know we have done nothing except study how to distress them

with heavier and unjustified taxes.” 169

García y García had to repeat his pledge that new taxes would not be imposed, for “bad

and useless properties will be sold to obtain improvements that are indispensable. They will also

adorn the city, and will help us get rid of the continuous and deserved mockery from foreigners,

who experiment repugnance when they see these buildings. In other countries, those buildings

are, almost always, the best adornment in the city.” 170 García y García’s argument was hard to

challenge, not only because the buildings that housed the executive and legislative were in fact in

deplorable condition, but because his appeal to the ways foreigners perceived Lima and Peru hit

a sensitive postcolonial-national nerve. No opposition was expressed thereupon. Many,

including Senator Secada would enthusiastically support García y García’s reasoning, stating that

the new buildings would

169
Ibid., 191.
170
Ibid., 191.

88
 raise the reputation of our country, because the existing buildings cause
continuous sarcasm for our backwardness, our indolence, and our indifference. I
will support this heavy contribution in exchange for not preserving these
buildings, which, before the eyes of a proud foreigner, are insulting and derisive
to Peru… we ought not to forget that every foreigner goes to see these buildings
as soon as he sets foot on our streets.

Indeed, according to Secada no objections could me made to the project on the basis of

cost. The symbolic advantages of the project would always exceed any monetary measure,

which was something that any nation should know:

When trying to satisfy this kind of needs, no nation stops to examine if the state
coffers are replete or empty…or if it is in the brink of bankruptcy… What would
happen to the reputation of the Peruvian nation if this insignificant amount
condemns us to keep our old and indecorous government palace and the old and
inadequate premises where the Legislative Body celebrates its meetings? 171

This argument proved too powerful and the proposal was immediately approved. The

reputation of the nation as a whole was at stake, and the construction of the new palaces was

regarded as a matter of national interest. If the palaces would benefit the entire nation, the

provincial senators and the pueblos had nothing to oppose for they too would enjoy the benefits.

The Senate agreed that the cost of the buildings should not exceed three million sols, however,

and that the area occupied by the current Palacio de Gobierno must be used by its purchaser to

construct a “public passage” or mall according to a blueprint provided by the central

government. Althaus’s idea for a future, de-centered city, however, proved too drastic for the

Senators, and the final bill did not specify where the new buildings should be erected.

Eight months after the debate in the Senate, the Executive Branch initiated plans for the

construction of the new Government Palace. In May, 1873, Manuel Pardo’s administration

issued a Supreme Resolution authorizing the expenditure of two million sols to construct palaces

for the Executive and Legislative powers. The decree stated that the Central Board of Engineers

171
Ibid., 192.

89
and Architects of the State, created only six years earlier, would be in charge of the

implementation of the project, and specified that a competition for proposals must be announced

in Europe. The Board was “convinced that the most efficient way to obtain well studied

proposals, in harmony with the grandeur of such constructions, is to appeal to the best architects

in the world, for them to take part in a competition of proposals…” 172 By then, a French

architect, Maximilian Mimey –hired in the 1850s as Architect of the State— and a Polish

engineer, Edward Jan Habich –hired in 1869 as Engineer of the State— had been in charge of a

number of construction projects, and they attempted to transmit their knowledge to Peruvian

pupils and workers. Mimey was acclaimed for the design and construction of the Penitentiary

(inaugurated in 1862) and he enjoyed a reputation as a capable architect. The grandeur needed

for the government and legislative palaces, however, seemed to demand the participation of “the

best in the world.” In September, 1873, a new Supreme Decree announced that the government

had decided to engage Mimey, “who has just returned from Europe,” to draw the blueprints and

execute the construction of the buildings. Announcing a competition in Europe proved too

costly, and Mimey was already available and receiving a monthly salary. That he had just

returned from a voyage to Europe and had most surely gathered the latest trends there would now

be most useful for the design of the Palaces. Although the bill approved by Congress had

specified that the lot occupied by the government palace had to become a “modern passage,” the

September Executive Decree stated that the Central Board still had to determine the best way to

make use of it. 173

172
Memoria sobre las Obras Públicas del Perú. Presentada al Supremo Gobierno de la República por la Junta
General del Cuerpo de Ingenieros y Arquitectos del Estado (Lima: Imprenta Liberal de “El Correo del Perú,” 1874),
56.
173
Ibid., 56.

90
 No records of the Mimey blueprints for the palaces have been found. The ambitious

project demanded time and resources, and the wealth of the Guano period was coming to an end.

Peru would face a new crisis in the mid 1870s, only to engage in a dramatic military

confrontation with Chile in 1879. In the meantime, the Government Palace was still the object of

criticism by travelers. English scientist Thomas Hutchinson described it with irony months

before the initiation of the War of the Pacific:

It requires a large appreciation of Republican liberty to persuade oneself that the

palace of the head of the government could be occupied as this is at its base in the
side facing the plaza, as well as that up the Calle del Palazio, or Palace Street,
with little huckster shops in which are seen gridirons for sale, and old hatters
stores adjoining. ‘The divinity that doth hedge a king’ is certainly sadly wanting
in the case of the surroundings of a Peruvian President, as the old palace of
Pizarro painly testifies. 174

After all the debates, the Government Palace did not change its decrepit appearance

during the Guano era. Hutchinson’s words also registered the limits of the politics of

denomination carried out by Peru’s postcolonial founders, for he refers to the building as the “old

palace of Pizarro.” The republican name of “Government Palace” Seems not to have caught on.

The founding, popular name of the building that housed Peru’s Executive --built in the early

seventeenth century and rebuilt after the 1687 earthquake-- 175 was not easily displaced., and

indeed still rolls off the lips of Peruvians today.

The Universal Language of Peruanidad/Civilización

Other peripheral areas were progressively civilized with the construction of monuments

or public buildings during the Guano period, and especially in the 1870s, when the city walls

were torn down and planners began to project the city’s expansion. The first monument of this

174
Thomas Hutchinson, Two Years in Peru, with Exploration of its Antiquities (London: Sampson Low, 1878), I,
312.
175
Eduardo Martín–Pastor, De la vieja casa de Pizarro al Nuevo Palacio de Gobierno (Lima: Talleres Gráficos
Torres Aguirre, 1938).

91
kind was dedicated to the Combate dos de Mayo, a naval battle which took place in the vicinity

of the Port of Callao fourteen kilometers from Lima. This battle pitted Peru Bolivia, Chile, and

Ecuador against Spain’s Armada on May 2, 1866. The battle sealed the break with the former

and now decadent colonial empire, and the event was soon regarded as a “new” national

independence and one moreover that was won primarily by Peruvians (and not by Argentine and

Colombian Grenadiers, as was the case with Independence). 176 Mariano Ignacio Prado’s

administration took quick steps to commemorate the event by issuing a Supreme Decree to that

effect the day after the battle. The decree was “destined to consecrate in perpetuity the memory

of the 2nd of May.” 177 Guayaquil poet and philosopher Numa Pompilio Llona, who was traveling

to Paris, was commissioned to engage an artist for the monument in the French capital. Llona

announced a “universal competition” for proposals, which were examined by a commission

headed by the famous Swiss artist and art historian Marc Gabriel Gleyre. Gleyre had mentored

the Peruvian artist Francisco Laso. The commission was composed of Llona, the Peruvian

ambassador in Paris Francisco Rivero, the renowned French architects Eugène Emmanuel

Viollet-le-Duc and Félix Duban, and the sculptor Jean-Joseph Perraud of the Parisian Academie

des Arts. 178 Thirty-six project proposals were received in plaster scale models, mostly from

French sculptors, but also from an Italian and a Pole, and the jury announced its decision on

February 24, 1868. All of the proposals were considered noteworthy –all were exhibited

temporarily in the Main Hall of the Palais de l'Industrie in Paris— but the one presented by

sculptor Leon Cugnot and architect Emile Oscar Duillaume was the winner. They proposed a

176
For instance, the Sociedad de Fundadores de la Independencia, created in 1855, was immediately renamed as
Sociedad de Fundadores de la Independencia, Vencedores del Dos de Mayo de 1866 y Defensores Calificados de la
Patria.
177
La legislación y los heroes nacionales (Lima: Congreso del la República del Perú, 2005), 8.
178
According to Natalia Majluf, the terms for the international contest were made public on July 17, 1866. The
names of the members of the jury are in José Gamarra, Obras de arte, 165.

92
marble Doric column on a base of four bronze figures representing la patria, Bolivia, Chile, and

Ecuador. The column was crowned by a figural representation of Victory, with arms raised and

carrying a sword, and a palm, symbolizing martyrdom. There are also bass reliefs representing

Peruvian combatants, and a sculpture of a wounded José Gálvez, who died in combat and was

immediately elevated to the category of national Hero.

The construction of the monument took four years. The marble was worked in Carrara,

Italy and the bronze figures were produced in the Fhierar workshop in Paris. A simulacrum of

the monument, using the pieces that were ready, was erected and exhibited in the Champs

Elysees in Front of the Palais de l'Industrie in Paris between May and June, 1872, during Paris’s

Beaux Arts Exposition, before being dismounted and shipped in pieces to the port of Callao from

Le Havre and Genoa. 179 The total weight of the monument was four hundred tons, 180 and it

reached Lima between 1873 and 1874. The place elected by the Manuel Pardo administration in

1873, after a study performed by the Central Board of Engineers and the Architect of the State,

was the old “ovalo de la Reina,” a small oval plaza near the Callao Gateway, which was

considered the most beautiful and impressive of the nine gateways of the city walls.181 The

Gateway had been constructed by Viceroy O’Higgings and paid for by the Tribunal del

Consulado at a cost of 343000 pesos. It had been designed by engineer Luis Rico, and had three

arches and Ionic columns, adorned with the coats of arms of the Crown, the Viceroy, and the

Consulado. The central arch carried an inscription in Latin that read Imperate Carolo IV anno

179
Natalia Majluf, Escultura y Espacio Público, 15.
180
José Gamarra, Obras de arte, 168.
181
Memoria sobre las obras públicas del Perú presentada al Supremo Gobierno de la República por la Junta
Central del Cuerpo de Ingenieros y Arquitecto del Estado (Lima: Imprenta Liberal de “El Correo del Perú,” 1874).

93
M.DCCC. 182 The arch was destroyed as part of the demolition of the city walls carried out by

U.S. entrepreneur Henry Meiggs in May, 1874. The demolition made it possible to expand the

ovalo to host the large “Victory monument” and to make it a ronds-point for the future

thoroughfares that would surround modern Lima. 183 The cost of the awards, marbles, and

bronzes in Europe was 69604 sols; by 1874 the government estimated an approximate cost of

69554 for the erection of the monument in Lima, and an additional 14685 sols for the

construction of the Plaza. According to the numbers provided by the 1874 Ministry of

Government, Police, and Public Works, the cost for the complete Plaza Dos de Mayo was

153844 sols. 184 It is not certain that this figure includes the thirteen iron posts and gas lanterns,

the eight Carrara marble benches, and the iron chain that surrounded the monument. 185

The monument was finally inaugurated on July 29, 1874, by President Mariano Ignacio

Prado. Peru now had a national monument for its new independence. It was a neoclassical

column designed in France by French artists, made in France and Italy, assembled first in the

Champs Elisées –one may wonder if Monteagudo’s Atahualpa and Fernando VI were able to

enjoy its preview there— and shipped to and erected in Lima to represent modern Peruvianness.

My irony here should not be read to imply that there were more authentically “Peruvian” ways

available to represent Peruvianness. Peruanidad was as much “under construction” as were the

monuments to Bolivar, the signs of the zodiac, Columbus, or Dos de Mayo. The new plazas and

paseos were attempts to represent the nation that elites desired: one that spoke the universal

182
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general, 656. In 1801, Hipólito Unánue also provided a detailed description of the
gateway. Hipólito Unánue, “Discurso histórico sobre el Nuevo camino del Callao, año de 1801,” Colección
documental de la Independencia del Perú (Lima: Comisión Nacional del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia del
Perú, 1974), 427.
183
Jorge Bernales, Lima, la ciudad y sus monumentos (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano Americanos, 1972),
and Alberto Regal, Historia de los ferrocarriles de Lima (Lima: UNI e Instituto de Vías de Transporte, 1965),20-1.
184
Memoria que presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1874 el Ministerio de Gobierno, Policía y Obras Públicas
sobre los diversos ramos de su despacho (Lima: Imprenta de “El Comercio,” 1874).
185
Syra Alvarez, Historia del mobiliario, 66.

94
language of civilization. The symbolic value of the Ovalo or Plaza de Dos de Mayo was

highlighted by the fact that the Callao Gateway was torn down in this very spot. The aesthetic

references to the “provincialized” colonial past had to be demolished to but also recalled (here by

association with the site) in the construction of a modern and universal Peruanidad.

Paradoxically, the Gateway had been a key part of the Bourbon attempt to assert modernity in

the colony, it too had expressed an enlightened, universal language through neoclassical

architectural signs. The colonial modernity of the eighteenth century was now resignfied as

obsolete, and it would be displaced by the postcolonial national modernity of the nineteenth

century (Figure 2-8).

Building these universal symbols of Peruanidad was expensive. The cost of the Dos de

Mayo monument was assumed by a Peruvian state in deep financial trouble, but a consensus had

been reached about the greater value of national civilization. In August 1868 congressional

representatives discussed the budget to construct monuments to the memory of Colonel Pedro de

La Rosa and Master Sergeant Manuel Taramona, the “first Republican heroes” who had died in

1822 in Iquique during the wars of Independence. 186 Congressman Gálvez expressed his

sentiments: “When it is a matter of commemorating such glorious events, economic objections

cannot be raised. We must erect something worthy of the people we want to honor, worthy of

the reason they are to be honored, and worthy of the country itself.” Gálvez was followed by

Señor Bernales: “The monument under debate honors all of us. With its erection, we intend to

perpetuate the memory of martyrs of patriotism… considering the honor it will give all of us, the

construction of this monument, no matter how much it costs, will never be too expensive.” 187

Such was not the case throughout the whole republic, however. Minor monuments were erected

186
They were officially declared heroes in 1823. Manuel Odriozola, Documentos Históricos del Perú (Lima:
Imprenta del Estado, 1873), vol. V, 316-317.
187
Diario de debates. Cámara de Diputados. August 10, 1868.

95
in other cities –marble fountains in Trujillo and Huaraz in 1867, a monument-fountain in

Ayacucho in 1852 and a monument to honor Colonel Gálvez in Piura in 1866, for example. 188

These were comparatively small monuments that resulted from the initiatives of Prefects or

wealthy private citizens, and did not include the central government in their design, execution, or

financing. Early in 1825, Simón Bolivar himself had ordered the erection of an obelisk to

Liberty in the pampas of Quinua, the site where the Battle of Ayacucho had taken place one year

before. 189 That project was reactivated in 1863 by Juan Antonio Pezet’s administration, and then

in 1870 by Congress. 190 It never materialized. Provinces could wait for their monuments. But

not the former “City of the Kings.” Lima was visible to the world and its nation, and so it only

she could make Peru both modern and national.

“A(nother) Garden to Aromatize the Capital”

Lima’s preeminence as the privileged center of an already/not yet Peruvian modernity did

not go unchallenged. Provincial elites resented the fact that Lima’s postcolonial symbolic and

material power had left their pueblos unattended and “in the waiting room,” and they disputed

Lima’s claim to being a synecdoche for the nation. A lively congressional debate in 1868 on the

creation of a botanical garden in Lima may serve to illustrate the point. The Chamber of

Deputies received a proposal from the Instruction Commission to build a botanical garden in

Lima with a budget of 100000 sols. This project was meant to regularize the previous action of

the central government, which had decreed a year before to use land that belonged to the San

Carlos school to found a botanical garden, and had already allowed the expenditure of 26465

pesos to purchase plants for it. 191 Deputy Arias presented the proposal, arguing that the

188
Natalia Majluf, Escultura y Espacio Público, 12.
189
Ibid., 10.
190
La legislación y los héroes nacionales, 8.
191
Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima (Lima: Consejo Provincial de Lima, 1945), 73.

96
establishment of such an institution would benefit Peru greatly as a source of scientific

knowledge that would be instrumental in the exploitation of the country’s resources:

It is said in a proverbial way, that Peru is very rich; and it is indeed. But, what
does that wealth consist of? Is it only our guaneras? Undoubtedly not.
Providence has deigned to fertilize Peru’s three kingdoms lavishly. Its minerals
are superior…its vegetal kingdom is fecund… all these elements of wealth will be
available to us once the Botanical Garden is in place, and once we have a Central
School of Mining. 192

But some provincial representatives opposed both the idea and the budget it required.

Representative Esteves argued that the Botanical Garden was an extravagant luxury for Lima,

and that the provinces had more urgent needs:

The reasons stated by Mr. Arias are very good, when speaking about Lima. When
we speak of the interior, however, things are different. If we decide to give
flowers and grow gardens to aromatize the capital’s atmosphere, we should at
least get rid of the weeds and thorns in the interior where there are more important
unfortunate needs. 193

Esteves’s words were an alert to elites that the expensive projects to transform or

modernize Lima were in fact deepening the chasm between the capital and the interior provinces.

Arias calmly replied that the improvements carried out in Lima would benefit the entire nation:

Mr. Esteves has said, among other things, that the Botanical Garden is an
improvement that only the sons of the capital will enjoy… That is not correct.
The benefits obtained from the research carried out in the capital, in medicine, the
natural sciences, and all the branches of knowledge, will mostly benefit the
citizens of the south. 194

Arias’s argument expressed a prevalent idea among elites: Lima’s educational, scientific,

medical, military, judiciary, and penitentiary institutions would be “national,” that is, they would

serve the entire nation. On the one hand, people from “the interior” who required access to these

“national institutions” could travel to the capital city; on the other, it was believed that those

192
Diario de debates. Cámara de Diputados (Lima: Imprenta del Estado: 1868), 631. October 29, 1868. Discusión
del dictamen de la Comisión de Instrucción sobre la construcción de un jardín botánico en esta capital.
193
Ibid., 631.
194
Ibid., 631

97
institutions served the nation, creating knowledge or technology that could be disseminated

across the country. The Botanical Garden was supposed to be a “national” scientific institution

charged with producing necessary “theoretical and practical knowledge” that would be applied to

the development of Peru’s natural resources. As Mr. Arias argued, “the botanical garden is not

only a recreational establishment. No! Its objective is higher and greater. It is to offer Peru a

new source of knowledge, which will be instrumental for the exploitation of our rich jungles.” 195

Other representatives from “the interior” argued that scientific research did not

necessarily have to be carried out in Lima. After all, researchers and students could conduct

fieldwork in all of the country regions, especially in “the jungle.” The expedition approach and

the idea of fieldwork in the Amazon rainforest was nourished in the nineteenth century by the

image of the region as a vast and mysterious treasure chest that hid countless unknown botanical

species and other natural resources waiting to be discovered and exploited. It was also seen as an

unpopulated or “savage” area that had been neglected by Spanish colonialism. Its untouched

wealth inspired continuous dreams of a “new colonialism” that, in many ways, received the

influence of the English and French colonial enterprises in Africa (which were, in turn,

discursively modeled in reference to Iberian “old” colonialism). 196 The connection between

these colonial and postcolonial desires for possession is evident in Arias’s response:

It has also been said that we do not need a Botanical Garden, because we have
one in our vast jungles, and that it is there where research must be done. It is true
that the jungle is a natural botanical garden; but because of its magnitude.
Because of its size, it is impossible, or at least very difficult to build a school of
natural sciences next to the tiger, in front of the panther, in the midst of the roars
of the lions, and surrounded by an endless number of venomous insects… 197

195
Ibid., 631.
196
This is one of Mark Thurner’s arguments in his “After Spanish Rule.”
197
Diario de debates. Cámara de Diputados (Lima: Imprenta del Estado, 1868), 631.

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 Apparently, Arias imagined an Amazon rainforest populated by African species! In any

case, the desire for a Botanical Garden in the guano era was in itself a Limeño imperial aspiration

vis-à-vis the Peruvian “interior.” All of Peru’s botanical species would now be collected and

contained in an enclosed area within the capital city. Representative Távara participated in the

debate with a succinct, bold argument that in fact synthesized what all representatives who

supported the idea had in mind: “we need to have a botanical Garden because every civilized

country has one.” 198 Távara’s words ended the debate, and the proposal was approved. The

Botanical Garden was founded within the city’s walls and placed under the jurisdiction of the

Faculty of Medicine, and its first plants included the specimens of an orchard that belonged to

the San Carlos School. Additional plants and seeds were obtained from the Société Nationale

D’Acclimatation de France, which received Peruvian species in exchange. The Garden was

directed by Sebastián Barranca, a naturalist and philologist, while the French professor Jean

Baptiste Martinet was placed in charge of the classification of species and the creation of a

master list of plants that the institution should possess. 199 German naturalist Carlos Klug was

hired to install the nurseries.

Lima now had a Botanical Garden. This Garden served scientific purposes, but more

importantly it would “aromatize” the city and make it like “any other civilized country.” Still,

the 1868 Botanical Garden was not the first such garden founded in the City of Lima. A

previous, colonial Botanical Garden had been founded by Viceroy Francisco Gil de Taboada y

Lemos in 1791 as part of the Bourbon enlightened and naturalistic drive to promote useful

198
Ibid.
199
J.B.H. Marinet’s research was published in 1873 under the name Enumeración de los géneros y especies de
plantas que deben ser cultivadas ó conservadas en el Jardin Botanico de la Facultad de Medicina de Lima, con la
indicación sumaria de su utilidad en la medicina, la industria y la economia (Lima: Imprenta del Estado, 1873).

99
science in and from Spanish America. 200 The famous scientific expedition to Peru headed by

Hipólito Ruiz and José Antonio Pavón between 1777 and 1788 included disciple botanist Juan

José Tafalla and designador (taxonomist) Francisco Pulgar. Tafalla and Pulgar stayed in Lima

after 1788 to gather and send material back to Spain, and to develop botany in the Viceroyalty of

Peru. 201 Tafalla soon gathered a collection he denominated “Flora Peruana,” which was the first

group of species of the botanical garden he created with the assistance of Pulgar, and Francisco

González Laguna, a priest of the order of Los Agonizantes, renowned naturalist, and collaborator

of El Mercurio Peruano. 202 By 1815, the garden held samples of five thousand species that

Tafalla had gathered in expeditions to the entire Viceroyalty. 203 This garden, which was located

in one of the lots contiguous to the Hospital San Andrés, seems to have fallen victim to the

violence and instability wrought by the independence and caudillo wars, and by the 1850s it had

disappeared.

The drive to create a botanical garden during the guano era derived from an enlightened

desire for knowledge, from a desire to maximize the exploitation of Peru’s natural resources, and

from the aspiration to be part of a universal community of nations that characterized itself as

scientific and civilized. Paradoxically, those were the same motivations that had inspired

Spanish and Creole naturalists to create the first Botanical Garden with the sponsorship of the

200
The Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid had been founded in 1755 to gather species from Spain’s colonies. A
scientific expedition to New Spain ended in the foundation of the Real Jardín Botánico del Palacio Imperial de
Nueva España in 1788. See: Graciela Zamudio, “El Real Jardín Botánico del Palacio Imperial de Nueva España,”
Ciencias, no. 68 (2002): 22-27.
201
Hipólito Unánue, “Introducción a la descripción científica de las plantas del Perú,” en Colección documental de
la Independencia del Perú (Lima: Comisión Nacional del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia del Perú, 1974), vol.
1, 252; Estuardo Nuñez, Viajes y Viajeros extranjeros por el Perú; Apuntes documentales con algunos desarrollos
históricos-biográficos (Lima: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias y Tecnología, 1989), 162-3.
202
Rodolfo Pérez Pimentel, Diccionario biográfico del Ecuador (Guayaquil: Universidad de Guayaquil, 1993), 10;
Jorge Cañizares Esguerra, “Nation and Nature: Natural History and the Fashioning of Creole National Identity in
Late Colonial Spanish America,” paper presented to the XX International Congress of the Latin American Studies
Association, Guadalajara, Mexico; Hipólito Unánue, “Introducción a la descripción científica de las plantas del
Perú,” en Colección, vol. 1, 253.
203
Rodolfo Pérez Pimentel, Diccionario biográfico.

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Bourbon state. Although to call Tafalla a “Spanish” naturalist –as opposed to “Creole”—

obscures the fact that Tafalla created the first Department of Botany in Lima, was part of a

vibrant “Creole” intellectual community in Lima and across the Viceroyalty of Peru, and was a

close friend of Hipólito Unánue and other collaborators of El Mercurio Peruano, and remained

in Peru until his death in 1805. In 1871, Unánue announced that Tafalla would be in charge of

the botany reports in El Mercurio, and even if no article was ever published under his signature,

Unánue commented that Tafalla sent illustrations and detailed descriptions of species to the

Sociedad Académica de Amantes del País. 204 As Cañizares-Esguerra has argued, the natural

history of men like Tefalla and González Laguna played a key role in fashioning Creole patriot

identity by providing American elites with the tools to imagine their realms as separate and

distinct national spaces. 205

Notably, during the 1868 debate on the initiative to create a Botanical Garden for the

nation, the colonial-era Garden inaugurated under the enlightened Bourbon regime passed

unmentioned. The project of postcolonial national modernity would be founded on the erasure

of earlier colonial modernities. The postcolonial reinvention of Lima repeated the desires, styles,

and rhetoric of the enlightened Bourbon project and its Spanish and Creole naturalists. In this

and other cases, Bourbon enlightened projects were erased or destroyed to make room for

postcolonial enlightened projects that were similar in their objectives and styles. Postcolonial

national modernity was a repetition of the Bourbon imperial project, but it had to be represented

and discussed as a “new” initiative in a new nation that would thus enjoy a new beginning with a

boundless future.

204
Hipólito Unánue, “Introducción a la descripción;” Rodolfo Pérez Pimentel, Diccionario biográfico.
205
Jorge Cañizares Esguerra, “Nation and Nature.”

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 The Modern Demolition of the Modern

The English traveler Thomas Hutchinson, who visited Lima in 1871, believed the city’s

physiognomy had changed so much in the previous decade that older descriptions of it were now

completely out of date: “Lima has been well described, and by many writers –by Ulloa, Frezier,

Stevenson, Markham, Bollaert, Paz Soldan, Dr. Baxley and by a score of others. But the City of

the Kings has had so much in transition about it that what was written about it, even so as late as

ten years ago, cannot hold good to-day.” 206

Lima was being postcolonially nationalized, or to use a synonym, postcolonially

universalized. Processes and debates on these transformations expressed the desire to reject the

colonial past. Architecture also was to express the arrival of the new time of the nation, as

neoclassical styles predominated in monuments, sculptures, and buildings. This was a

paradoxical choice, considering that neoclassicism had been introduced during the enlightened

Bourbon colonial period, as seen in the neoclassic Gateway to Callao that was demolished to

erect the neoclassic Dos de Mayo Monument. Hospital Dos de Mayo, constructed between 1868

and 1875, using a radial design similar to that of the Penitenciaría (analyzied in the next

chapter), broke with the tradition of colonial hospital architecture however, which had been

similar to that of the convents and monasteries. It was also constructed following state-of-the-art

sanitary principles and adopting the pavilion system, which allowed for therapeutic illumination

and ventilation. 207 It was built by the Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Lima under the

direction of Manuel Pardo –who would later be President of Peru. None of the proposals

presented in the open competition called in Paris satisfied the jury, and Pedro Gálvez, Peru’s

Ambassador in that city chose the blueprint designed by architect Mateo Graziani, who directed

206
Thomas Hutchinson, Two Years in Peru, 305.
207
José García Bryce, “Aspectos de la arquitectura en Lima, 1850-1880,” Kuntur. Perú en la cultura, no. 4 (1987).

102
the construction along with Swiss Michele Trefogli, Architect of the State who had been hired by

Castilla’s administration in 1860 and who had participated in the construction of Lima’s

Penitentiary. 208

The Hospital boasted an Arch of Triumph for an entrance and a building that resembled a

Roman Temple, with four columns and no decorations: a monument to rigid discipline that

expressed the values elites wished to instill in the population. Fittingly, this modern Roman

Temple has its clock (Figures 2-9 and 2-10). Despite all the innovations of the hospital, Limeño

churchgoers could find it strangely familar. Since the neoclassical style was not introduced to

Peru after independence but rather in the late eighteenth century, many of Lima’s churches had

been transformed before 1821. Many façades and altarpieces had been completely remade, or

else they combined the earlier baroque style of the seventeenth century with new, neoclassical

elements. Matías Maestro, priest, architect, painter, and sculptor was the most active developer

of the neoclassical style in Lima. He was hired by congregations to remodel their churches to

conform to the architectural style then in vogue, and also by the colonial state to build, for

example, Lima’s first cemetery and also a Gateway (both in 1808) that, ironically, looked very

much like the Hospital Dos de Mayo’s Arch of Triumph. The postcolonial universalization of

Lima, however, required a discursive negation of the colonial modernity of the Bourbon regime.

The transformations of Lima reasserted the capital’s preeminence vis-à-vis the rest of the

country. Lima became an expensive synecdoche for Peru, and this role provincial elites

resented. By 1872, for example, the Chamber of Deputies furiously debated the new Municipal

Law. Representative Basadre raised his voice of protest: “This Capital is the spoiled girl of all

departamentos, the heir of all of Peru’s treasures. The departments of the South do not have the

208
Pedro Oliveira, “Apuntes para la historia del Hospital “Dos de Mayo,” Memoria administrativa que presenta a la
Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Lima su Director Sr. D. Carlos Ferreyros, correspondiente al año económico
de 1896 (Lima: Imprenta Liberal, 1896).

103
expensive institutions Lima has; splendid schools, palaces, charity institutions, great hospitals,

etc.” Representative Andraka immediately replied that “if Lima, for example, has a School of

Medicine, it is to serve all departments, because it is impossible to build a similar one in each of

them. If Lima has great public institutions, it is to serve all inhabitants of the republic.” 209 If it

was true that the Peruvian state was unable to construct first class institutions throughout the

entire country, it is also true that much was spent for symbolic purposes. The benefits of these

symbols or monuments of modernity, however, were supposed to reach the other departamentos

for “the richness of Lima disseminates in all directions and extends to and comprises all the

confines of the Republic. Lima has become a truthful sign of Peru’s worth and represents it in

foreign nations.” 210

The Lima transformations were not made for cosmetic reasons but to create a sense of

national community and, as we will se in the next chapter, to develop the human resources of

industrial capitalism. Not all reforms produced the effects desired by planners, or course.

Projects were planned and executed by an often incoherent state, and by inconsistent and often

corrupt administrations. They often did not accomplish their objectives because of the

“proliferating illegitimacy” of Limeño spatial practices, 211 by the subaltern parole that bent the

langue of law. 212 Reports on the use of reformed spaces, for instance, reveal the dismay of

functionaries at the people’s appropriation of them. Shortly after their erection, monuments were

fenced so as to protect them from robbery and vandalism. One may wonder what these

monuments, which were erected –after their design and construction in Europe— to symbolize

209
Diario de los debates de la Cámara de Diputados (Lima: Imprenta de “El Nacional,” 1872), vol. II, 454. Debate
on chapter seven of the Law of Municipalities, November 8, 1872.
210
Diario de Debates del Congreso Ordinario del año de 1860 (Lima: Tipografía de “El Comercio,” 1861), 167.
Chamber of Senators. January 29, 1861.
211
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
212
Homi Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of Modern Nations,” The Location of Culture
(New York: Routledge, 2004).

104
Peruvian community might have meant to the general public (Figures 2-2 and 2-3). In a report

sent to the mayor in 1877 the guard of the “civilized” Alameda de los Descalzos called for

additional police support, without which, he claimed, would be forced to close the paseo’s gates:

It is impossible to keep gardens and public paseos in good condition, if the action
of the police forces does not assist in this respect… Public destroy the plants, pull
up the flowers. This fault is committed very frequently by people whose
education and status should make them solicitous to strive for the paseos’
maintenance… To avoid these acts, you must ask the Prefectura for two
permanent guards for the Alameda de los Descalzos, without which this
inspection will be obliged to put a stop to the entrance of public to such a
garden. 213

Something similar happened to the 1861 renomination of Lima’s streets. Streets in Lima

had been named according to use and tradition. Some carried the name of a neighbor, others

were known after memorable events, particular signs, the street’s form, etc. In 1861, the

municipality decided to regularize names by officially baptizing the full length of streets with a

single denomination, and using the names of Peru’s departments, provinces, and rivers –although

two streets received the venerable names of the first and last Incas, Manco Capac and Atahualpa,

respectively. 214 Nothing could be more synecdochal than this measure. Now the entire nation

was nominally contained in the capital city! This attempt to make Lima an inhabitable map of the

entire nation was not successful, though, and had to be reinforced at a later stage. Limeños

stubbornly stuck to the old denominations, much to the dismay of the city authorities. Famous

writer Ricardo Palma commented on the street names:

In spite of the attempt to officially re-baptize them, no Limeño uses the new
names, and they have plenty of reasons. As for myself, I never make use of the
new denominations: first, because the past deserves some respect, and abolishing
the names that inspire historical remembrances does not lead us anywhere;
second, because such prescriptions of the authority are like wet paper and will

213
AHML, Municipalidad, Alamedas y paseos, March 21, 1877.
214
For complete information on the process, see Juan Bromley, Las Viejas Calles de Lima (Lima: Municipalidad de
Lima Metropolitana, 2005).

105
 only make people forget what already entered our memory throughout
centuries. 215

The Alameda de los Descalzos would also be the object of nostalgic lamentations both by

foreigners and Limeños alike. In 1860 French traveler and Consul Léonce Angrand nostalgically

recalled the promenade he had seen in Lima twenty years before, which had now been

transformed into an unrecognizable “garden.” The promenades, wrote Angrand, should not be

called “gardens” for they ought not to be “subdued and disciplined” but instead maintained as

bucolic spaces, characterized by simplicity and informality. 216 Palma, a romantic liberal,

believed that

today’s promenade, with its statues, fences and fountain may well be more
artistic, but not more poetic than the promenade of our childhood. Today, it is
something we have already seen in Europe and in other cities in America. But it’s
not typical, it’s not Limeña. Today’s promenade is worth little more than a
cigarette butt. It is a promenade with pretensions of civilization and nothing
more. I wish I could entertain myself in the semi-savage promenade of
yesteryear. 217

Palma nostalgically thought that the civilized Alameda had lost the sensual attractiveness

of his childhood. He shared elite anxieties over the rapid transformations of Lima. A reporter of

the newspaper El Comercio commented upon a religious procession in 1860 in similar terms,

lamenting that girls now dressed in a European, oppressive, and flavorless way:

The procession for Saint Rose was lively and well attended. Two things were
missing, however: a reminder of what is gone and might not exist anymore…
The tapadas were hardly seen… Our señoritas have abandoned their
incomparable dress. The delicate waists of the girls in the procession were
strangled by rude corsets… Dressed the French style, and serious as the cold
daughters of Albion, oppressed by the weight of today’s customs, the girls seem
to throw a furtive look, which –betraying their forced dress— was full of vivacity
and mystery… 218

215
Ricardo Palma, Tradiciones Peruanas Completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1952), 388.
216
Léonce Angrand, “Carta sobre los jardines de Lima” Imagen del Perú en el siglo XIX (Lima: Editorial Milla
Batres, 1972), 165.
217
Ricardo Palma, Tradiciones Peruanas (Madrid: Calpe, 1923), 299. Emphasis in the original.
218
El Comercio, September 1, 1860.

106
 Nostalgia was an elite by-product of the rapid transformations of Lima and Limeño

habits. Some, like Palma and later historians and commentators, interpreted these changes as the

attempt to “copy” European cities and styles. My argument throughout this chapter has been

different. Elites wished to define Peru as a nation coeval with the international community of

“civilized” or “advanced” nations. They did not simply copy or mimic Europe. Instead they

engaged the universals of a hyperreal Europe, and postcolonially constructed a hyperreal Lima as

the national center from which modernity could expand across the hyperreal “country.”

107
Figure 2-1. Plaza de la Constitución – featuring Monument to Bolívar unfenced

Figure 2-2. Fenced liberator

108
Figure 2-3. Entrance to the reformed Alameda de los Descalzos

Figure 2-4. Reformed Alameda de los Descalzos

109
Figure 2-5. Columbus monument at the Alameda de Acho

Figure 2-6. Plaza Mayor – Government Palace to the left (1860)

110
Figure 2-7. Government Palace, 1879

111
Figure 2-8. Dos de Mayo Plaza

112
Figure 2-9. Dos de Mayo Hospital (Under construction)

Figure 2-10. Dos de Mayo Hospital. Front Building

113
 CHAPTER 3
THE TIME OF THE NATION AND THE TIME OF CAPITAL

A Republican Penitentiary for a Republican Society

Mid-nineteenth century Limeño elites were unable to build a Republican government

building, but they succeeded at erecting a modern, impressive penitentiary that became the “first

modern construction” in Lima. The architectural style and design was decided upon by Mariano

Felipe Paz Soldán, then a young lawyer and judge who had served as a diplomat in Colombia.

Before returning to Peru, Paz Soldán was commissioned by the government of President José

Rufino Echenique to travel to the United States, where he would study different penitentiary

systems and the designs of several prisons in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York,

Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. After a fruitful stay in the United States, in which

he placed special emphasis on the observation of the institutions’ architecture, internal discipline,

the roles of the employees and directors, the treatment received by the inmates, and financial

aspects, Paz Soldán returned to Peru to study the state of prisons in Peru. His experience as a

lawyer and judge in Lima, Callao, Cajamarca and Cuzco had given him a clear idea of Peru’s

judiciary and prison systems. With the results of his research, Paz Soldán wrote a detailed

report, entitled Examen de las Penitenciarías de los Estados Unidos. 219

The book contains a comprehensive description of eighteen institutions in the United

States. Paz Soldán was especially impressed by the Auburn and Philadelphia penitentiaries.

Auburn’s striking extension and façade was complemented by an efficient system of

administration that produced a monetary surplus. Inmates worked in shoe, carpentry, weaving,

and tool-making workshops, which allowed the institution to obtain its own funds, and inmates

219
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, Examen de las Penitenciarías de los Estados Unidos: Informe que presenta al
Supremo Gobierno del Perú su Comisionado Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán (New York: Imprenta de S.W. Benedict,
1853).

114
to learn a trade and accumulate earnings. The panoptical architecture of Philadelphia’s Eastern

State Penitentiary 220 also made a powerful impression on Paz Soldán. “When I was in this

institution, I felt emotions that are difficult to explain… in my dreams to improve my patria’s

penal system, I imagined that famous building in the city of Lima. My heart filled with joy, not

seeing the executioner’s scaffolds but instead a work of civilization and philanthropy.” 221 The

Auburn system established a working regime in workshops during the daytime and solitary

confinement at night, with enforced silence at all times. It was based on the reformation of

inmate morality through strict routines and regimentation, but also included elementary

education every night and lessons by clergymen. The Philadelphia regime placed emphasis on

the most absolute isolation of prisoners. Inmates could leave their individual cells every

fortnight, blindfolded and only to take a bath; solitude was intended to promote spiritual

reflection and change without unnecessary distractions.

After reviewing the main characteristics of U.S. penitentiaries, jails, and prisons, Paz

Soldán’s report reviewed conditions in Peru’s prisons. Although he had been commissioned to

travel to the U.S. to gather the necessary information to suggest improvements to Peru’s jails and

prisons, Paz Soldan believed that he could only carry out his duties by taking into account Peru’s

existing institutions. According to Paz Soldán, Peru’s penitentiary system was poor, and existing

prisons could not be remodeled. New ones had to be built according to state-of-the-art

penitentiary principles that did not seek to punish criminals, but instead to reform inmates so as

to make them into functional members of society. In his report, Paz Soldán reviewed the Auburn

and the Philadelphia systems, registering the objectionable aspects of each one for Peru. The

Auburn system allowed inmates to relate to each other, which might obstruct their reformation or

220
The Eastern State Penitentiary was built between 1823 and 1835 by architect John Haviland. It is considered the
world’s first penitentiary.
221
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, Examen de las Penitenciarías de los Estados Unidos, 68.

115
indeed facilitate the organization of a mutiny. Still, the Philadelphia system of solitary

confinement was more deficient. Complete isolation, noted Paz Soldan, “is diametrically

opposed to universal manners and to man’s instincts… solitude increases anti-natural

inclinations and secret vices.” 222 Paz Soldán held that “man” was “essentially social and

communicative, all of his passions have a natural, non-dangerous relief when accompanied by

his fellow men.” Solitary confinement would promote “hatred against those who oppress him,

against the society that –let us say it frankly—buries him alive.” 223

The characteristics of the Peruvian population also had to be taken into account if Peru

was to create a suitable penitentiary system. For Paz Soldán, Peru’s penitentiary system and the

design of any prison building should adjust to modern principles and to local characteristics and

needs. The penitentiary could not simply be a copy of what he had seen in the U.S. His analysis

of Peruvian society, however, followed contemporary or universal sociological ideas about

“race.” He considered that Peru’s population was divided “by nature” into three main castas (a

colonial classificatory term that denominated mixed blood groups but which now was becoming

increasingly interchangeable with raza or “race”) “each with a peculiar and distinct character.” 224

The “white man” was human and indulgent, sociable, inclined to morality and a lover of

progress. White inmates, therefore, had to be “punished without scorn, preserving his dignity,

and treating him with gentleness and patience.” 225 The Auburn system was the best for “el

blanco,” whose innate character leads him to “unite with men, to whom he is generally

superior.” 226 In contrast, “the Indian” was indolent, indifferent, lazy, and filthy. Indian inmates

would actually enjoy solitude and idleness in confinement, which would only “accentuate his

222
Ibid, 106.
223
Ibid, 107.
224
Ibid, 100.
225
Ibid, 100.
226
Ibid, 112.

116
anti-social and semi-savage condition, which is a comfortable habit for him, but one opposed to

the nature of society, to its needs and its progress; an Indian would leave the cell at the end of his

sentence in the same condition he had entered; and that is not the goal of the Government.” 227

The Auburn system’s emphasis on shared labor was the most suited to reform “the Indian,” for it

would make him sociable and hardworking at once. The “black man” or “el negro,” in spite of

his “cruel instincts,” learned easily, was grateful when treated well, and was willing to work for

the “enjoyments of life” once he had a chance to experience them. He was also talkative, “which

means that silence will be the hardest punishment for him.” 228 Indeed, “isolation would drive the

negro to commit suicide.” 229

The characteristics of each “caste” or “race” and Peru’s need to reform its population

lend Paz Soldán to believe that the Philadelphia system was not applicable to Peru.

Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary’s architecture, however, could be reproduced in Lima

with minor modifications to include Auburn-like workshops, mess hall, library, and chapel, to

combine the strict vigilance of the inmates’ conduct with labor and educational practices that

would serve to “moralize” or reform bad habits. Lima, then, should have a panopticon, and its

exterior should be an “architecture parlante.” Paz Soldan believed the external appearance of

the prison must accord with the building’s purpose. It must look firm, “solid, durable, and it has

to have a serious and severe aspect. It must not have decorations, useless ornaments, or

architectural luxury.” Paz Soldán drafted an initial blueprint for the future building with these

considerations in mind 230 (Figures 3-1 and 3-3).

227
Ibid, 111.
228
Ibid, 110.
229
Ibid, 112.
230
Ibid,, 120.

117
 The penitentiary should transform the inmate and return him to society as a functional

worker and citizen, but it should also communicate a stern lesson. The combination of reclusion

and labor would make “the treacherous assassin, the impudent thief, the troublemaker, the

dissolute man, and even the one that provokes scandals know that there is a curb to their offences

and disorders.” Inmates would end their reclusion having learned a trade, possessing petty

capital, and having internalized strong moral principles to pass on to their children. The

penitentiary, then, should be a “house of education and correction,” 231 that would “control not

only their bodies but their own conscience.” 232 In Paz Soldan’s “house” inmates could not

communicate with each other orally or by signs. Their bodies could gather in the workshops and

mess hall, but their “souls” would remain in absolute isolation. They would also receive “moral,

religious, elementary, and industrial education.” Inmates would receive sermons by chaplains

who “should never preach any particular doctrine,”however –Paz Soldán believed individual

beliefs must be respected— but only inculcate morality “because morality is only one and

universal, and the basic principles of all religions are the same.” 233 The education for inmates

should include reading, writing, arithmetics, and penal laws, and a library should be available to

them to stimulate the “desire for enlightenment.” 234 Inmates would also be reformed through the

repetitive transcription of mottos, which would induce them to amendment after acknowledging

and loathe their guilt. 235 Workshops were to be constructed for inmates to internalize the

principles of obedience, discipline, and hard work, and to learn a useful trade. Finally, mild

231
Ibid., 115.
232
Cecilia Méndez, “Penalidad y muerte en el Perú,” Márgenes. Encuentro y debate, no. 1 (1987): 188.
233
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, Examen de las Penitenciarías de los Estados Unidos, 125.
234
Ibid., 125.
235
Peru’s National Archive holds 1864 sheets of “planas” –phrases inmates had to transcribe repeatedly. The
phrases carry messages that would instill ethical values to inmates and would make them reflect on their guilt. Some
of them are “After God, the patria, and honor,” “persevere and you will surmount any difficulty,” “bad friendships
corrupt the human heart, and throw you into an abyss of vices,” “if you want to be appreciated by society, be
virtuous and honest, try to live a moral life, setting good examples to everyone,” and “pure conscience gives
happiness to man.” AGN, R-J, 242, Penitentiary.

118
misdemeanors were to be punished “with humanity and patience,” while punishments for serious

offences should be “moderate, but enough to instill fear to avoid the repetition of the offense,”

and applied “with no anger or fury but rather with the cold blood of a father who corrects, and

not with the desire for revenge of the tyrant who oppresses.” 236

Paz Soldán had to wait until 1855 to see his dream of a modern penitentiary come true.

The Castilla regime ordered its construction on October 20, following the drafting of a final

design that Paz Soldán had developed with the assistance of Maximilien Mimey, and which

combined the work-disciplining advantages of the “Auburn system” with the panopticon

architecture of the Philadelphian prison. The projected building was to be the largest ever

constructed in Lima. Its front would be 158 meters long (518 feet), with a width of 114 meters

(374 feet), for a total surface of 18012 square meters (193879 square feet). The massive

structure would include seven cell blocks, four for inmates –two for males, one for female

interns, and one for minors— for a total 280 cells,237 and three for workshops, larders, mess

rooms, bathrooms, etc. Cell blocks had two floors for regular cells and underground chambers

for punitive cells (Figure 3-4). Other facilities included a central watchtower, administration

offices, apartments for the directors, kitchens, cafeterias for guards, a library, a chapel, a

hospital, and a meeting hall. The granite perimeter walls were 12 meters tall (39 feet) and 3

meters wide (9.84 feet) at its base and 1 meter wide (3.28 feet) at its highest point. 238 The

projected budget reached 530000 pesos. 239 The Castilla administration also named a

commission presided by Paz Soldán to select the site for the construction of the building. Paz

236
Ibid., 133.
237
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general de Lima (Lima: Tipografía Nacional de M.N. Corpancho, 1858), 671.
Mateo Paz Soldán, brother of Mariano Felipe, however, states that the original blueprint was designed to host 316
inmates, Mateo Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú: Obra Póstuma del D.D. Mateo Paz Soldán (Paris: Librería de
Fermín Didot, 1862), 296.
238
Mateo Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, 296.
239
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general, 671.

119
Soldán’s report recommended a healthy location with dry soil, isolated from buildings or

factories but near the city, to facilitate its supply and the easy sale of manufactured products

made in the workshops. The cornerstone was set on January 31, 1856 by President Castilla on the

southern limits of the walled city, away but relatively close from the populated center, a location

that Mateo Paz Soldán –brother of Mariano Felipe—regarded as one with the “healthiest air” in

Lima. 240 Commemorative medals of gold, silver, and copper were minted for the inaugural

ceremony.

The construction of such an enormous building demanded an unprecedented mobilization

of funds, workers, technology, and resources over a span of six years. Paz Soldán had three kilns

for bricks made, and a continuous kiln for lime, and he laid a three-mile Decauville railway to

transport granite and limestone from the quarry located in El Agustino. Granite rock and

refractory bricks had never been used in Lima (most buildings were made of adobe, wood, and

tile), and the continuous kiln and the railway were also the first of their kind in Lima. The

construction also demanded a large skilled workforce impossible to find in Peru. Consequently,

nine stonecutters, five bricklayers and a blacksmith were hired in Europe on four-year contracts

in the first three years of the project. It might have been the excitement of the dimensions and

novelties included in the construction, as well as its rapid progress –Paz Soldán worked fast and

energetically, constructing the railway, for example, in only twenty-seven days— what inspired

Castilla to order Paz Soldán to enlarge the penitentiary in 1858. An excited Paz Soldán reported:

The Libertador and Grand Marshal Ramón Castilla ordered me to enlarge this
edifice as much as possible, because it is a building to which Peru directs its
hope…and that the Penitentiary must be a living monument of his enthusiasm for
public works, and worthy of Peru’s grandeur. 241

240
Mateo Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, 297.
241
Memoria que presenta al Congreso Extraordinario de 1858 el Ministro de Gobierno, Culto y Obras Públicas
(Lima: Tipografía Nacional, 1858), 52

120
 The new penitentiary would now have a breadth of 189 meters (620 feet), a depth of 152

meters (499 feet), for a total area of 29010 square meters (312268 square feet), and cells for 312

inmates. Notably, Paz Soldan believed it would be convenient to enlarge the building even

more, to host 478 inmates! 242 By the end of 1858 nearly 30 thousand tons of granite and

limestone and a million bricks had been consumed in the construction. 243 The building’s doors,

windows, and other components were made in Europe and shipped to Lima before its

inauguration in 1862. 244 According to historian Jorge Basadre, the total cost of the building was

in the neighborhood of 600 thousand pesos, 245 but the annual Memorias of Public Works for

1858 and 1860 report an expenditure of 550 thousand pesos in only two years. 246 By the end of

1858, Paz Soldán believed 805 thousand pesos in excess of the original budget would be required

to finish the building, projecting a final cost of 1335000 pesos. 247

The building was inaugurated on January 31, 1862 with great expectations. The Castilla

administration ordered the Casa de la Moneda (national mint) to coin a silver medal that, on one

side, showed the effigy of President Castilla with an inscription showing the dates of the

placement of the first stone and the inauguration; and, on the other side, a figure of the

panopticon with the names of Paz Soldán, director of the works, and “Maximiliano” Miney, the

architect. Fittingly, the seal of the Peruvian Republic crowns the scene, hovering above the

penitentiary. All the efforts and expenses put into the construction reveal that the penitentiary

was clearly a matter of great symbolic and national import. (Figure 3-2).

242
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general, 676.
243
Ibid., 672. According to Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, 30 thousand tons of stones were used in the
construction. Paz Soldán, however, reports having used those many stones by the end of 1858. Juan Bromley and
José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de la ciudad de Lima (Lima: Consejo Provincial de Lima, 1945).
244
Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República del Perú (1822-1933) (Lima: Orbis Ventures, 2005).
245
Ibid.
246
Memoria que presenta al Congreso Extraordinario de 1858 el Ministro de Gobierno, Culto y Obras Públicas
(Lima: Tipografía Nacional, 1858); Memoria del Ministro Estado en el Departamento de Obras públicas y Policía
presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1860 (Lima: Tipografía de Justo Montoya, 1860).
247
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general, 677.

121
 Peru’s largest and most costly building would occupy a crucial symbolic place in Lima’s

project of postcolonial modernization. It would serve to moralize and civilize the population, in

particular, the lower “castes” of society who elites such as Paz Soldán regarded as “anti-social,”

“semi-savage,” “lazy,” or guided by “cruelty instincts.” Paz Soldán held, for instance, that “the

Indian” lacked hygienic habits and argued that the fact that “he” did not use a bed to sleep on

was proof of his uncivilized character and paucity of moral values.248 The penitentiary would be

a factory of civilization, eradicating those habits which were “opposed to the nature of society,”

and instilling cultured habits, respect for the law and authority, and work discipline. Life at the

penitentiary was to be guided be the severe principles of the institution’s motto: “Silence,

Obedience, Labor.” This motto was inscribed over every threshold in the building. The

penitentiary was a social laboratory for the society elites wanted to forge. One ruled by the

progressive severity of the state and conformed of docile, obedient, and hardworking citizens.

This vision was clear to Paz Soldán, who used the construction of the Penitentiary to carefully

observe his workers’ habits and to conceive new methods to further reform them.

In order to closely manage a large number of workers, which represent the most
ignorant component of our society, I decided to thoroughly observe their
inclinations and character, their common habits, and the way these could be
corrected. I can affirm that no task is easier than to completely improve this part
of society. To correct their faults and even to contain them when they were
dominated by passion, anger, or drunkenness, it has been enough to send an
employer to reestablish order immediately, without having to use any means of
coercion.” 249

The building’s dimensions as well as its severe and solid appearance would also exert,

according to Paz Soldán, a pedagogical purpose and was appropriately called by him and other

commentators “a monument.” The word “monument” as used by contemporary observers

248
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, Examen de las Penitenciarías de los Estados Unidos,110.
249
Mariano Felipe Paz-Soldán, Director of Penitentiary. July 22, 1862. Memoria que el Ministro de Gobierno,
Policía y Obras Públicas presenta el Congreso Nacional de 1862 (Lima: Imprenta de “La Epoca,” 1862).

122
alluded first to the extraordinary magnitude of the edifice, but it may also have referred to its

pedagogical purpose. “Monument,” after all, derives from the Latin verb “monere,” which

means to “remind” and/or “to warn.” The penitentiary would thus be a monument to “remind”

citizens of the presence of the state, and to “warn” them about its capability to capture and

reform bodies and minds, and to impose its internal social order on the society beyond its walls.

The penitentiary system was also informed by new concepts of society and new

techniques or means to control the population. A new juridical order was emerging, as a new

civil code was promulgated in 1852, and the death penalty was abolished in 1856 by the

government of Ramón Castilla. The latter reform was part of a series of changes in penal

legislation since Independence intended to replace the severe punishments applied during

colonial times. The Protector San Martín, for example, had abolished punishment by lashes

soon after his Declaration of Independence, since “far from correcting [such punishment only]

strengthens the victim’s bond with crime, making him lose all sense of shame and self-

esteem.” 250 Republican penalties were to be applied not as measures of retaliation, but with the

aim to reform. Criminals would be reintegrated into society as productive members after a

period of confinement that would correct their deviant behaviors. In 1822, Monteagudo had

envisaged a jail that would be “a monument to philanthropy” and which would stand in stark

contrast to “those sepulchers for living men that carried the name of jails, where inmates were

submerged…because the maxims of the Holy Office served as models to all tribunals in Spain

250
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente (La Plata: Universidad Nacional de la Plata, 1950). Decree issued
on May 22, 1822. Peru’s first three constitutions allowed a moderate use of the capital law, but Congress did not
specify when it could be applied. Juan F. Olivo, ed., Constituciones Políticas del Perú, 1821-1919 (Lima: Imprenta
Torres Aguirre, 1922). See also Pedro L. Alvarez Ganoza, Orígen y trayectoria de la aplicación de la pena de
muerte en la historia del derecho peruano (Lima: Editorial Dorhca, 1974).

123
and its Colonies.” 251 Two years after the inauguration of the penitentiary, Senator Santisteban

expressed a similar sentiment in an argument against a proposal to reinstate the death penalty:

All the tendencies in philosophy and in the constitutions that are based on liberal
principles tend to make cease the empire of the executioner, to demolish the
gallows and to erect monuments to civilization to protect society. What would
that monument to culture, which has been erected in Lima with great sacrifices,
mean if the scaffold is maintained? 252

A civilized society could not maintain uncivilized ways to punish offenders. The

penitentiary was, therefore, a “monument” to the Republic that symbolized the triumph of

civilization over barbarism. This “monument” was intended for the consumption of the local

population as well as that of the rest of the world. It would serve to announce that Peru was part

of the civilized world, that it had left the inhumanity of colonial rule –let us now remember

Monteagudo’s words on the Inquisition—and its obscure tortures and scaffold. Paz Soldán

summarized this civilizing spirit after the inauguration of the institution:

This work has the highest importance. It will exert a moral influence on society,
it will be a monument that will honor those who have erected it forever… It will
give other nations a positive idea of our civilization, and it will be a warranty
against the wrongdoers and an effective way to contain their evil instincts,
without using the dreadful spectacle of the scaffold. It will not be necessary that
law, to preserve the existence of the social body against those who walked away
from the path of justice, use its sharp blade to make bleeding heads fall. Once
captured and taken to this office, where the reform of the moral being takes place,
they will be returned to society transformed into useful men. The law will thus
fulfill its high purposes using noble and humanitarian means. 253

“Silence, Obedience and Labor” Outside the Penitentiary’s Walls

As we have seen, early postcolonial efforts to “Peruvianize” public spaces, such the new

Plaza de la Constitución, included a reform of the popular use of public space. Monteagudo in

251
Bernardo Monteagudo, Esposición de las tareas administrativas del gobierno desde su instalación hasta el 15 de
Julio de 1822 (Lima: Imprenta de Manuel del Rio, 1822), 12.
252
Diario de debates del Congreso del año de 1864 (Lima: Imprenta de “El Comercio,” 1864).
253
Memoria que el Ministro de Gobierno, Policía y Obras Públicas presenta el Congreso Nacional de 1862 (Lima:
Imprenta de “La Epoca,” 1862), 39-40.

124
particular, actively attempted to transform and “moralize” the habits of Limeños, issuing decrees,

for instance, to regulate the ringing of church bells, 254 prohibit cockfights, 255 curb the use of

mourning dress, 256 determine where to bury corpses, 257 regulate theater players –who should not

offend “public morality”— as well as the audience –indecorous smokers would be punished with

a two month jail sentence— 258 and to transform “republicanized” Plazas by evicting street

vendors. 259 It was essential to rid Lima of the “abuses of the old regime,” for “war had to be

waged” not only against Spaniards but more importantly against “the vices of their reign.” 260

These efforts were resumed during the Guano era with greater vigor. Monteagudo was unable to

carry out his plan to cleanse the Plaza of vice. Indeed, in the mid-nineteenth century Lima’s

plazas hosted a multitude of vendors, water carriers with their donkeys –which drank from the

plaza’s fountain—and crowds of people from all walks of life, particulary on weekends and

holidays. 261 The Main Plaza was still unpaved and dusty. It was an open, chaotic space without

specific paths for the circulation of pedestrians, carriages, or horse and mule riders, it had no

“green areas” and no drainage canals. The buildings surrounding the plaza were irregular and,

according to contemporary descriptions, “indecorous.” By the Guano era, “intervention” in the

Plaza became a necessity, not only because it was the home of the national and municipal

governments but because it was now desirable that all urban spaces and bodies be regulated and

controlled (Figure 3-5).

254
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 465. Decree issued on May 21, 1822.
255
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 331. Decree issued on February 16, 1822.
256
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 267.
257
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 153. Decree issued on October 25, 1821.
258
Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 234.
259
Also see Colección de leyes, decretos y órdenes publicadas en el año de 1821 hasta el 31 de diciembre de 1830
(Lima: Imprenta de José Masías, 1831), 152.
260
See Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 331 and 465.
261
Max Radiguet wrote the most lively and eroticized description of Lima’s Plaza Mayor in 1841. See Max
Radiguet, Lima y la sociedad peruana (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, 1971) (1856).

125
 To transform the Plaza Mayor vendors had to be eradicated. In 1852, the Castilla regime

had built a Central Market to avoid crowd gatherings in all plazas in the city, and to make sure

food was managed and sold under sanitary conditions. A new slaughterhouse was also built

outside the city walls in 1855. Both the market and the slaughterhouse obeyed state-of-the-art

sanitary codes. Yankee traveler and antiquarian Ephraim George Squier described the market as

“better in many respects, and more commodious, than any now existing in New York,” and

recommended a visit to the slaughterhouse “if for no other reason than as showing how much

more neatly and efficiently the act of slaughtering the animals is accomplished than with us.” 262

The transformation of the Plaza was now possible, and by 1857, the Castilla

administration gave signs of its intention to transform the Plaza into a “boulevard or park as large

as the space allows” by commissioning the Italian architect José Tiravanti, who had arrived in

Lima in 1850 to draft the design. 263 Years later, in 1858, the Municipality designed a project to

pave the Plaza with stone slabs, create and fence green areas, and channel its irregular ditches.

The commission in charge of the project argued that:

Similar parks have been constructed in a number of cities in Europe and the
United States, with the aim to correct the air that flows rarefied in places where
population has concentrated, and where there is not sufficient space to let air
circulate freely…. Most houses, stores and commercial businesses gather around
that plaza, and they require wide and free space to operate. Furthermore, frequent
necessary troop concentrations take place in the Plaza for the celebration of civic
and religious festivities. 264

None of these projects were executed. The balconies surrounding the Main Plaza,

however, were made uniform that same year. 265 By 1863, an open contest for the remodeling of

262
George Squier, Peru illustrated or Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (New York:
Hurst and Company, 1877), 54-5.
263
AGN, OL, 403 Carta del Ministro de Gobierno, Culto y Obras Públicas al Ministro de Estado en el despacho de
Hacienda, May 13, 1857.
264
AHLM, Comisiones Especiales, Ornato.
265
Natalia Majluf, Escultura y espacio público. Lima, 1850-1879 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1994).

126
the Main Plaza was won by Francisco Pietrosanti. Pietrosanti’s proposal included paving of

white and black stones, a garden surrounding the fountain and protected by an iron gate, as well

as statues representing the four seasons, and ornamental vases for flowers guarded by more iron

fences. 266 Sixteen marble benches were included; clear paths for pedestrians signaled where to

stroll; the Plaza became a park for pedestrians, separated from surrounding streets, where

carriages and horses could now circulate. 267 Since a system of potable water was being gradually

implemented throughout the city, the water fountains in Lima’s plazas, including that in the

Plaza Mayor, began to disappear or became ornamental objects. 268 The remodeling gave the

Plaza Mayor a uniform, rigidly symmetric, regulated aspect, which clearly regulated the use of

the space. 269 Indeed, strollers were given indications about where to walk, where to direct their

gaze, where to sit; they would also know, of course, what not to do (Figure 3-6). This kind of

urban intervention was clearly aimed at regulating the population, promoting new uniform habits

to replace the disorderly crowds formerly found in the plazas. A newspaper editorial quoted by

Natalia Majluf highlights the importance of such a project for Limeño/Peruvian society: “to

standardize the customs is to establish the basis for peace and progress… The march of

civilization essentially tends to uniform the customs…” 270

Urban planning was also aimed at eradicating undesirable occupants from the streets,

especially those considered “vagrants” and whose “idleness” was now considered intolerable

under the republican order. Some spoke of a relationship between slaves and the manumitted

266
Ibid..
267
Syra Alvarez, Historia del mobiliario urbano de Lima, 1535-1935 (Lima: Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería,
2000).
268
In 1855, the Castilla administration signed a contract with the Empresa del Agua, which had to change the
existing clay piping system for a network of iron pipes. Works began in 1857. This allowed for some Limeños to
have running potable water in their houses. See, Syra Alvarez, Historia del mobiliario.
269
Natalia Majluf, Escultura y espacio público.
270
“Contacto de los pueblos,” El Progreso, July 28, 1849. Quoted by Natalia Majluf, Escultura y espacio público,
32.

127
population with idleness and crime. Representative Bieytes expressed those feelings in a

congressional debate on the proper ways to repress vagrancy: “Anyone can see thousands of

manumitted, who used to work in estates, surrendered to vagrancy, theft, scandal, and to life in

taverns…” 271 The republican order, and the liberal emphasis on work as the cornerstone of

national prosperity, required responsible, disciplined citizens and workers, and politicians and

reformers increasingly repudiated “idleness” as a cultural burden inherited from colonial times.

The Law for the Internal Organization of the Republic, issued on January 5, 1857, established

that all public functionaries must keep their poblaciones free of vagrants. A wide and ambiguous

definition of vagrancy was adopted:

Those who do not have a known trade or occupation, or an honest and known way
of life, those who have the habit of visiting gambling houses or who surrender
themselves to drunkenness, those sons who are supported by their parents or live
out of inherited goods and who live in idleness and abandonment… those who do
not have a known residence, those who, not having a physical impediment to have
an occupation dedicate themselves to beg, those workingmen and artisans who do
not work out of laziness or vice, and the beggars who do not have a license. 272

Idleness was criminalized and spoken about in a medical rhetoric, as a growing “cancer”

that had to be excised to maintain the health of the social body. The Minister of Public Works

and Police, Manuel Morales, expressed this view in a typical fashion:

I believe it is appropriate to call your attention toward a calamity society

experiments; a painful disease, and the leprosy of the social body, which swiftly
disseminates its unfortunate influence throughout the healthy part, and which
demands a prompt and efficient remedy. I am speaking about vagrancy, which is
the cause of most vices. The vagrant is a useless, onerous and pernicious member
of society, because he spends the time he should use in a profitable occupation, in
vices or crime, and he perverts others with his corrupting influence. The orgies of
the plebe –which are, almost always, promoted by the vagrants— are sources of
immorality and corruption, where crimes are planned, where distinguished

271
Cámara de Diputados 4 de marzo de 1861. Diario de Debates del Congreso Ordinario del año de 1860 (Lima:
Tipografía de “El Comercio,” 1861), 823.
272
Diccionario de la Legislación Municipal del Perú. Compuesto por Juan José Calle (Lima: Librería e Imprenta
Gil, 1910), 3, 281.

128
 criminals lecture the least expert, and from where the evildoers depart to all
directions to carry out their tenebrous plans. 273

Morales’s words were typical because they reflected the disciplinary aspects of the Lima

elite’s republican project but also because they were illustrative of a sociological diagnosis and

lexicon then in gestation. Sociological discourse conjured the subject of la plebe as an

identifiable sector of society which was to be named in the singular and described in clinical and

psychological terms. Politicians and social commentators developed a precise notion of “the

plebe.” “The plebe” had acquired laziness and dissipated habits during colonial times and these

had festered during the post-independence caudillo era. It was considered necessary to restrain

their “instinctive” impulses towards excess and debauchery and take measures to transform them

into self-disciplined, law-abiding citizens and reliable workers, and to firmly punish their

“immorality.”

Manuel Atanasio Fuentes was one of these civilizing sociologists who produced

“knowledge” about Lima’s population, and in particular la plebe, through detailed statistical and

prose discourses on, for instance, their leisure activities, hygiene habits, and physical and mental

illnesses. 274 All this “information” was explicitly created with the purpose of engineering and

administering the population. As Fuentes noted, “it would be dangerous to base administrative

measures on inaccurate and incomplete works… Careful, systematic statistics are an

indispensable requisite for good economic and administrative management in all branches of

public service.” 275 Fuentes reported on the “pernicious tendencies” and “primitive instincts” of la

plebe, which “needs to be energetically and vigorously contained within the limits of order and

273
Memoria que el Ministro de Estado en el Departamento de Obras Públicas y Policía presenta al Congreso
Ordinario de 1860 (Lima: Tipografía de Justo Montoya, 1860), 41-2.
274
The Central Council of Statistics was created in 1848.
275
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general, 32.

129
moderation.” 276 Such “containment” could be achieved through stricter regulations and penalties

against idleness and intemperance, state vigilance of public spaces, “education” and

indoctrination, in addition to the embodied pedagogy exercised by those vigilant “monuments”

of civilization discussed above.

To remedy “vagrancy,” the Decree of April 7, 1866 declared primary education

compulsory and established sanctions for parents, legal guardians, and employers who did not

provide for the education for their children, pupils, or servants, or who did not register and send

them to public schools. By July, 1873, stricter measures were taken against children who did not

attend school. They were to be interned in a boarding school on the navy frigate Apurímac,

placed in the Military School, or in the School of Agriculture. 277 Still, in 1876 the Minister of

Government, Aurelio García y García stated that “the effects of idleness and vagrancy are

unfortunate and increasing,” and so proposed a set of measures “to extirpate this sinister germ

that carries immorality and misfortunes to the Republic.” He would reduce the number of

holidays “which now account for almost one fourth of the civil year,” regulate religious

ceremonies in which there are “profane and licentious demonstrations for several days,” and

persecute “idle” people and vagrants “under all circumstances…creating a tax, though moderate,

to force even the most indolent individuals to work.” Other measures were aimed at “opening

attractive horizons to ambition” through education and for “promoting love of labor and

property” with the opening of state-funded industrial workshops. 278

Gambling was another detestable vice scheduled for eradication. As early as 1822

Monteagudo had reported on his efforts to rid Lima of gambling, emphasizing the colonial

276
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general, 601
277
Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República, vol. 8, 82.
278
Memoria del Ministro de Gobierno entregada el 4 de Agosto de 1876 (Lima: Imprenta de “El Comercio,” 1876),
88.

130
regime’s guilt for promoting it, and contrasting colonial permissiveness with republican

firmness. Interestingly, Monteagudo speaks of gambling in the past tense, as something the

republic had “already” resolved. At the same time, however, his speech indicated that the

problem was “not yet” eradicated and required the constant vigilance of the state. He referred to

gambling as “that abominable passion that used to conspire against all virtues, and which

enjoyed impunity and was even promoted by the government. It is persecuted today in an

inexorable way.” 279 By 1869, gambling was again a matter of public interest. Minister of

Government, Police and Public Works, Rafael Velarde, expressed anguish over the state’s

inability to control it in a letter to the Prefect of Lima: “the government knows that in spite of the

frequent regulations to prosecute gambling in this capital, there are several houses in which such

criminal livelihood is encouraged, causing terrible damage to society, perverting the youth and

ruining many fathers.” 280 Vagrancy and gambling were now expressions of the immorality of la

plebe that had to be surveilled. The National Guard created by Bolívar in 1825 was reorganized

successively in 1845, 1852, 1855, and 1873, not only because of differences among

administrations but as an expression of the perception that control of the population had not yet

been achieved. 281 After the 1873 reorganization, the newspaper El Guardia Nacional

editorialized that “freedom and order are the foundations for the edifice of the Republic. If one

of those foundations yields, the edifice collapses.” 282

The central state and the municipality of Lima became through direct hiring and tax

incentives the main sponsors of new activities such as opera, ballet, and mime. The perceived

279
Bernardo Monteagudo, Esposición de las tareas administrativas, 15-6. The decree prohibiting gambling was
issued on January 3, 1822. Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, 271.
280
Ministerio de Gobierno, Policía y Obras Públicas. Al prefecto del departamento de Lima, August 11, 1869.
Boletín oficial de leyes, decretos, resoluciones y oficios del gobierno. Segundo semestre de 1869 (Lima: Imprenta
del Estado), 129.
281
For a review of those reorganizations, see Rómulo Merino, Historia policial del Perú en la república (Lima:
Imprenta del Departamento de Prensa y Publicaciones de la Guardia Civil, n/d).
282
Ibid., 12.

131
need to promote such activities was so great that the Ministry of Public Works and Police, for

example, was placed in charge of the Teatro Principal, owned by the central government. A

1860 report by the Minister of Public Works and Police indicated the interest of the state in

promoting cultivated leisure activities among the masses. Theater would now acquire a

pedagogical mission: “Considering the degree of civilization and culture reached by this capital,

theater could not fulfill its important duties of educating and moralizing the pueblo, if the

government does not offer a special protection.”283 Peru’s central state would thus sponsor

cultural activity, regulate its content and functioning. In 1849 a new Code had been issued to

control theater activity, regulating its inspection, vigilance, protection, and promotion. The code

attempted to promote the taste for high culture and rid the population’s inclination towards

popular and spontaneous leisure activities. It allowed for the censorship of plays that could

“pervert the taste or fill the spectators with pieces indignant for a civilized pueblo.” It also

allowed the censorship of plays that could “excite passions or ideas that threaten public order,”

for plays should not transmit ideas contrary to the “moral and appropriate customs, the social

order and families or specific persons.” The reglamento also stated that a directive board would

be in charge of hiring the artists. National theater was also promoted with the establishment of

four annual prizes for “national” dramaturges. The code regulated the ways the public could

behave. Limeños should wear appropriate outfits when attending civilized spectacles, and the

audience should not promote public disorder or interrupt the performance of the artists. 284 By

1872 the municipality of Lima, now in charge of the regulation and promotion of theater,

released a Code of Municipal Police, which stated that municipal authorities could shut down

283
Memoria del Ministro de Estado en el Departamento de Obras Públicas y Policía presenta el Congreso
Ordinario de 1860 (Lima: Tipografía de Justo Montoya. 1860), 22.
284
El Peruano, February 1, 1849.

132
“any performance or entertainment” which contained “allegories, ornaments, or advertisements

that could excite, in special circumstances, passion or the disruption of public order.” 285

State or municipal sponsorship allowed Limeños to enjoy European cultural products.

Hiring artists or subsidizing opera, music concerts and recitals, and ballet presentations, the state

would help transmit “a sense of spirituality and embellishment” that would transform Limeños’

taste and morality. 286 Opera companies and divas from Italy, France, and the United States

enjoyed great success in Lima since 1846; concerts, ballets and mimes also acquired such

popularity that seasons were extended. Historian Jorge Basadre narrates anecdotal and

passionate confrontations between fans of different opera companies as well as popular agitation

(in crowds of two thousand people!) over the presence of a famous diva. 287

The state and the municipality also became involved in the formation of an intellectual

community through subsidies and scholarships, dedicating part of Guano revenues to promote

the production of national cultural products. As Francesca Denegri has commented, the state

became the most important sponsor of what was called the Peruvian Romantic Movement. 288

This sponsorship included sending art or literature students abroad to study, acquire experience

and cultivate their talents, on the condition of returning to Lima as professors or to open special

state schools or cultural institutions. 289 It also included hiring European artists and musicians to

285
“Policía Municipal, Reglamento. Expedido el 12 de Julio de 1872,” Legislación municipal. Leyes, resoluciones,
decretos, ordenanzas y reglamentos vigentes sobre municipalidades. Compilación publicada por el Honorable
Consejo Provincial de Lima. Siendo Alcalde el Señor General don Juan Martín Echenique (Lima: Imprenta de "El
Nacional", 1899), 224.
286
Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República. For a discussion on the importance of theater as an instrument for
civilization and political discussion between 1820 and 1828, see Mónica Ricketts, “El teatro en Lima: tribuna
política y termómetro de la civilización,” La independencia del Perú. De los Borbones a Bolívar, ed. Scarlett
O’Phellan (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2001), 429-453.
287
Jorge Basadre, Historia de la República.
288
Francesca Denegri, El abanico y la cigarrera: la primera generación de mujeres ilustradas en el Perú (Lima:
Flora Tristán e Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1996).
289
Painters Francisco Laso and Luis Montero, for instance, were sponsored by the Echenique administration to study
in Europe and to open a School of Arts in Lima after returning.

133
animate Limeño intellectual life and spread their skills and knowledge through state schools. 290

Most importantly, cultural developments could not be limited to upper class Limeños. Culture

should reach the masses through, for instance, retretas in paseos, parks and plazas in which the

musical bands of the military corps played, for instance, Viennese waltzes, pieces of opera, and

of course patriotic marches to uplift the crowds.

Education of the masses was also stressed and regulated during this period. As with other

social aspects, it was held that Spanish rule had promoted ignorance by neglecting the

development of education. 291 The Constitution of 1823 had declared that “education is a

common need, and the Republic must provide it equally to all of its individuals,” 292 but it was

only in 1850 that it was regulated. The first Reglamento stated that every parish should have free

schools, and include not only courses on grammar and mathematics, but “rules of practical

morality, including civic duties and urbanism.” 293 A more comprehensive Reglamento General

de Instrucción Pública was issued in 1855, elaborated by the intellectual collaborators of

Marshall Castilla, including the physician, philosopher, historian, and educator Sebastián

Lorente. The basic principle for the reglamento was the search for an integral education of the

individual, with the goal of “moral, intellectual, aesthetic, and physical” perfection. It

established schools for infants to care for poor children between 3 and 6 years of age, and created

schools for “Popular Education” which were free and compulsory. Parents, legal guardians, and

290
Such was the case of Genoese violinist Claudio Rebagliati, who arrived in Lima in 1863. Rebagliati had studied
with Paganini and had acquired fame as a child prodigy in Italy before crossing the Atlantic. He founded and
directed the Sociedad Filarmónica de Lima, restored Peru’s national anthem, and composed the Rapsodia Peruana
28 de Julio in 1868.
291
The Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente comments that “the general ignorance that the Spanish
government has maintained in America has been a tremendous act of tyranny.” Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima
Independiente, 279.
292
Constitución Política de la República Peruana, art.181. Valcárcel, Carlos, Breve Historia de la Educación
Peruana (Lima: Editorial Educación, 1975).
293
Alberto Regal, Castilla educador; la instrucción pública durante los gobiernos de Castilla (Lima: Instituto
Libertador Ramón Castilla, 1968), 66-67.

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employers were obliged to “send” children, pupils, and employees under 14 to school. Children

would receive “moral education, which has the foundation of religion, and is aimed at inspiring

piety and love towards the Patria, fraternity for all races, respect to laws and customs,

truthfulness, personal dignity, firmness of character, the habits of work the good use of time, and

the purity of sentiments.” The reglamento also included “aesthetic” education to develop “the

sentiments of what is beautiful,” as well as physical education. 294 It was an education in

republicanism, with its emphasis upon the formation of virtuous citizens acting in public on

behalf of the common good.

The emphasis of the reglamento on physical education was part of a larger project to

discipline Limeño bodies and regulate hygiene habits. Lower class boys between three and six

years of age would receive instruction in “physical education and pious practices” before

reaching primary school. Starting in 1864, private schools also included physical education in

their curricula. 295 Educación física courses included exercises, as well as lessons on hygiene at

home and proper habits to sit, walk, and eat. Sebastián Lorente and Manuel Atanasio Fuentes,

two of Lima’s most important intellectuals, were rivals in many respects, but they agreed on the

importance of “private hygiene.” Both wrote hygiene manuals that were profusely distributed in

public schools. Fuentes’ book highlights the importance of hygiene in education: “This precious

art should be part of education… as early as primary school. There should be hygiene books

suitable for the students’ age and intelligence. The same efforts should be made in factories,

workshops, and farms, where the ignorance of the rules to preserve the gift of health causes so

much destruction.” 296 The hygienist impulse, however, was not limited to schoolboy lessons.

Politicians, intellectuals, and doctors all shared a preoccupation with Lima’s “stagnant”

294
Ibid., 92.
295
Alberto Cajas, Historia de la educación física en el Perú (Lima: Imprenta Gil Armas, 1957), 66.
296
Manuel Fuentes, Elementos de higiene privada (Lima: Tipografía Nacional de M.N. Corpancho, 1859), 5.

135
population and poor hygiene habits, both in public and private spaces. Fuentes, for instance,

believed that Lima’s insalubrities produced dysentery and other illnesses that decimated a

population “that thinks little about its health,” and he “complained about the indecent and

harmful habit of satisfying certain needs on the street.” 297 The concerns about an alleged

demographic problem in Lima dovetailed with conceptions about public space discussed above.

Bad hygiene habits not only threatened the general welfare of the city; they were unpatriotic and

anti-republican.

By 1856 the central government allowed for sanitary inspections in private residences “in

order to systematize public hygiene in the country.” 298 The sanitary conditions of private

residences were now a matter of national interest. If public space had been defined as “sacred”

because it belonged to the nation, the preoccupation for la plebe’s habits started to erase the

notion of a private sphere. The Municipality of Lima also launched a program of domiciliary

visits in 1868, in part as a response to a Yellow Fever epidemic. Even if the official decrees did

not target a specific segment of society, they inevitably generated reports only about the

residences of poor Limeños. Doctors reported on the overcrowding among poor in precarious

houses, the ventilation and illumination of rooms, the way people kept animals in their homes,

and habits of dress; all of these were depicted in a language of repugnance. 299 The inspectors

were authorized to fumigate houses and to remove the infirm to the Lazaretto (Leprosary) with

or without the family’s consent. 300

La plebe occupied a place in the minds of elites similar to that granted to el indio –also in

the singular and the masculine gender. Both were seen as legacies of backward Spanish

297
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general, 66.
298
“Decreto Oficial,” La gaceta médica de Lima, 1, no. 7 (1856): 7.
299
AHML, Serie Higiene y Vacuna 1857-1884.
300
José María Zapater, “Visitas domiciliarias,” El Comercio, Jun 6, 1868; Mariano Arosamena, “De las
habitaciones,” La gaceta médica de Lima, 1, no. 10 (1856): 8-9.

136
colonialism. It was the republican elite’s sacred and secular duty to bring the urban plebe and

the Indian to contemporaneity, to make full them into citizens of the Republic. Both were

imaginary groups allegedly still imprisoned in the dark mental and cultural dungeons of Spanish

colonialism, living not yets that served to create the narcissistic self-perception that elites were

already coeval with the civilized community. One difference between “the Indian” and “the

Plebe” was proximity, such that la plebe was in effect more dangerous to elites. La plebe lived

within the confines of a city that had not yet developed a pattern of neighborhoods differentiated

by class.

The moralización of la plebe was also to be accomplished through the creation of schools

of arts and trades. The 1855 reglamento stated that such schools were intended to offer “a

careful education and theoretical and practical education on blacksmithing, carpentry, tailoring,

shoemaking, and other common arts.” 301 These schools were aimed at “turning artisans into the

ideal hardworking citizens of a liberal republic,” 302 and at providing a trained labor force to meet

the city’s emerging industrial and public works demands. By 1860 president Castilla ordered the

opening of the first such school in Lima. It was inaugurated in 1864 in the old Colegio Real with

the presence of the liberal Argentine intellectual Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who gave one of

the inaugural speeches. Sarmiento synthesized the objectives of the institution. Peru needed the

“development, through education, of the abilities of the greatest number of people for the

creation and increase of wealth.” Spanish colonialism had been unproductive because it had

sought the rapid wealth of Peru’s gold and silver. It was now the charge of the Arts and Trades

School to provide the appropriate technical education for the creation of lasting wealth, which in

turn would mean a new independence. “The School of Arts and Trades is the corollary to the

301
Ibid., 94.
302
Iñigo García-Bryce, Crafting the Republic; Lima’s Artisans and Nation Building in Peru, 1821-1879
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004), 73.

137
Battle of Ayacucho…” 303 The spirit of a new independence was expressed in a different way by

Director Julio Jarrier, who highlighted the fact that the school was directly aimed at moralizing

la plebe, since “labor, that fecund and immense source of morality for all classes of society, is

more so for the ones who are not privileged by fortune.” 304

The Arts and Trades School opened with a teaching faculty hired in France. The School

offered scholarships to the hijos del pueblo (sons of the People) after being examined on the

subjects of religion, grammar, and arithmetic. 305 By 1872 the school had workshops in

mechanics, blacksmithing, carpentry, and locksmithing, and a repair shop for carriages. The

importance of the School was summarized by chronicler Juan Ezeta, who praised it for

promoting the arts, which “are one of the sources of history, and one of the foundations for

morality, because they snatch the pueblo from the mud of vice.” 306 Iñigo García-Bryce

concluded that the School trained students to conform to virtuous behavior within and without its

facilities, and that such behavior included order, silence, and cleanliness. 307 Mariano Felipe Paz

Soldán would have been pleased, for the principles expressed in his penitentiary motto had now

found a secure place in the education of the extramural population.

Some private efforts would also have the same goals. The Sociedad de Amantes del

Saber (Society for the Love of Knowledge), created in 1856, for instance, was a group of upper-

class Limeño volunteers who gave free lessons in calculus, geography, grammar, geometry,

French, English, and conduct for the education of “el pueblo and for its intellectual, moral, and

material progress.” 308 Its 1873 internal reglamento stated that members were obliged to teach a

303
Ibid., 72.
304
“Escuela de Artes y Oficios,” El Comercio, December 10, 1864.
305
An advertisement published in the daily La Patria, in 1873, announces those requirements for the applicants. La
Patria, April 23, 1873.
306
Juan Ezeta, “Escuela de Artes y Oficios,” La Patria, April 14, 1872.
307
Iñigo García-Bryce, Crafting the Republic, 83.
308
El hijo del pueblo, March 26, 1864.

138
minimum of thirty hours a year, and to contribute money to the same end. The Society included

illustrious members of Limeño society, including Manuel Pardo, future President of Peru,

Manuel de Mendiburu (the historian and biographer), Henry Meiggs (the Yankee businessman

and engineer), and Francisco González Vigil (a radical priest known for his republican

“catechisms”). 309 A Sociedad Filotécnica was also founded in 1856 to disseminate scientific

knowledge through “educación popular.” Its members taught Sunday classes on algebra,

physics, chemistry, economics, industry, and hygiene.

Other instruments for the education of the masses included public clocks. Clocks were

installed in Peru’s largest cities in the 1850s and 1860s. 310 While clocks had been important

during late colonial times, when they were located in church towers, they now acquired

republican connotations. In 1874 Mayor Aurelio Denegri ordered that “all public clocks in Lima

must synchronize with the clock of the municipality, and the time that the latter shows will be

regarded as the legal time of this city.” 311 Limeños should internalize the rhythm of the clock if

they were to become citizens of contemporary, “homogenous time,” and if they were to become

the reliable workers required by industrial capitalism. 312 La plebe would become el pueblo, that

is, citizens/proletarians, with a regulated conception of time that was in synch with the universal

demands of capital.

A National Exposition in the International Time of Capital

Lima’s claim to modern coevalness or contemporaneity would be one of the central

themes of its first Universal Exposition. To no one’s surprise, the Exposition would feature a

309
Reglamento de la Sociedad de Amantes del Saber (Lima: Imprenta de El Nacional, 1871); Nuevo Reglamento de
la Sociedad de Amantes del Saber (Lima: Imprenta de Francisco Solís, 1873).
310
Natalia Majluf, Escultura y espacio público, 12.
311
Diccionario de la Legislación Municipal del Perú. Compuesto por Juan José Calle (Librería e Imprenta Gil,
1910), vol. IV, 152.
312
English historian E. Thompson has analyzed the importance of the imposition and internalization of a new
discipline of time for the development of industrial capitalism. Edward Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and
Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, no. 38 (1967): 56-97.

139
monumental clock as one of its central attractions. Peru’s 1872 National Exposition was

modeled after the great Universal Exhibitions of the nineteenth century. The decree signed by

President José Balta in 1869 stated that the Exposition would “promote national work and

industry and make Peru’s natural riches known” to the world, and therefore it should exhibit

natural, agricultural, and manufactured products, as well as “plants and animals of all kinds, both

native to the Republic or imported from abroad and acclimatized in it.” It should also host a

“public competition for models, machinery, useful plants and animals.” 313 In truth the Exposition

of 1872 was Peru’s second such exposition. A previous industrial exhibition had been held at the

School of Arts and Trades in 1869. In that exhibition a large number of products from the

school’s workshops and those of the penitentiary had been presented along with agricultural

products and zoological and botanical specimens from Lima’s Botanical Garden. 314 Balta’s

exposition would be more grandiose, for the President was a faithful believer in the idea that the

future of the country depended on the development of infrastructure and technology. Balta’s

speech to the 1869 closing ceremony of Congress expressed this devotion

When I speak about public works, gentlemen, my heart stretches. They are the
path towards the country’s happiness and for the future of the upcoming
generations. Public works are the wealth, the comfort, and the means for any
country. For us, however, they are the salvation, morality, the triumph or order
and of all the elements of prosperity. The union of the country, the peace, the
population, and all of our problems are to be solved this Providential solution.
That is why the government values it; that is why it promotes research, removes
all obstacles, stimulates all desires, and attracts all capitals. 315

For the exposition to express such a spirit, a great compound of 192 thousand square

meters (2077000 square feet, or forty-eight square acres) was constructed on ex-hacienda land

313
Decree issued on August 2, 1869. Boletín oficial de leyes, decretos, resoluciones y oficios del Gobierno, Segundo
semestre de 1869 (Lima: Imprenta del Estado, 1869), 95
314
Iñigo García-Bryce, Crafting the Republic, 95-8.
315
“Mensaje del Presidente de la República, José Balta, al Congreso Constitucional. 28 de enero de 1869,” Mensajes
de los Presidentes del Perú. Recopilación y notas por Pedro Ugarteche y Evaristo San Cristóval. Vol. 1. 1821-1867.
(Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1943), 1288-1289.

140
that became accessible after the demolition of the city walls. The Parque de la Exposición

included a main “palace” and a number of pavilions of different shapes and sizes. It also

included the Machinery Building, a horse stable, a concert hall for 250 people, a theater, the

President’s Pavilion –also known as the Venetian Pavilion— and “Gothic,” “Moorish,”

“Chinese” and “Byzantine” pavilions, a green house for tropical plants, a restaurant, a cafeteria, a

pond for boats with a “Japanese bridge,” and others for fish, birds, and turtles, all surrounded by

elegant gardens. A fountain crowned with a statue of Hercules, and an Arch of Triumph that

displayed Peru’s national seal and which was crowned by a statue of liberty, completed the park.

The compound sported a picturesque environment, evoking different epochs, civilizations, and

styles in an eclectic, and romantic way. The carefully designed “natural” landscape combined

with the exotic architecture of the pavilions produced a sensorial and sensual experience of

orientalist appropriation, and modern, imperial fantasy of universality devoid of colonial anxiety

or guilt. In short, the world’s imaginary past, present and future was now “contained” in an

alluring paseo for Limeños (Figures 3-7 through 3-12).

The palacio was designed by Italian architect Antonio Leonardi, 316 and built in a neo-

Renaissance style, with iron columns imported from Europe, which supported wooden beams.

The Palace had marble tiles for the floor and its doors and windows, according to architect

García Bryce, were inspired by the Vendramin Palace in Venice. 317 The combination of metal

structures and neo-Renaissance or neo-Gothic façades was by now commonplace in train stations

and exposition pavilions around the world. The palace interior was decorated with furniture and

curtains brought from France by Peru’s ambassador, Luis Albertini. 318

316
According to Héctor Velarde, the Franco-Prussian war of the 1870s diminished French architectural influence in
Peru. Italian architects were hired in stead. Héctor Velarde, Arquitectura Peruana (Lima: Studium, 1978).
317
José García Bryce, “Aspectos de la arquitectura en Lima, 1850-1880,” Kuntur. Perú en la cultura, 4 (1987).
318
Roberto Vértiz, Pedro Ruiz Gallo; una vida consagrada al Perú (Lima: CONCYTEC, 1994), 228.

141
 The organizer of the exposition was Manuel Atanasio Fuentes. It exhibited a wide array

of industrial, agricultural, mineral, and artistic objects from Peru and abroad –Bolivia, Belgium,

Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Persia, Scotland,

Switzerland, and the United States—for three months. Foreign exhibitors applied to Peru’s

consular agents, and received “liberal concessions” to transport articles to Callao. The Peruvian

government covered the expense of transport to Lima, as well as the distribution and placing of

all articles, and the keeping and feeding of animals. The government would award special prizes

to foreigners who introduced innovations applicable to Peru’s industries. 319

Apart from “Peruvian” industrial products and machinery that exemplified the scientific

and industrial development of the country, there were paintings by Francisco Lazo –Santa Rosa

de Lima— and Luis Montero –Funerales de Atahualpa— along with pre-Hispanic mummies,

archaeological and “ethnographic” objects from different parts of the country, including clothing,

bows and arrows, paddles, stone axes, and masks. Allusions to history and to “Indians”

produced a contrast with the building’s decorations and the technology exhibited. The effect was

one of an explicit “denial of coevalness” for “savage” Indians that made them anthropological

objects of study, thereby reinforcing the symbolic rule of the modern time of capital.

The initial budget for the Exposition was 250000 soles for a construction project that was

to take eight months. 320 The park was built in thirty months and the entire exposition, according

to the Minister of Government Francisco Rosas, required a total 2073709 sols. 321 The expenses

were approved by Congress, after a debate that was almost identical to those over the

319
“The Peruvian Exposition,” The New York Times, May 10, 1871.
320
Rosas reported that the Exposition had cost 1,784,620 soles, with additional expenses of 289,089 soles, which did
not include maintenance costs. Boletín oficial de leyes, decretos, resoluciones y oficios del Gobierno, Segundo
semestre de 1869 (Lima: Imprenta del Estado, 1869), 95.
321
Memoria de el Ministro de Gobierno, 1874, (Lima: Imprenta del Estado, 1875).

142
Government Palace and the Botanical Garden. Representative Navarro, for instance, reasoned

that:

With regards to the Exposition Palace, it is a monument that not only will honor
Peru; it will also make it known around the world. All the civilized countries
compete at exhibiting artifacts and products of all kinds, building those palaces…
Economizing in works of this kind speaks very little of the culture of a country. 322

One of the main attractions of the Exposition was the monumental clock made by the

master sergeant, artisan and inventor Pedro Ruiz Gallo (Figure 3-13). Being a humble, self-

taught man, Ruiz Gallo spent six years building his clock. Part of that time was spent in petitions

for support for his endeavor to authorities, private citizens, and the general public. It was a

complex machinery that marked the hours, days, months, seasons, years, and centuries, as well as

the Moon’s phases and the Sun’s course in the heavens. At five o’clock in the morning it

displayed the raising of the national flag while playing the national anthem; the flag was lowered

at six in the afternoon. 323 Every hour, the clock also displayed a painting representing a scene of

Peru’s history. The first painting depicted Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo founding the Inca

Empire after rising from the waters of Lake Titicaca. The second painting represented the Inca

Empire’s grandeur, with the last great Inca Huayna Capac and the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco.

The third represented the valley of Cajamarca and the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, which

was the natural setting of the fourth painting, which in turn depicted Inca Atahualpa’s capture

and Pizarro’s troops killing Indians in Cajamarca’s plaza, in what Ruiz Gallo described as “an

abominable butchery.” 324 The fifth painting was a reference to the Inca Prince Cahuide’s efforts

to defend Sacsayhuaman’s fortress against invading Spaniards. Painting six represented the Inca

322
Diario de los debates, Tomo II que contiene las sesiones de la prórroga del Congreso Ordinario de 1870,
Cámara de Diputados, 3 de enero de 1871. Debate sobre partidas al ejecutivo, 290.
323
According to Hutchinson, it also played “the more popular air 2 de Mayo.” Thomas Hutchinson, Two Years in
Peru, with Exploration of Its Antiquities (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1873), 341.
324
Pedro Ruiz Gallo, “Descripción de la maquinaria del reloj construido por el que suscribe,” December 29, 1870,
reproduced in Roberto Vértiz, Pedro Ruiz Gallo, 213-14.

143
Tupac Amaru’s execution in Cuzco in 1572 at the hands of the Spanish Viceroy Francisco

Toledo. The seventh painting depicted the capture by patriots of the Spanish frigate Esmeralda

on the coast of Callao in 1820. Picture eight depicted the Declaration of Independence in Lima

in 1821. The ninth was a depiction of the Battle of Junín in 1824, while the tenth painting

represented the decisive Battle of Ayacucho, also in 1824. The eleventh painting was a depiction

of the May 2 battle of 1866. Finally, the last painting was dedicated to the Balta administration,

which had sponsored the final stage of the project. President Balta appeared in front of a map of

Peru in which several of his public works projects appeared. 325

Ruiz Gallo’s clock had multiple and related symbolic connotations. Its location in the

Universal Exposition marked the secularization and synchronization of Peru’s time with that of

the universe. Its paintings composed a national historical narrative of a glorious precolonial era

followed by a sanguinary and illegitimate colonial rule which, however, was resisted and

successively overthrown (moreover, the reference to the Battle of May 2 alluded to a recent

Independence). After this tragic, but epic history, the final painting represented the culmination

of history in a rational administration that was building the necessary infrastructure for Peru’s

future: the nation’s entrance into the universal age of capital.

At The Same Time: The Time of the Nation and the Time of Capital

By the end of the guano period, Lima had experienced unprecedented changes. The old

colonial walls were demolished starting in January 1870, opening new spaces for the city’s

expansion, following the French model of wide thoroughfares. 326 The Dos de Mayo monument

and the National Exposition compound were the first large architectural projects outside of what

325
Unfortunately, the paintings and Ruiz Gallo’s clock have not survived and their descriptions are not detailed. We
have followed Ruiz Gallo’s own description, which is found in Roberto Vértiz, Roberto, Pedro Ruiz Gallo, 208-215.
326
U.S. entrepreneur Henry Meiggs was in charge of the demolition, using equipment imported from the United
States and employing, at one time, as much as fifteen hundred workers. Watt Steward, Henry Meiggs, Yankee
Pizarro (Durham: Duke University Press, 1946), 228.

144
had been the walled colonial city. Planners imagined a city rounded by “wide boulevards that

focused theatrically on historic monuments.” 327 A new, orderly metropolis could now be

created. An industrial area on the road to Callao, a working class neighborhood in an area

adjacent to the city, sanitized neighborhoods for the forming clase obrera, 328 and comfortable

neighborhoods in the newly opened southern end of Lima would now contribute to the making of

a socially segregated and policed city. The city had also started to channel its haphazard ditches,

and it installed a system of potable water. Limeños were enjoying new sights as state-or-the art

gas lanterns were introduced in 1855 329 and now illuminated the streets, plazas, public buildings,

and private homes. Lima now had several secular shrines: monuments, paseos, and buildings that

were landmark expressions of an epistemological break with the colonial past. Lima’s civic

character now included clocks, fountains, benches, lamps and domesticated nature.

The times were a-changing for a capital city whose cultural and material renovation

during the second half of the nineteenth century was marked by the political and economic need

to forge a modern state capable of establishing order and social control over the population,

particularly the urban plebe, whose habits were considered as remnants of the colonial past. La

plebe had to be Peruvianized/universalized as much as Lima. New buildings, such as the

Penitentiary and the Exposition Palace served as living monuments to the fact that the time of the

327
Spiro Kostof, “His Majesty the Pick; the Aesthetics of Demolition,” in Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public
Space, ed. Zeynep Çelik, Diane Favro and Richard Ingersoll (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994).
328
President Balta authorized the creation of the working class neighborhood of La Victoria in the early 1870s, but it
was only developed since 1896. See: Aldo Panfichi, “Urbanización temprana de Lima,” Mundos Interiores. Lima
1850-1950, ed. Aldo, Panfichi, and Felipe Portocarrero (Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, 1998); Gabriel Ramón, “El
guión de la cirugía urbana: Lima 1850-1940,” Ensayos en Ciencias Sociales (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad
de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2004).
329
The act of inauguration of the system was considered one of the most significant steps towards progress in the
city of Lima. A newspaper report stated that “the view of the Plaza was beautiful and extremely flattering to the eye;
the joy and awe ignited the faces of those who were lit by the silver rays; a deaf murmur of pleasure circulated
among all groups: it looked as a nocturnal festivity lit by the moonlight… from that moment it was impossible to
distinguish between the light brought from the skies by the hand of God, and the light created by man’s
intelligence.” El Comercio, March 7, 1855.

145
churches and royal edifices had come to an end, and that Limeños now lived under the modern

empire of the time of the republic and capital.

At once, nationalist elites affirmed both the “already” modern and they denied coevalness

to the “inadequate,” “excessive,” subaltern subjects named la plebe, el indio, and los pueblos,

leaving them in the “waiting room” of history, in an ambiguous “not yet” that elites were to

transcend so as to bring subalterns into the time of the nation and capital, and thus maintain their

ascendance. 330 The transformations of Lima inscribed in the city a narrative of a radical rupture

that allowed the nation to enter the secular, homogeneous time of history and, at the same time,

of abstract labor.

330
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000).

146
Figure 3-1. Paz Soldán’s blueprint for the Penitentiary

Figure 3-2. Commemorative coins for the inauguration of the penitentiary (1862)

147
Figure 3-3. Penitentiary’s façade

148
Figure 3-4. Radial Pavillion in Lima Penitentiary

Figure 3-5. Unreformed Plaza Mayor, 1860

149
Figure 3-6. Reformed Plaza Mayor, 1872

Figure 3-7. Exposition Compound under construction, 1871.

150
Figure 3-8. Exposition Park under construction, 1871

Figure 3-9. Presidential “kiosk,” Exposition Compound

151
Figure 3-10. Presidential kiosk – postcard

Figure 3-11. “Bizantine” Pavilion

152
Figure 3-12. Bizantine Pavillion (later used as headquarters for Zoo)

Figure 3-13. Pedro Ruiz Gallo’s Clock

153
 CHAPTER 4
“ETHNIC THERAPEUTICS”: THE APPEARANCE OF RACE IN SOCIOLOGICAL
THOUGHT AFTER THE WAR OF THE PACIFIC

Oh! The ones who will come, with a stick over the shoulder
Armed with a hammer or a plow
To turn debris into houses,
And to give social spirit to populations!
I name you with joy and emotion!
Hail, demolishers of the past!
Hail, conquerors of the present!
And, Hail, oh Fathers of the rising Peru!

In 1891, lawyer, poet and philologist Pedro Paz Soldán y Unánue, nephew of Mariano

Felipe and Mateo Paz Soldán, and grandson of Hipólito Unánue, wrote a long essay in which he

argued that Peru’s future depended upon a massive immigration of white Europeans. Writing

under the literary pseudonym of Juan de Arona, Paz Soldán had previously written about Peru’s

“barren” and “languid” environment as the principal cause, of a lethargic, drowsy, and indolent

character, and of a lack of aesthetic and emotional sensibility among Peruvians. Arona

synecdochally reduced Peru’s geography to that of Lima’s surrounding deserts, which he

described as “lands that seem to have been disinherited of all charms of nature,” 331 and he argued

that such infertile topography could only generate unproductive individuals devoid of “energy”

and “originality.” It was a “dusty and dry soil” in which “man is half-buried since birth.” In his

Diccionario de Peruanismos (1884) Arona observed that Peruvian (Limeño) speech was

characterized by paucity, since they always “preferred vulgar words to learned ones,” had a

limited vocabulary, and in any case used it improperly. The physical environment also had the

effect of reducing the number of terms Peruvians used, for they only needed two words to

describe it: “sand and willows.” 332 There were other historical causes for the Peruvian’s cultural

331
Juan de Arona, Diccionario de peruanismos. Ensayo filológico (Lima: Librería Francesa Científica Garland,
1883), 31-2.
332
Juan de Arona, Diccionario, xlix.

154
poverty, however. Spanish conquistadors “did not bring the tools and utensils for labor and

farming, but only the arms for conquest and the arsenal needed for devastation.” 333 Moreover,

colonial society had promoted only mediocrity and a general tendency to idleness. In short,

Peruvians lived frugal and uneventful lives and so a limited vocabulary was all that was needed.

Since Independence things had scarcely improved, however. Peru’s mortal enemy was none

other than the Peruvian himself, especially the Peruvian invested with authority, for “nothing

does more to make progress impossible here than Public Power.” 334 The long list of postcolonial

revolutions also contributed to a society characterized by a “lack of everything.” 335 Peru’s

environment and history had allied to create a society without hope. Only the immigration of

white Europeans could save the country: “only then will our endemic sickness that is

degenerating us into dissolution and which will produce our death if we do not inoculate new

elements, start to be modified.” 336

Juan de Arona was by no means the first Peruvian to raise his voice to promote European

immigration as a solution to the nation’s social and economic maladies. As early as 1835,

several administrations had attempted to attract Europeans. These projects defined desired

immigrants as “whites” who would populate a territory that was imagined as empty and with

enormous potential, and they followed immigration policies in Argentina, Canada, and the

United States. For example, Manuel Pardo, a wealthy Limeño educated in France and who

would later become president of Peru, was acutely concerned with immigration during the Guano

Age (1840s-70s). In one of his many articles on the topic published in La Revista de Lima,

Pardo argued that

333
Juan de Arona, La inmigración en el Perú. Monografía histórico-crítica (Lima: Editorial e Imprenta Enrique
Lulli, 1971), 39. (1891).
334
Juan de Arona, La inmigración en el Perú, 30.
335
Juan de Arona, Diccionario, lii.
336
Juan de Arona, La inmigración, 30.

155
 Education and the moral improvement of the peoples, especially of American
peoples, must not come from books or doctrines: the moral regeneration of the
people, as Alberti has stated, is not a plant that reproduces from a seed, but one
that needs to be transplanted so that it may propagate. Our peoples urgently need
habits of morality, order, love of work, and respect for the law and the
authorities…but these habits and sentiments are not promoted by laws and books,
political parties or primary schools. All the bibles that a representative of the
Republic may wish to give out to the pueblos of Peru will not inspire the religious
and moral sentiments that immigration will. 337

Many other intellectuals of the Guano Age had expressed a similar faith: Peru needed a

larger population and it was most convenient to “import” Europeans. José Antonio de Lavalle

had argued in 1859 that “nothing is more convenient that the introduction of Europeans.

Intelligence, civilization, strength, energy, and physical beauty are all possessed by them… Let

us attempt to make the white element predominant in Peru and to make its population grow with

able, intelligent, cultured and civilized inhabitants.” 338 Peru’s early immigration hopes,

however, had miserably failed to replicate the experiences of Canada, the United States, Brazil,

or Argentina. Few Europeans found it attractive to come to Peru to “hacer la America” (get rich

in America) and the few who arrived discovered that the eye-catching incentives promised by the

Peruvian state where nowhere to be found. During the Guano Age, Limeños had placed their

hopes on Europe to solve the scarcity of labor in coastal areas, 339 as a remedy for “the

backwardness of the arts in Peru” 340 –European engineers, architects, educators, musicians,

botanists, and gardeners had been hired and brought to Peru by the state to plan and execute

works and to staff educational institutions— and to populate and develop the Amazon basin. 341

The Peruvian state had also granted scholarships for graduate studies in Europe to talented

337
Manuel Pardo, La revista de Lima, vol. II, 103.
338
José Antonio Lavalle, La revista de Lima, vol. I, 808-9.
339
58 Basque families arrived in 1860 to work in the Coastal hacienda Talambo.
340
1835 Supreme Decree to promote immigration to Peru, Juan de Arona, La inmigración, 49.
341
296 Tyrolese immigrants arrived to form the colony of Pozuzo, in the central Amazon Basin in 1857. 315
Germans colonized Oxapampa in 1868. Around 300 Italians were introduced to the Chanchamayo Valley in 1873.
See Luis Gálvez, “La colonización alemana en el Perú,” Boletin del Ministerio de Fomento, II, no. 3 (1904); Alfredo
Saccheti, “Inmigrantes para el Perú,” Boletin del Ministerio de Fomento, III, no. 4 (1905).

156
Peruvian students, and had commissioned professionals to “inspect” European and U.S.

institutions as possible “models” for similar ones to be established in Peru.

Elites had also constructed notions of the “races” that inhabited Peru. In particular, they

had created a postcolonial notion of “the Indian” as an apathetic, submissive, and “miserable

race” that had been degraded by Spanish colonialism, and which did not have the energy to

“redeem himself,” and which had to be brought into contemporaneity by paternalist elites

through the liberal removal of the remaining colonial institutions and cultural traits. 342 Mid-

nineteenth century elites had also constructed notions of el negro as a being dominated by “his

instincts” but ultimately redeemable through education and proper example. The immigration of

Africans, however, was no longer acceptable. In 1868, entrepreneur Juan Lagrele made a formal

request to bring indentured African workers for agriculture. Both the Supreme Court’s

prosecutor and the Ministry of Foreign Relations denied the request, reasoning that “although the

Republic has its doors open to allow the entrance of any foreigner who possesses moral

habits…the government cannot grant special protection to African immigrants, whose customs

and personal conditions are not convenient for the country.” 343 Elites believed it was their duty

to uplift or moralize el negro –that is, the population of African descent that was now part of the

national community—but did not want newcomers from Africa. Racial conceptions were

flexible, as intellectuals shared faith in the civilizing power of a progress that could be achieved

in the comprehensive restructuring of society. For example, Pardo argued that railroads would

make a “moral and intellectual revolution on the backward masses that form the bulk of our

population… granting mobility to those men who live and die immobile as stones… Only by

improving their conditions will these men absorb principles of personal dignity and

342
For a discussion on the postcolonial construction of the Indian, see Efrain Kristal, The Andes Viewed from the
City: History and Political Discourse on the Indian in Peru, 1848-1930 (New York: Peter Lang, 1987).
343
El Peruano, September 21, 1869.

157
independence.” 344 Other intellectuals argued that the removal of “colonial institutions” such as

rural gamonalismo (local bossism or paternalism of landowners, which was actually a

postcolonial invention that followed upon the dissolution of more formal structures of colonial

rule in the countryside) and “the indigenous community” would liberate Indians, promoting a

sense of individuality by introducing a notion of private property that would allow them to be

full participants in economic and civic life. In short, el indio and el negro could be uplifted from

their backward, miserable condition by removing the surviving “barriers to progress” implanted

by Spanish colonialism.

Romantics like the painter Francisco Laso could find beauty in Lima’s multicolored

society however, which he vividly described in 1859 as a “beautiful mixture.” Laso wrote that

“when I see so many different physiognomies mixed together, and when I pay attention to the

immensurable variety of colors, I cannot help but compare the reunion of Peruvians to the artist’s

palette, richly adorned with abundant colors and the most diverse shades.” 345 Laso also held that

“man” was not constituted by skin but by “form, intelligence, and heart.” As a result, the “dark

castes” required only a certain cultivation so that Peru should possess “an abundance of perfect

beings.” 346 Bad governments and not bad people driven by base instincts were to be blamed for

the “excesses” of Lima’s plebeian cholos and negros. 347 Laso’s poetic description of Lima was

echoed by Manuel Atanasio Fuentes who compared Lima’s population to a multicolored “field

of flowers,” “neither uniform nor monotonous, nor tiring to the senses.” If Lima’s “garden”

were composed only of “white flowers” it would offer a “monotonous sameness, tiring to the

344
Manuel Pardo, “Estudio sobre la provincial de Jauja,” La revista de Lima, vol. I, 391.
345
Francisco Laso, “La paleta y los colores,” La revista de Lima, vol. I, 231.
346
Ibid., 231.
347
Ibid., Francisco Laso, La revista de Lima, vol. II, 311.

158
senses.” 348 Peruvian intellectuals of the mid-nineteenth century like Fuentes and Laso aspired to

create a civilized but “colorful” society, and they shared a sense of optimism about the

possibilities for reform among the undisciplined plebe.

If the elite’s desire for a massive influx of European immigrants was never satisfied, a

large number of Chinese indentured laborers did arrive on Peru’s shores during the Guano

bonanza. The importation of coolies for agricultural labor on coastal sugar and cotton haciendas,

as well as for the extraction of Guano, began in late 1849 thanks to the political influence of men

such as Domingo Elias and Juan Rodriguez, who owned large estates in the Departments of Ica

and La Libertad. 349 Their importation was met with resistance but it was agreed that they were a

“necessary evil” for the exploitation of the wealth of Guano, and for the flourishing sugar and

cotton export business. 350 When the initial five-year contracts (which were normally extended to

seven years) came to an end, however, some Chinese relocated to Lima and, more specifically, to

the surrounding environs of the newly built Central Market. Limeño reaction to urban Chinese

settlement was visceral and out of proportion, however, as intellectuals, journalists, and

municipal authorities all expressed repugnance toward what they regarded as an unaesthetic,

filthy, and corrupting presence in the heart of their capital city and around the market that had

been constructed to “sanitize” the city. Even Laso actively opposed the presence of “the Asians”

as a functionary of the municipality. 351 Quite obviously, his colorful palette could not accept the

inclusion of this unexpected addition. In short, the “Asian menace” threatened to block

348
Manuel Fuentes, Lima. Apuntes históricos, descriptivos, estadísticos y de costumbres (Paris: Librería de Firmín
Didot, 1867), 77-8
349
About 100,000 Chinese arrived to Peru in the twenty-five years of coolie commerce. In 1862, around 750
Hawaiians and Polynesians were brought to Peru to work in the extraction of Guano. Juan de Arona, La
inmigración, 85-88.
350
Humberto Rodríguez Pastor, Hijos del Celeste Imperio en el Perú (1850-1900). Migración, agricultura,
mentalidad y explotación, Lima: Instituto de Apoyo Agrario, 1989; Herederos del Dragón. Historia de la
comunidad china en el Perú (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2000).
351
Rodríguez Pastor, Humberto, “La calle Capón, el Callejón Otaiza y el Barrio Chino,” Mundos interiores: Lima,
1850-1950 (Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, 1995), 407.

159
republican efforts to create a hygienic, orderly, and moralized society. A chronicler writing for

El Comercio expressed those feelings in an 1870 editorial:

If the importation of that filthy and corrupted race continues, in twenty-five or

thirty years most of the population on the coast, if not in the entire Republic, will
be completely composed of Asians and their descendants. A population that will
naturally have all the evil instincts, corruption, and physical weakness (apart from
the ugliness) of such a detestable race will make the Republic a colony of the
Celestial Empire, because their depraved habits and social mores will
predominate as soon as they are the majority. We Peruvians will have to resign
ourselves to speaking Chinese…to having a Chinese President…as well as
Chinese ministers and high functionaries. We will have to pluck up the courage
to see our daughters marry a Chinaman, to have grandchildren of a repugnant
ugliness and rickets, of perverse instincts, of dissolute morality and customs. 352

Reactions against the Chinese were resolute. It was held that they belonged to a

depraved, corrupted and decadent “race” that had entirely lost its past splendor. Their bodies

were regarded as ugly and meager, their customs –especially gambling and the consumption of

opium—were seen to be filthy and immoral, and it was suspected that they were prone to

homosexuality. The Chinese in Lima seemed to embody all of the fears of the modernizing

elites, as they threatened to spread their “vices” and “filth” into Peruvian society through the

food they managed in the market and cooked in their small restaurants, and through their

gambling and opium houses. The Minister of Government, Worship and Public Works

unsuccessfully attempted to halt Chinese immigration, issuing a decree in 1856, when the first

Chinese began settling in Lima. Minister Juan Manuel Mar reasoned that Chinese immigration

“is not convenient to Peru, because they are a degraded race.” He also employed a liberal

argument: “the introduction of Asian colonizers… is degenerating into some kind of Black trade,

352
El Comercio September 7, 1870, quoted by Rodríguez Pastor, Hijos del Celeste Imperio.

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which will not continue without violating the principles of freedom and equality that the

administration has proclaimed.” 353

If part of the rhetoric used to describe the Chinese was similar to that employed to speak

about la plebe or el indio, the Chinese subject did not elicit a national civilizatory mission. They

were considered a foreign, cancerous tumor that threatened to infect the Peruvian body, and so

must be extirpated. The Chinese were constructed as a “racial” entity with innate characteristics

that determined their cultural traits and intellectual and physical capacities. Thus constructed as

a “boundary” for the nation, they were not to be assimilated, but kept permanently and

unambiguously apart. 354

By the time Arona published his pessimistic views of Peruvian society and expressed his

faith about the regenerative power of immigration –which he considered his “only remaining

faith”-- Limeño rhetoric about “race” had been dramatically modified. A deep disillusion with

the Peruvian nation set in following the country’s defeat in the War of the Pacific (1879-1883).

That defeat was seen as proof that the six decades of Peru’s independent life had been fruitless.

Peru was not a unified nation, and it had fallen behind the other South American countries. The

sense of defeat was highlighted by the fact that Lima itself had been occupied by Chilean forces

between 1881 and 1883. For some the easy Chilean victory only could be explained by the

natural inferiority of “the Indian” or “the indigenous race” which then composed the majority of

Peru’s population. This was the sentiment romantic writer Ricardo Palma expressed in his now

famous letters to Nicolás de Piérola, who had assumed presidential powers in 1879 after

353
Juan Manuel Mar, decree issued on March 5, 1856. Memoria que presenta al Congreso Extraordinario de 1858
el Ministro de Gobierno, Culto y Obras Públicas (Lima: Tipografía Nacional, 1858), 47.
354
The notion of “boundary” was developed by anthropologist Fredrik Barth to study the construction of ethnic
identities. Fredrik Barth ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference
(Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1969).

161
proclaiming himself “Supreme Commander in Chief.” In a letter dated February 18, 1881 --only

days after Lima fell in the Battles of San Juan and Miraflores-- Palma stated that

…the main cause for the disaster of the 13 is that the majority of Peru is formed
by an abject and degraded race, which [General Pierola, who granted himself the
decorative and demagogic title of “Protector of the Indigenous Race” 355] had
attempted to dignify. El indio does not have the sentiment of patria; he is an
innate enemy of el blanco… he does not care if he is Peruvian, Chilean, or
Turkish. That is why entire battalions surrendered their arms at San Juan without
spending a single cartridge. To educate the Indian, to inspire patriotism in him,
will not be the work of institutions, but of time… The historical antecedents
eloquently tell us that the Indian is organically a coward. 172 adventurers were
enough to imprison [Inca] Atahuallpa, who was escorted by fifty-thousand men,
and to conquer an empire that possessed millions of inhabitants. It is painful to
say it, but the Araucanian race was more virile, because it tenaciously resisted
conquest. 356

Ricardo Palma’s opinion was shared by many contemporary observers: the nation carried

a heavy burden, an “Indian Problem” that impeded development and national integration.

Palma’s reference to the virility of “the Araucanian race” was a well-established trope of Chilean

patriotism, but here the contrast with “the Peruvian Indian” as a naturally effeminate, passive

being with no identity or agency (which in turn drew upon previous, nineteenth-century

constructions of el indio) now acquired greater potency after the catastrophic defeat at the hands

of the Chilean army. Palma’s son Clemente, also a prominent journalist and modernist literati,

would repeat his father’s argument about Peru’s defeat being caused by Indian natural cowardice

in his 1897 thesis entitled El porvenir de las razas en el Perú (The Future of the Races in Peru).

Clemente Palma now added that the “Indian race” was “a degenerate branch of an ancient ethnic

trunk from which all other inferior races derived,”357 and he entertained the idea of a “final

solution” to the Indian Problem.

355
Alberto Ulloa, Don Nicolás de Piérola: Una época de la historia del Perú (Lima: Minerva, 1981).
356
Ricardo Palma, Cartas a Piérola sobre la ocupación chilena de Lima (Lima: Milla Batres, 1964), 20.
357
Clemente Palma, El porvenir de las razas en el Perú (Lima: Imprenta de Torres Aguirre, 1897), 15

162
 [The Indian] race has been brutalized by decrepitness. Because of its innate
inferior condition, and because of the vices of drunkenness and lust, it is a useless
factor… Useless factors must disappear and do disappear. With the entrance of
civilization into the Sierra [Andean highlands] and the montaña [subtropical
Eastern escarpment] the pure indigenous elements will disappear, as happens in
the United States with the Redskins… There is also a means to assist the
evolutionary action of races: the means used in the United States: to exterminate
with cannonballs that useless race, that waste of race. But that means is cruel;
justifiable in the name of progress but reprehensible in the name of philanthropy
and tradition, which are rooted in the Peruvian spirit. With a less idealist and
more practical character, with an abundance of a superior population to replace
that unfortunate race –which is, anyway, a historical memento—that would
undoubtedly be the most expeditious method. 358

Clemente Palma was by no means the only one to fantasize or seriously propose that Peru

follow the example of the United States, Argentina, or Chile to finally solve what late

nineteenth-century elites defined as one of Peru’s most pressing urgencies. The nation could be

built a cañonazos (by military means) if the cannonballs were aimed at the population that

restrained it. Palma’s words here, however, expressed a profound rupture with earlier ideas

about race in Peru. “Race” had become a free-floating and dominant sociological tool for

analyzing society and designing reforms for its improvement, and as such its analytical power

was now extended to describe and characterize “whites” themselves. Palma argued that “the

Indian race” was decrepit and useless. His mention of the vices of drink followed an established

postcolonial pattern: Spaniards had degraded Indians by spreading alcoholism and the “vice” of

chewing coca to momentarily satisfy the empty bellies of laborers, and which had supposedly

been used only in ceremonial occasions during pre-Hispanic times. Following a curious version

of Darwin’s notion of the “survival of the fittest,” Palma argued that the “Indian race” was

condemned by evolutionary laws to disappear, and that the mere presence of civilization

accelerated the process of disappearance. These evolutionary laws did not depend upon

anyone’s will but genocide was a quicker, more practical solution.

358
Ibid., 35.

163
 Since Peru’s defeat in the War of the Pacific was considered proof that the Peruvian

nation was not consolidated, analysts also blamed the incapacity of elites to lead and unify it.

The positivist aristocrat and later anarchist thinker Manuel González Prada was one of the

leading intellectuals to develop a ferocious criticism of Peru’s republican elites. For Gonzalez

Prada this elite was an aristocratic group without principles, guided by petty appetites, and

willing to preserve the status quo inherited from Spanish colonialism. Peru did not have a real

bourgeoisie, only rapacious elites with no work ethic and who exploited “the miserable

Indian.” 359 González Prada extracted quotations from French philosophers Auguste Comte and

Emile Durkheim, who had founded “the queen of positivist sciences,” Sociology, to notably

affirm that “race” was merely a “subjective category” that generated a “load of divagations

without any scientific foundation.” “Race” was a “comfortable invention” in the hands of

colonizing whites, a mere justification of exploitation. 360 Quoting the French physician Gustav

Le Bon, Gonzalez Prada denied the existence of “pure” races, for human groups were produced

by history and not by nature. Nevertheless, Gonzalez Prada’s discourse used the “subjective

category” profusely, for his analysis of Peruvian society is plagued with references to el indio, el

negro, and el blanco as largely fixed and irreconcilable entities that possess clearly

distinguishable characteristics. The Indian, for instance, “has been creeping in the most inferior

stratums of civilization, and is a hybrid with the vices of the barbarian and without the virtues of

the European.” 361 In a Lamarckian fashion, González Prada argued that the Indian had been

degraded by a Spanish “feudal” regime that republican elites had stubbornly maintained.

However, the Indian could acquire dignity if scientifically educated, and if given the chance to

359
See Manuel González Prada, Pájinas libres (Lima: Dupont, 1894); Horas de lucha (Lima: El Progreso Literario,
1908).
360
Manuel González Prada, “Nuestros indios,” Horas de lucha (Lima: El Progreso Literario, 1908), 333.
361
Manuel González Prada, “Discurso en el Politeama,” Pájinas libres; Horas de lucha.

164
become a proprietor, for “nothing transforms the psychology of man faster or more radically than

property.” 362 González Prada both continued and broke with the nineteenth-century liberal

tradition of commentary on the Indian race. His hopes to “free” the Indian through education

and private property had been part of the liberal program to make Indians full citizens of the

nation and participants in a “free” economy. He argued that Peru’s “whites” had not carried out

a true civilizing campaign to bring el indio into contemporaneity. Indeed, “he” was to blame for

the country’s situation and for the Indian misery. The “white” was Peru’s real problem. The

white was an “animal of white skin; no matter where he is born, he carries the golden disease

throughout his life, and he yields to the predatory instinct.” 363

González Prada’s views on race were also expressed in the “solutions” he envisaged to

refound the Republic. On the one hand, he proposed an extention of paternalist, liberal policies

aimed at freeing an “enslaved” Indian: private property –which implied an attack on hacendados,

but also on indigenous communities— and education –with a greater emphasis on “the science

strengthened by the century”— that is, positivist science. On the other hand, González Prada

stated that the Indian had to redeem himself, for a more humane treatment could not be expected

from his oppressors. The Indian only had to acquire the necessary virility to spend “the money he

wastes in alcohol and fiestas” on “rifles and cartridges [with which]…he would make others

respect his property and life. He would respond to violence with violence.” 364 Here González

Prada seemed to give agency to the Indian in the form of virility and resolution, as well as pride

and rebelliousness. However, these qualities had to be inculcated by an unmentioned agent, that

is, by enlightened positivist thinkers and “leaders” like himself.

362
González Prada, “Nuestros indios,” 349.
363
Ibid.
364
Ibid.

165
 Clemente Palma and González Prada appear to be in opposing trenches in the debate on

race and Peruvian society. Palma believed in “the convenience” of the complete disappearance

of the Indian –which would happen slowly without intervention, or swiftly through patriotic acts

of genocide— while González Prada believed the Indian had to be instilled with a sense of

dignity so that he could respond violently to oppression. Both thinkers imagined violent “final”

solutions, although in opposite directions, and they shared the notion that the “Indian race”

lacked agency and virility. There are other important similarities between the two. Clemente

Palma was not sympathetic towards the Peruvian “white race” either, and described it as

defective and poorly equipped for civilization. The “Spanish race” --which formed one of the

main races that constituted Peru-- was “nervous,” “morally weak,” “relatively superior to the

Indian race, but characterized by enthusiasm and decadence,” “idealist and not practical,”

“turbulent and agitated, more artist than intellectual, vehement but not energetic; voluble and

unstable.” 365 The “Creole race,” to which Palma thought he belonged, was “the only race with a

future” although it lacked “the necessary energy to constitute a nationality.” It had brilliant

intellectual abilities, but it was not an industrious, “practical race.” “Eternal Quixotes, mad

followers of ideals,” Creoles were “incapable of progress” unless they were subjected to “ethnic

therapeutics to guarantee their physical health and moral vigor.” 366 To Palma, “ethnic

therapeutics” implied miscegenation of Creoles with “the German race,” because

The German is physically strong: he will add vigor to the muscles and blood of
our race; he is intellectual, profoundly intellectual: he will give solidity to the
mental life of our race. [Miscegenation between the German and the Creole
races] will harmonize, in the brain of the chosen ones, the artistic sentiment of the
Latin race with the scientific spirit of the Germans. He is serene, energetic, and
tenacious: he will be a counterweight to the vehemence, weakness, and
inconsistency of the Creole. 367

365
Clemente Palma, El porvenir, 11.
366
Ibid., 37.
367
Ibid.

166
 To Clemente Palma environmental, institutional, or educational reforms could not alter

the basic characteristics of a “race.” Also drawing from “the wise” Le Bon, but to a different

effect, Palma stated that “the idea, still prevalent, that education can change the character is an

illusion; one of the most ill-fated illusions that the theoreticians of pure reason have

entertained.” 368 This “illusion” explained why “superior” peoples had failed at civilizing inferior

ones. The only method to “improve” the Creole race was through its miscegenation with a

superior, more virile, active, and industrious race. “Peoples’ instincts cannot be modified with

laws and education, but with the right breeding…it may not be poetic to treat peoples like bovine

species, which are improved by having a certain bull mounting a cow. But does it matter if the

concept is not poetic if it is the formula for the future happiness and superiority of Peru? Nothing

is more prosaic than progress.” 369 Palma was pessimistic about Peru’s future. None of its races

had the capacity and virility to “constitute a nationality,” or to guide the country to progress.

Palma was not expressing a mere “comfortable invention” to legitimize exploitation of subjected

peoples, nor to satisfy some elites’ narcissistic fantasies; he was admitting Creoles’

incompetence to lead the country for their innate lack of virility, energy, and consistency. Peru

had no future unless it received help from abroad.

For González Prada races were malleable entities which changed according to

environmental and historical factors, but no contemporary group in Peru was able to become a

true bourgeoisie to lead the country to progress, prosperity, and social justice. “Whites” were

trapped in the obscurantism imposed by Spanish colonialism and were unwilling to yield their

inherited privileges for their country’s sake: every “white” was “a Pizarro, a Valverde, or an

368
Ibid., 11.
369
Ibid., 11.

167
Areche,” that is, a Conquistador or vile Spanish official.370 For their part, Indians were passive

and needed to be educated into his own liberation. To no surprise, González Prada was also a

strong supporter of European immigration, which for him was a source of optimism for the

country, since “foreign immigration does not come to Peru as a passing gust of wind, but as a

stable atmosphere that will replace the Spanish one and will penetrate our lungs, modifying us

physically and morally. We are already losing the detachment to life that characterizes old

Spaniards, as well as the groaning sadness that distinguishes the Peruvian indigene.” 371 The

immigration of non-Spanish Europeans was already exerting a positive influence in Peruvian

society, not through miscegenation but through an environmental “ethnic therapeutics,”

renovating the intellectual atmosphere and ridding Peru of the undesirable traits of its two main

racial and cultural trunks.

European immigration became more relevant as a result of the Limeño elite’s self- doubts

about its own racial capacity for progress. In the Guano Age they had creatively selected and

adapted “scientific” doctrines of race to legitimize their ascendance over the nation, imagining

the improvement of the nation through miscegenation between Europeans and Indians. They had

also seen Indians and Chinese immigrants through the lenses of racist doctrines. After the War

of the Pacific, however, Lima’s elites could not remove these same lenses when looking in the

mirror. The historical analysis of the influential positivist thinker and University Rector Javier

Prado considered that Peruvians were poor despite the country’s enormous natural richness

because of the negative influence of “race.” To modify Peru’s situation, it was necessary to

“rejuvenate our race and our inheritance through the miscegenation with other races.” The

Creole race had to be modified because Creoles were a “lazy race, with poor blood and without

370
Manuel González Prada, “Nuestros indios,” 349.
371
Manuel González Prada, “Conferencia en el Ateneo de Lima,” Pájinas libres; Horas de lucha, 17.

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muscular vigor. It is a vice-ridden race given over to pleasure and which has cortesan

customs.” 372 History, and in particular Spanish colonialism, had made Creoles accustomed to

enjoy a privileged position in society. The Creole race had become lethargic and was thus

unable to develop the country’s potential; the “entire weight of the new nation” was carried by a

race that had received a “fatal inheritance” that rendered it in every way “opposed to republican

institutions.” 373 Similarly, educator Manuel Vicente Villarán held that “whites” had acquired an

“aversion to labor” during colonial times when all work was to be carried out by Blacks and

Indians. “By birth and race” Creoles disliked work, loved to acquire money without effort,

preferred “comfortable idleness,” and displayed a tendency to squander money. 374

A combination of factors explains the elite’s self-flagellation and pessimism about Peru’s

future. Like other Latin American elites prior to the late nineteenth century, Lima’s elite had

paid careful attention to European “scientific” postulates on race but had not accepted them

wholeheartedly, instead selecting those ideas that served to legitimize their ascendancy. They

had adopted, for instance, a faith in an environmental approach to race, believing that acquired

traits could be transmitted through inheritance; a belief that was supported by the French

naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s theory of evolutionary transformationism, and by a selective

reading of Charles Darwin’s natural selection theory. 375 Elites had also rejected those European

doctrines that denied them an equal footing with their European peers –discarding, for instance,

Comte de Buffon’s ideas on natural history and their implications for humans, and LeBon’s

observation that the mixture of Spaniards with inferior populations had produced “bastard,

372
Javier Prado, Estado social del Perú durante la dominación española (estudio histórico-sociológico (Lima:
Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1941), 125. (1894).
373
Ibid., 196-7.
374
Manuel Vicente Villarán, “Las profesiones liberales en el Perú,” Páginas escogidas (Lima: Talleres Gráficos P.
Villanueva, 1962), 321. (1900).
375
For an explanation of environmental, Lamarckian conceptions of race, see Nancy Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics:
Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). Charles Darwin did not rule
out the influence of environment as a supplementary mechanism for the development of species.

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energy-lacking nations without any future and unable to contribute to civilization’s progress.”376

The postcolonial elite had also made postulates of its own which opposed most European

theories of race. In particular, they argued that miscegenation did not produce a degenerate,

inferior mongrel, and that “whitening” could improve their societies. The catastrophe of the War

of the Pacific, however, forced many Peruvian elites to revise these ideas of race.

During and after the war patriotic Chilean discourses highlighted her success as a nation

and a race. This success was attributed to Chile’s racial uniformity and superiority over

neighboring countries. Chilean “whites” saw themselves as strong, industrious, and progressive,

thanks in part to their “Basque racial heritage.” Basques were held to be strong, entrepreneurial,

and virile as compared to aristocratic Castilians and languid Andalusians. Chilean “vigor” was

also attributed to Chile’s peripheral or frontier reality in colonial times, in which the relative

paucity of a sedentary Indian population and African slaves had obliged colonial whites to

develop a work ethic, and to carry on a virile tradition of warfare against “savage Indians” on the

southern frontier. Chilean whites often saw Lima’s white elite as backward, arrogant, lazy,

wasteful, superstitious, and ostentatious, in part because they were descended from old Castilian

and Andalusian families, and in part because they had been accustomed to the privileges of being

the courtly center of a vast Viceroyalty that had included Chile. Centuries of opulence,

combined with the ready availability of slave and Indian labor and permanent coexistence with

those inferior races had weakened their race. In contrast to Peru’s Indians, both Imperial and

Chilean nationalist discourses had painted “the proud Araucanian race” as possessed of martial

376
Gustave Le Bon, Les premieres civilisacions, 1889, quoted by Javier Prado, Estado social del Perú, 196.

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and rebellious qualities. The Chilean Indian’s was a virile race. 377 During the war itself, Chilean

military leaders and troops fashioned an erotic discourse of conquest that feminized Lima and

Limeños and exalted the victor’s virility and domination. Lima was described as a “womanly,”

“coquette,” Oriental, and attractive city, while Limeños were depicted as men “with no energy”

and who liked to be dominated. 378 They draw emasculated images of Limeños as well as

eroticized ones of Limeñas as “experts in sensual pleasures” quite willing to yield to the

victorious Chilean soldiers. 379 Chilean descriptions of the Limeño population underline the

city’s unaesthetic racial diversity and the impurity of her racial hybrids. 380

Limeño elites seemed to have been deeply moved by Chilean discourse since they created

their own versions of the same discourse. The denunciation of the colonial legacy acquired

greater dimensions among intellectuals, who lamented the cultural and racial traces left by a

backward Spanish colonialism. During the dark days of the Chilean occupation of Lima,

Ricardo Palma abandoned all of his previous romanticism, arguing that Lima now deserved a

proverb usually used to describe Genoa: “men without faith, women without shame.” 381 Peru

now lacked “virility” and patriotism “because anarchy is a gangrene upon us, and because

corruption flows in the veins not only of the men of our generation but of the generation that will

replace us.” 382 This racialized view of Peru’s corruption and lack of manly potency led Palma to

377
For a discussion on Chilean nationalist discourses and the related ideas on race vis-à-vis the War of the Pacific,
see Hugo Maureira, “‘Valiant Race, Tenacious Race, Heroic, Indomitable, and Implacable:’ The War of the Pacific
(1879-1884) and the Role of Racial Ideas in the Construction of Chilean National Identity,” paper presented to the
ILASSA Student Conference on Latin America, February, 2004.
378
For an analysis on the gendered and racialized discourses during the war, see Carmen Mc Evoy, “‘Bella Lima ya
tiemblas llorosa del triunfador chileno en poder:’ una aproximación a los elementos de género en el discurso
nacionalista chileno,” in El hechizo de las imágenes: Estatus social y etnicidad en la historia peruana, ed. Narda
Henríquez (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2000).
379
Ibid., 216.
380
Hugo Maureira, Hugo, “‘Valiant Race,” Carmen Mc Evoy, “‘Bella Lima.”
381
Letter to Nicolás de Piérola dated on April 5, 1881. Ricardo Palma, Cartas a Piérola sobre la ocupación chilena
de Lima (Lima: Milla Batres, 1964), 33.
382
Letter to Nicolás de Piérola dated on June 27, 1881. Ricardo Palma, Cartas a Piérola, 51.

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the conclusion that “Chileans have not defeated us; it has been our own vices [that defeated

us].” 383

Older European discourses on race (particularly those concerning the inferiority of

hybrids and Creoles) which Lima’s postcolonial elites had previously discarded were now

rekindled and taken into account in discussions of the country’s future. Racialist conceptions of

“the Latin” as idealistic, mystical, and artistic and so unsuited for the virile exigencies of

modernity were now widely expressed. 384 Ideas about the lingering effects of Spanish “blood”

transformed older Black Legend views that had condemned the remnants of the Spanish heritage

to a republican oblivion. Javier Prado, for instance, quoted the Argentine positivist Domingo

Faustino Sarmiento in support of the notion that the Moor’s long occupation of the southern half

of the Iberian Peninsula had forced Spaniards there to absorb a “great part of the moral character

of the sons of Africa.” 385 The northern Basque heritage of Chileans had exempted them from

this pernicious influence; but this was clearly not the case of Peru’s Andalusian and Castilian

“whites.” Writing under the pseudonym of El amigo de Tejerina, literati Federico Blume spoke

of Limeño elites during colonial times as “cruel exploiters of slaves…who lived sedated by the

opium of their dusty titles of nobility, or their weakened aristocracy... They maintained their

sons in a stern idleness, as princes who possessed a divine right to comfort.” 386 Another racialist

argument deployed to explain Limeño’s alleged inferiority was their long and intimate

coexistence with “the inferior races” of Indians and Blacks. These inferior races, affirmed Javier

Prado, had exerted an insidious influence on “Spaniard blood” in Peru. Whites had been

exposed to the vices of their black servants and nannies, including “sensuality, robbery,

383
Ibid., 51.
384
See Clemente Palma’s allusion to the Latin race above.
385
Javier Prado, Estado social del Perú, 127.
386
El amigo de Tejerina, “Expectativas nacionales,” El Comercio, September 6, 1903.

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superstition, and laziness.” 387 White Creole children imitated these “pernicious examples and

adopted customs that would have sad and shameful consequences.” 388 Worse, the influence of

uncivilized and “irresistibly lascivious” Black women was transmitted directly through their

breastmilk, as they often served as wet nurses in white households. Once again, old colonial

discourses were resurrected. The notion of contamination by breastmilk was central to an old

imperial discourse deployed by the Spanish against their Creole inferiors, and it was applied with

great frequency during the Bourbon eighteenth century. Now the very same discourse was

resurrected by “modern Peruvian” critics. As for “the influence” upon Whites of “the Indian,”

some elites spoke of their “numbing” presence. Others took a more ambiguous stance, pointing

out that Peruvian elites had also descended from Indians and were not, therefore, “pure whites.”

El Amigo de Tejerina, for instance, argued that Peru’s weak and impressionable population was a

consequence of the “abundant blood from our disheartened [Indian] singers of Yaravies

[melancholic tunes], which runs in our veins.” Such a population lacked the “virility and energy

of homogeneous and young races.” 389 Blume’s allusions to “our Indians” and to Indian blood

“running in our veins” were symptomatic of elites’ racial self-doubts. Their whiteness was

suspected of having been tainted by miscegenation with Indians, and in any case Castilian and

Andalusian “blood” was already “tainted” by “the Moor.” In his 1909 study on Lima’s races

Enrique León García affirmed that the “Creole white” was very different to the northern

“European white” because of the three centuries of miscegenation between indigenous and

Spanish blood, and because of new successive breedings. León García did not specify which

387
Ibid., 164.
388
Ibid., 165.
389
El amigo de Tejerina, “Expectativas.”

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“races” participated in those breedings, in effect suggesting that the “white” label Creoles used

actually hid the fact that they were all mestizos. 390

The racial diversity of Lima’s population was also now seen in an increasingly negative

light. If Laso once described Lima’s society as a colorful palette, and Fuentes as an attractive,

diverse garden, many postwar or turn-of-the-century intellectuals lamented the “chaotic” racial

heterogeneity of the population. Since they saw races as entities with different characteristics

and interests, population diversity could only spell the failure “to unify the national sentiments,

the interests of the patria.” 391 Thus, El amigo de Tejerina, argued that the unseemly combination

of idle elites and an “oppressed, enslaved, almost savage aboriginal race” had made it impossible

for Peru to unite as a nation. 392

Widespread miscegenation was also now considered pernicious. Writing under the

pseudonym of El Barón de Keef, Federico Elguera --an influential journalist, literati, and

politician, and Lima’s mayor between 1901 and 1908—argued that in any of Lima’s tramway

cars one could discover “new castes, individuals of all colors, sizes, and odors: whites, mestizos,

blacks, yellows, zambos, mulatos, cuarterones, cholos, Chinese, Japanese, sacalaguas, with red,

green, bluish, and iridescent skins.” To Elguera, such profusion would make anyone think that

the “monkey descends from man, and not the other way around...such is the degeneration of the

species in Lima… I fear that a hybrid element, such as the mule, will be soon produced, which

in turn will cause the stagnation of the population… Another malady caused by all this crossing,

in my opinion, is the amazing increase of criminality.” 393 Finally, writers like Juan de Arona

390
Enrique León García, Las razas en Lima. Estudio Demográfico (Lima: Universidad Mayor de San Marcos,
Facultad de Medicina, 1909), 12.
391
Javier Prado, Estado social del Perú, 196.
392
El amigo de Tejerina, “Expectativas.”
393
Federico Elguera, “Las razas,” El Barón de Keef en Lima. Segunda epoca. Charlas con Soria (Lima: Ignacio
Prado Pastor, editor, 1999) (1919).

174
added that the climate made Limeños lazy, unproductive, and mediocre. Arona thought he was

recycling the ideas of his great grandfather, the naturalist and patriot Hipólito Unánue about the

influence of climate on Lima’s population. While Unánue subtly and elegantly criticized

Europeans racial ideas of superiority –criticizing those who “have appointed themselves as the

tribunal, and have sentenced in their own favor” 394— Arona misread Unanue to argue that the

monotonous climate of Lima had produced racially inferior Limeños. 395

Different solutions were proposed to address Peru’s “racial problem.” Those who took a

radical, non-environmentalist stance such as Clemente Palma, favored immigration as the

country’s only solution. “The hour of eugenics” came early to Palma, for his “prosaic” program

was to

breed weak races with strong ones, the artistic ones with practical ones, to
annihilate –through successive breedings— the germs of inferior races, to
substitute old and anemic blood corpuscles with those of a plethoric and healthy
blood; in short, to sustain the virility and health of the people with a solution
similar to the one used by cattle breeders: surveilling and carrying out a racial
selection. 396

Interestingly, the “inoculation” of “new elements” was seen as a means for preserving

“our race,” and even for making it reemerge as a purer, healthier race. El Amigo de Tejerina

argued that Peru needed new people to transfuse their blood and so to strengthen “our race.”

According to El Amigo, “our” race was artistic but not industrious, a race of poets and dreamers

incapable of material progress. Remembering the defeat against Chile, Tejerina added that

miscegenation with European immigrants would also make “our race” more adept at “the

394
Hipólito Unánue, Observaciones sobre el clima, y sus influencias sobre los seres organizados, en especial el
hombre (Madrid: Imprenta de Sancha, 1815) (second edition), 87.
395
For an analysis of Unanue, see Thurner, Mark, “After Colonialism and the King: Notes on the Peruvian Birth of
‘Contemporary History,” Postcolonial Studies, 9, no. 4 (2006): 393-420.
396
Clemente Palma, El porvenir de las razas, 3.

175
defense of our rights.” 397 Immigration and “ethnic therapeutics” through miscegenation was thus

a matter of national survival.

Those who took an environmentalist stance proposed immigration along with educational

programs, and a drastic transformation of the living environment. Immigration would serve to

“improve the race” because Europeans would teach by example. The plans for attracting

European immigrants acquired different connotations, as greater efforts were made for this

purpose. Plans for immigration were not designed merely to obtain an agricultural labor force,

or to colonize an “empty” Amazonian frontier. “Peru needs immigrants, not colonizers” stated

A.M. de Idiáquez, Peru’s General Consul in Genoa in his 1905 report to the Ministerio de

Fomento on how to attract Italian immigrants. 398 Immigrants would preferably come to Lima to

start new industries, activate economic life, and demonstrate their “practicality” to Limeños.

They were to start up new businesses, be incorporated in the much needed working class, or to

be employed as bureaucrats and domestic servants. For instance, J.P. Paz Soldán, Peru’s General

Consul in Buenos Aires, suggested in 1905 that Peru should attract Argentine construction

workers, carpenters and plaster workers, and even doormen, office-boys, mailmen, chauffeurs,

and domestic servants. Paz Soldán is, quite obviously, referring to European immigrants who

had settled in Argentina. 399 The immigration projects had to be carefully planned and executed,

as “we must increase the white population with a meditated, scientific plan.” 400

A new wave of Asian immigration is not what planners had in mind. Ironically, Japanese

indentured laborers were imported to provide labor force for sugar and cotton haciendas starting

397
El amigo de Tejerina, “La nueva avenida del sol,” El Comercio, March 15, 1903.
398
A.M. de Idiáquez, “Comunicación al Sr. Director de Fomento,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento, III, no.10,
Lima: Imprenta de “La Opinión Nacional,” 1905.
399
J.P. Paz Soldán, “Report on European Immigration to the Argentine Republic,” Boletin del Ministerio de
Fomento, III, no. 2 (1905): 60-1.
400
Alfredo Sachetti, Consul in Turin, “Immigrantes para el Peru.” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento, III, no. 3
(1905): 68-93.

176
in 1899. The Chinese coolie traffic had ended in 1874, after the opposition of the Celestial

Empire and the subsequent signing of the Tsien Tsin Treaty between Peru and China. 401 This

time around it would be Augusto Leguía, a rising politician with large sugar haciendas in coastal

Lambayeque who used his influence to persuade the administration of López de Romaña. The

prospect of a new flood of detested Asians spurred a revival of anti-Asian sentiments among

Limeño intellectuals and politicians. By the early twentieth century, there was a clear association

between “the yellow race” and certain epidemics such as the Bubonic plague and Yellow

Fever. 402 Dr. Alberto García, who worked for the newly created Hygiene section of the

Ministerio de Fomento, stated in 1903 that “the most devastating plague that has afflicted and

afflicts humanity,” was generated in the countries of the “yellow race, where civilization has not

penetrated yet,” and from there had spread around the world. This was yet another reason to ban

Asian immigrants, for they carried the constant threat of “the pest,” and produce “an

inconvenient breeding with degenerate races.” 403 Experts argued that Japanese immigration

would produce an increase in the statistics of disorder, criminality, and mortality. 404 The

Japanese immigrants did make their appearance in the city, adding to the discomfort of elites and

segments of the lower classes. The fact that Asians made up the largest percentage of

immigrants in Lima meant that elites had to look to other means for “racial improvement.”

Education: The Scientific Formation of a Virile Population

Education was a central issue for supporters of environmental theories of race.

Educational reforms had been implemented during the early postcolonial years of San Martín

and Monteagudo and these were later revived during the mid-century Guano Age. Late
401
Humberto Rodríguez Pastor, Hijos del Celeste Imperio.
402
According to Jorge Lossio, the association between the Chinese and the yellow fever was considered factual by
1858, that is, when the first Chinese had settled in Lima. Jorge Lossio, Acequias y gallinazos: Salud ambiental en
Lima del siglo XIX (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2003).
403
Alberto García, “La peste bubónica,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento, I, no. 1 (1903): 110.
404
Alfredo Sachetti “Immigrantes para el Perú.”

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nineteenth-century ideas on education were marked by the desire to create a more industrious,

healthy, and virile population, and to increase the “practical” professions and occupations.

Education should counteract the negative “racial” effects of climate and history. Intellectuals,

politicians, and educators shared the belief that the current educational system maintained its

backward, colonial characteristics. For the new elites the system still emphasized the rote

learning that was thought to be unhelpful for the development of industries, and it did not instill

the values and virtues that the country needed, especially those of hard work and patriotism.

Lima’s 1899 municipal reglamento for schools stated that “practical teaching must be preferred

in all circumstances” and it explicitly prohibited “all manner of teaching based on the exclusive

use of memory.” 405 The measure was based on the belief that education failed because children

did not really learn. Peru’s 1901 Minister of Fomento voiced the same idea, adding that “the

reason is that they are not taught what is needed, but things foreign to life; they are soon erased

from memory because they are not applicable.”406 Peruvian students were the passive receptors

of data that had no direct application in their lives. Even the teaching methods in the Colegio

Guadalupe, the most liberal public school in Lima, were now considered obsolete, for they were

based on repetition or memory, and so did not respond to the country’s needs, in particular,

Colegio Guadalupe did not motivate its students to action! 407 Javier Prado added his voice to the

choir of criticism against Peru’s education, stating that it was too abstract and “empty of ideas”

and only developed students’ memory. 408 Educator Elvira García y García stated that “the

405
“Reglamento de las escuelas municipales de Lima,” Legislación municipal. Leyes, resoluciones, decretos,
ordenanzas y reglamentos vigentes sobre municipalidades. Compilación publicada por el Honorable Consejo
Provincial de Lima, siendo alcalde el señor general don Juan Martín Echenique (Lima: Imprenta de “El Nacional,”
1899), 412.
406
Memoria que Ministro de Fomento, doctor Agustín de la Torre González presenta a la Legislatura Ordinaria de
1901 (Lima: Imprenta “El Lucero,” 1901), vi.
407
See the editorial in El Comercio, February 15, 1901.
408
Javier Prado, “Discurso en el Ateneo,” quoted by Andrés Quintana, “La cuestión de los exámenes. Conferencia
de pedagogía leída en la Facultad de Letras,” El Comercio, November 19, 1908.

178
primitive school” taught children “sterile” lessons; a modern school had to take into account the

“infinite acquisitions of modern science,” and spread these through pedagogical methods based

on experiential learning. 409 In response, the 1908 National Reglamento for primary schools

prohibited teaching methods exclusively based on the use of memory, for the goal of primary

education was to provide children with “knowledge of practical usefulness.” 410

It was said that education promoted professions such as law and literature, which were

not what Peru needed. The word intelectualismo was used to describe education that encouraged

rote learning rather than creativity and practicality. This rote or “blind intellectualism” 411 had to

end, for it did not respond to “the moral and social purposes” of education. 412 Peru needed to

instill industrious habits and knowledge. For the lower classes –that is, for the hijos del

pueblo— schools should be workshops 413 or agricultural schools 414 where they could acquire

discipline, “love of work,” and the necessary knowledge to make a living. To fulfill these

objectives, all schools should have farms 415 and “museums” with mineral, fossil, plant, and

insect specimens. 416 The emphasis on practical knowledge was also expressed in the 1908

National Reglamento for primary schools, which established educational field trips to factories

“where children may practically and experimentally see the transformations of raw materials,” or

to exhibitions, “industry museums,” laboratories, and workshops where manufactured products,

including monuments, could be observed. Other educational field trips were meant to offer

409
García y García, Elvira, “La escuela de ayer y de hoy,” El Comercio, December 16, 1908.
410
Reglamento General de Instrucción Primaria (Lima: Litografía y Tipografía Carlos Fabbri, 1908), 4-5.
411
Alfredo Saucchetti, “Inmigrantes para el Perú,” 68.
412
Andrés Quintana, “La cuestión de los exámenes. Conferencia de pedagogía leída en la Facultad de Letras,” El
Comercio, November 19, 1908.
413
Proposal by Juan Revoredo, Mayor of Lima. See Memoria de la administración municipal de Lima. Presentada
por su alcalde don Juan Revoredo. (enero de 1890 a noviembre de 1891) (Lima: Imprenta de Torres Aguirre, 1891),
11-2.
414
Memoria que Ministro de Fomento, doctor Agustín de la Torre González presenta a la Legislatura Ordinaria de
1901 (Lima: Imprenta “El Lucero,” 1901), x.
415
Ibid.
416
Reglamento General de Instrucción Primaria (Lima: Litografía y Tipografía Carlos Fabbri, 1908), 151.

179
practical lessons in physics, the natural sciences, public hygiene, agriculture, geometry, arts and

industries, and history. 417 History was considered to be among the “practical” knowledges to be

transmitted in school, particularly in the wake of Peru’s traumatic defeat and occupation during

the War of the Pacific. The educational field trips to industries and historical monuments in

effect replaced the participation of schools in religious ceremonies, for the Municipality of Lima

had prohibited schools to attend religious ceremonies in 1899, arguing that “it is convenient to

end with that custom which is not related to the purposes of educational institutions.” 418

Factories, workshops, and monuments were now to be visitable “shrines” in the civic religion of

national industrialism. The need to forge patriotism was also expressed in a mandate of the

1899 reglamento to the effect that all class sessions must close with a short lesson on an

important event in Peru’s history. 419 The 1909 reglamento for primary schools also established

that the national anthem was to be sung twice per week. During ceremonies in which patriotic

poems were sung, teachers were instructed to “speak to children in terms that would fortify their

patriotic sentiments,” and students were obliged to perform “gymnastic and military

exercises.” 420 The promotion of nationalism and industrialism had gone hand to hand for some

time –as exemplified by the 1872 National Exhibition discussed in the previous chapter— but

there was a greater sense of urgency in the postwar era.

The education of elites also had to be reformed. Elites had to abandon their preference

for liberal professions to develop commerce and industries. To Manuel Vicente Villarán, that

meant adopting a “Yankee education” more suitable to the “exigencies of the times.” Peru

417
Ibid., 149-51.
418
“Concurrencia a festividades religiosas,” Lima 18 de junio de 1889. Legislación municipal. Leyes, resoluciones,
decretos, ordenanzas y reglamentos vigentes sobre municipalidades. Compilación publicada por el Honorable
Consejo Provincial de Lima. Siendo alcalde el señor General don Juan Martín Echenique (Lima: Imprenta de “El
Nacional,” 1899), 451.
419
Article 81 of the “Reglamento de las escuelas municipales de Lima,” Legislación municipal, 413.
420
Reglamento General de Instrucción Primaria (Lima: Litografía y Tipografía Carlos Fabbri, 1908).

180
needed entrepreneurial, energetic men to develop its immense natural wealth, and not the erudite

scholars, lawyers, and literati schools were then producing. While Villarán believed immigration

was necessary, he argued that a strong group of Peruvian businessmen and industrialists had to

be developed since attracting immigrants and foreign capital could be “a risk to our future

security” if Peru did not have its own bourgeoisie. 421 Other voices supported the influential

Villarán in his claim that Peru’s educational system should follow the lines of Yankee education.

Intellectuals and politicians argued that Peruvian education produced an excess of lawyers who

swelled the state’s bureaucracy and political parties, and who constituted a barrier to private and

state initiatives. Some considered that elite youth also preferred to go into the military not out of

patriotism but as a way to maintain their status and satisfy their political and economic appetites.

Peru had a top-heavy army bloated with generals and coronels but short on good soldiers. El

Amigo de Tejerina bitterly complained that Peru had an abundance of lawyers and colonels who

“grow and propagate like flies in the summer; they flutter and buzz about, and swarm around the

best public posts.” This lamentable state of affairs, he argued, was a consequence of a system of

education that had not broken with the colonial cult of formality and legal paperwork. A new

system of education had to imitate that now in place in the U.S. and England. Peru needed the

kind of people those countries had: “ordinary, rustic, uncultured, even stupid, but also more

practical.” A similar “race” could be created in Peru to rid it from its “ridiculous and shameful

lethargy.” Tejerina praised “Yankees” and “Englishmen,” noting that “they may not have read

Cicero” and were “mostly fools” (Tejerina writes this phrase in English and attributes it to

“Macaulay” in an apparent reference to British historian Thomas B. Macaulay) but possessed a

practical drive that Peru desperately needed. Prosaic and ordinary, Anglos had unified their

countries with railways and the telegraph, and they knew how to efficiently administer and
421
Manuel Vicente Villarán, “Las profesiones liberales en el Perú,”325.

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develop their territories. 422 Three years later El Amigo de Tejerina was more optimistic about

Peru’s future, for “our compatriots… are gradually abandoning politics... and from the fiscal

budget.” Some lawyers and military were becoming entrepreneurs, merchants. Tejerina argued

that every Peruvian should have a small private business, for the country to progress. 423

It was desirable to follow the uncultured Anglo or German example since, as Clemente

Palma had said, “nothing is more prosaic than progress.” In and article in The Contemporary

Review that El Comercio reproduced in 1907 historian Herbert Paul now declared that poetry and

literature were dead. Paul argued that poetry had breathed its last breath and was soon to be

replaced by science, and that the energy formerly wasted in literary ramblings was now spent

productively. There had been a change of epoch, and “the men of this century are not like the

ones in the past because our life has suffered a complete transformation, and literature, as it was

understood only fifty years ago, is an exotic plant that has no atmosphere to live in our practical

society.” 424 Even Alejandro Deustua, who abhorred Yankee materialism and opposed modeling

Peru’s educational system after the U.S. system, believed new aspirations and ideals had to be

instilled in Peru to adapt to the “evolutions of time.” Deustua noted that Yankees were more

inclined to progress because they had no history and therefore did not live “with their backs to

the future,” as did Italy or Peru. 425

Not all intellectuals bought the idea of using the United States as a model for Peru’s

society and education. Deustua had been commissioned to study European pedagogical methods

and to recommend those that could be suitably adapted to Peru’s “conditions of race and

422
El Amigo de Tejerina, “El país de los trámites (un artículo que se le olvidó al Barón de Keef),” El Comercio,
February 17, 1901.
423
El Amigo de Tejerina, “Una obra útil,” El Comercio, November 20, 1904.
424
Herbert, Paul, “La muerte de la literatura,” El Comercio, October 29, 1907.
425
El Comercio, February 20, 1901.

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sociability.” 426 Deustua returned convinced that “Latin souls” (the label included Spaniards and

Italians, but possibly not Argentines) could not assimilate “Saxon” education. Hispanic

Americans were vehement, lazy, and inert, and they could not internalize the perseverance of

Yankees, the English, or the Germans. It was a mistake to attempt to copy educational systems

designed for different races, just as it was erroneous to try to generalize education to Indians and

the lower classes. Indians were too uncultured to receive any influence from school. “They only

have a human form… What would those who are not persons, who do not live like persons, and

who have not differentiated themselves from animals learn to read, write, or count?” They did

not need schooling but to be civilized through example, and to be liberated from “the tyranny of

their masters.” For their part, the lower classes in Lima were docile, sheepish, and credulous

people without will; they also had no need for schooling but instead to be led correctly. Peru

lacked a real leading class however, and therefore should concentrate its efforts on developing

that class. A select and enlightened elite who should be morally educated not to pursue their

personal interests but to lead and develop the country. 427 More than practical men, Peru needed

an elite with high moral standards which were not to be transmitted through religion but through

science. Deustua creatively adapted Durkheim’s ideas on social solidarity to state that the

organic solidarity of an advanced society was not based only on economic interest, for this only

united egotistical men temporarily; instead, a higher, moral organization was needed for the

prevalence of the “collective ideal.” Deustua also used Durkheim to assert that not all men

played the same roles in society; therefore, education could not be equal for everyone. 428

426
“Con motivo del regreso del doctor Deustua,” El Comercio, March 4, 1901.
427
Alejandro Deustua, “El problema pedagógico nacional,” La cultura nacional (Lima: Universidad Mayor de San
Marcos, 1937). (1904).
428
Alejandro Deustua, “Carta dirigida al Dr. Manuel V. Villarán, a propósito del cuestionario sobre Ley de
Instrucción,” Colección de artículos publicados por Alejandro O. Deustua (Lima: Imprenta A. Dávila, 1914).
(Letter sent on December 5, 1910.

183
Education of the elites was thus indispensable to provide Peru with a leading class that could

guide and organize the rest of the population.

In 1908 the German ex-patriate Dora Mayer, who would later become known as a noted

indigenista, criticized Villarán’s enthusiasm for the U.S. on the grounds that the “moral concept”

of North Americans was pernicious for the formation of “our youth.” The European “psyche”

closer to that of the “South American race” since “Western” societies had experienced a long and

arduous evolution while the “Great Republic” had developed rapidly. Mayer, who had herself

emigrated from Germany only five years earlier, also argued that Peru’s progress was

inconceivable without “foreign” influences. North American, German, and English educators

could teach Peruvian students such values as “order, punctuality, energy, and accuracy” but Peru

had to evolve by itself just like any other organism –Mayer gives the example of a butterfly

shaking off its cocoon.. Peru only needed time, and any attempt to unduly accelerate its process

of evolution was destined to fail. At the same time, however, Mayer recommended the hiring of

Swiss and Swedish teachers for Peruvian schools, arguing that they had the good qualities of the

North Americans and Germans but lacked their materialistic ambitions. Labeling Villarán a

“modernist,” Mayer proudly calls herself and Deustua “nationalists,” for they sought “the most

beautiful vindication of the Peruvian, Latin, and South American ideals.” 429

Mayer’s ambiguous ideas combined a sense of the moral superiority of “Latinos”

allegedly grounded in their (Catholic?) virtues and rich historical past –which made Peru similar

to Europe, with a negative perception of Latinos and Peruvians as lethargic and non-perseverant.

Mayer added a historicist theory of the development of the national organism, but also believed

in the convenience of “foreign influence” to instill dynamism in Peru’s society. Her

proclamation that her position was “nationalist” as opposed to the “modernist” stance of
429
Dora Mayer, “Plan de estudios y el patriotismo,” El Comercio, October 17, 1908.

184
Villarán, only highlights the ambiguity of defining what as “national,” “foreign,” and “modern”

for Limeños by the early twentieth century. Mayer defined “modernism” as a stance that

“brought Saxon ideas to us” but that it was mistaken to adopt “foreign” models for organizing

Peruvian society and institutions. It appears that for Mayer many European traditions were not

foreign to Peru, and she does not define what “Peruvian, Latin, and South American ideals”

might be.

Despite the complaints of “nationalists” it seems that Villarán’s “modernist” stance was

officially adopted. In 1908, President Augusto Leguía appointed Villarán Minister of Justice and

Instruction. As Minister he promoted the state’s sponsorship of graduate studies in foreign

countries for students of Education, and he commissioned Francisco García Calderón, then in the

United States, to select and hire a group of U.S. educators to work in Peru. 430 His successor José

Matías León continued these policies, sponsoring the studies in the U.S. of two graduating

educators, and hiring U.S. educators with the help of Peru’s Consul in New York. 431 Six

German educators were hired in Hamburg to teach the “practical” courses of mathematics,

mechanical arts, drawing, chemistry, music, and physical education, and a U.S. principal was

contracted to lead the Colegio Guadalupe in 1909. German teachers were also hired to establish

kindergarten in Peru. 432 In addition, a long list of European professionals were hired to open or

improve professional schools of engineering, agronomy, veterinary science, pedagogy, and the

arts and trades.

The educational reforms also included a greater emphasis on physical education. It was

perceived that Peru needed a “virile” population for national defense, and to stem further racial

430
Jorge Basadre, “Prólogo,” Villarán, Manuel, Páginas escogidas, 325.
431
Memoria presentada por el Ministro de Justicia, Instrucción y Culto, Doctor José Matías León al Congreso
Ordinario de 1909 (Lima: Tipográfica de “La Opinión Nacional,” 1910), xxvi-ii.
432
Ibid.

185
decadence. To promote “vigor” in a population diagnosed as weak and effeminate, schools

would now have intensive gymnastic and sports activities. While physical exercise had been part

of earlier programs of education and hygiene, it now acquired more urgency in the wake of the

War of the Pacific and in light of the contemporary ascendance of scientific racism and eugenics.

Herbert Spencer’s writings on physical education –published in a series of articles in the 1850s,

and gathered in a book entitled Education: Moral, Intellectual, and Physical (1861)— were

reproduced in Lima’s newspapers in the early twentieth century in support of the idea that it was

the obligation of the state to promote the formation of a healthy and disciplined population. 433

Lima’s schools progressively transformed their infrastructure to include open areas for

sport activities and gyms. To gain time, however, the Municipality built facilities in 1891 for all

of the schools in the city. The speech by Lima’s Inspector of Education at the cornerstone

ceremony for the Central Gym made it clear that physical education was a matter of national

survival. The ascendance of a nation was relative to its power, and its power was dependent

upon the vigor, education, and number of its citizens. Since rapidly increasing the number of

citizens was not easy, Domingo Montesinos reasoned that citizens had to be educated and made

robust in a scientific manner through physical education. After all, that was what “our Incas”

had done. According to the Inspector, the Incas had taught “everyone” (the inspector carefully

avoided speaking of the citizens of the Inca empire) to run, jump, wrestle, and handle weapons.

In this, the Incas had been like the Greeks, for whom gymnastics was part of the essential

physical education of the people. It was thus clear that “this education is necessary to form

433
Fanny Muñoz, Diversiones públicas en Lima, 1890-1920: la experiencia de la modernidad (Lima: Red para el
Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú, 2001), 203.

186
warriors, but also to give youngsters grace, vigor, and beauty.” 434 Physical education was also a

tool to rid Peruvian education of its monotony and boredom, and to create much needed “men of

action.” The plan to make physical education mandatory was not universally accepted, and some

tried to resist the measure 435 on the grounds that exercise would weaken the bodies of children

and youngsters. The municipality had the active support of Lima’s newspapers, which published

numerous editorials lauding the benefits of sports and gymnastics for the acquisition of such

values as discipline, competition, and respect for rules. By the early twentieth century,

newspapers included special Sports sections –although no word in Spanish yet existed— and

several specialized publications, such as The Sport, Quincenario Ilustrado, published by the

Association of Target Shooting Societies, Sport y variedades: sport, letras, ciencias, artes y

variedades saw the light by 1889 and 1900, respectively. New sport clubs for boat races, tennis,

shooting, cycling, cricket, and football also appeared during these years. 436 The wave of new

publications and institutions related to sports –some created by European immigrants— exerted a

strong influence on Lima’s elites and helped solidify the conviction that physical education and

sports were convenient for the education, moralization, and strengthening of the population. By

1896, the administration of Nicolás de Piérola picked the example of the Municipalidad de Lima

and mandated physical education at schools throughout Peru so as to form “an organically and

morally vigorous generation.” 437

The drive for the inclusion of physical education continued for years, seemingly to

convince remaining doubters. The municipality stressed that physical development did not have

434
“Memoria del Inspector de Instrucción, Sr. Dr. don José Domingo Montesinos, de 1891,” Memoria de la
administración municipal de Lima. Presentada por su Alcalde don Juan Revoredo. (enero de 1890 a noviembre de
1891), (Lima: Imprenta de Torres Aguirre, 1891), 32.
435
“Informe de la Inspección de Instrucción del Concejo Municipal de Lima,” El Comercio, July 5, 1899.
436
Fanny Muñoz, Diversiones públicas, 203, 206, and 211.
437
Mensaje del Presidente de la República en la instauración del Congreso Ordinario de 1897 (Lima: Imprenta El
País, 1897).

187
a secondary importance in relation to the intellectual or academic function. By 1901, Federico

Elguera, Mayor of Lima, stated that countries with a “homogeneous race, where the species do

not degenerate, where there is not as much misery and the climate is fortifying,” could

concentrate on teaching children academics. Peru did not have those conditions, for “rickets and

the degeneration of race increase here; we lack strong arms for farming and have plenty of idiots,

drunks, and tuberculous people; we therefore need to dedicate ourselves to physical development

and introduce habits of morality and temperance, to produce men who read, write, and count, and

to handle the pick and the handsaw.” 438 Elguera’s words synthesized elite perception of Lima’s

population, and about the power of physical education to “improve the race” or at least slow its

degeneration. Physical education would also serve to rid Limeños of misoneismo or the

stationary spirit, and to help them acquire the habits and strength needed for the formation of a

disciplined labor force.

Along with physical education, reformers proposed that target practice or shooting be

instituted in the schools. Mayor Juan Revoredo proposed in 1891 that students learned shooting

“to make every citizen a soldier, ready to act when the patria requires his services.” 439 Target

practice would instill accuracy, patience, calm, and temperance, and it would make students part

of an “army of reserve.” Again, the legacy of the War of the Pacific expressed itself in the plans

to reform education. Target practice did spread among Lima’s upper classes, and even among

workers. A 1901 article in El Comercio praised a group of “honest and hardworking artisans”

who had recently created a shooting society. Shooting was no longer a luxury for the wealthy

but “a necessary exercise for all social classes in the country.” Artisans would not only acquire

438
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1901 (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1901), 40.
439
Memoria de la Administración Municipal de Lima. Presentada por su Alcalde don Juan Revoredo. (enero de
1890 a noviembre de 1891) (Lima: Imprenta de Torres Aguirre, 1891).

188
the benefits of the discipline but would also learn how to handle the “complicated mechanisms of

firearms.” 440

The Nation’s Wombs: Women, Race, and the Disappearance of the Private Sphere

“A serious responsibility for the nation’s future lies on every woman”

Dr. Rómulo Eyzaguirre

The elite’s obsession with the growth and physical improvement of Lima’s population

became more pronounced over time. White immigrants never arrived in the numbers desired; it

became increasingly clear that if Lima’s and Peru’s racial makeup were to improve it would have

to be done via environmental and cultural transformations. Intellectuals, politicians, authorities,

and medical doctors all shared the rhetoric that Lima’s population was stagnant or had been

reduced 441 despite the fact that statistics for the period appear to demonstrate important

growth. 442 Since the discourse posited that the power of a nation depended on the size and vigor

of its population it became an object of professional preoccupation; experts diagnosed the causes

of a supposed decline, and elaborated proposals to remedy the situation.

Most elites appear to have believed that Lima had a very high mortality rate. Federico

Elguera, Mayor of Lima, argued during his inauguration speech that his administration’s main

objective was to “hygienize” Lima, for it had an annual mortality of four percent, “while most

civilized countries have a rate below two percent.” 443 Elguera’s estimation was conservative,

though. A1906 bill for a law for the prophylaxis of infectious and contagious illnesses prepared

440
“Los artesanos y el tiro al blanco,” El Comercio, March 3, 1901.
441
Dr. Almenara Butler, “Informe sobre mortalidad infantil,” Memoria administrativa que presenta a la Sociedad de
Beneficencia Pública de Lima su Director don Domingo Olavegoya, correspondiente al año 1903 (Lima: Imprenta
de “La Opinión Nacional,” 1903), 25.
442
According to the 1908 Census of Lima, the total “urban” population of Lima was 158,782 inhabitants, 142,997 of
which lived in the core of the city and the remainder in the nearby towns of Barranco, Chorrillos, Magdalena, and
Miraflores. The “rural” population was of 17,482 inhabitants. See Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, Doctor
David Matto, presenta a la Legislatura Ordinaria de 1909 (Lima: Of. Tipogáfica de “La Opinión Nacional,” 1909),
311.
443
El Comercio, January 4, 1901.

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by the Hygiene Board of the Ministerio de Fomento estimated Lima’s mortality rate at 37

percent, not much better that Peru’s 40 percent. It was an incredibly costly toll “annually paid to

death.” 444 Other alarming statistics revealed that Lima’s rate of mortality by “avoidable” illness

was higher than in other Latin American cities. Dr. Rómulo Eyzaguirre estimated the mortality

rate for typhoid in Lima at 11.3 deaths per 10,000 patients, while Buenos Aires had 1.18,

Montevideo 1.89, and Havana 3.24. 445

Peru needed to launch a war against death if it were to survive and progress. Limeño

experts, of course, were paying careful attention to alarming reports on the demographic

problems abroad. They compared their empirical findings to those obtained in Europe and other

Latin American cities and countries, and backed their research with plenty of quotations from

European “experts.” When in 1906 Dr. Eyzaguirre quoted Dr. Ponicare’s dictum that

“prophylaxis is an armed peace” he was not simply “copying” or reciting a newly imported

creed, for those words had a special resonance in early twentieth-century Lima. 446 In a

“practical” spirit, Eyzaguirre stated that Peru was suffering from the constant robbery of its most

precious form of capital: life.

[L]ife is the most important capital of nations, and health, being a capital itself,
guarantees life. It is admissible if life is lost by use…life and death are but two
phases of the same phenomenon. But it is unacceptable under any circumstances
to let the elements that announce proceeds, and that currently produce income, to
increase the tally of waste. 447

If life was a precious capital for nations, hygienists became the national bankers.

Physicians gained an unprecedented participation in the state apparatus and the general political

444
“Proyecto de ley de profilaxia de las enfermedades infectocontagiosas,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento, II,
no. 3 (1903): 2.
445
Eyzaguirre, Rómulo, “Demografía sanitaria. Enfermedades evitables,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento.
Dirección de Salubridad Pública, II, no. 1 (1906): 10.
446
Ibid., 2.
447
Ibid., 24.

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life of Peru, reducing the presence both of lawyers and the military. Between 1895 and 1930,

thirteen percent of parliamentary representatives were medical doctors. 448 The importance of the

profession was also expressed in the number of students who decided to study medicine.

Between 1897 and 1910 one third of the student population in Lima’s university was registered

in the Faculty of Medicine. 449 A large number of physicians specialized in disciplines related to

the demographic urgencies of the country and fell under the name of hygiene, for it was believed

that “while medicine saves individuals, hygiene saves collectivities and, with them, the

nations.” 450 Perhaps Deustua’s vision of a directive class was also being realized, as a

disciplined educated elite, working under the umbrella of hygiene, concentrated on the

improvement of society as a whole. Peru’s government promoted these professions and

sponsored graduate studies in Europe for two years in exchange for a report that should include

“study of the development of the specialty pursued, as well as ways to improve them in the

country.” 451 The study of hygiene, commented Dora Mayer in El Comercio, “encompasses the

spheres of morality, philosophy, law, and administration. It penetrates into jails, hospitals,

cemeteries, and homes; it does research on the habits of the poor and the rich, on fashions and

traditions; on the influences of climate, the epoch, and race.” Hygiene seemingly provided a

scientific method for avoiding illness: Mayer added that “the healing of a patient should start two

hundred years before his birth.” 452 Graduating physician Macsimiliano Barriga was one of those

students who sought to contribute to Peru’s salvation by writing his thesis on the effects of

448
María Emma Mannarelli, Limpias y modernas: género, hihiene y cultura en la Lima del novecientos (Lima:
Ediciones Flora Tristán, 1999), 48.
449
Ibid.
450
Rómulo Eyzaguirre, “Demografía sanitaria, 25.
451
“Nómina de los médicos peruanos que ultimamente han realizado en Europa, por cuenta del gobierno, estudios
especiales de su profesión,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento. Dirección de Salubridad Pública, I, no. 2 (1905): 2.
452
Mayer, Dora, “La higiene en el Perú,” El Comercio, November 4, 1907.

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exercise on health. To him the study of hygiene “was a clamorous national exigency, for it deals

with the conservation and vigor of the species, which is so intensely needed today.” 453

Once it was agreed that hygiene was an investment in the future, and that hygienists were

the bankers in charge of taking care of the nation’s capital, it appeared clear that women were

central actors in the production and reproduction of the nation’s wealth, or at least the vaults

were it was temporarily held. In 1905, Dr. Belisario Sosa, one of the physicians who had studied

tocology in France with the sponsorship of the state, proposed that the state keep pregnant

women and new mothers under careful surveillance so that they might follow the scientific

guidance of medical doctors. They should be forced to report at least once a week after giving

birth. In fact “she must be forced to take her child to a doctor’s office everyday if such is

needed, and if she does not meet this obligation she must be looked for until she is found.” 454

Eyzaguirre, for his part, blamed Lima’s demographic maladies on the unhealthy housing,

the general lack of hygiene, ignorance, and poverty. There was, however, a deeper problem:

Lima lacked real mothers. No hay madres screamed Eyzaguirre! Limeñas preferred to turn their

infants over to wet nurses whose minds were “darkened by ignorance.” Here Eyzaguirre refers

to the fact that Limeño elites usually hired black wet nurses who tended to overfeed their

children, causing colic, dyspepsia, and eventual death. All of this was caused by women’s

disdain for “healthy professional advice.” Eyzaguirre proposed to penetrate to mothers’

consciousness and thereby to distance them from “ancient routines” through education. If there

were schools for the professions, he reasoned, “why do girls finish their schooling without

knowing how to take care of their children?” Since it was a physiological fact that they would

453
Maximiliano Barriga, El ejercicio y la salud. Tesis de Bachiller (Lima: Universidad Mayor de San Marcos,
Facultad de Medicina, 1902), 176.
454
Belisario Sosa, “Informe sobre maternidad,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento. Dirección de Salubridad
Pública, I, no. 2 (1905): 18.

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become mothers they should acquire “complete knowledge of their duties.” Schools for females,

he continued, must have mandatory training in nurseries (casas cuna) for at least one year to

combat the high mortality rate that kept Lima’s population stagnant. Eyzaguirre compared this

mandatory training for girls to compulsory professional internships for men. Motherhood was

women’s profession, and one they must perform properly, for “a serious responsibility for the

nation’s future falls on every woman.” 455

Women’s education must be reformed to comply with that sacred national duty. Women

were to receive special training for their special maternal roles. This meant a radical

transformation in relation to the education they had received hitherto, which was believed to be

part of the legacy of colonialism. From an early age, women were used to living in enclosed

environments and not moving, 456 and they were educated to be faithful Catholics, wasting

precious time “devoutly kneeling in the temple” and being locked in schools directed by nuns

until they turned eighteen or twenty. 457 They could not develop their bodies in a proper way to

carry out their important mission. Hygienists, educators, and writers –including avant garde

female intellectuals— created the notion that Limeñas were frivolous and vain, unwilling to

make the sacrifices that the nation required. Graduating physician Alejandro Benavente

reasoned that wealthy Limeñas followed the shallow exigencies imposed by civilization –such as

high heels or the corset— which deformed their bodies for maternity. 458 A similar criticism of

“white mothers” was also made by physician Enrique León García in his study entitled “The

Races in Lima.” For León García women’s education was antiquated and full of prejudice, for

455
Rómulo Eyzaguirre, “Demografía sanitaria,” 22.
456
Elvira García y García, “Por qué son débiles nuestros niños,” El hogar y la escuela, I, no. 4 (1909): 117.
457
Teresa González de Fanning, Educación femenina. Colección de artículos pedagógicos, morales y sociológicos
(Lima: Tipografía de “El Lucero,” 1905).
458
Alejandro Benavente, Nuestras intervenciones en la Maternidad de Santa Ana. Tesis de Bachiller (Lima:
Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, Facultad de Medicina, 1911).

193
they had learned their raising manners from their mothers and grandmothers. Childcare methods

were the same as a century before and as a consequence the “select class” lost more children than

was allowed by hygienic rules. 459 If elite women were ignorant of the basic methods for taking

care of the nation’s capital, subaltern women did worse. As a result, more mestizo children died

than whites, and more Indian children than mestizos. Indian women were particularly ignorant in

the ways they raised their infants. Las indias did not breastfeed, were cruel mothers “by

inheritance,” and beat their children just as their husbands beat them. 460

In addition, women had to be educated because they were in charge of the education of

the children in their early, pre-school years. An anonymous chronicler of El Comercio was

aware of the reproductive role of women, and suggested that the state concentrate on their

education: “To obtain good citizens, we must educate women.” 461 Their instruction had to be

reformed to include physical education –carefully measured, so as to avoid a possible

masculinization of their bodies— 462 hygiene –including feminine and infant hygiene— and

childcare. 463 Still, their primary education excluded civic lessons on Peru’s Constitution and

Municipal and Electoral Law which male students did receive. 464

Dr. Almenara argued that the only way to solve Lima’s demographic problems was to

protect infants “before their birth.” This meant that pregnant woman –“that unfortunate being

that has to suffer, until the end of time, the harsh and painful proof to which she is condemned to

459
Enrique León García, Las razas en Lima, 52.
460
Ibid., 53-5.
461
“Crónica de Agridulce,” El Comercio, December 25, 1908.
462
Fanny Muñoz, Diversiones públicas, 203, 209.
463
The 1903 Anti-alcoholic Congress concluded that women’s anti-alcoholic education had to be equal to that of
men, except that women had to receive courses on domestic economy, hygiene of newborns, hygiene for women
during puberty, and hygiene for the mother. “Congreso Nacional Anti-alcohólico. Conclusiones,” Boletín del
Ministerio de Fomento, I, no. 2 (1903): 120.
464
“Reglamento de Instrucción pública de 1875,” Leyes y resoluciones vigentes en material de instrucción
expedidas desde 1876. Recopiladas por Filiberto Ramírez, comisionado al efecto por el Consejo Superior de
Instrucción Pública (Lima: Imprenta de “El País,” 1897).

194
ensure the species survival”— had to be protected. In fact, intrauterine protection of the child

(niño, in the masculine) had to be provided “before his parents’ marriage.” Almenara also

complained about Limeñas’ unwillingness to breastfeed their children. He believed that women

were not complying with their “natural duty,” and proposed to severely restrict and inspect the

hiring of wet nurses, for if “men are not allowed to send a replacement to his compulsory

military service, women must not be allowed to hire replacements.” Quoting a “prominent

hygienist” who had stated that maternal milk did not really belong to mothers but to the infant,

Dr, Almenara added that “those people do not have the right to deal with maternal milk as they

wish.” 465

Almenara could easily have said that the milk belonged to the nation. In fact, the

preoccupation with Lima’s supposed demographic maladies and racial decadence made women’s

bodies the property of the state, whose experts could examine and experiment with them in an

effort to produce healthy citizens –an invariably masculine category. Specialists and graduating

students inspected women’s bodies, paying particular attention to their reproductive system, the

point at which the reproduction of the population and the race took place. The bodies of lower

class women at the Hospital de Santa Ana were the sites of most of the research on topics such

as pregnancy and hygiene. 466 This was possible because positivist doctrines erased the

distinction between public and private spheres; or, to phrase it differently, all was now defined as

national, and it was the state’s obligation to penetrate, intervene, and regulate in what was

formerly considered private. The 1906 law for the prophylaxis of infectious diseases declared

“the unlimited right of the state to intervene in all matters related to the defense of health and

465
Dr. Almenara Butler, “Informe sobre mortalidad infantil,” 29.
466
María Emma Mannarelli, Limpias y modernas, 48.

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life, which is the most valuable capital of a society.” 467 Philosopher Javier Prado, who by 1907

was a deputy in Peru’s Congress, also stated that “the juridical sciences have progressed, and the

old absolute and abstract concepts of personal liberty and inviolability have been replaced by the

broad concept of social duties.” 468

Radical Therapy for a Sick Organism

Peru’s defeat and Lima’s occupation in the War of the Pacific led turn-of-the-century

Limeño elites to conclude that Peru was neither an integrated nation nor a developed society.

They came to blame Spanish colonialism and its lingering effects on elites. Peru lacked a

leading or directive class that could unify the nation and develop its natural wealth and biopower.

Republican elites had been unable to rid Peru of the legacy of Spanish colonialism because they

themselves were culturally and racially trapped in it. Thinkers of different tendencies coincided

in this harsh diagnosis of Peru’s history and nature. Javier Prado, for instance, argued that early

Republican elites had repudiated Spanish government and the idea of absolutist monarchy but

their lack of moral education had left Peru without guidance. The political and social habits of

elites had been shaped by the very system of government they had wished to deny. The

contradition between republican drive and “colonial mentality” rendered elites ineffectual when

it came to building a modern nation. 469 As a consequence, all previous efforts to create a unified

and developed nation were critically obliterated by intellectuals and reformers. Judging the

postcolonial revolutionaries and reformers in the light of the catastrophe of the recent war, all

that they had achieved now seemed insignificant if not schizophrenic.

Turn of the century elites repudiated the republican past and analyzed it critically to

467
“Proyecto de Ley Para la profilaxia de enfermedades infectocontagiosas,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento.
Dirección de Salubridad Pública, II, no. 3 (1906): 2.
468
“Debate parlamentario. Cámara de Diputados. Sobre el artículo 2. Sesión del primero octubre de 1907,” El
Comercio, Octubre 10, 1907.
469
Javier Prado, Estado social del Perú, 198.

196
extract the “severe lessons for experience” they thought it provided. 470 Philosopher Juan de

Lavalle proclaimed in 1908 that there were no lessons on morality in Peru’s history. Those

lessons could only be extracted by opposition or negation. In his view, history taught that Peru’s

life had been characterized by inconsequence, immorality, and irrationality. From Peru’s long

and painful history one only learned that Peru needed to apply universal social and political

“laws” and thus launch a new beginning. 471 The past had to be transcended. Peru was still

kneeling before its past, said Deustua, which made it “vain,” “impotent,” and “passive.” 472 The

past had “feminized” Peruvian society. Consequently, a more virile Peru would have to free

himself of a feminine past. The “scientific laws of sociology” were to be applied to examine that

past, and to dictate that Peru was a “sick organism.” As Gonzalez Prada wrote, “anywhere you

touch Peru, pus flows out.” 473 The patient needed serious medicine.

These ideas were crafted in the grave and urgent atmosphere that followed the trauma of

the war. Nevertheless, they were foundational for future sociological readings of Peru’s history

and society. Intellectuals or political elites would criticize the previous generation, accusing it of

not being modern enough, of being trapped by their colonial mentality, or of pursuing half-

hearted projects of modernization, destined to fail. Peru had been conquered by the “wrong”

empire –not by hardworking pioneers but by arrogant, lazy, “feudal,” and exploitative

Conquistadors, and as a result it lacked a leading class or true bourgeoisie, and so it did not

deserve to be called a nation. Only a radical transformation –a new beginning, a patria nueva, a

revolution— brought by a messiah or redeemer –immigrants, a “strong hand,” el pueblo, the

470
Patrón, Pablo, “Estudio crítico sobre el discurso del Dr. Javier Prado y Ugarteche acerca del Perú colonial,”
Javier, Prado, Estado social del Perú, 284. Patrón read this speech at the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos in 1894.
471
Lavalle, Juan de, “De historia nacional. Un nuevo texto. Resumen de “La historia del Perú” por Carlos Wiesse,”
El Comercio, September 6, 1908.
472
Alejandro Deustua, “El problema pedagógico nacional.”
473
Manuel González Prada, “Propaganda y ataque,” Pájinas Libres.

197
proletariat, the Indian, the suffering poor, or the global market—could save her.

If Peru was a sick organism, it was seen as being composed of afflicted organs or social

entities: ill, decadent races without “energy” or moral capacity. Since there was nothing of

present value in Peru’s past, she was desperately in need of “ethnic therapeutics” either in the

form of the “inoculation of new blood” or the reform of Peruvian bodies and minds. Both of

these therapeutics methods were debated and attempted. European immigrants did not arrive in

significant numbers, and so elites concentrated on “hygienic” reforms. “Hygiene” combined

new pedagogical methods with physical activities. Women’s bodies became privileged sites for

national intervention, for the womb and the breast were the sites were life, race, and the capital

of the nation was reproduced.

The perceived need for a practical and energetic bourgeoisie and an abiding proletariat

meant that efforts at reform had to be concentrated in Lima. The trauma of Lima’s occupation

by Chilean forces reinforced the capital city’s ascendance. In comparison with other Latin

American capitals, Peru’s capital had been left behind. Some now believed that this was

probably the reason why European immigrants did not wish to come to Peru. Holding

environmental conceptions of race, experts affirmed that Lima had to be physically reformed and

sanitized to improve and increase its population. These concepts merged with the resurfacing

urgency to insert Lima –and, subsequently, Peru— in the era of progressive industrialism. Those

efforts will be analyzed in the following chapters.

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 CHAPTER 5
MAPPING THE PROLETARIAT AND THE WRETCHED (1895-1910)

Peeping into Enemy Territory: The Literary Construction of the Poor’s Habitats

After War of the Pacific, intellectuals and politicians had agreed that Peru must forge a

unified national community, recover the lost time through the development of industries, and

develop a strong, disciplined population to achieve both objectives. The perception that Lima

suffered demographic maladies, together with the positivist disappearance of the private sphere,

made women’s bodies key sites of scrutiny and intervention. Other privileged locations for

inspection were Limeños’ dwellings, specially the private homes of subaltern inhabitants, as

hygienists and authorities attempted to diagnose the living conditions of the city inhabitants to

design policies for habitat improvement. Following environmental conceptions of race, experts

aspired to outline scientific solutions to Lima’s “racial problem.” A literary genre –the

ethnography of the urban poor— was born out the growing preoccupation for the sanitation of

Lima, for the systematic diagnosis of private homes and neighborhoods produced scientific

reports that inscribed the new anthropological subjects and their settings. In spite of the

scientific faith in the possibility to manage and improve the population’s characteristics through

environmental transformations, the reports show a constant tension with the conception that the

unsanitary conditions of the poor’s dwellings and neighborhoods were the result of the lower

classes’ insurmountable decrepitude.

Sanitary inspections of private homes had been mandated in several occasions during the

Age of Guano, usually after news of a breakout of an epidemic. By the turn of the century,

however, routine inspections were carried out as part of the continuous and generalized

preoccupation about Lima’s demographic maladies. By the beginning of the twentieth century,

hygienists had become influential intellectuals and policymakers (see Chapter 4 above). They

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now occupied important positions in the Municipality of Lima –each of the city quarters boasted

a team of sanitary doctors— as well as in newly created institutions, such as the Instituto

Nacional de Vacuna y Seroterapia (1896), the Instituto Municipal de Higiene (1902), the

Dirección de Salubridad of the Ministerio de Fomento, which included a section of hygiene and

another of demography (1903), and the Policía Sanitaria (1904). Each of these institutions had a

small army of inspectors who studied the hygienic conditions of the city and penetrated into the

poor’s houses. The School of Medicine had also established a close relationship with other state

institutions concerned with public health. 474 The Facultad also stimulated graduating students to

join experts in the mission to inspect the houses of the “proletariat and the shameful families,” 475

all in the name of the common good.

Juan Antonio Portella was one graduating higienista from the Facultad who wrote his

1903 thesis on the hygiene conditions of poor neighborhoods. After arguing that the houses of

the poor were unsanitary and hosted dangerous organisms that made their inhabitants prone to

succumb to infections, Portella warned possible readers that the poor themselves were a hazard

“for everyone” because they could disseminate disease throughout the city

And something every well-off person must take into account is that the poor, due
to the miserable conditions of their existence, are terrible enemies and a danger
for everyone. There is something all classes share, to which we are all exposed:
disease. Contagion is similar to the vengeance of the underprivileged against the
indolence of the wealthy. 476

Portella was trying to convince wealthier Limeños that they could not afford to leave the

poor unattended, not because of a benevolent, philanthropic spirit, but because their own health

474
María Enma Mannarelli, Limpias y Modernas: Género, hygiene y cultura en la Lima del novecientos (Lima:
Ediciones Flora Tristán, 1999), 47.
475
Those are the adjectives used by Dr. Morante in his 1901 report on the houses of quarter 3 of Lima. M. Morante,
“Memoria anual del Médico Sanitario Municipal del Cuartel 3,” Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1901
(Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1901).
476
Juan Antonio Portella, La higiene de las casas de vecindad. Necesidad de construir casas higiénicas para
obreros, Tesis de Bachillerato (Lima: Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, 1903).

200
depended on that of their “enemies,” the poor. Portella’s thesis received enthusiastic praise from

an anonymous commentator in El Comercio. The commentator thanked him for his “upsetting

and bitter depiction” of the living conditions of the poor, and echoed its criticism of the upper

classes for having done “nothing in favor of the destitute class, ignoring its outcry, and for

proceeding with a selfish criterion, which carries general damages and dangers.” Limeño elites,

he argued, had not made efforts to improve the conditions of Lima’s poor, in spite of the age’s

“universal movement in favor of the proletariat.” 477 It was time to penetrate into the enemy

territory of la plebe to scrutinize it and to attempt to design alternative, sanitary housing for

Lima’s poor.

A 1904 Supreme Resolution by the Central Government commissioned physician

Leonidas Avendaño and engineer Santiago Basurco to create a report on the sanitary conditions

of poor Limeño dwellings. The Resolution was based on the perception that the high mortality

and morbidity rates of the city were caused by the anti-hygienic conditions of the casas de

vecindad (crowded tenements), callejones (rundown, ghettoized properties), and solares (lots

occupied by informally built shacks). In short, the dwellings where the majority of Lima’s poor

resided. Avendaño and Basurco’s diagnosis was also to include a plan for the construction of

houses and neighborhoods for workers. 478 Basurco, a prominent Engineer of the State, quickly

released a brief preliminary report in which he deplored the physical conditions of the poor’s

residences, and argued that their decaying environment had pernicious physical, cultural, moral,

and racial effects on the population at large.

The engineer/ethnographer elaborated a “realistic” narration of the neighborhoods and

houses he claimed to “describe in all of its terrifying reality.” Lima’s poor lived in miserable

477
“Una Tesis importante,” El Comercio, October 11, 1903.
478
Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento. Dirección de Salubridad Pública, I, no. 1 (1905): 214-5.

201
conditions that were unacceptable in modern times. Their dwellings were built with the same

materials and technology used “in the times of Francisco Pizarro.” 479 The floors in the casas de

vecindad were uneven and dirty; the common areas were narrow and did not receive enough

daylight, while the smoke from the tenants’ stoves could not be liberated, creating a polluted

atmosphere that promoted illnesses and sickened the visitor. The mud and dab used in the

construction of the dwelling’s walls absorbed the humidity of Lima’s environment, generating

ailments among the occupants; the uneven, rustic walls offered an ideal habitat for rodents.

These built environments had negative effects on the occupants’ habits. The

neighborhoods were so narrow and crowded that their tenants were forced to maintain close

relationships with each other, which in turn facilitated numerous “opportunities to engage in

relationships of intimate friendship” as well as “opportunities to quarrel for causes related to the

state in which they live.” This proximity in misery also promoted “gatherings in which alcohol

plays a major role.” As a result, the habitats of the poor were “dumps of misery, filth,

immorality, and every bad thing a human mind can imagine.” 480 A heady literary mixture of

science and disgust gave such reports a “realistic” and sensual tone. Elite readers were invited

to “peep” into the poor’s private habitats, seeking to stimulate the reader’s imagination by way of

detailed descriptions of odors and voyeuristic suggestions of “intimate relations… and every bad

thing a human mind can imagine.”

The reports reinforced deep-seated notions that la plebe was guided by its instincts, and

that it did not inhabit the same age as elites. Basurco commented that the poor “did not care if

places got more crowded,” if “race kept degenerating,” or if their houses and neighborhoods

were “centers of corruption and misery.” This was so because “a worker” did not desire

479
Santiago Basurco, “Construcción de casas higiénicas para obreros,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento.
Dirección de Obras Públicas. I, no. 1 (1905): 61.
480
Ibid., 56.

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economic welfare, but instead to spend as little as possible in rent. “That way, he has more

money to spend on alcohol in the bar nearest to his house.” 481 Drinking was also an option for

the “father” who sought “in the street or the tavern… a way to distract himself from the

annoyances he encounters at home.” 482 The poverty of the families in the callejones and casas

de vecindad was in the reports ascribed to the poor’s lack of discipline and ethics, and especially

of the men, who did not comply with the patriarchal obligations of “respectable men.” Using the

singular male form, Basurco stated that “he” did not care about the condition of his residence or

for the economic welfare of his family. But while the moral condition of the poor male

explained the decrepitness of their houses; Basurco, however, also argued the opposite: that the

residences’ environment made them centers of corruption where “urchins were transformed into

potential criminals” and that degenerated race.

Basurco’s contention that the plebe lived under the same conditions as their remote

ancestors, and that mud and dab walls were the equivalent of a lazy mule in the age of the

locomotive, 483 served to expel the poor from contemporaneous time, and thereby consitute them

as “anthropological objects” of scientific study and intervention. 484 The same temporal strategy

is found in Basurco’s final report, written in collaboration with Avendaño, and published in

1907. The final report was a meticulous account of the dwellings of the poor that included

statistical data but relied heavily on the prosaic or ethnographic narration. The text readily asked

readers to accompany the authors on a fantastic journey through time, into places “whose

existence in the midst of the twentieth century seems unbelievable in a city like Lima… More

than shelters for civilized men, they seem like caves from prehistoric epochs, from the primitive

481
Ibid., 63.
482
Ibid., 56.
483
Ibid.,62, 63.
484
Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1983).

203
times of the existence of humanity.” 485 Such reports facilitated the view among elites that

different historical times coexisted in Lima. Lima was a city that only partially lived in the

twentieth century, for it still held areas trapped in the Stone Age or in the early colonial period.

The inhabitants of these primitive areas or callejones did not inhabit modernity or

contemporaneity.

Certain passages of the experts’ report, however, appear to betray horror in relation to the

poor’s temporal promiscuity. After describing a tenement in the heart of the city with the usual

words of disgust (“a mare magnum,” “filthy dump,” the “negation of hygiene”) Basurco and

Avendaño concluded that its existence was a “mockery of twentieth-century civilization.” 486

The choice of words here is certainly ambiguous. Did the hygienists mean to suggest that the

tenement was a shameful anomaly in modern times? Or were they suggesting that the housing of

the poor constituted a burlesque curse upon the hypocrisy of twentieth-century civilization in

Lima? Ambivalence also appears in the descriptions of the furniture in the dwellings. The

experts expressed their disgust at the dirtiness and worn out look, but also observed that here

“there are pieces of all known ages and styles.” 487 The poor appeared to gather artifacts from all

the ages, disrupting the “homogenous time” of the nation of upper-class Limeños who would

fully inhabit the twentieth century. 488 The physical proximity and temporal promiscuity of the

poor and the danger it represented for wealthier Limeños were constantly emphasized by Basurco

and Avendaño. Their description of the Callejón de la Cruz, for instance, ended with the

cautionary reminder that it was in the vicinity of an institution “that host the men of tomorrow:”

485
Santiago Basurco and Leonidas Avendaño, “Higiene de la habitación. Informe emitido por la comisión nombrada
por el gobierno para estudiar las condiciones sanitarias de las casas de vecindad,” Boletín del Ministerio de
Fomento. Dirección de Salubridad Pública, 3, no. 4-5 (1907): 84.
486
Ibid., 48.
487
Ibid., 109.
488
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:
Verso, 1991).

204
the prestigious Colegio Guadalupe. 489 Basurco and Avendaño repeatedly mentioned the

laundry women who washed better-off people’s clothes in the most unsanitary conditions of the

callejones. 490 They, too, were, an ubiquitous sign that the poor were not immobile and stuck in

their “caves” but dangerous, liminal individuals who moved across social space and time, and

who readily penetrated into elites’ intimate environments, carrying with them their “pathogenic

agents.”

Like wet-nurses, seamstresses and nannies, laundry women assumed an important role in

these ethnographic texts. A 1901 sanitary report on tuberculosis, written by hygienist M.

Morante, had argued that the disease was mostly found among “the proletariat and the shameful

families” but he emphasized women who had been “forced to work.” Working women were

emphasized for two reasons. On the one hand, they served as a sign of the moral decadence of

the poor, that is, as a proof that males in the lower classes did not comply with the duties of any

respectable patriarch. On the other hand, women of the poor sectors of Lima provided elites with

domestic service as maids, nannies, cooks, and launderers, and were therefore in contact with

upper class people who did not care to know how they lived once they left their working

environments. Morante’s, as well as Avendaño and Basurco’s reports attempted to put an end to

that comfortable ignorance, not to promote compassion but as a call for a virile, patriarchal

response to protect upper-class families.

The idea that lower class men did not make good providers and therefore were not part of

the gente decente was persistently repeated in the reports, and would be at the core of later

assumptions in the literature on the lower classes that characterized them as plagued by a

489
Ibid., 82.
490
Ibid., 39, 43, 47-8, 111-2.

205
stubborn machismo. 491 The point had been made earlier by Lima’s sociologist Joaquín Capelo,

who dedicated part of his Sociología de Lima to the city’s seamstresses:

In the poor families, you often see the mother and the sisters of the shameless man
spend entire nights, from dusk to dawn, sewing until they become consumptive,
and almost without food. She makes immense sacrifices only to earn a few coins
to pay for the expenses demanded by the vices of her shameless man. 492

The “women who have been forced to work,” now stated the hygienist Morante, were

poorly paid, malnourished and, more importantly, lived in callejones or in casas de vecindad

where “life is impossible due to their poor hygienic conditions.” Morante described the interior

of the callejón dwellings with horror, for they seemed to have been made “in flagrant opposition

to the most fundamental precepts of modern hygiene.” In these dwellings “men, women,

children, and domestic animals live together crowded in appalling confusion and without a single

measure to preserve the life and health of the inhabitants… [F]amilies of four, six, or more

members live in tiny rooms of two or three square meters.” 493 These extremely small rooms

were multipurpose, for dwellers raised their animals, cooked food, and washed clothes in the

same space where they ate, slept, and passed the day. Such disorderly rooms offered perfect

conditions for the incubation of all kinds of “infectious elements.” The clothes washed in those

grimy environments did not necessarily belong to the room’s occupants, for most of the female

dwellers worked as launderers, washing clothes for better-off people. The report concluded with

the frightening warning that the clothes women washed might carry the infectious elements of

the poor into the dwellings of “respectable people.” 494 The idea of microbes and bacteria being

transported from the filthy environment of a callejón to the body of an upper class Limeño was

491
Mathew Gutmann, The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996).
492
Joaquín Capelo, Lima en 1900: estudio crítico y antología, ed. Richard Morse (Lima: Instituto de Estudios
Peruanos, 1973), 174.
493
M. Morante, “Memoria anual del Médico Sanitario,” xxix.
494
Ibid.

206
intended to frighten municipal authorities and readers, for the danger of contamination,

according to experts, was closer than they could have imagined.

The reports drew vivid depictions of the “savage” disorder in the interiors of the houses

of the poor. The revolting descriptions served to reinforce the idea, also promoted in the same

texts, of the poor’s degradation. The reports attempted to transcend the limits of eye-witness

descriptions, to invite readers to smell the “nauseating,” “corrupted and infectious atmosphere”

of the neighborhoods and houses. Every sensorial reference in these texts was immediately

considered a proof of the decadence of the poor. The worn-out furniture, for instance, was a clear

indicator of the low moral condition of their owners:

Nothing is more grotesque, more anti-aesthetic, and more difficult to maintain in

good conditions of cleanliness, than the furniture one finds in the rooms of these
houses… Fading, falling apart, and with a permanent layer of dust and dirt, they
offer a repelling aspect and typify the moral condition of their owners… all that is
a pandemonium, an aberration, something hard to conceive. 495

The association between the uncultured, pre-historical environment and the “primitivism”

of the population was also reinforced by the experts’ appeal to the concept of race. The

decrepitness of the habitat and that of the inhabitants clearly complemented each other. The

Cantagallo neighborhood, for instance, “reminds the viewer of the shelters of ancient nomad

populations… [they are] truly infected caves, impossible to be inhabited even by wild beasts” 496

By mentioning that this area was inhabited by Indians and that its population included an Asian

tripe peddler, Basurco and Avendaño’s depiction of Cantagallo’s filth was reinforced. The

shacks and neighborhood were filthy and primitive simply because the people who lived there

were naturally filthy and primitive. The same association between the built environment and

racial characteristics is made in another passage

495
Ibid., 109.
496
Ibid., 107.

207
 This entire amorphous group of rooms is inhabited by individuals of the Indian
race, of lymphatic temper, pusillanimous, illiterate, and without any trace of
culture, lacking any aptitude to carry out the most elementary precepts of hygiene.
That explains the extreme unhealthiness of this neighborhood. 497

These racial associations were common in hygienist reports. Dr. Rómulo Eyzaguirre had

also made it in his 1906 report on preventable diseases. When describing the living conditions of

the poor, Eyzaguirre argued that “the indigenous race” was “the most miserable, the filthiest, the

one that lives in the worst conditions, eats the worst, does not have notions of hygiene, and lives

in an astonishing promiscuity...” 498 Hygienists agreed Indians were the “poorest and less

cultured people” and, therefore, were incapable of living an hygienic life. Since the most

crowded and dirtiest callejones were the ones where Indians lived, reasoned Eyzaguirre “these

circumstances give us a clear idea of the relationship of cause and effect between race, culture,

the economic status, overpopulation, and the type of building.” 499

Basurco and Avendaño also made a clear association between the Indian inhabitants of

poor neighborhoods, and the Asian peddler of Cantagallo, with the animals they raised in their

houses and shacks. According to the report, the Asian peddler lived “in the most appalling filth,”

and shared his small shack with “no fewer than four dozen” cats. 500 As for Indians, they noted:

It is an ancient custom among individuals of the lower class, especially those of

the Indian race, to live in dreadful promiscuity with all kinds of domestic animals,
which dirty the pavement and the furniture with their excrement, and contribute,
in no small part, to the unhealthiness of the dwelling. Dogs, cats, pigs, guinea
pigs, chickens, etc., are the inseparable companions of these individuals of the
lower class. 501

497
Ibid., 42.
498
Rómulo Eyzaguirre, “Demografía sanitaria. Enfermedades evitables,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento.
Dirección de Salubridad Pública, 1, no. 1 (1906): 13.
499
Ibid., 13.
500
Basurco, Santiago y Leonidas Avendaño, “Higiene de la habitación,” 107.
501
Ibid., 110.

208
 The reports attributed filthiness and the decadence of the dwellings in the callejones and

casas de vecindad to the racial and cultural characteristics of the poor. The temporal and spatial

promiscuity of dwellings “true burrows, where the inhabitants live, cook, and satisfy all of their

[physical] necessities,” 502 and the crowdedness of the rooms, for instance, were signs of the

moral promiscuity of the poor, who lacked family values, lived in informal and unstable unions,

and so produced illegitimate offspring 503 “for as long as those arrogant, indomitable, and

unsociable wills desire.” 504

With these kinds of diagnoses it is perhaps unsurprising that the hygienists could not

design a coherent solution to the “horrifying” living conditions of the poor. They would arrive at

the terrifying conclusion that changing the environment would not transform the racially ruined

poor. Basurco’s initial report only recommended to prohibit the use of mud and dab in

constructions, for these materials should not be used in the era of the more sanitary, modern

brick. He also argued that it was convenient to “make disappear this kind of construction

(referring to callejones, solares, and casas de vecindad) that has caused so much harm to the

city.” 505 Demolition was, then, the only solution. . Basurco barely expressed his opposition to

apartment buildings for working class families. “Due to the customs of our pueblo, which lacks

hygiene habits and a degree of education,” and who possess an “expansive character,” those

buildings would be counterproductive. Tenants would still have “intimate contact with each

other,” and as a result socializing habits could not be reformed. 506 At the same time, the

construction of new neighborhoods could make use of sanitary materials and state-of-the-art

502
Basurco, Santiago and Leonidas Avendaño, “Higiene de la habitación,” 7.
503
Ibid., 32.
504
Ibid., 33.
505
Santiago Basurco, “Construcción de casas higiénicas,” 56.
506
Ibid., 65-6.

209
methods, but the characteristics of Lima’s poor would end up ruining the built environment over

time.

The Basurco and Avendaño report made repeated calls for “the immediate closure and

demolition” of the neighborhoods in the worst conditions, for they were “a threat for the hygiene

and security of the surrounding population.” 507 The poor posed an enormous threat because they

were disseminated throughout the entire city, so that in effect Lima itself was temporally and

spatially heterogeneous and promiscuous. This point was emphasized when referring to those

areas populated by a large number of Asian Limeños. 508 The Asian population had become a

particular preoccupation for elites since a large number of Chinese immigrants settled in the

vicinity of the Central Market around the mid-nineteenth century (see Chapter 4 above). The

Basurco and Avendaño report called for the immediate removal of Asians from the center of the

city to isolated locations outside Lima. They argued that the famished and ragged Chinese

“poison the environment with the virus-filled emanations from the opium they smoke and with

the fetid and mephitic gases of the filth that surrounds them,” and that the agglomeration of

Asians was “a revolting and repugnant plague, more frightening than all past and future

epidemics.” 509

By the turn of the twentieth century, some of the Japanese who had finished their

contracts as agricultural indentured workers had begun to settle in Lima. To prevent a greater

concentration of Asians in Lima –that is, the formation of a Chinese-Japanese neighborhood--

the Municipalidad de Lima quickly entertained the idea of relocating the existing Asian

population. A report presented by the Municipality’s Hygiene Inspector in 1901, for instance,

507
Santiago Basurco and Leonidas Avendaño, “Higiene de la habitación,” 107.
508
The term “Asian-Limeños” was never used by hygienists, intellectuals, or workers. I use it to state that Chinese
and Japanese immigrants who settled in Lima were indeed Limeños, a status other Limeños were not willing to grant
them.
509
Ibid., 86.

210
recommended the construction of a Chinatown outside Lima to cleanse the city from a

population that, “as experience has long demonstrated,” were “completely unable to acquire the

most elementary notions and practices of hygiene.” 510 Federico Elguera, Lima’s Mayor, would

have surely agreed with his inspector, for he had described the barrio chino as an “unbelievable

and outrageous inferno,” and had stated that “as a descendant of a civilized and virile race, I have

humane instincts, but I do not believe it would be a sin to close that infernal place, and start a fire

in it… it is a wound we ought to burn, to protect the health of the social body.” 511

Two months after the report, the Municipality approved a proposal to expropriate and

demolish the Callejón de Otaiza, a large property occupied by about one thousand Chinese

tenants. The newspaper El Comercio immediately praised the proposal on the grounds that the

Central Market needed more space and cleanliness, and that the Chinese presence filled it with

“foul-smelling emanations.” El Comercio suggested that a lot along the road to Ancón should be

destined to the erection of a Chinatown “for Asians to build their houses there, and thus we could

progressively expel all of them from the center of the city.”512

The inspectors’ reports’ final objective had allegedly been to provide guidelines for the

improvement of the housing conditions of the poor. That goal, in fact, had legitimized the

experts’ endeavor in the first place. Basurco and Avendaño, for instance, argued that the

relevance and legitimacy of their mission was scientific, because “only once we know how and

where the lower people –the crowd that constitutes the great mass of the working element— live,

can the guidelines aimed at improving their anomalous situation be formulated on behalf of

510
“Estudio presentado al Sr. Alcalde del Honorable Concejo Provincial por la Inspección de Higiene,” El
Comercio, January 19, 1901.
511
Federico Elguera, “La higiene,” El Barón de Keef en Lima (Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1913), 107.
512
“Un buen Proyecto,” El Comercio, March 31, 1901.

211
hygiene, morality, and charity.” 513 They also argued that the “classes not favored by fortune,”

and the people who lacked “economic or intellectual resources” had “the right to possess a

sanitary dwelling, just like any other individual at the dawn of the twentieth century.” 514

Inspections and reports were the scientific way to reach an appropriate solution to lower class

housing problems, which in turn would help change lower-class habits and “the race.” The

experts’ intrusion in private homes was also legitimized in the name of the common welfare, for

The Municipality must intervene in every aspect related to the aesthetics and
hygiene of the city and its inhabitants. Its field of action is so great in this regard,
that its authority must be exercised not only on the urban network, on the streets
and the facades of homes, but also in their internal arrangement, even in the
slightest details. 515

But the hygienists/ethnographers Basurco and Avendaño failed to elaborate viable

alternatives to improve the living environment of the poor, and only proposed that the Central

Government construct a barrio obrero to be administrated by the Sociedad de San Regis --an

institution that attempted to promote legal marriages among the poor. 516 The barrio should

include individual homes for nuclear families, each with two rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, and

patio, and with abundant potable water. Different activities should be carried out in separate,

specialized spaces to avoid disorder and filth, and a system of surveillance had to be mounted to

make sure inhabitants did not reproduce their moral promiscuity and disorder, thereby ruining

the sanitized spaces. The experts must have known, however, that the expenses their proposal

implied made it simply unfeasible.

Nevertheless, the experts did solidly construct the houses and neighborhoods of the poor

in their literary descriptions, and these allowed elites to peep into the lives of their poor

513
Santiago Basurco and Leonidas Avendaño, “Higiene de la habitación,” 36.
514
Ibid, 3.
515
Ibid., 78.
516
Ibid., 73.

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neighbors. As literary texts, the ethnographies served to reconstruct elite Limeños’ self-image as

civilized and racially virile “whites” who inhabited modernity as “men of tomorrow.” 517 In

short, reports served to heal the narcissistic wounds that afflicted Lima’s elites after the trauma

of defeat in the War of the Pacific. As discussed in Chapter 4 above, one consequence of that

war was the generation of doubts about the elite’s own claim to civilization, modernity,

nationhood, and whiteness. The war had symbolically pushed them down to the level of la

plebe. Now, the literary construction of the poor served to raise them back into a position of

social, racial, and patriarchal self-respectability.

The reports also offered imaginable if inviable alternatives for achieving the “common

good,” for that notion was largely identical to what was convenient for the elite “everyone”

mentioned by Portella, that is, those who could be contaminated by the noxious influence of the

poor. The reports served to encourage the segregation of the city to protect the health of

“everyone,” and they would be influential in guiding the city’s extramural growth. Although

Portella’s strategy was apparently aimed at stimulating elites to invest in the improvement of the

lives of “the enemies,” the reports also suggest that the poor were hopeless, and that

environmental changes would not reform their “racial” defects. The most convenient way for

elites to avoid the unwanted contagion was perhaps to avoid contact with them altogether. This

conclusion was hardly viable, but it was consistent with the discourse of “ethnic therapeutics”

outlined in Chapter 4 above.

517
My reading of hygienists reports as ethnographic texts is informed by the textualist and poststructuralist critiques
of ethnographic writing and anthropology as a discipline. See James Clifford and George Marcus, ed, Writing
Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Clifford Geertz,
Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Mary Louise Pratt,
“Fieldwork in Common Places”, in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford
and George Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Also see the foundational text by Edward
Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).

213
 Making a Respectable Working Class

Lima’s callejones, solares, and casas de vecindad were never demolished and their

occupants were not evicted, with the notorious exception of the Callejon Otaiza, which was

violently torn down in 1909 to force its Chinese occupants out of the area of the Central

Market. 518 Upper class Limeños decided to relocate to the newly developed peripheral areas

where new, comfortable chalets were built beyond the reach of the quotidian influence of their

dangerous enemies. Some working class neighborhoods were developed too, under both private

and state or municipal initiatives, and these were specifically designed to host stable, organized

workers. The immense majority of Limeños did not have stable jobs, however, and so could not

afford to acquire the new houses despite state incentives. As a result, the vast majority was

marginalized from these new developments.

The most active agent in the construction of working class neighborhoods was the

engineer, inventor, and diplomat Pedro Paulet. Paulet had studied in Europe with state

sponsorship and was named Director of the School of Arts and Trades in 1904. According to

Paulet, cheap housing had to be provided to obreros not out of philanthropy but as a practical

measure, for without it Lima’s “social machinery” would not run smoothly. The betterment of

workers’ living conditions was a matter of “practical utilitarianism,” and it would promote the

development of efficient industries in Lima. 519 Paulet’s writings and speeches deployed an

engineering lexicon. The social machinery was indeed made of individual machines, and “the

human machine” was the “most precious mechanism of all, but also the most delicate and

518
Humberto Rodríguez Pastor “La calle Capón, el Callejón Otaiza y el Barrio Chino,” Mundos interiores: Lima,
1850-1950, ed. Aldo Panfichi and Felipe Portocarrero (Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, 1995).
519
“Conferencia dada por el señor Pedro Paulet, Director de la Escuela de Artes y Oficios, en el local de la
Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas, el 25 de agosto de 1910,” Boletín de la Dirección de Fomento, 8, no. 9 (1910): 26.

214
difficult to operate.” 520 His was the perspective of a “social engineer,” a specialist who was

concerned with the “requirements of the human engine, studies the laws to perfect its

functioning, seeks remedies for its flaws, and teaches how to take advantage of its

performance.” 521 The “social engineer” had been created, according to Paulet, in the most

advanced industrial society, the United States, where the practical convenience of perfecting the

“human machine” had supposedly had positive material effects on society as a whole.

Improving the conditions of workers was, then, an investment that would produce a profitable

return, for it would make society run smoothly and increase its productivity, and not a “calling to

vague philanthropy.” 522

Paulet was not alone in this criticism of philanthropy and his utilitarian view of social

problems. In 1905, The Department of Public Sanitation of the Ministerio de Fomento

reproduced an essay on social hygiene. Written by Doctor Ensch, “Chief of the Hygiene

Department in Schaerbech” (sic) Brussels in 1904, the essay argued that the human body was a

machine whose integrity had to be preserved. The health of a worker, therefore, had to be taken

care of “with the zealous care the industrialist watched over the integrity of a metallic engine.” 523

If the industrialist was used to value the return given by a machine, reasoned the hygienist, “it

seems unquestionably logical that he observe the most idolatrous cult for the health of his

workers. However, while the metallic engine is lubricated and cleaned with solicitous care, the

human engine is generally abandoned.” 524

520
Ibid., 26-7.
521
Ibid., 27.
522
Ibid., 27.
523
“Ensayo de higiene social por el doctor Ensch, jefe del Servicio de Higiene en Schaerbech (Bruselas),” Boletín
del Ministerio de Fomento. Dirección de Salubridad Pública, 1, no. 4, (1905): 65.
524
Ibid., 66.

215
 Paulet argued that Limeño workers should have inexpensive, sanitary, and aesthetically

pleasing houses for the moralizing effects the reformed environment would have on them.

Houses should be attractive since “ugly homes motivate men to go to taverns, expel women onto

the street, and abandon the children.” 525 Workers should be made into respectable patriarchs who

could take care of the needs of their families. In contrast to the hygienists, however, Paulet did

not appeal to racial stereotyping. He did stress that the current dwellings of the workers were

“centers of infection… a savage display for foreigner visitors” 526 but his speeches and texts

exuded optimism about the possibilities of reform. In part, this optimism was a consequence of

the perception that Lima had not developed its industries to the level most European metropoli

had and therefore did not suffer from the maladies progress itself created. Paulet was conscious

that the development of an industrial society carried inherent problems and he thought that Peru

could anticipate and avoid them. Peru was “the country of the future” and as such was in a

particularly favorable position to prepare itself for development.

Paulet had visited poor neighborhoods during his eleven-year stay in Europe when, after

completing his studies in Paris, he served as Peru’s Consul in Paris and Antwerp. The

neighborhoods of the European poor produced a profound disappointment in him. The tenement

buildings for the poor “hosted more elements of destruction than of life” 527 particularly in the

“proud capitals, where ‘space is measured’ and the dwellings seemed like medieval prisons, the

patios mine shafts, and the rooms “boxes for flies.” At the same time, however, there were

successful efforts that Peru could imitate. Among these, Paulet highlighted initiatives in Europe

which included the participation of the state and the municipalities, as well as private businesses

525
Pedro Paulet, “Las habitaciones baratas. La cuestión en Europa,” Boletín del Ministerio Fomento, 2, no. 2
(1904): 70.
526
Pedro Paulet, “Construcción de habitaciones para obreros,” Boletín de la Dirección de Fomento. 7, no. 8 (1909):
55.
527
Pedro Paulet, “Las habitaciones baratas. La cuestión en Europa,” 76.

216
such as mortgage and insurance companies, and factories. The construction of low-cost housing

not only had become a “matter of social prophylaxis, but also one of the most profitable

businesses,” 528 he noted with approval. Peru could follow this example immediately. In his

1908 article Construcción de habitaciones para obreros, Paulet argued that independent,

spacious houses for workers –with two ample rooms, complete sanitary services, patios, and a

yard—could be built in Lima. He estimated that workers would become the owners of such

houses in the relatively short span of twelve years with monthly payments that would be equal to

the rent paid for a “filthy room in a callejón.” Paulet would later state that the new homes should

be located in spacious neighborhoods with parks, public forests, and wide arteries. 529

Similar ideas were expressed by physician Enrique León García in 1903. León García

was also optimistic about Peru’s future. While in Europe housing projects had led the working

classes into a “desperate situation” of “pauperism” 530 in Lima lots and materials for construction

were relatively cheap. Moreover, “the social problem of the old nations is, fortunately, unknown

in Peru.” 531 In his opinion, Peru’s misery “only existed in form not in content; it does not derive

from fatal or unavoidable causes.” León García argued that “our pueblo” was not well fed,

lacked comfortable houses, vigor and perseverance for work, as well as love of health and the

habit of saving money, but that all these defects could be corrected through education and the

application of a few basic principles. The good doctor exhorted workers to “work, persevere,

save money, [and] take care of yourself.” 532 The existing “badly understood form of charity”

also had to be abolished since Peru’s poverty was promoted by Catholic religious communities;

528
Ibid., 76.
529
“Conferencia dada por el señor Pedro Paulet,” 29.
530
Enrique León García, “Alojamientos para la clase obrera en el Perú. Comunicación al Congreso Anti-Alcohólico
de Lima de 1903,” Boletín del Ministerio Fomento. Dirección de Salubridad Pública, 2 no. 1, (1906): 55.
531
Ibid., 55.
532
Ibid., 55.

217
as a result, the poor “beg for food, and find extraordinary facility for idleness.” 533 León García

criticized Peru’s aristocracy for bequeathing their fortunes to pious, religious institutions. Peru

did not need this kind of charity; instead, it required scientifically directed intervention supported

by the state.

Paulet’s optimistism was also related to his proximity to a large sector of Lima’s workers.

As Director of the School of Arts and Trades, he was aware that at least some workers were

adopting measures of self-sanitation and reformation in an effort to support their claims that they

too were civilized, and so distance themselves from the baneful category of la plebe. Paulet was

particularly close to workers organized in the Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas, the largest

association of mutual aid societies of the time. 534 Lima’s workers had a tradition of association

in mutual aid societies since the mid-nineteenth century. The societies provided financial and

health assistance to unemployed, ill, and disabled workers, and covered members’ funeral

expenses. 535 Some societies also voiced demands to lower food prices, and provided assistance

to strikers. 536 They also founded primary schools and “popular libraries” on their premises,

organized conferences by university students and experts –such as Paulet himself— 537 promoted

theater and literature among members, and participated in educational campaigns –such as the

1903 Congreso Anti-alcohólico organized by state and municipal agents to civilize Lima’s poor.

533
Ibid., 55-6.
534
Agustín Barcelli has argued that the Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas had fifteen thousand affiliates by the early
twentieth century. Agustín Barcelli, Crónicas de las luchas obreras en el Perú. (Historia del sindicalismo peruano)
(Lima: Cuadernos sindicales, 1979), 45. Peter Blanchard, however, has stated that the Asamblea claimed forty-nine
constituent societies with four thousand members. Peter Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement,
1883-1919 (University of Pittsburg Press, 1982), 35.
535
Iñigo García-Bryce, Crafting the Republic; Lima’s Artisans and Nation Building in Peru, 1821-1879
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004).
536
Peter Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement; Ricardo Temoche, Cofradías, gremios, mutuales
y sindicatos en el Perú, (Lima: Escuela Nueva, 1987), 77-8.
537
The Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1902 (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1902) reports on conferences
given by municipal hygiene experts on the premises of the “Confederación de Artesanos Unión Universal.”

218
538
Iñigo García-Bryce has argued that the mutual aid societies of the nineteenth century allowed

artisans and workers to claim membership in “respectable society,” 539 and the same may be said

of workers’ movements in the early twentieth century. Not only did the societies help prevent

workers from slipping into a state of total destitution during hard times; they promoted the

identity of “gente decente,” that is, the notion that organized workers were better than day

laborers, peons, domestic servants, and the unemployed.

The Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas in particular was a moderate association that had

been created in 1891. As with previous worker movements, it had received the support of the

state and even from entrepreneurs. Its activities, after all, reproduced the language of reform of

modernizing elites, with an emphasis on hygiene and self-reformation, and its political agenda

was to reconcile “the interests of the factory owners with the needs of the workers.” 540 In this

regard, it is significant that the First Provincial Congress of Workers, convened in August 1896,

was held in the luxurious Palacio de la Exposición commonly used for the banquets and

receptions of elites. The First National Congress of Workers, organized by the Confederación de

Artesanos Unión Universal, the other large association of mutual aid societies, was held in

Peru’s Chamber of Deputies and was sponsored by the central government. 541

Paulet’s 1910 speech in the headquarters of the Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas

expressed optimism at the future of Lima’s workers. He emphatically opposed political

discourses based on class and so never spoke of a “working class,” arguing that there was “no

538
The Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas founded the first “popular library” with the help of Ricardo Palma in 1911.
See, Agustín Barcelli, Crónicas de las luchas obreras, 45; Dennis Sulmont, El movimiento obrero en el Perú/ 1900-
1956, (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1975), 72; David Parker, “Civilizing the City of Kings:
Hygiene and Housing in Lima, Peru,” in Cities of Hope: People, Protests, and Progress in Urbanizing Latin
America, 1870-1930, ed. Ronn Pinneo and James Baer (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 166.
539
Iñigo García-Bryce, Crafting the Republic, 105-31.
540
Dennis Sulmont, El movimiento obrero en el Perú, 72.
541
Agustín Barcelli, Crónicas de las luchas obreras, 57, 59; Dennis Sulmont, El movimiento obrero en el Perú, 72.

219
reason to invoke the class struggle” in Peru. 542 But he knew that the worker’s association had

rejected the use of a language of class, which it considered proper to “diseased

philosophies…confused theories.” As the Vice President stated, “we know there can be no

social problems among us since there are no social classes, property is accessible to all, our laws

consecrate every freedom, and our genuinely democratic institutions have erased the frontiers of

race and genealogical distinctions by viewing everyone as elements of society and free and equal

citizens.” 543 Paulet, then, did not need to use the word “class” to air his proposals for the

construction of houses as a central element of the “democratic rights of citizens in a free and

independent republic.” 544

Paulet was speaking to an audience that was constructing a sense of identity based on

their distinctiveness vis-à-vis the jornaleros, peones, and the large mass of people engaged in

informal activities. More radical worker movements, such as the anarchists, differed from

mutual aid societies in their political strategies, but they too engaged in a process of self-

reformation and civilizing that echoed the discourse of the higienists. Manuel González Prada,

the aristocratic intellectual leader of the anarchist movement, had bitterly criticized artisan

mutual aid societies, charging that

the Lima artisans sit between the simple day workers (whom they despise) and the
upper class (whom they adulate). They constitute a pseudo-aristocracy with all
the ignorance of the lower ones and all the depravation of the upper ones… Since
they have no convictions, and do not have the slightest idea of their social mission
or their rights…they play the role of courtiers or lackeys to all legal or illegal
powers. 545

542
See, Manuel González Prada, “El Primero de Mayo, 1906” Anarquía (Santiago: Editorial Ercilla, 1936). (1906).
543
Editorial written by the Vice President of the Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas in 1911. Quoted by Peter
Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement, 35.
544
“Conferencia dada por el señor Pedro Paulet,” 27.
545
Quoted by Ricardo Temoche, Cofradías, gremios, mutuales y sindicatos, 89. The quote also appears in Peter
Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement, 47.

220
 González Prada was alluding to the mutual aid societies close links with governmental

authorities, and their alleged lack of ideological commitment, an accusation repeatedly made in

anarchist publications such as Los Parias, El Artesano, and Integridad, all of them linked in one

way or another to González Prada. Anarchist movements took a more confrontational stance

against governments and owners, organizing protests and struggling for the eight-hour work-day,

but they never gained the massive support of workers. 546 In spite of these differences with the

more conciliatory mutual aid societies, however, anarchist institutions were also interested in

workers’ reformation, and repeatedly argued that workers needed to embrace education and

become “modern.” In 1905 the newspaper Los Parias asserted that “civilization is not just

material progress; civilization is also illustration, truth, justice; civilization is patriotism,

abnegation, truth; civilization is nobility of spirit and sentiment.” 547 The largest anarchist

federation of workers, created in 1912 with the name of Federación Obrera Regional Peruana,

was explicitly created to “elevate the moral and intellectual standard of workers through

education,” among other objectives. 548

González Prada himself carried a strong faith in education as a tool to transform society

and liberate it from its colonial characteristics, and he attempted to form a permanent and close

relationship between literati and anarchist labor unions. Although he argued that such a bond did

not imply a hierarchical relationship, he also argued that revolutionaries had to reform a “mass”

that was inert and lethargic. González Prada’s stance on the liberation of the Indians (see

Chapter 4 above) was identical to this elitist proposal for a liberating revolution of the workers.

The two missions were to be led by intellectuals. When addressing the workers, as in his 1905

speech to the Federación de Obreros Panaderos Estrella del Perú –an organization that had

546
Peter Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement.
547
Los Parias, quoted by David Parker, “Civilizing the City of Kings,” 166-7.
548
Ricardo Temoche, Cofradías, gremios, mutuales y sindicatos, 171.

221
broken from the mutual aid Confederación de Artesanos, and taken a more radical, anarchist

stance—González Prada never mentioned the Indians as playing any role in the universal

revolution carried out by proletariats. 549 The mission of the proletariat implied the omission of

the Indians. The anarchist’s omission was not gratuitous, for he was addressing an audience who

was interested in distancing itself from “uncivilized” Indians, and urban plebe. Workers were

constructing a notion of themselves as “the men of tomorrow” which also denied coevalness to

the “non-modern” elites that González Prada had forcefully attacked as “serfs.” Elites, Indians,

and la plebe were remnants of a world that would be transformed by the liberating action of the

energetic proletariat.

Mutual aid societies and anarchist labor movements, therefore, reformulated the ideas on

hygiene and moral reform to claim workers’ avant garde position in society. They criticized

gambling and vagrancy, and traditional diversions such as cockfighting and bullfighting, arguing

that the ultimate blame for those vices fell on Lima’s elites and authorities. They struggled for

decent, sanitary housing for the working class, not the poor in general; they, as respectable

members of society, had to be protected from the noxious influence of la plebe, and in particular

of the “filthy” and “degraded” Asians that populated the city. Workers appear to have resented

the competition from Asian-Limeños in the job market and also the fact that many Chinese and

Japanese immigrants had relatively prosperous shops and restaurants; they expressed their bitter

opposition to Asian immigration as well as a profound repugnance to Asians in a rhetoric that

mirrored that used by hygienists and municipal authorities.

A report on a 1906 assembly of workers’ representatives of the Sociedades Obreras

written by an (apparently undercover) agent of Lima’s prefecture illustrates the point. According

to the agent, the workers had gathered to discuss the recent arrival of a large number of Japanese
549
Manuel González Prada, “El intelectual y el Obrero,” Horas de lucha (Lima: El Progreso Literario, 1908)

222
immigrants. Two opinions were articulated by the representatives. One group argued that a

commission should present the central government with a petition to end Asian immigration

immediately on the grounds that they “invaded all centers and industries in which national

workers are employed,” thereby inflicting a severe damage on the working pueblo. A second

group opposed the first group’s proposal, arguing “with greater impetus, and taking things with

all seriousness” that Asians “belonged to a degenerate race, undeserving of being allowed into

Peru.” This group stated that Asians be immediately expelled from the country, and that workers

voice the demand to the government. The debate among the workers is interesting not only

because of the bitter hostility shown towards “Asians,” but also because delegates ended up

arguing over which would be the most honorable way to present their demands: in a letter to the

government or a rally of all of Lima’s working class. They finally agreed that a rally would

cause disorder and consequently discredit the workers’ organization, and so named a commission

to draft a petition to the government. The final agreement did not specify what the content of the

petition should be, or at least it cannot be deduced from the police report. 550 The debate revealed

that many workers resented the presence of Asians and that they readily used the racist

conceptions common among intellectuals, journalists, and social commentators. It also reveals,

however, the importance of respectability and prestige for sectors of the working class.

Opposition to Asians was openly expressed in riots that followed upon rumors to the

effect that a large number of immigrants was about to arrive at the port of Callao, in May

1909. 551 Demonstrators led by the Partido Obrero (Workers Party) sacked and destroyed some

twenty shops and workshops owned or managed by “Asians,” and beat the Japanese or Chinese

they encountered on the way. Rioters reportedly yelled “Death to the Chinese!” and “Down with

550
Communication No. 788, al Señor Prefecto del Departamento. June 15, 1906. AGN, Ministerio del Interior,
Dirección General de Gobierno, 3.9.1.15.1.16.17.
551
Peter Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement, 80.

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the Chinese, murderers of the pueblo, robbers of our bread!” 552 In response, President Leguía

immediately suspended “Chinese” immigration. This was a clever, demagogic move, for Leguia

had long pushed for the importation of Japanese workers, and Chinese immigration had

effectively come to an end nearly thirty-five years before! Mayor Billinghurst, who was

particularly interested in gaining the support of Lima’s workers, rapidly ordered the demolition

of the Callejón Otaiza, a measure that was applauded by the workers’ organizations. 553 The

negative perception of Asian immigrants among Lima’s workers was promoted by influential

intellectual figures such as González Prada who had argued that “the Chinese has inoculated in

the national organism a vicious and decrepit germ. With the Spaniard, we keep inoculating in

our brains the theological virus. Between the friar and the Chinese, Peru is like a wax candle

whose two extremes are burning.” 554

Worker’s actions against the Asian-Limeños were consistent with the workers’ claim to

be decentes, or respectable citizens. In a time in which vigor, discipline, order, and virility were

considered the ultimate values to achieve a progressive, orderly, and industrious society, workers

claimed they possessed those qualities and were therefore modern citizens, indispensable for

Peru’s future. The Chinese and Japanese immigrants were available, and easy opportunity for

workers to mark their distinction as modern subjects who opposed vice, corruption, and filth.

Asians were being constructed as a threat to Limeño society –as were the poor— and organized

workers likewise seized the opportunity to distance themselves from their poor neighbors, which

would in turn help them support their claims to state-sponsored sanitized housing. These claims

552
Augusto Ruiz, “Los motines de mayo de 1909. Inmigrantes y nativos en el Mercado laboral de Lima a
comienzos del siglo XX,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Etudes Andines, 29, no.2, (2000):173-188; Peter
Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement, 80.
553
Augusto Ruiz, “Los motines de mayo de 1909,” 180-1.
554
Manuel González Prada, “Memoranda,” El tonel de Diógenes, seguido de Fragmentaria y Memoranda (Mexico:
Tezontle, 1945), 235.

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had the active support of Paulet and other specialists such as the physician Enrique León García,

whose speech in the Congreso Anti-Alcohólico de Lima in 1903 –a congress that featured the

participation of workers’ organizations— proposed that “the serious and hard-working” obrero

should be provided with stable jobs and comfortable houses, so that he be kept apart from the

pernicious influence of la plebe, that is, from the large mass of poor people who engaged in

informal activities to make a living, and who were increasingly identified as dangerous

“vagrants.” Workers must be kept apart from the decadence of the idle and dissipated vagrants

with which they still shared the malignant callejones and casas de vecindad. 555

The physician, who had a particular interest in race –his 1909 doctoral thesis was a

discussion on “the races in Lima” 556-- argued that the human species was as subject to

environmental influences “as the most modest of the zoological species.” 557 The oppression,

forced labor, corruption, intemperance, and inadequate housing imposed by Spanish colonialism

on what had been a “healthy and vigorous Peruvian race” were still prevalent; “our race” had not

been able to break the cycle of decadence because the advent of the Republic had not altered the

environmental conditions of his existence. León García’s uses the labels “Peruvian race” and

“our race” to refer to “the race” that existed before the Spanish conquest, which was “vigorous as

a jungle beast,” “lived from nature,” had “simple customs,” and enjoyed “large doses of air from

the fields,” but which had been degraded by colonialism. 558 The worst living conditions of this

race and, therefore, the greatest racial deterioration, were to be found in Lima, in the “small, dark

and humid” rooms of the casas de vecindad. These poor houses hosted social parasites that lived

555
Enrique León García, “Alojamientos para la clase obrera en el Perú,” 56.
556
León García, Enrique, Las razas en Lima. Estudio Demográfico (Lima: Universidad Mayor de San Marcos,
Facultad de Medicina, 1909).
557
Enrique León García, “Alojamientos para la clase obrera en el Perú,” 53.
558
Ibid., 53-4.

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off charity. The working class, argued León García, was in dangerous proximity to such

“unemployed and vice-ridden people.”

The “serious and hard-working” obrero, if temporarily unemployed, might be attracted to

the easy life of vagrants. Idleness and bad company would lead him to the tavern, where he

would “drink, become a gambler, a thief, disloyal, filthy, and clumsy,” in short, “an idiot or a

swindler of the worst kind.” 559 García León thus argued that the working class men be offered

the opportunity to acquire comfortable, attractive housing; it was useless to preach temperance if

the disgusting physical conditions of the “home” –León uses the word in English— “makes him

feel the need to leave it… After spending a whole day in his workshop or factory… he will

abandon it for as long a time as possible, to spend hours in a pulpería; the rest is a known story:

the honorable worker of today becomes one more alcoholic tomorrow.” 560

To avoid the “dissolution of many households,” it was, therefore, urgent to separate

“honorable workers” from the idle plebe. Paulet’s and León García’s calls for houses for the

working class began to materialize with the construction of barrios obreros by private

entrepreneurs and the Beneficencia Pública de Lima –Lima’s largest charity organization—

which created the Cajas de Ahorros (savings accounts) to help workers to purchase single-family

homes in mortgage payments. The prerequisites for access to the new houses in what would

become the district of La Victoria –such as the Las Chacritas, La Victoria, and Manzanilla

neighborhoods— in an area developed outside what had been the city’s limits, made these homes

unreachable for anyone but the workers with the most stable and comfortable financial situations.

In short, at least part of the respectable workers was indeed separated from the “corrupting”

poor.

559
Ibid., 56.
560
Ibid., 57. Pulperías were small restaurants where alcoholic beverages were also served.

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 As discussed in Chapter 4 above, the end of the War of the Pacific brought an intense

period of reflection on Peru’s national being, that produced an uncertainty among elites

regarding their own organic capabilities to be the leading class their country needed to confront

the imperatives of progress. A wide array of experts also discovered that Peru and its capital city

had demographic problems that made them vulnerable in a possible foreign conflict and

unsuitable to develop the disciplined and virile society they desired. The scientific management

of the population could be the solution to correct social deficiencies and promote the formation

of an efficient, well lubricated social machinery. It was important, therefore, to transform the

habits of Limeños, to regulate women’s bodies and behavior, and to penetrate into domestic

spaces to scrutinize them, identify problems, and design policies to correct them.

The scientific drive to examine the living conditions of the poor produced little change

regarding neighborhoods and dwellings, but it produced texts. The poor and their habitats were

textually created in ethnographies that deployed the lexicon of war in a moment of postwar

angst, displaced the ethnographic subjects of inquiry from contemporaneity, incited readers’

voyeuristic imagination and finally concluded that the degradation of the poor’s habitats was the

outcome of the poor’s racial degradation. The postcolonial obsession for erasing the past now

manifested itself in proposals to demolish those living powerful symbols of supposedly bygone

eras: the neighborhoods of the poor.

Ethnographies textually recreated the gap between well-off Limeños and the neighboring

poor the War of the Pacific had bridged, and offered a clear alternative to Limeño elites: to

distance themselves from the physical proximity of their dangerous “enemies.” In that context,

organized workers claimed their right to distance themselves from the other poor, using the

lexicon of hygienists to assert that they too were respectable and disciplined patriarchs in

227
dangerous proximity with la plebe. Workers stated that they too inhabited contemporaneity, and

thus had the right to escape from the gaze of the ethnographer.

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 CHAPTER 6
OPENING THE CITY (1895-1910)

By the end of the Guano Age, reformers had sketched plans for the future expansion of

Lima. With the demolition of the colonial walls, a series of wide, Haussmannian thoroughfares

were designed by U.S. entrepreneur Henry Meiggs and Italian engineer Luis Sada di Carlo as

avenues and paseos to surround the city. New areas would then be urbanized to include an

industrial zone, neighborhoods for the working class, and residential areas for the middle and

upper classes. New spacious avenues would also penetrate the old city core, for which entire

blocks were to be demolished. 561 Both the occupation of Lima and the crisis produced by the

War of the Pacific halted these developments; the urban reforms hitherto conducted suffered a

serious setback. Limeño authorities and intellectuals came to the conclusion that Lima had been

left behind in comparison to other Latin American capital cities, such as Santiago and,

especially, the now paradigmatically cosmopolitan Buenos Aires.

The war, however, also provided new national symbols of heroism that were exalted as

unifying examples of self-sacrifice and virility. This chapter discusses the new attempts to

reform Peru’s capital from the mid-1890s through the first decade of the twentieth century.

These efforts paid special attention to the transformation of what were deemed to be

unwholesome public spaces, particularly the narrow streets of the colonial city which, it was

said, did not allow for the necessary “air circulation.” A new period of relative economic

expansion, based on the development of exports and substantial foreign investment in production

by the end of the century, gave rise to a vital period of modernization and recuperation after the

generalized postwar crisis. The drive of modernization of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth

561
José Barbagelata, Un siglo del acontecimiento histórico precursor del desarrollo urbano de Lima moderna
(Lima: n/e, 1971).

229
centuries followed principles similar to those of the earlier, Guano period, but was now marked

by the trauma and desperation of war.

It was an intense period of modernization, as new means of transportation –tramways,

automobiles, and telephones— were introduced into a city that was witnessing an enthusiastic

period of construction and an unprecedented industrialization. Limeños’ lives were radically

altered as they acquired new rhythms of daily life, and as new forms of socialization appeared.

The physical and cultural renovation of the city produced the typically ambiguous discourses of

modernity, however. Nostalgic laments of the disappearance of Lima’s colonial particularities

went hand-in-hand with wholesale renovation; denunciations of the unwanted environmental,

aesthetic, social, and cultural effects of “progress,” were expressed even by the most active and

virulent proponents of modernization.

The most energetic promoter of Lima’s physical and cultural transformation during the

period was Mayor Federico Elguera, whose administration spanned between 1901 and 1908.

These were the excited words of

We had never seen in Lima a greater number of new private constructions than
the ones built this past year… Aside from the factories built in the new avenues
and neighborhoods, the motivation of the owners of the old properties of the city
has increased. Everywhere, the old wooden balconies and mud walls are being
replaced with properly ornamented brick façades. It is evident that Lima goes
through an unprecedented period of prosperity and progress, which will soon
make it reach the third place among South American capitals. 562

Lima was indeed witnessing an unprecedented cycle of construction, which included new

factories and commercial houses, but also private homes. 563 The Municipalidad de Lima under

562
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1903 (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil), 34.
563
Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata estimate that the number of buildings in the city increased from 12,311 in
1903 to 14,230 in 1908. See Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima (Lima: Consejo
Provincial de Lima, 1945); Gabriel Ramón, “El guión de la cirugía urbana: Lima 1850-1940,” Ensayos en Ciencias
Sociales (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos,
2004), 22.

230
Elguera promoted the construction of homes by giving annual prizes to the owners of the most

attractive homes. It was an effort to rid Lima of the drab old mud and dab constructions, and

particularly those with shuttered, wooden balconies which were now seen not only as remnants

of colonial times but as anti-hygienic. It was argued that the shuttered balconies hindered the

free circulation of air, and that their secretive or veiled nature as a favorite spying perch did not

favor the establishment of healthy republican relationships.

Elguera was a practical man who had traveled in Europe and Latin America. He was

elected as Mayor of Lima’s municipality as member of a non-partisan movement named Liga

Municipal Independiente. He returned to Lima in 1896 and began to write columns for El

Comercio under the pseudonym of El Barón de Keef. In these columns he lamented Lima’s lack

of “civilized” attractions and entrepreneurial spirit, the decadence and disorder of its buildings,

and its generally anti-aesthetic environment, especially its unhygienic conditions. He also

spurned Limeños for not doing enough to transform the city and bring it into modernity or

contemporaneity. Lima’s decadence was the consequence of a lack of authority and of a general

culture of indiscipline and disorder. “With the passing of the centuries” he noted in one of his

first contributions, “the city of Lima will deteriorate, collapse, and disappear; for no one does

anything for it.” 564

Elguera’s writings were meant to make Limeños aware that “Lima is the reception salon

of Peru. For dignity and convenience, it is necessary to improve and beautify it.” Lima could be

made “the Paris of the Pacific, without the harshness of its weather and other disadvantages the

capital of France has, when contrasted with ours.” 565 Once elected, he declared that the main

objectives of his administration were to improve the hygienic conditions of the city, as well as its

564
Federico Elguera, “Teatros,” El Barón de Keef en Lima, 35.
565
Federico Elguera, “Las limeñas,” La vida moderna, por el Barón de Keef (Lima: Oficina Tipográfica Casa de la
Moneda, 1926)

231
beautification and the education of its inhabitants. 566 Elguera continuously highlighted the

significance of these reforms, repeating the old idea that “if we want Peru to become a great

nation, we must begin by making Lima a great city.” 567

During Elguera’s term as mayor Lima’s administration was reformed. Special attention

was placed on the inspection and transformation of the sanitary conditions of the city, and a

hygiene unit was created for each of Lima’s districts. Several public buildings were constructed

to host municipal and state institutions, including the Facultad de Medicina (1903), the Instituto

de Higiene (1904), the Hospital Nacional de Insanos (construction initiated in 1901), and the

Teatro Municipal (inaugurated in 1909). Older buildings were transformed, such as the

Inquisition Palace (1903), which was being used as headquarters for Peru’s Senate. The

Exposition compound would now host a zoo (inaugurated in 1909), a lawn tennis club, and two

shooting practice clubs. 568 Lima would have its first horse race track in the adjacent Santa

Beatriz (1903). The city also erected new monuments, such as the Bolognesi monument (1905),

located in a round-point similar to the Dos de Mayo Plaza, and the Cripta de los Héroes (1908)

in the cemetery, both built to honor the heroic figures of the War of the Pacific. New, broad

avenues were also constructed. The avenue or Paseo 9 de Diciembre was begun in 1898 to

divide the Exposition Park so that it would become part of Lima’s RingsStrasse, or the Avenidas

de Circunvalación. It was completed during Elguera’s administration, along with its new upper

class mansions. The Circunvalación avenues also included the Grau thoroughfare, which was

opened after the demolition of the City walls in the early 1870s but was completed in the early

twentieth century, hosting the Facultad de Medicina –built in what was the Botanical Garden—

566
El Comercio, January 4, 1901.
567
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1904. (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil).
568
Carlos Cisneros and Rómulo García, Guía ilustrada de Lima, Callao y sus alrededores (Lima: Imprenta del
Estado, 1898).

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and the new Escuela de Artes y Oficios (1905). The new Avenida Piérola had been opened in

1898 to connect the city with the town of Magdalena, as was the Avenida El Sol, in 1908, to open

a new area for the city expansion in the Santa Beatriz area. The construction of a new wide

avenue in the central area of the city, Avenida La Colmena, had started in 1899 as a new business

area, and was inaugurated in 1907. The Plaza Mayor was also reformed months after Elguera’s

inauguration (1901), this time to be a comfortable paseo for Limeños’ amusement. The

appearance of new private buildings and industries, the introduction of electric tramways (which

started replacing the mule drawn tramways in 1904), the telephone, electricity (introduced in

Lima in 1886, but used extensively since in 1902), automobiles (1903), and automobiles for

public transportation (1903), as well as the paving of streets and the channeling of ditches, also

combined to transform Lima, and to increase the reputation of Mayor Elguera.

The Mayor himself was enthusiastic about these transformations, and personally

supervised city matters. The municipality prohibited mud and dab constructions, promoted the

demolition of old houses or at least the renovation of their façades and the removal of balconies.

Soon after his inauguration, Elguera personally lobbied to achieve these goals, meeting with

homeowners on the central Jirón de la Unión --a street that connected the Plaza Mayor with the

San Juan de Dios train station, and which was also becoming a commercial area. According to a

reporter from El Comercio, the meeting was enough for the Mayor to convince them to “destroy

the old balconies” of their properties, which “make their buildings ugly.” Elguera used the same

strategy with the neighbors of the Mercaderes and Espaderos streets and announced that by the

end of 1902 only four or five old balconies would remain, because their owners had refused to

demolish them. 569 This was the tireless working style of Lima’s most active modernizer.

569
“Reforma estética,” El Comercio, March 6, 1901.

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 His campaign against the old “Arabesque” balconies was part of his preoccupation with

giving the city a new aspect. His annual Memorias (reports on his administration) always

included praise for those who demolished “those old balconies, which gave the city a depressing

appearance.” 570 It was a matter of a new aesthetic sensibility, and part of a general repudiation

of a past that was, as we saw in Chapter 4, identified with backwardness, disorder, and

indolence. It was also believed that the balconies attempted against the indispensable circulation

of air, which in turn was believed to cause Limeños’ apathy and idleness; the destruction of the

balconies was therefore considered a measure to beautify the city, to give it a “modern

physiognomy… a definite aesthetic style in harmony with modern hygiene.” 571

The modernization of Lima during the post-War of the Pacific period was characterized

by an obsession with hygienic principles, and particularly with the perceived need to allow for

“air circulation” in a city whose weather was relatively mild, humid, windless, and enclosed by

desert and mountains. The avenues designed for the expansion of the city were wide, intended

for carriages and tramways, but they were also paseos or walkways where Limeños could find

solace and entertainment in their leisure time. These were multi-purpose thoroughfares for the

circulation of vehicles, people, and air. The Avenida Piérola, which was also known as the

Camino a la Magdalena, was one of those thoroughfares constructed in 1898 to connect Lima

with the town of Magdalena, and to open a new area for the expansion of the city. The 4.75

kilometer (15573.96 feet) avenue would start in a large, rond point plaza similar to the Plaza Dos

de Mayo in the southern part of the city. It was erected in honor of Colonel Francisco Bolognesi,

fallen during the War of the Pacific. It was designed to have a central road for carriages, two

walks for pedestrians, and lateral roads for tramways and cyclists, for a total width of 41 meters

570
Apart from the 1901 Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima, see the Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1904
(Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1904).
571
“Construcciones urbanas,” El Comercio, October 31, 1903.

234
(134.51 feet). It would terminate in another rond point from which a new 300 meter (984.24

feet) avenue would depart towards Magdalena’s center. 572 By the same years, however, the

construction of a new mental asylum was projected in Magdalena del Mar in an non-developed

area close to the sea coast. 573 The Ministerio de Fomento immediately planned to enlarge the

Avenida Brasil to reach the unpopulated area of the future asylum. This avenue, added the

proposal, could also be extended to the center of the city by splitting the old blocks that

intervened in its course, and then continue its way across the Rímac River. The purpose of this

long avenue, which the proposal named Avenida Central de Lima and which was meant to be

“the city’s main artery,” was to allow for the “unquestionably healthy air” of the sea to bathe the

city. 574 The experts of the Ministerio apparently believed such an avenue could also serve to

transport the much needed air into the city, and asked the Municipalidad de Lima to immediately

proceed with the studies required for its construction. A Supreme Decree ordering its

construction was issued by President Nicolás de Piérola in 1899. 575

The Paseo 9 de Diciembre, was not as long an avenue as the Piérola road to Magdalena,

but carried a stronger symbolism. It crossed the Exposition compound, dividing it in two, to be

part of the Avenidas de Circunvalación surrounding the older part of the city. 576 It would start in

a rond point that would connect it to the Avenida Grau, its state-of-the-art pavement would then

pass in front of the Exposition Palace, and reach the Plaza Bolognesi’s rond point. The Paseo 9

572
Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1898 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1899), 302-310. This
publication has detailed descriptions of the design of the Avenue, made by engineer Enrique Silgado, and the
expropriation of lands for its construction. See also, Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima,
97-8.
573
The first proposals for such an asylum are in Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1895 (Lima: Imprenta
Torres Aguirre, 1900). The Anales de las obras públicas del Perú del año 1897 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre,
1902) include the project for the asylum designed by Manuel Muñiz.
574
Anales de las obras públicas. 1898 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1900), 184.
575
Memoria administrativa que presenta a la Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Lima su Director Pedro D.
Gallagher correspondiente al año 1901 (Lima: Imprenta Liberal, 1901), xxvii-viii.
576
Details about the construction of such paseo can be found in the Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año
1898, 209.

235
de Diciembre would thus be connected to the road to Magdalena and be the road to Lima’s

extension to the coast. Being located along the Exposition parks, it came to symbolize Lima’s

pattern of expansion: a broad, clean avenue for automobiles, adorned with trees and plants to

provide pedestrians with a cultured paseo, surrounded by parks that would soon host a botanical

garden and a zoo, and governed by the paradigmatically “modern” Exposition Palace. Peru’s

pavilion in the Universal Exposition held in Paris in 1900, an iron structure designed and

constructed in France by French architect Fernand Guillard, was granted to the Municipality of

Lima to host the new Municipal Hygiene Institute. 577 The structure was shipped to Lima to be

placed on the 9 de Diciembre, across from the Exposition Palace (Figure 5.1). The paseo thus

contained symbolic references to universal nature (a botanical garden, a zoo), universal progress

(the exposition palace, a hygiene institute in a recycled world fair pavilion), and to Peruvian

heroism (Plaza Bolognesi). To increase the symbolism of the paseo as an epitome of Lima’s

future, the Columbus monument (see Chapter 2 above) was relocated to continue its civilizatory

mission in front of both iron, universal, buildings (Figure 5.2). 578 The paseo would soon be

known by Limeños as Paseo Colón, an informal name that the Municipality had to recognize and

make official.

A new, elegant neighborhood was rapidly constructed in the paseo. El Comercio

enthusiastically highlighted that the new area was becoming a “quiet and hygienic” residential

area, which was a sign that Lima’s expansion towards Magdalena and the sea coast would open

a “new Lima, built in very different conditions than the old one; the promise of a twentieth-

577
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1902; Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1903 (Lima: Empresa
Tipográfica, 1910),
578
This was Columbus’s third relocation. After its original erection in the Alameda de Acho, the navigator was
transported to the Plaza Italia, then to the rond point that connected the avenues Grau and 9 de Diciembre, to find its
final (?) destiny in front of the Exposition Palace. The sailor was a particularly movable civilizational figure in
Lima.

236
century Lima will become a reality!” 579 Such a promise included the reformation of Limeños’

habits, for the Paseo 9 de Diciembre was to play the civilizing role the Alameda Acho and the

Alameda de los Descalzos had during the Guano Era (see Chapter 2 above). The only difference

was that the 9 de Diciembre combined its role as a recreational facilities with those of a

convenient artery for carriages and automobiles, and a connection with the newly developed area

around Magdalena (Figure 5.3). By the early twentieth century this grand avenue embodied

Limeño modernity as much as the older paseos symbolized colonial backwardness, or had simply

fallen into oblivion. Those now fading paseos of that previous wave of modernization were now

actively forgotten by Elguera, who spoke about the 9 de Diciembre as

what the city needed and had lacked until today: a healthy and charming place to
invite the population to life, to free air. It will end with the old, vice-ridden and
thus far indomitable custom of sedentary life; which goes by enclosed within the
unhealthy and humid environment of most of the homes in Lima… This work is a
new manifestation of the tendency that has dominated enlightened and practical
spirits since the days of the ancient poet, the tendency to beautify and improve.
The aspiration for progress combined with utile dulce. 580

As it were, each new process of modernization had to reinvent the city anew according to the

current fashion, inscribing past reinventions as unhealthy, inexistent, or pre-modern. 581 Elguera

was also a poet, and one of the basic precepts of his administration was that “without aesthetics,

there is no hygiene.” 582 Reforms had to reconcile practicality with beauty. Beauty was

synonymous with the novel and the open. The colonial and the enclosed now included the entire

nineteenth century. A progressive but anonymous chronicle in El Comercio went as far as to

argue that Lima was finally abandoning “its medieval aspect, to transform itself into a modern

579
“Los paseos públicos,” El Comercio, August 11, 1901.
580
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1901, xi.
581
Federico Elguera, “Teatros,” El Barón de Keef en Lima, 35.
582
“Informe del Médico Sanitario del Cuartel Segundo y del Inspector de Higiene del Consejo,” Memoria
administrativa que presenta a la Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Lima, 385.

237
city,” with the Paseo Colón. 583 To accelerate this process, the chronicle suggested “studying…

the experience acquired in the main cities of Europe and the United States, without disregarding

the job carried out fruitfully in Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Mexico, Buenos Aires, and

Caracas.” 584 Modernizing Lima was to repudiate and forget the past and all previous efforts of

modernization, and instead look to the rapid development of cities that had not been left in the

“waiting room” of modernity.

The Paseo 9 de Diciembre was a sign that Lima was catching up. The excitement about

the area was registered in El Comercio, as it reported on the new chalets (a word that was rapidly

added to the Limeño lexicon): “in less than four months, several houses have been erected.

They have the style of European chalets… the rustic aspect of the empty lots on both sides of the

paseo will soon disappear… Lima will have a new neighborhood, well located, and with a

uniform style in its constructions.” 585 The contrast between the rustic and the modern, the

industrial and the hand-crafted, the disorderly and the uniform, was constantly used to oppose the

pre-existing city to the new one that was “already” under construction, and “yet” to be a reality.

The new houses did not have the slightest resemblance to the old colonial ones. Gone were the

mud and dab walls and the wooden balconies; the façades followed French petit-palais or art

nouveau styles –an emphasis placed on large windows. The new layouts did not include the

grand central patio of older constructions in the Hispanic style, but instead a garden entrance and

a backyard. Upon returning to Lima after a long journey abroad, author and journalist Pedro

Dávalos y Lissón excitedly observed that “all the buildings are modern and they have a

583
El Comercio, August 11, 1901.
584
Ibid.
585
“Un Nuevo barrio,” El Comercio, November 3, 1901.

238
comfortable layout, never seen in Lima before,” adding that “nothing has been taken from the

models of the old colonial house.” 586

New houses and business buildings were also constructed in the old core of the city. The

Municipalidad and El Comercio paid careful attention to these developments and praised the

owners in public to stimulate others to follow their lead. One 1903 article in El Comercio, for

instance, mentioned the new homes of the wealthy Pardo, Alvarez Calderón, and López Aliaga

families, as well as the home of Mr. Tomás Valle; it also praised the building of the insurance

company Rímac, one of the first in Lima to boast an elevator. Owners would see their social

prestige increase as a reward for their service to the city. The article ended on a significant note:

“Indeed, we will not mention a great number of urban constructions that are also being executed

in the new neighborhoods in La Victoria, or along the Alamedas de Circunvalación… We only

mention those that have architectural merit.” 587 Those new neighborhoods were for the working

class.

The Colón paseo, however, was not only a new space for wealthier Limeños. Along with

the Exposition parks (the area severed from the Palace was named Parque Neptuno) and its zoo,

the paseo would exert a civilizing influence on all of the inhabitants of the city. The retretas

given by military bands in Lima’s parks on weekends were relocated to the new paseo. On

March 10, 1901, for instance, the band of the Regiment Artillería, played pieces of Italian

operas, as well as marches, polkas, and Peruvian-waltzes composed by José Sabas Liborio, a

musician born in the Philippines of Spanish parents, and who was hired by the Piérola

586
Pedro Dávalos y Lisson, Lima en 1907. Colección de artículos publicados en “El Comercio” con el epígrafe de
“Lo que fué ayer Lima, lo que es hoy, y lo que será mañana” (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1908), 29,61.
587
“Construcciones urbanas,” El Comercio, October 31, 1903.

239
administration to direct the musical bands of Peru’s army. 588 The municipality and the media

also wished for Limeños to spend their leisure time in the paseo, and they expressed joy when a

large crowd showed up: “since this paseo was open to the public, it has been invaded by

numerous paseantes (walkers)… the garden offers a beautiful sight, making it similar to English

parks. One could see several families of our pueblo lying on the grass under the trees, playing or

chatting, enjoying the holiday.” 589 The installation of the zoological park was also intended to

“enlighten children and all social classes” as stated by Deputy Pérez in the 1908 congressional

debate on the Central Government’s bill to open it. 590 A new Botanical Garden was also created

to complement the zoological park; in 1901, the municipality hired “a qualified gardener in

Belgium” with the assistance of Mr. Tolmos, Peru’s Consul in Antwerp. 591 The now old

botanical garden of the late 1860s had been reduced for the construction of the Facultad de

Medicina, and the municipality saw it fit to ignore its existence and start anew.

Mayor Elguera could not be more excited about the rapid transformation in Lima’s

architecture. Years before, and writing under the Barón de Keef pseudonym, he had stated that

Lima had become “a village resistant to architecture, which offers an appearance as peculiar as

detestable… [B]uildings are made as in the time of Pizarro, with no criteria, no study, no reason,

and no architecture.” 592 He could now proudly state that “Lima has fully entered a period of

architectural transformation.” 593 But if new neighborhoods were the sign of the emergence of a

new Lima, the old city could not be left untouched. Elguera argued that intensive surgery was

588
“Anunciando retreta,” El Comercio, March 9, 1901. Libornio composed the famous Marcha de banderas, still
played in official ceremonies during the raising of the Peruvian flag.
589
“Parque Colón,” El Comercio, January 3, 1901.
590
“Congreso Extraordinario. Cámara de Diputados. Sesión del 18 de noviembre de 1908. Parque zoológico,” El
Comercio, November 18, 1908.
591
According to the note in El Comercio, Enrique Van der Groen, who worker at the Botanical Garden in Antwerp,
was hired. El Comercio, May 14, 1901.
592
Federico Elguera, “Las casas,” El Barón de Keef en Lima, 44-6.
593
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1905 (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1905), 45.

240
required to modernize an area that had been laid out before the appearance of modern means of

transportation, and whose narrow streets suffocated the environment. Elguera proposed to

demolish old blocks to give way to wide arteries: “In order to promote public hygiene, it is

indispensable to open new arteries in the old center of the city; the new avenues will be

important for the embellishment of the city… old cities can be transformed by widening the

streets… opening new and wide avenues by splitting the old blocks.” 594 It was a matter of

embellishment, but also of hygiene, for Lima’s “weather demands open, ventilated streets.” 595

A new and wide avenue was under construction since 1899. It was initially named

Avenida Interior de Lima and was to cross the central core of the city, connecting the Plaza Dos

de Mayo with the Avenida Grau, near the Facultad de Medicina, also under construction. The

project was carried out by the private Sociedad Anónima de Construcciones y Ahorros “La

Colmena” directed by former President of Peru Nicolás de Piérola. Months after handing Peru’s

presidency to Eduardo López de Romaña, Piérola ran for Lima’s Municipality, but was defeated

by Federico Elguera; the politician then turned to business and launched its first major project.

Piérola argued that such an avenue was crucial for the renovation of the city, especially to make

wealthier Limeños interested in having healthy, “dignified” housing. 596 The avenue would,

therefore, not only modernize the city’s infrastructure, but also “our customs and national

character.” 597 The former president quickly obtained permission to open the artery and to

negotiate the necessary expropriations to that effect. The construction was directed by engineer

Santiago Basurco, and its first phase was inaugurated in 1907, while its second one in 1911. 598

594
Ibid., 40-1.
595
Federico Elguera, “Oficio de la Alcaldía Municipal de Lima al Sr. Director de la Sociedad de Beneficencia
Pública de Lima,” Memoria administrativa que presenta a la Sociedad de Beneficencia, 384.
596
Boletín de “La Colmena,” Sociedad Anónima de Construcciones y Ahorros, 1, no.1 (1900):5.
597
Ibid.
598
Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima.

241
The Avenida Interior, which was always known by Limeños as the Avenida La Colmena became

a new symbol of progress (Figure 5.4). It was never finished to reach the Avenida Grau, but new

businesses soon occupied its homogeneous buildings; it was a wide avenue with roads for

automobiles and tramways and with a characteristically French style.

Elguera wanted more similar avenues. In this, Lima needed to follow the example of

Buenos Aires: “Lima must start its immediate transformation, as Buenos Aires has done, opening

new communication roads by splitting the old blocks and thus achieving the city’s

embellishment and its true hygienization.” 599 Within days after his inauguration, the Mayor

launched a campaign to open an artery to connect the San Juan de Dios Hospital and train station

–which in turn was being connected with the Dos de Mayo Plaza through the Avenida La

Colmena— with the Plaza Mayor (which, by the turn of the century was re-baptized as Plaza de

Armas. 600 This avenue would serve a double purpose: it would give Lima a spacious, modern

avenue in the vicinity of the Plaza de Armas Elguera was renovating –which would allow for the

circulation of fresh air—, and would allow the city to rid itself from the Callejón de Petateros a

narrow one block alley that hygienists considered a dangerous infectious center of vices and

which came out onto the Plaza.

The Callejón de Petateros represented the ultimate symbol of Lima’s backwardness: it

did not allow for the traffic of carriages and air, and hosted a large number of small businesses

and restaurants owned by Chinese Limeños. A 1901 report by Enrique León García, by then in

charge of the Hygiene department of the Municipality of Lima, argued that the Callejón had been

built “in the times when hygiene did not exist,” and condemned its old façades, the irregularity of

599
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1906 (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1906), viii.
600
The Director of the Sociedad de Beneficancia Pública de Lima, Pedro Gallagher, received a note from Elguera on
January 17, 1901, communicating his decision to open such avenue. Memoria administrativa que presenta a la
Sociedad de Beneficencia, xxiv.

242
its buildings, and the presence of “unregulated prostitution,” to conclude that it was urgent to

“disappear” the Callejón as soon as possible. 601 El Amigo de Tejerina –that is Federico Blume,

who had written poetry along with Elguera with the literary pseudonym F+F— immediately

joined the voices of support for the destruction of Petateros, arguing that it was “a living

example of the backwardness in which architecture, hygiene, and common sense where in that

already remote time.” Tejerina emphasized that the Callejón was dangerously located in the

center of the city, and its filth and microbes, especially produced by the Chinese restaurants,

expanded throughout the entire city. In particular, Tejerina warned that the Callejón was in

close proximity to an elegant restaurant where “the most distinguished ladies of our high social

circles and the most selected members of Limeño society” gather.” 602

Elguera’s administration designed an ample boulevard that required the complete

destruction of Petateros as well as of five other blocks. It was to have a uniform architectural

style, similar to La Colmena, and connect Lima’s Plaza de Armas with the future Legislative

Palace, which was to be constructed in the lot of the San Juan de Dios hospital and train station.

The Avenue was baptized by Elguera as Avenida 28 de Julio, and it was explicitly modeled after

Buenos Aires’s Mayo Avenue. Such as Buenos Aires, Lima would achieve both its

“embellishment and its true hygienization.” 603 The 28 de Julio was never constructed. Elguera

battled fiercely for his project and received the support of the media, but could receive enough

support for the legal expropriations required. It seems clear, too, that Elguera’s popularity had

started to raise some brows: the mayor was not allowed to run for a third period, for a law

specifically aimed at him impeded it.

601
“Informe del Médico Sanitario del Cuartel Segundo,” 385.
602
El Amigo de Tejerina, “El país de los trámites,” El Comercio, February 17, 1901.
603
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1906, viii.

243
 Elguera’s first reform was the transformation of the Plaza Mayor (de Armas). The plaza

received new stone pavement, and the large esplanade was transformed to give way to green

areas, with walks for pedestrians. The marble benches were replaced with a large number of iron

and wood ones, and the marble statues and vases were removed. The Plaza also received new

lightning. The intention was to follow the style of English parks, 604 that is, a place for

entertainment and relaxation with green areas. The inspector of thoroughfares and paseos of

Lima’s Municipality argued that the old Plaza had a “colonial and withered somnolence,” and

was only attractive “for the meditations of the unemployed and vagrants of low esteem.” The

new one, for its part, was “a social center… children go to play there, and a great number of

people like to go at all hours.” 605 To Elguera, the sixteenth-century Plaza had finally been

transformed into a twentieth-century one (Figure 5.5). 606 Other plazas were also converted into

comfortable paseos; the Plaza Bolívar (Monteagudo’s Plaza de la Constitución, that Limeños

still called de la Inquisición), for instance was also transformed to provide a cultured space for

outdoor leisure. 607 The Belgian gardener hired by the Municipality was in charge of all parks.

The new public buildings constructed during the post-War of the Pacific period

conformed to the architectural and hygienic standards. A project for a new prison for Lima,

presented by architect Basurco under the pseudonym Desiderio won an open competition called

by the Ministerio de Fomento in 1906. The jury, which included the President of the Supreme

Court, Alberto Elmore, the intellectual Javier Prado, physician Francisco Almenara Butler, and

City engineer Alejandro Guevara, chose Basurco’s proposal –a panopticon for three hundred

inmates with six radial pavilions that included workshops— because the design proved the

604
El Comercio, May 15, 1901.
605
“Memoria de la Inspección de Alamedas y Paseos. Al señor Alcalde del Honorable Consejo Provincial,”
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1903, ii-iii.
606
Memoria de la Municipalidad de Lima. 1901 (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1901).
607
Ibid.

244
building would have plenty of light and ventilation. 608 Similarly, Basurco’s proposal for the new

building for the Colegio Guadalupe, presented to the 1898 open competition, emphasized the

importance of lighting and air circulation. According to Radamés –Basurco’s pseudonym—there

existed two schools of thought about lighting; those that favored a single source of light –such as

“Guillaume, Liebreich, Dailly and Tretal, the eminent Director of the School of Architecture in

Paris,” and those that argued that “classes must be inundated by light from all directions,” such

as “Gariel, Javal, and Hurel, in France, and Janssens, Boens, and the Superior Council of

Hygiene in Belgium.” 609 Considering the characteristics of Lima, Basurco sided with the second

group. 610 The same arguments were made in Basurco’s design of the Facultad de Medicina

(1903), in the terms for the construction of a new hospital for women, 611 and especially in the

terms for the open competition of proposals for a new mental asylum, and in the winning

proposal by physician Manuel Muñiz. 612

New monuments complemented Lima’s transformation and were an integral part of its

expansion and planning. Eighty-five years after the declaration of Peru’s Independence,

Liberator José de San Martín did not have a monument in Lima. President Andres Avelino

Cáceres decreed an erection of a monument for the Liberator, ordered an open competition for

proposals, and even placed its cornerstone in a public ceremony in 1890 at the small Plaza 7 de

Setiembre. 613 By 1891, a single proposal had been presented, and the competition deadline was

608
Details on the general conditions for the building demanded by the jury are found in the Anales de las obras
públicas del Perú. Año 1896 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1901), 454, 628-631. Details of Basurco’s proposal
are found in Anales de las obras públicas del Perú del año 1897, 427-431.
609
Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1898 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1899), 451.
610
The jury, however, did not declare a winner. Ibid.
611
For the latter, see Memoria administrativa que presenta a la Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Lima su
Director don Domingo Olavegoya, correspondiente al año 1903 (Lima: Imprenta Liberal, 1903).
612
The terms for the competition are in Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1895, 301-310. The complete
proposal by Muñiz is in Anales de las obras públicas del Perú del año 1897, 312-389.
613
Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1890 (Lima: Imprenta La Industria, 1897).

245
postponed. 614 Thirteen years later, the José Pardo administration called for a new open

competition, sending a circular to Peru’s Consuls throughout Europe asking them to publicize the

competition, setting a deadline for August 1905. 615 It is impossible to tell what happened to that

competition, but by 1906 a

Commission, chaired by Argentina’s ambassador in Lima, and which included Mayor Elguera,

Manuel Villarán, and other prominent Limeño members, opened a new one. This time, twenty-

one proposals were presented, but none satisfied the commission. The Central Government

ended up asking Felipe de Osma y Pardo, Peru’s ambassador in Spain, to hire a notable sculptor

to design and execute the monument. 616 Osma contacted Valenciano Mariano Benlliure, a

prominent sculptor who directed the Spanish Academy in Rome and had designed monuments to

Simón Bolívar in Panama and Bernardo de Irigoyen in Argentina. 617 Benlliure presented his

maquette in 1909 and finished the sculpture, but the project was forgotten until 1919, when Peru

started the preparations for the celebration of the Independence Centennial (see Chapter 7

below). 618

A minor monument to honor San Martín was erected in 1906 in the rond point of the

Paseo 9 de Diciembre and the Avenida Grau. It was a donation by Colonel Lorenzo Pérez Roca,

a private citizen who probably sensed that neither the Central Government nor the Municipality

made an effort to honor the Generalísimo with a monument. Pérez Roca’s was a relatively small

obelisk crowned by an angel in front of which a standing San Martín held Peru’s flag (Figure

614
Anales de las obras públicas del Perú correspondientes al año 1891 (Lima Imprenta La Industria, 1898).
615
Ministerio de Gobierno, Monumento al General San Martín (Lima: Imprenta La Industria, 1905).
616
Memoria del Ministro de Gobierno, Policía, Correos y Telégrafos. 1907 (Lima: Imprenta de “El Lucero,” 1907),
xvii.
617
Castrillón, Alfonso, “Escultura monumental y funeraria en el Perú,” in Escultura en el Perú, ed. Jorge Bernales
(Lima: Banco de Crédito, 1991), 349.
618
Gamarra, José, Obras de arte y turismo monumental: Bronces, estatuas (de pie y sentadas), bustos, obeliscos
(Lima: Ku, 1996), 52.

246
5.6). 619 It had a short life there, for it was moved to make room for the itinerant Columbus,

which was removed from the Plaza Italia (where he had been placed after his removal from the

Alameda de Acho) to be placed in the rond point. Columbus would soon be transported some

blocks way, in front of the Exposition Palace, but San Martín was homeless until the

Municipality of the town of Barranco decided to place him in the middle of one of its streets, in

1922. The monument’s angel, apparently, did not like the new location and disappeared.

Both Government and Municipality did act swiftly to construct monuments and

memorials to honor the heroes of the War of the Pacific. The first initiative for the construction

of a monument to honor the war heroes came from a group of notable citizens who formed the

Liga de Defensa Nacional, which started to collect monetary contributions in 1899. 620 By 1901,

the Municipality had decided to support the enterprise, and requested the Central Government to

assign a location for the monument. The empty rond point where the Paseo 9 de Diciembre,

Piérola Avenue, and the future Avenida Alfonso Ugarte converged was assigned. 621 It would

serve to continue the Avenidas de Circunvalación in the area formerly occupied by the city walls,

with the wide thoroughfares connected by circular plazas, such as conceived by entrepreneur

Henry Meiggs and architect Luis Sadá di Carlo when the walls were demolished by the early

1870s. By 1902, Congress granted four thousand libras to the Municipality of Lima for the

construction of the monument; 622 the Municipality then opened a public competition for

proposals, receiving 153 from Spanish, French, and Italian sculptors. The proposal by the

famous Spaniard Agustín Querol was elected by an international jury composed by the

ambassadors of Spain, Italy, Belgium, the United States, and France.

619
The design was presented in El Comercio in 1901. El Comercio, January 30, 1901.
620
Castrillón, Alfonso, “Escultura monumental y funeraria en el Perú,” 341.
621
Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1901 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1904).
622
Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1902 (Lima: Imprenta del Estado, 1907).

247
 The monument had a granite pedestal whose base was surrounded by bronze

representations of the Battle of Arica, the sacrifice by Alfonso Ugarte, a hurting Patria, and

Goddess Fame raising her hand. The upper part of the pedestal included a marble representation

of a flying angel carrying a laurel crown. It was crowned by a bronze statue of Colonel

Francisco Bolognesi, who was represented as wounded, ready to collapse, and holding a flag and

a handgun with difficulty. It was a representation of martyrdom, not triumph, of a defeated

soldier that clung to life and to his nation’s flag; it was intended to cause grief and admiration

towards sacrifice in a most unfavorable situation. Although it was a multinational monument,

such as its Dos de Mayo counterpart –the bronze was smelted in Barcelona, the granite column

was made in Turin, the marble angel in Carrara, and the stone base in Lima— 623 it was strikingly

different to its Dos de Mayo predecessor, which exuded optimism; Bolognesi’s sculpture, and the

monument as a whole, was a call to unselfishness, to place to interest of the nation above

personal ones (Figure 5.8).

Querol’s monument was quickly and harshly criticized by González Prada, who argued it

was excessively ornamented –the positivist thinker preferred bold, direct statements— and that

the representation of Bolognesi was not the martial, virile depiction of a soldier but a symbol of

passive docility, a depressing and lachrymose statue that did not invite to action. 624 Years later,

in 1954 President General Manuel Odría would agree with González Prada, ordering the removal

of “the statue of death,” and its replacement with a “statue of life,” a triumphant and brave

Colonel made by Peruvian sculptor Artemio Ocaña. 625

623
Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima, 99.
624
Manuel González Prada, “Nuestras glorificaciones. La de Bolognesi,” Horas de Lucha.
625
Castrillón, Alfonso, “Escultura monumental y funeraria en el Perú,” 343; Gamarra, José, Obras de arte y turismo
monumental, 15.

248
 By 1905, when the monument was inaugurated in front of a crowd of fifty thousand

people–according to a police report— 626, however, the plaza and monument carried a strong

symbolism. González Prada may not have noticed the contrast between the patriotic agonies of

Bolognesi and Alfonso Ugarte, and the environment surrounding it. The plaza had been

designed, like the Plaza de Armas, as a park for Limeños amusement, with green areas, and iron

and wood benches; the surrounding buildings were newly built mansions in French architectural

style; and it was located in the intersection of the Paseo Colón and Piérola Avenue –themselves

signs of an enlarging, progressive city (Figure 5.8). The entire Plaza thus theatrically

symbolized values linked to González Prada’s positivism, such as sacrifice for the common

welfare, as well as the emergence of a new, unified, and progressive nation after the disaster of

the War. In short, it marked a new beginning. When compared to the fate of San Martín’s

monuments, it is clear that Limeño elites were more eager to symbolize this rupture with the past,

than Peru’s Independence. After all, they had agreed –González Prada included— that the

previous republican era had only been a continuation of colonial times.

Modern Transformations, Modern Discomforts

Francisco García Calderón was a Peruvian philosopher who had been born in Valparaíso,

Chile, and raised in Paris, France. He was a modernizer who criticized Spanish colonialism and

its legacies in Peru, applauded the orderly and peaceful modernization of the country since 1895,

and who argued that the opening of the Panama Canal would allow for the massive immigration

of Europeans to Lima, thus making Peru a country for the future. In 1907, he wrote his famous

Le Perou Contemporain: Etude Sociale in French, in which he described the Lima from which

he had recently departed

626
Communication No. 1127, del Subprefecto al Prefecto del Departamento. November 8, 1905. AGN, Ministerio
del Interior. Dirección General de Gobierno, 3.9.1.15.1.16.17.

249
 Lima goes through a moment of transition in its architecture and character. It is
losing some of its old aristocracy and charm, rich in memories of gallantry,
mysticism, and luxury, to become a modern and commercial city, with wide and
rectilinear avenues, and white, beautiful, and uniform residences of monotonous
simplicity. In Lima one could find the melancholic and voluptuous hideaways of
the colonial promenades, or the members of the viceregal court, displaying their
luxury and beauty; the old silent convents, and the contemplative, nonchalant, and
isolated life of the old temples. Here and there the small and cheap houses, with
the grilled windows and the covered balconies, mysterious, in front of which one
could evoke the colonial sensuality, the love intrigues, and the Spanish passion,
strong and brave, used to dangers and duels. Since the modern days, the
municipal activity seeks the hygiene of the city, and the beauty in its
monuments… Lima is the capital in all aspects, in thought, activity, moral,
politics, and life: in a centralized country, she imposes opinions, fashions, and
habits. 627

García Calderón praised the transformation of Lima into a modern city, but it also

inspired him to evoke a charming and aristocratic village, full of mysticism and sensuality.

García Calderón was more ambiguous than his long time friend José de la Riva Agüero, who, in

a more radically aristocratic vein despised the “the modern uproar and the pretentious vulgarity

of the new buildings,” as well as the “artificial and dangerous” foreign influences that were

making Lima lose its particular flavor and identity –the “wind of ignorance and stupidity that has

been blowing for some time, which wants to make of Lima the most colorless place on earth.” 628

The rapid transformations of the city certainly made some Limeños wonder if the

modernization and progress of the city was convenient or desirable. And this preoccupation was

expressed by some of the most active modernizers. Médico alienista Manuel Muñiz, for

instance, whose 1896 proposal for the construction of the Hospital Nacional de Insanos (national

mental asylum) won the open contest of the Ministerio de Fomento, argued that “insanity is a

result of civilization… the century that is about to end has been fecund in discoveries that have

exerted a powerful influence on the social evolution of humanity… but the splendors of current

627
Francisco García Calderón, Le Perou Contemporain: Etude Sociale (Paris: Dujarric et Cio. Editeurs, 1907), 11-2.
628
José de la Riva Agüero La Historia en el Perú. Tesis para el Doctorado en Letras (Lima: Imprenta Nacional de
Federico Barrionuevo, 1910), 221-2.

250
civilization are dimmed by the results of a fatal law…the number of defeated people increases in

an alarming rate.” 629 Civilization not only brought material and social progress, argued Muñiz,

but insanity. “While this does not constitute proof the current decadence of the human being, it

does perfectly characterize the current historical period.” 630 Progress increased population

density, exposed people to the pernicious influences of industries, and caused physical and

intellectual surmenage. It was evident to Muñiz “that the number of mad people has increased,”

but also that mad people “have never suffered in the ancient and primitive eras, nor today among

the savage peoples, as much as they suffer in the so-called civilized world.” 631 Once and again,

Muñiz warns readers of the “inherent dangers of the development of civilization,” 632 to argue

that Peru needed to anticipate and prevent the future effects of progress.

In a similar vein, hygienist physician Alberto García argued that tuberculosis was caused

by civilization. His first article on the issue opened with a bold statement: “exhaustive and

irrefutable research has proven that tuberculosis is not a consequence of weather, and that it is,

more than any other thing, caused by civilization!” 633 The increase in population density, and

the “reproduction of pauperism,” that resulted from progress, in turn caused the disease.

Moreover, the industrial growth, added García in another article on the subject,

Absorbs the physical energies of individuals, eroding them by the excess of work
and the chronic intoxications produced by the handling of all kinds of poisonous
substances… The human conglomerations in the factories and the dwellings for
workers, the generally poor sanitary conditions of these; the low salaries, which
are also diminished by the demands of the tavern and drunkenness; the high prices
of properties, which obliges the population to live without the revitalizing effects
of pure air… have created greater and more difficult obstacles to surpass to beat
tuberculosis. 634

629
“Proyecto de Manuel Muñiz, Eureka, de Manicomio,” Anales de las obras públicas del Perú del año 1897, 312-3.
630
Ibid., 313.
631
Ibid., 314.
632
Ibid., 339.
633
Alberto García, “La cuestión tuberculosis,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento, I, no. 5 (1903).
634
Alberto García, “La cuestión tuberculosis,” Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento, I no. 6 (1903): 33.

251
 An identical opinion was expressed by physician Rómulo Eyzaguirre: “tuberculosis is a

disease of civilization.” 635 These fears were part of a long-time concern about the deterioration

of the quality of air in Lima as a result of industrialization, the introduction of new combustibles,

and the pollution generated by trains. 636 In 1858, Manuel Atanasio Fuentes had already

expressed his alarm over Lima’s atmosphere, which was not “renovated” because of the absence

of wind, and the city’s enclosed location, surrounded by mountains. The pollution generated in

the city made air, therefore, “heavy and unsuitable for breathing.” 637 Fuentes proposed an

expensive, but “simple and applicable remedy:” to open cracks in the top of the mountains

around Lima, so that “winds may expel the noxious mass of vapors” out of the city. 638

Every new development in Lima carried its own set of dangers. Gas lighting generated

concern among physicians for the effects of the “emanations of sulphurous acids” produced by

combustion. 639 The appearance of electricity was followed by frequent accidents. El Comercio

reported on these occurrences almost on a daily basis: Electric lines fell on pedestrians who

were instantly killed and caused fires. 640 By 1903, a chronicler lamented that “experience tells

us everyday and every moment, since the electric lighting replaced gas…that even though it is

true that it is a betterment, it comes with serious dangers for the public…” 641 In 1907, Emilio

Guarini, an Italian engineer interested in the development of electricity in Peru and who was

professor of physics at the School of Arts and Trades, praised the “prodigious influence of

635
Rómulo Eyzaguirre, “Demografía sanitaria. Enfermedades evitables,” 11.
636
Jorge Lossio, Acequias y gallinazos: Salud ambiental en Lima del siglo XIX (Lima: Instituto de Estudios
Peruanos, 2003).
637
Manuel Fuentes, Estadística general de Lima (Lima: Tipografía Nacional de M.N. Corpancho, 1858), 71.
638
Ibid.
639
Jorge Lossio, Acequias y gallinazos, 71.
640
For some examples, see El Comercio September 13, 1903; November 3, 1907.
641
“Accidentes eléctricos,” El Comercio, October 18, 1903.

252
electric industry on the economic development of other industries.” 642 Guarini responded to

those who compared “the electric dangers in the capital” to the “yellow menace” caused by the

presence of Asians in Lima. There existed a radical difference between the two dangers, argued

Guarini, for “we could easily avoid the yellow danger with a radical measure… to expel the

Chinese. But we could not think of a similar remedy for the electric danger in the capital.” 643

The engineer stated that civilization had inevitable consequences, Peru, “especially Lima,” had

to accept to reach economic prosperity.

Other accidents reported on a daily bases were those caused by the electric tramways.

Pedestrians were run over, cars derailed, causing alarm among Limeños. Some expressed

anguish about electricity and the eléctrico (electric tramways) in Limeño valses. The Viennese

waltz had been introduced in Peru as a civilized, modern music genre; it was played in the

retretas in Lima’s plazas and paseos to educate the ears of Limeños of all walks of life. It was

soon “transculturated” 644 by elite and lower class musicians, to be played in plazas, salons, and,

according to vals historians, especially in callejones. The lyrics of this anonymous and untitled

vals from 1900, express the anxieties of lower-class Limeños vis-a-vis the changes experienced

in the city: “I don’t know/what foreigners want to do to Lima/They come here to install/such a

dangerous light/They call it the “electric light”/It competes with gas/and no matter how good it

is/it always causes disease/Poor gas man!/What job will he have?/He’ll have to become a tailor

or a shoemaker/Or will have to take what is not his.” 645 Another vals, composed in 1905 by

Belisario Suárez, expressed similar fears about the electric tramway: “A company has been

642
“Los servicios eléctricos de Lima. Conferencia del profesor Guarini,” El Comercio (December 24, 1907.
643
Ibid.
644
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).
645
José Lloréns, “De la guardia vieja a la generación de Pinglo: Música criolla y cambio social en Lima 1900-1940,
in Lima Obrera, 1900-1930 ed. Steve Stein (Lima: Ediciones El Virrey, 1987): vol. II, 274.

253
formed/it will replace the Urbano: the horses and drivers/will have to stop working, poor

drivers/they will have nothing to push, with this new system/everything will come to an end.” 646

Of course, not all commentators lamented the transformations and the accidents. El

Amigo de Tejerina expressed his satisfaction for the accidents related to the first tramways that

connected Lima to Callao and Chorrillos, for they were a sign that Lima was progressing and

was going to progress more because “the laws that rule the development of the societies are

inevitable.” 647 Tejerina compared the “grandiose” number of accidents in the United States –he

argued that 1216 people had been killed and 47428 had been wounded in U.S. tramways in

1903— to “our two or three muertitos” (dead ones, in a pejorative way), to conclude that Lima

was still “leagues away from real progress;” “We are still far from being able to flaunt 47

thousand and more victims of accidents caused by our tramways,” lamented the writer. 648

Cultural changes were also promoted, feared, and lamented. El Comercio, for instance

launched a campaign against the “uncivilized” ways Limeños, especially lower-class ones,

celebrated festivities such as the carnival. Reformers had also been preoccupied about this

“barbaric” festivity since the Guano Era –there is no evidence that Monteagudo prohibited it, but

he well might have. In particular, Fuentes expressed its disgust for Limeños’ excesses, and

unruliness. Other festivities and entertainments, such as gambling and bullfighting, and

traditions, such as the public expressions of mourning, were also condemned and/or legally

regulated. Healthy and disciplined ways of spending free time were promoted, such as theater,

the paseos, the retretas, and new kinds of public festivities for holidays. These had to be

646
Ibid., 275.
647
El amigo de Tejerina, “Progreso,” El Comercio, September 18, 1904.
648
Ibid.

254
decorous, non-excessive diversions, for “moderation and restraint are essential for a balanced

and harmonious life, both, for individuals and the nation.” 649

In 1901, the Elguera municipal administration prohibited the game of carnival in public

areas; offenders would be arrested for twenty-four hours or be fined with ten sols. According to

reformed-minded commentators, the game consisted in a general war with flour, color powder,

eggs, mud, food, and especially water. Any passerby was a potential victim, even police agents

and soldiers who patrolled the city to control disorder. 650 The municipal order seemed to have

been effective, for a chronicle in El Comercio stated that the game had not been played, and

Limeños had preferred the more civilized mask balls. “The influence of the twentieth century is

impacting the game of carnival, civilizing that popular diversion.” 651 It was a reason to

celebrate, for the traditional game was particularly inappropriate for men; in a time when virility

was desperately sought, the carnival showed “a ridiculous feminism among men who practice

it.” 652 Another chronicler joyfully added that “culture always triumphs, and tears out what should

not exist… in a few years the game of carnival will be reduced to floats, to ball dances, to

serenatas like those in Venice, or to fantastic lightings like those in Rome.” 653 This was a

campaign against the public manifestations of joy and sorrow, for “the sorrow and joy of a

discreet home must not be announced in public…they must be reserved.” 654 Private and

controlled celebrations were commented favorably; public ones were carefully programmed and

regulated by municipal authorities. The municipality, for instance, arranged Christmas

celebrations, lighting the most important buildings in the city, organizing float parades and music

649
Federico Elguera, “El fonógrafo,” La vida moderna, por el Barón de Keef, 21,
650
“Carnavales. Crónica. Carnestolendas” El Comercio, February 17, 1901.
651
“Carnavales,” El Comercio, February 15, 1901.
652
Ibid.
653
“Carnavales. Crónica. Carnestolendas” El Comercio, February 17, 1901
654
“Pompas fúnebres,” El Comercio, July 14, 1901.

255
festivals in the remodeled Plaza de Armas, requesting private citizens and businesses to decorate

the city with plants, Christmas trees, balloons and electric lightings, and prohibiting the mesitas

de vendimia (sale of liquor on the streets) where “the pueblo used to find the occasion to drink

and fight.” 655

Once those regulations were in effect, however, observers uttered lamentations.

“Happiness is leaving us,” expressed a 1903 report on Christmas celebrations. According to the

note, Christmas Eve used to be a night of noisy happiness and “honest popular joy,” a

manifestation of the “generous and jovial” character of Limeños, but these features were nowhere

to be found anymore. “What has caused the disappearance of our old traditions?” asked the

reporter, “the struggle for life of the hardworking and strong peoples does not leave room for joy

and leisure… the more time man consecrates to work, and not to pleasure, the more powerful he

becomes.” In order to form a powerful and modern society, the festive celebrations, therefore,

had to give way to discipline and hard work. The report concludes with a short reflection:

“Setting all philosophies apart, the fact is that man is sadder everyday.” 656 The dream of

reformers was becoming true; Limeños’ cultural change was taking place. A side-effect of the

modern transformations, however, were the romantic literary constructions of an idealized past.

But the most intriguing ambiguities about the effects from progress came from no other

than Mayor Federico Elguera. A Barón de Keef chronicle entitled El adelanto (progress), for

instance, praised the “marvels of electricity and the prodigies of mechanics,” the presence of the

phonograph, the telephone, the automobile, the telegraph, the cinematograph, the radio, and

aviation. All these “discoveries, hidden for thousands of years, have illuminated men in the past

655
“La Pascua,” El Comercio, December 25, 1901.
656
“La alegría se va,” El Comercio, December 25, 1903.

256
fifty.” 657 With such progress, however, life was not more harmonic, simpler, or happier, for “the

calm and peace of bygone times have been replaced by the continuous excitement of the spirit,

by anguish, and restlessness. Today’s man is nothing but a toy of the universal disconcert. This

drags him into its whirlpool, envelops him in its labyrinth, and sweeps him into its tempest.” 658

To Elguera, each discovery or development hid new dangers, hardships, and tragedies. The

seducing presence of the automobile, for instance, produced “a swarm of nuisances, hazards, and

expenses.” 659 In other texts, Elguera continues reflecting over progress and its effects. The

phonograph, which allowed its user to execute whatever music he pleased, which made any

performer, dead or alive, follow his orders, and which made singers sing always in key as many

times as the user pleased, also took away peace and silence. The telephone, made to

communicate, ended up isolating people… Worse yet, all those things had become part of

people’s lives to the extent that they could not feel satisfied without them! 660

Progress, is to live in continuous worry, corroded by envy, neurasthenia, and

greed. Progress is to kill millions of men in a war, and to leave others useless and
mutilated… Progress is to lengthen the agony of the moribund with hypodermic
injections, and progress is to have a car of the urbano [tramway] in Lima cut a
pedestrian’s legs, or an automobile kill another pedestrian on the street, so that he
is taken to the morgue for an autopsy to know what caused his death. All that, is
progress. 661

The ultimate modernizer, he who made every effort to transform Lima, Elguera provided

a synthetic definition of contemporary years as a time of “continuous necessities, permanent

anguish and distress, and its disenchantment and disillusions.” 662 And confessed that he admired

“and bow before the progress of humanity, but I also tremble.” 663

657
Federico Elguera, “El adelanto,” La vida moderna, por el Barón de Keef, 33.
658
Ibid.
659
Ibid., 35.
660
“El sosiego,” La vida moderna, por el Barón de Keef, 42.
661
Ibid., 100.
662
“La radiola,” La vida moderna, por el Barón de Keef, 124.
663
“El adelanto,” 35.

257
 Historians of Peru could now conclude that these doubts are a sign of elite’s

schizophrenia on modernity. That these fears for progress show elite’s conservatism and

resistance to change, or that they express elite’s profound, maybe unconscious desire to maintain

the (colonial) status quo that benefited them. Following González Prada, Javier Prado, Clemente

Palma, and a long list of other elitist critics of elites, social historians could argue that these

ambivalences prove that modernizers were, at heart, un-modern; ergo, their efforts to transform

Lima were doomed to fail. After all, has not it been said many times that Lima failed to become

Paris, or that Peru is the land of lost opportunities, or that elites were not true modernizers

because they were trapped in their colonial mentality, or that each of them was, deep inside, a

Pizarro, a Valverde, or an Areche?

My conclusion will be different. These ambivalences show that modernizers like

Fuentes, Muñiz, García, Eyzaguirre, Elguera, a well as many others, tried their best to make

Lima, and Peru, modern. In many ways, they were successful; they changed the city in a modern

way, attempting to destroy or forget its (also modern) past, to make room for new modernity. A

modern pattern, indeed: the new becomes old all too quickly. “Modern life transforms customs

and habits, and sweeps, like a plentiful river, all its finds in its bed” wrote the Mayor. 664 Elguera

might have feared that the solid and modern city he strove to construct would soon fall pray to a

new modernizer, a younger version of himself. All that is solid melts into air. The nostalgia

over the past, after all, was a product of modernization itself. The disciplinary machine of

modernity was transforming the customs and habits in the city, creating more disciplined

national beings, more “respectable” city dwellers, and, of course, more avid consumers.

664
Federico Elguera, “La moda,” La vida moderna, por el Barón de Keef, 11.

258
Modernizers then looked at the luring eyes of the modern creature they had passionately created.

They were delighted and terrified.

259
Figure 6-1. Instituto Municipal de Higiene

Figure 6-2. Paseo 9 de Diciembre, with Columbus Monument

260
Figure 6-3. Paseo 9 de Diciembre

Figure 6-4. Avenida La Colmena

261
Figure 6-5. Lima’s Plaza de Armas after 1901 reforms

Figure 6-6. Monument to San Martín

262
Figure 6-7. Bolognesi Monument

Figure 6-8. Plaza Bolognesi

263
 CHAPTER 7
A NEO MODERN CITY (1919-1930)

In July 1921 Peru held a splendid celebration to commemorate the centennial of the

Declaration of its Independence. The administration of President Augusto Bernardino Leguía

resolved to make the occasion an apotheosis of nationalism in which homage was paid to the

Liberator José de San Martín –a plaza and a monument would be erected in his honor— and

which was used by Leguía to consolidate the image of his regime (pompously named the Patria

Nueva or New Fatherland) as a new national beginning.

The 1921 celebration, along with the commemoration of the centennial of the Ayacucho Battle in

1924, spurred an unprecedented drive for the physical transformation of Lima, as a large number

of monuments, avenues, and public buildings were constructed and/or inaugurated for the

occasions. They were only, however, key moments in a period of intense expansion and

transformation of the city, which urban historians consider “the most decisive and interesting

epoch in the evolution of the City.” 665

Lima was to play an important role in Leguía’s Patria Nueva. During his first

administration the President had expressed his intention to beautify and modernize the capital,

for “every Capital is, and must be in effect the highest exponent of the culture and wealth of a

country.” 666 Leguía’s would have the chance to carry out his intentions during his second

administration, which lasted eleven years (1919-1930), and which was sustained by an economic

bonanza based on foreign investment and loans. Lima carried the synecdochal role previous

elites had conferred upon it. Leguía’s reforms of the city followed the same basic principles

developed by preceding experiments at modernization, but it also represented a radical rupture

vis-à-vis them, for they were guided by diverse historicisms. Leguia’s modern Lima included

665
Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima (Lima: Consejo Provincial de Lima, 1945), 104.
666
Speech at the Municipality of Lima. Quoted by Rene Hooper, Leguía. Ensayo biográfico, 146.

264
diverse references to multiple pasts, as contemporary discourses on the nation’s past and

character found expression in concrete.

The Discourse of Discourse: The Multiple Pasts of the Patria Nueva

Soon after forcefully taking power in 1919, President Leguía made plans for the

celebration of the centennial of Peru’s Independence. The regime invited representatives of

virtually all countries with which Peru maintained diplomatic relations to make the statement

that the nation was back on the track of progress and had a bright future ahead. In the midst of

the celebrations, President Leguía welcomed General Charles Marie Emmanuel Mangin,

Ambassador Extraordinaire of the Republic of France, with these excited words:

France... the Great Republic, heart and brain of the world, predestined by the God
of Nations to be the crucible of the great ideas, and the apostle of redemption
which, educating the peoples with its abnegation and sacrifice, has always
marched at the vanguard of humankind, carrying the banner of Justice and Law…
Our Independence was a consequence of your grand revolution, that torch that
illuminates the spirit of the subjugated peoples and all the oppressed classes. Our
civilization is the daughter of yours… you are the fountain to which our children
go to drink from the well of good, beauty, and truth. 667

Limeño elites had certainly been influenced and attracted by French ideals and styles well

before the 1789 Revolution; ever since the eighteenth-century ascent of the Bourbon dynasty,

France was the incarnation of civilisation. French political, scientific, and artistic ascendancy

over Peru’s elites had been undisputed throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

as elites studied French, paid careful attention to political, scientific and philosophical

developments in France, and traveled to the City of Light to drink from the well of modern

splendor and wisdom. As we have seen in previous chapers, the language of Peruanidad

constructed by postcolonial elites resonated with the idiom of universal civilisation under

667
“Respuesta de Leguía al discurso del General Mangin, Embajador Extraordinario de la República de Francia,” in
Discursos y documentos oficiales en el primer centenario de la Independencia Nacional MCMXXI, ed. Ministerio de
Relaciones Exteriores (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1921), 124.

265
construction in the French Republic, particularly in “the Capital of the Nineteenth Century.” The

reforms of Paris enacted by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Prefect of Seine, in the 1860s

also had become the paradigmatic model for the modernization of cities throughout the world;

the expansion of Lima was planned in the early 1870s after Haussmann’s urban principles, and to

many twentieth-century Peruvians the capital of Peru should and could be made into “the Paris

of the Pacific” (see Chapter 5 above).

Leguía’s speech to welcome General Mangin, then, contained references to the

relationship between France and Peru that were not particularly novel or unusual. At once,

Leguía expressed his admiration for the Great Republic and its Revolution and he aligned Peru’s

Independence and republican life with it, that is, with the universal movement against oppression

and toward Justice, Law, and Beauty.

Leguía, however, not only expressed admiration for French civilization during his eleven-

year administration. At the 1926 inauguration of the monument to the founding Inca Manco

Cápac, --a gift from the Japanese colony marking the centennial of Peru’s Independence-- the

President delivered these words:

The Incas taught us to love justice… The glorious Empire of the Incas, founded
by Manco…was a lighthouse that, from the center of America, illuminated the
entire continent. It is the archetype of the strong governments that educate people
into order, progress, and prudence, which socialize property, and thereby save
them from decrepitude and ruin. 668

The trope of the glorious Inca Empire had been a cornerstone of “Peruvian” nationalism

before and after the revolution of Independence.669 By 1926 the Incas –the term designates only

668
“Discurso del Presidente de la República. Inauguración del monumento a Manco Capac,” in La Independencia
del Perú y la colonia japonesa, ed. Comisión organizadora del monumento a Manco Capac (Lima: Imprenta
Eduardo Ravago, 1926).
669
For more on the subject, see Mark Thurner, “Peruvian Genealogies of History and Nation,” in After Spanish
Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas, ed. Mark Thurner and Andrés Guerrero (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2003).

266
the royal dynasty of imperial rulers— had come to incarnate the principles positivist elites,

including the President, valued most. The Incas were now cast as a progressive ruling class that

had led its people to development by creating an orderly society in which each individual was

part of a well-lubricated “social machine.” Leguía was not alone in projecting positivist values

onto the Incas. Julio C. Tello, Peru’s leading archaeologist at the time, and who was named by

Leguia Director of the first Museo Arqueológico del Perú in 1924, highlighted the Inca’s rigid

social engineering in his inaugural speech, remarking that “the motto” of the Incas had been

“specialized work, organized cooperatively, as the basis for all physical, intellectual, and social

progress.” During the time of the Incas “everything was conducted to make men, since

childhood, in a dynamic factor oriented towards the dominion of Nature… through cooperative,

intense, and persistent work. Work was a pleasure, not a burden.” A state supervised division of

labor coexisted with an education that emphasized a work ethic, and made work “a pleasant

occupation.” 670 By the 1920s, Incas too carried the positivist banner of “order and progress,”

and were an example of a state that placed social interests above individual interest.

Leguía’s allusion to the Incas as rulers who had saved their people from decrepitude

resonated with elites’ post-War of the Pacific concerns about the decadence of “race” (see

Chapter 4 above). Leguía positioned himself as a new savior, declaring repeatedly that he was a

“redeemer of the Indian race.” Leguía sought Indian integration into the national community

through the expansion of education, the construction of highways, and by making them into

proprietors, for “nothing connects men to society in a better way than the property of land.” 671

670
“Discurso del doctor Julio C. Tello, Director del Museo,” in El Perú en el Centenario de Ayacucho.
Recopilación efectuada por la Secretaría del señor Presidente de la República de los discursos pronunciados en las
ceremonias conmemorativas (Lima: Editorial Garcilaso, 1925), 505-6.
671
“Entrevista al Presidente Leguía,” Mundial, V, no. 206 (1924).

267
 This liberal program for the integration of el indio was complemented with paternalistic

laws of protection and tutelage, such as the 1921 creation of the Sección de Asuntos Indígenas

(Office of Indigenous Affairs), later called Dirección de Asuntos Indígenas, within the Ministerio

de Fomento, and the 1922 formation of the Patronato de la Raza Indígena (Guardianship of the

Indigenous Race), both meant to be official channels for the expression of Indian grievances.

The Patronato had civilizatory objectives too, however. It wanted to “instill among the

individuals of such a race… the absolute respect for the rights and property of other people, the

need and advantages of work… to respect contracts, the need and usefulness of not living in

concubinage, to take good care of their children, to practice personal and domestic hygiene

habits… as the most effective way to preserve health.” 672 Leguía himself argued that the

Patronato’s main objective was to educate the Indian. 673

Leguía followed liberal and positivist thinkers in the idea that Peru needed a “practical”

and “industrial” education, and he criticized the country’s existing educational system, especially

Peru’s “old University, where a brilliant youth… lives enslaved by the verbalist prejudice, that

old legacy of the colonial regime.” 674 A self-styled “practical man,” Leguía had not needed a

university degree to become a successful entrepreneur, and like El Amigo de Tejerina (see

Chapter 5 above) he argued that Peru’s university produced “solemn doctors that make up for

their lack of scientific training with verbal improvisation.” 675 Accordingly, the education of

Indians should be based in agricultural schools were they could develop practical skills for their

672
Quoted by Augusta Alfajeme and Mariano Valderrama, “El surgimiento de la cuestión agraria y del llamado
problema indígena,” in Indigenismo, clases sociales y problema nacional: la discusión sobre el problema indígena
en el Perú, ed. Carlos Iván Degregori (Lima: CELATS, n/d), 100.
673
Augusto B. Leguía, Patria Nueva: Colección de discursos pronunciados por el Presidente Augusto B. Leguía
(Lima: Editorial Cahuide, 1927) vol. II, 7.
674
Quoted by Rene Hooper, Leguía. Ensayo biográfico (Lima: Ediciones Peruanas, 1964), 134.
675
Augusto B. Leguía, Discurso con que el Señor Augusto B. Leguía asumió por tercera vez la presidencia de la
República, el 12 de octubre de 1924 (Lima: Editorial Garcilaso, 1924), 12.

268
integration into “our industrial, commercial, and agricultural life.” 676 In 1921 Leguía announced

that his government would hire “three or four hundred North American and German school

teachers to educate el indio “to live better and need more of the things he has never known.” 677

Leguía also created the “Day of the Indian,” a holiday to be celebrated on June 24 –the

winter solstice, and the day the Incas apparently paid tribute to the sun— and he proclaimed

himself Wiracocha, a God-like figure, to highlight his paternal sensibility vis-à-vis the Indian.

He also delivered some short speeches in Quechua, a language he otherwise could not speak.678

His indigenismo was an elitist mixture of enlightened, patriarchal philanthropy with a practical,

liberal view that Indians should be integrated into the national community by means of the free

market. Much like previous liberal and positivist thinkers, Leguía argued that Indians had to be

made either into property owners or rural proletariats. The government should also make them

“feel the need for comfort,” and then teach them how to satisfy those new needs through work. 679

This way, Indians would need to insert themselves into the money economy, which would

benefit them and Peru as a whole. Leguía stated that his government would thus accomplish a

goal Peru’s Independence had not fulfilled: the liberation of the Indian from the “last enslaving

chain that the glorious Battle of Ayacucho was unable to break.” 680 Leguía was not only

positioning himself as a civilizer that intended to follow the example of the Inca elite; he also

inserted his name in the genealogical line of the liberators, a move that President Ramón Castilla

had also made during the Guano Era, when he abolished slavery and the indigenous contribution.

676
“Entrevista al Presidente Leguía,” Mundial.
677
“Entrevista al Presidente Leguía,” La Prensa, May 5, 1921.
678
Manuel Burga and Alberto Flores Galindo, Apogeo y crisis de la República Aristocrática. Oligarquía, aprismo y
comunismo en el Peru 1895-1932 (Lima: Ediciones Rickhay, 1980), 133-4.
679
“Entrevista al Presidente Leguía,” La Prensa, May 5, 1921.
680
Ibid.

269
 Apart from the symbolic declarations and acts of a usually grandiloquent and self-

centered persona, Leguía actively promoted an Incanist nativism or indigenismo incaista.

Cuzco, the ancient capital of the empire and its Inca dynasty should be made into “the Mecca of

America” for tourist consumption. 681 His government supported archeological research and the

establishment of archaeological museums as educational and research institutions. Leguía also

supported the work of indigenistas such as Hildebrando Castro Pozo –appointed director of the

Sección de Asuntos Indígenas— and helped with the organization of the “Indigenous

Congresses” held by the Comité Pro-Derecho Indígena Tahuantinsuyo, an organization formed

in 1920 in Lima. The Comité Pro-Derecho was a diverse group, and it included anarchists,

members of working class organizations, indigenista intellectuals, and some persons who

claimed to be indigenous. The purpose of the Committee was “unifying the members of the race

and having them know their political, economic, and social rights, because their work represents

the progress and wealth of the Republic.” The motto of the organization was “union is our

principle, culture or enlightenment our means.” 682 Leguía’s Ministerio de Fomento officially

registered the Comité in 1920, and the President received representatives to its First National

Indigenous Congress, sent a personal representative to its inauguration, and provided for food,

lodging, and transportation for the provincial representatives. 683 In the Third Congress, held in

Lima in 1922, a resolution was approved to praise the President and to thank him for his support.

The Sixth Congress, held in 1926, declared Leguía Honorary President of the Comité. 684

681
Quoted by Rene Hooper, Leguía. Ensayo biográfico, 145.
682
Wifredo Kapsoli,and Wilson Reátegui, El Campesinado Peruano: 1919-1930 (Lima: Universidad Nacional
Mayor de San Marcos, 1987).
683
Wilfredo Kapsoli, Ayllus del sol: Anarquismo y utopía andina (Lima: Tarea, 1984), 294.
684
Ibid. For more on the Comité, see Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture
in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).

270
 Leguía’s regime had designed a new Constitution in 1920 that legally recognized the

existence of the “Indigenous Communities.” Article 58 of the Constitution stated that “the state

will protect the indigenous race and will issue special laws for its development and education in

harmony with its needs. The Nation recognizes the legal existence of indigenous

communities…” 685 Leguía, then,institutionalized a nativist or indigenista discourse that had

been around in Peru for a long time, and he merged it with a liberal paternalistic discourse --also

present in Peru since the nineteenth century— that aimed to civilize the indigenous “race” and

integrate it into the national body. His speech before the bronze statue of Manco Capac

expressed those tendencies. The Patria Nueva, in Leguía’s view, should emulate the example of

the enlightened founder of the glorious Empire, taking Indians by the hand and leading them into

the school of order and progress, and like Manco save them “from decrepitude and ruin.”

Indeed, the Ministro de Fomento, Pedro José Rada y Gamio, explicitly equated the civilizational

figure of Manco Capac with that of President Leguía. The Incas had established a government of

“order and progress,” stated the Minister, but they also demonstrted a protective or paternal spirit

towards the population; the Incas gave importance to agriculture and irrigation, and as a result

established a powerful empire that expanded throughout South America. Leguía’s

administration, for its part, argued Rada y Gamio, followed the same Inca motto of order and

progress, and it also “protected” Indians. The Minister then turned to address the President

directly: “with a paternal decision… you provide protection to el indio, you receive him in your

governmental mansion, you shake hands with him, and share his wishes… you want to make the

Indian the great citizen of Peru.” 686

685
Constitución para la República del Perú. Dictada por la Asamblea Nacional de 1919 y promulgada el 18 de
enero de 1920 (Lima: Sanmartí y Ca., 1920), 10.
686
“Discurso de Pedro José Rada y Gamio, Ministro de Fomento,” in La Independencia del Perú y la colonia
japonesa, 39-40.

271
 The 1921 centennial celebration of Peru’s independence hosted two major guests: the

Representative of the Holy See, and the Spanish Ambassador. When Leguía welcomed Mr.

Cipriano Muñoz y Manzano, Conde de la Viñaza, Ambassador Extraordinary of His Majesty

Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, to the celebrations of the centennial of Peru’s Independence, he did

so with these words:

The Madre Patria, the common patria of these peoples that she… discovered and
conquered with her legendary effort, and elevated to Christianity and
civilization… While the sociological needs of growth toward self-government
produced that deplorable dispute between such a mother and her sons, it could
never extinguish the gratitude and love that burns in our soul for the elevated
nation in whose dominions the sun never set. The bonds that unite us are…
unlimited; we are blood of your blood; we are your once favorite sons, living
proof of your gigantic territorial expansion, palpable concretion of your glories.
We Peruvians are Spaniards by blood, tradition, faith, and language, by all that
distinguishes a race. 687

Peru was now “a Catholic country,” and Spain was the nation’s Madre Patria, that is, the

“fatherland” that had “mothered” Peru and all other “Hispanic American” countries. 688 The

centennial would be a celebration of the historical relationship between Peru, Spain, and the

Church. The centennial marked a historiographical break of sorts; anti-Spanish and anti-Vatican

sentiments had been a crucial element in Peru’s early nineteenth-century nationalist discourses.

The anti-Hispanic and anti-Roman “Black Legend” had been indispensable during and after the

wars of Independence; it was renewed when in 1866 Spain’s fleet attempted to seize the Guano

islands along the coast of Peru. That military confrontation closed with the Battle of Dos de

Mayo, and the memory of that event was still prevalent during the harsh decades of the

immediate post-War of the Pacific era (1880s-1900s). Even though Peru and Spain had

established diplomatic relations in 1879, Peruvian elites maintained their distance from Spain,

687
“Respuesta de Leguía al Mensaje de Alfonso XIII, Rey de España,” in Discursos y documentos oficiales en el
primer centenario, 20-1.
688
Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Discursos y documentos oficiales en el primer centenario, lxv.

272
which was now considered to be a decadent country. During the post-War of the Pacific period

Peru’s maladies were still attributed to the abhorrent and seemingly indelible Spanish legacy.

While the Inca past had been reconstructed as Peru’s glorious, imperial past, Spanish colonialism

had been interpreted along the lines of the “Black Legend,” that is, as an obscurantist era of

illegitimate, foreign rule that had left a legacy of backwardness.

Things would start to change during the 1910s and 1920s, though, as intellectuals such as

historian José de la Riva Agüero and poet José Santos Chocano reinterpreted Spanish conquest

and colonialism to reconcile Peruvianness with “its” colonial past. The War of the Pacific had

created another “other” in opposition to which Peru’s identity was to be forged, for Chile now

appeared as a closer and more dangerous “other,” displacing Spain as an oppositional figure.

The Mexican Revolution, World War I, and the Russian Revolution had also produced fear and

anguish over the possible consequences of progress throughout Latin America. A narrative of

hispanoamericanismo had also developed in Spain as a result of the loss of its final colonial

possessions in 1898 as a discursive attempt to reestablish Spain’s pride that emphasized the

vindication of the colonial past and the traditional Spanish values in contraposition to Anglo-

Saxon expansion. 689

The attraction of the United States –Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó pejoratively called it

nordomanía— as well as pragmatic utilitarianism, was attacked throughout the continent by

intellectuals that defended the values transmitted by Spain to America, Catholicism in particular,

and sought to preserve regional identity. 690 In Peru, some voices had been questioning the

“practical spirit” reformers wanted to instill in the population during the early twentieth century.

689
Ascención Martínez, “El Perú y España durante el Oncenio. El Hispanismo en el discurso oficial y en las
manifestaciones simbólicas (1919-1930), Histórica, XVIII, no. 2 (1994).
690
For similar discourses in Latin America, see Frederick Pike, Hispanismo, 1898-1936: Spanish Conservatives and
Liberals and their Relations with Spanish America (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971); Emilia de
Zuleta, “El hispanismo de Hispanoamérica,” Hispania, 75, no. 4 (1992).

273
Riva Agüero, for instance, wrote a prologue to Oscar Miró Quesada’s book entitled Problemas

ético-sociológicos del Perú, in 1907, in which the young historian praised the book for its

criticism to the “exaggerated industrialism” and the “economic utilitarianism” modernizing elites

wanted to promote among Peru’s youth. 691 Riva Agüero argued that industrialism –which he

considered “abject”— could only erode social bonds, and create a “total absence of scruples,”

and a “ferocious and monstrous egoism… that kills all enthusiasm and degrades all nobility.” 692

For Riva Agüero, himself a nobleman –his title was Marqués de Montealegre y Aulestia— the

attack on modernity was also a matter of defending his own status and a hierarchical order that

had long lost its splendor or effect. The Anglo-Saxon cultural “penetration,” especially of the

United States, and to a lesser extent England and Germany, was seen as “dangerous” because it

promoted industrialism and utilitarianism, that is, it led Peru away from its original cultural

roots.

Riva Agüero was to become the main hispanista historian of Peru. He would argue that

Peru’s character and destiny were completely shaped by the colonial era, in which the spiritual

unity of the nation had been forged. This was a characteristic of all “Spanish America,” which in

fact formed, along with Spain, an original and indivisible “Spanish civilization.” 693 Peru was, in

his view, particularly well positioned within this “continental and ethnic patriotism,” 694 for

Peruvians were “heirs of the oldest viceroyalty in Southern America; we were, from Panama to

the [Magellan] Straight, the superior political and administrative nucleus, whose command was

conferred as a promotion to the outgoing Viceroys of Mexico, the first-born emporium of the

691
“Prólogo de Riva Agüero. Problemas ético sociológicos del Perú,” El Comercio, November 3, 1907.
692
Ibid.
693
José de a Riva Agüero, Por la verdad, la tradición y la Patria (opúsculos) (Lima: n/e, 1937), 208.
694
Ibid.

274
North.” 695 Ever attentive to titles of nobility, Riva Agüero argued that Peru “possesses through

its antecedents, the most authentic titles for predominance in western South America.” 696

Riva Agüero’s hispanismo coexisted harmoniously with his Incaismo; he enjoyed

comparing the Inca Empire with ancient Egypt or Persia, as well as with “young China.” The

empire had been born of a group of clans, passed through a period of feudalism, only to unify

itself under an absolute and warrior monarchy. Most importantly, it was a society of two classes

in which patriarchal elites exerted a gentle despotism over the Indian masses. In short, Inca rule

had made a “paternal and kind imprint” 697 on Peru. It was the Inca nobility that Riva Agüero

admired, and this admiration reflected his view that contemporary Peru needed a civilizing elite

“to guide its destiny.” Riva Agüero repeatedly lamented that such a class had been lacking

throughout Peru’s republican life. He attributed Peru’s defeat in the War of the Pacific to the

absence of a leading class that could unify and guide the nation. He severely criticized the

caudillos and civilista politicians that had governed the country, but argued that they were

preferable to the “mesocratic, financial oligarchy” that had come to take its place. 698

Riva Agüero looked to Peru’s colonial era for inspiration, and he was especially fond of

the pre-Bourbon or Hapsburg era (1500s-1600s). During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Peru was the “favorite and spoiled son” of Spain during the “world hegemony of the

Hapsburgs.” 699 Riva Agüero found Peru’s geography to be strikingly similar to Spain’s, and he

compared the cities of the interior, “Cuzco, the imperial, Huamanga, the white, Huánuco, the old

Lion of the Dons, and the tragic Cajamarca,” to be like the cities of Castile and Extremadura, for

their “silent majesty” and their “stony and heraldic beauty.” Lima, “the gracious, with fresh

695
Ibid., 151.
696
Ibid.
697
José de la Riva Agüero, La Historia en el Perú, 201-2.
698
Ibid., 472.
699
José de a Riva Agüero, Por la verdad, la tradición y la Patria, 151.

275
glazed tiles and Moorish balconies of lattices” was considered “a living accurate copy of the

perfumed Andalucía.” 700 Riva Agüero’s romantic and aristocratic vision of Peru and Spain

crafted images of Peru’s cities that were radically out of synch with ongoing processes of

modernization.

Hispanistas rewrote the history of Peru, reinterpreting conquest as an audacious,

admirable endeavor that brought civilization and Christianity to South America, and that allowed

for the formation of Peru. This view had its architectural counterparts. A chapel to honor

Conquistador Francisco Pizarro was built in Lima’s Cathedral in 1927. At its inauguration,

President Leguía highlighted Pizarro’s “superhuman audacity” to plant, “in the most civilized

Empire of America, the cross of the Savior and the banner of Castile.” It was only fair to honor

the Conquistador, for “to glorify Pizarro is to glorify Spain, and in Spain, ourselves.” 701 Leguía

would later compare the conqueror with two mythical figures who resisted Moorish occupation

of the Iberian Peninsula: the eighth-century Visigoth Don Pelayo and the eleventh-century El

Cid. 702 The reference highlighted the historical dimensions of Pizarro’s deeds, and linked them

with the Reconquista as an expression of Spanish virility, the spirit of adventure, and the defense

of Catholicism.

Esteban Cáceres –a Spanish musician living in Peru, who composed celebrated Incanist

dramas, and formed “the Quena orchestra that must have existed during Inca times,” and who

wrote the hispanista book España en el Perú— argued that conquest had given birth to “Spanish

Peru.” 703 Other voices insisted that Spain had transmitted its “soul to the sleeping races of

700
Ibid, 152.
701
Memoria que presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1928 el Dr. Pedro Rada y Gamio, Presidente del Consejo de
Ministros, Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores y Senador por Lima (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, n/d), 94-5.
702
Rogelio Sotela, Crónicas del Centenario de Ayacucho en Lima (San José: Imprenta M.V. de Lines), 121.
703
Estebán Cáceres, España en el Perú (Lima: Imprenta La Nueva Unión,. 1924).

276
America.” 704 Spanish domination was perceived as benevolent and beneficial, as “Spain brought

to this New World the Catholic faith that many nations in Europe rejected and the sanctity and

civilization that Africa and Asia had repudiated; had made the South American people, hitherto

barbaric and idolatrous, a people to which Jesus Christ had his most precious indulgence.” 705

Spanish legacy, which, with certain notable exceptions, had been severely condemned by

previous generations of historians and intellectuals, was considered beneficial. 706 Spain had

brought civilization, and it was referred to as “the generous land of the intrepid discoverers and

civilizers that gave us our rich language, holy religion, honest customs and example of virtues…

transcendental works in legislation, administration and artistic manifestation, such as the never

superseded colonial architecture correspond to our Madre Patria.” 707

Independence was refashioned as the natural result of the development of the child

mothered by Spain, in which “young America, a brave and beautiful girl, wanted to get out of the

paternal house and live without the tutelage of her mother.” 708 To Cáceres, Peru’s independence

was an expression of the indomitable character of Spaniards, for “Spaniards were those who

704
Words of the Venezuelan representative to the celebrations of the centennial of Ayacucho during the ceremony in
which Venezuela gave Peru Bolivar’s sword and Pizarro’s standard. See Rogelio Sotela, Crónicas del Centenario,
75.
705
“Oracíon jaculatoria pronunciada por el Reverendo Padre Dominico Fray Inocencio Hernández, Capellán de
Palacio, en el Te Deum cantado el 28 de Julio en conmemoración del centenario de la Independencia del Perú,” in
Discursos y documentos oficiales en el primer centenario, 280.
706
Nineteenth century precedents of discourses of conciliation with the colonial past were the writings of priest
Bartolomé Herrera, whose 1842 and 1846 sermons pronounced in the funeral of President Gamarra and in the
twenty-fifth anniversary of Peru’s Independence, glorified Spain’s monarchic, catholic, cultural legacies as the basic
elements to construct national identity. See Herrera, Bartolomé, “Oración que en las exequias celebradas el 4 de
enero de 1842 en la Iglesia Catedral; de Lima por el alma de S.E. el Jeneralísimo Presidente de la República D.
Agustín Gamarra, muerto gloriosamente en el campo de Incahue, pronunció el Dr. D. Bartolomé Herrera, Cura y
Vicario de Lurín,” in Escritos y Discursos (Lima: Librería Francesa Científica, 1929); “Sermón pronunciado por el
Dr. Bartolomé Herrera, Rector del Convictorio de San Carlos en el Te Deum celebrado en la Iglesia Catedral de
Lima el 28 de Julio de 1846,” in Escritos y Discursos. A different nineteenth century conciliation with colonial past
was elaborated by Sebastián Lorente. See: Mark Thurner, “Una historia peruana para el pueblo peruano. De la
genealogía fundacional de Sebastián Lorente,” Lorente, Sebastián, Escritos Fundacionales. Compilación y estudio
introductorio: Mark Thurner (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2005).
707
“Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores doctor Alberto Salomón, el día 31 de Julio. Ceremonia de colocación de las
primeras piedras de los locales que el Perú obsequia par alas legaciones de España, República Argentina y Brasil.”
in Discursos y documentos oficiales en el primer centenario, 327.
708
“Oracíon jaculatoria,” 280.

277
obtained independence from Spain.” 709 In this consanguineal rhetoric independence was a

family affair. The Conde de la Viñaza expressed that “although the sons have emancipated

themselves, the family is always the same, and the bonds that unite it are indestructible.” 710 For

his part, Leguía argued that the Battle of Ayacucho could not be interpreted as the defeat of

Spain, because it had been an event analogous to “juridical emancipation in the life of men: an

inevitable crisis of growth.” 711 This perception of Spain as “mother” contrasted with early

republican anti-Hispanic sentiments, which made the writers of newspaper Los Andes Libres, for

instance, speak of Spain in 1821 as a “screaming old stepmother that frightened America during

her childhood.” 712 The hated stepmother had now become a “loving mother who acknowledges

that those little ones that had once delighted in the Iberian home have now come of age, and she

opens her arms and gives advice, perhaps even feeling, at the bottom of her heart, a yearning for

grandchildren.” 713

This shift in the language of independence allowed for reconciliation with contemporary

Spain and an exaltation of Peru’s colonial past. Peru could now feel proud both of Incan and

Spanish rule, since both were our glorious, imperial, and noble pasts. This was not the unifying

narrative republican Sebastián Lorente had crafted during the middle decades of the nineteenth

century, as analyzed by Mark Thurner. 714 Lorente, a Spanish born physician, philosopher, and

historian, had elaborated an integral narrative of Peruvian history, which avoided the Black

Legend sentiments of many of his Peruvian contemporaries. Thurner argues, however, that

Lorente’s was not a history of elites and governors –Incas, Viceroys and Kings, Presidents—but

709
Estebán Cáceres, España en el Perú, 16.
710
Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Discursos y documentos oficiales en el primer centenario, 17.
711
El Perú en el Centenario de Ayacucho, 147.
712
Los Andes Libres, September 18, 1821, quoted by Mónica Quijada, “De la colonia a la república: inclusión,
exclusión y memoria histórica en el Perú,” Histórica, XVIII, no. 2 (1994): 369.
713
La Prensa, May 2, 1921.
714
Mark Thurner, “Una historia peruana para el pueblo peruano. De la genealogía fundacional de Sebastián
Lorente.”

278
a history that stressed the existence of Peruanidad since the most remote times. For Lorente, the

greatness of the past was to be found not in the rulers but in “Peruvians,” starting with the

“communal spirit” of the pre-Incan indigenous villagers. 715 In contrast, Hispanist reconciliation

with Spain in the early twentieth century was informed by a “Great Men” discourse of history,

and it was impregnated with aristocratic conceptions of race and family that encompassed

“blood, tradition, faith, and language.” Leguía’s historicist vision, however, was not identical

with Riva Agüero’s. To be sure, both men saw history as a higher patriotism. The President

certainly agreed with these words of the historian: “History is a school of seriousness, good

judgment and, essentially, the incitement to duty and heroism, for it ennobles the soul and is the

source and root of patriotic love.” 716 Many of Leguía’s words on the Incas, the colonial era, and

Spain could easily have been written by Riva Agüero, and vice versa. Both also argued that Peru

needed a capable, civilizing “leading class.” But the statesman was a “practical man” who

declared his love for history but set his eyes on a sweeping modernization of the country. Riva

Agüero never applauded nor accepted this modernization. Leguía was not the kind of “leader”

Riva Agüero imagined for Peru. To be sure, they had strong political disagreements. Riva

Agüero was imprisoned in 1911 during Leguía’s first administration for publishing a newspaper

article demanding the release of the group that had attempted an abortive coup against the

President. Riva Agüero also protested against Leguía’s coup in 1921, and soon left for Europe;

he was not to return until after the fall of the president-turned-dictator in 1930. 717

715
Ibid. See also, Mark Thurner, “After Colonialism and the King: Notes on the Peruvian Birth of Contemporary
History,” Postcolonial Studies, 9, no. 4 (2006): 393-420.
716
José de la Riva Agüero, La Historia en el Perú, 548.
717
Riva Agüero did serve the Leguía regime during its final years, accepting a commission to study documents
related to Peru’s history in Europe. See, Mensaje presentado al Congreso Ordinario de 1929 por el Presidente señor
don Augusto B. Leguía (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1929). For more on the life of Riva Agüero, see Fred
Bronner, “José de la Riva-Agüero (1885-1944), Peruvian Historian,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 36,
no. 4 (1956).

279
 Riva Agüero’s disagreements with Leguía’s policies were more profound than these

political circumstances might suggest. Despite his historical declarations, Leguía was a

convinced modernizer who argued that Peru needed to develop its industries to end its

dependence on exports in a world market beyond the country’s control. For Leguia the state had

to be administered like a modern firm. Before entering politics, Leguía had worked for private

enterprises in Peru before becoming a manager for the New York Life Insurance Company. He

soon became a successful international entrepreneur with commercial activities and important

contacts in New York and London. During his years in London after his first administration,

Leguía returned to his commercial and stock market activities, and became President of the Latin

American Chamber of Commerce. 718 In spite of his wealth –he had been born in Lambayeque to

a distinguished family— he had not received a university education. He was a self-made

financier, the kind of “industrial man” desired by the likes of Manuel Villarán and El Amigo de

Tejerina, and despised by those like Miró Quesada and Riva Agüero (see Chapter 4 above).

Leguía’s admiration for the progress of the United States –Peru’s “older sister” as Leguía

referred to her during the Centennial celebrations— 719 shaped his administration profoundly. He

once stated that his “hope is to put an American in charge of every branch of the government’s

activity.” 720 To make that happen, he hired U.S. educators to write Peru’s new Law of

Education, 721 and he turned Peru’s Navy and Air Force over to U.S. officers. 722

The five-foot-three Leguía, who dressed as a Londoner to the end of his life, has been

considered variously as a populist champion of the middle-class, an adversary of the country’s

718
Rene Hooper, Leguía. Ensayo biográfico, 88.
719
Discursos y documentos oficiales en el primer centenario, 145.
720
J.A. Sterling to Secretary of State, Lima, Nov. 29, 1921, quoted by Marcos Cueto, “Sanitation from Above:
Yellow Fever and Foreign Intervention in Peru, 1919-1922,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 72, no. 1
(1992), 9-10.
721
“Obsequio que la colonia norteamericana en el Perú hace a la nación con motivo del centenario,” La Prensa, July
4, 1921.
722
“Ya ha Firmado,” Time, September 8, 1930.

280
landed oligarchy, and the man who opened up Peru to Yankee imperialism. 723 According to the

U.S. magazine Time, which dedicated its front cover to Leguía after his 1930 resignation, about

three hundred U.S. citizens had established businesses in Lima, and some 250 million U.S.

dollars were invested in Peru at that time. U.S. companies held the monopoly of Peru’s

telephone and telegraph service, owned the most important mining centers, and the most

important bank. 724 U.S. interests were so linked to the regime in Peru that U.S. Ambassador

Fred Morris Dearing left the country immediately after Leguía was overthrown. 725

Leguía’s exaltation of the colonial past and “Hispanic race” was, however, only one of

the many sides of a President who juggled parallel discourses while attempting to modernize

Peru. The Leguía regime did not make hispanismo its “official nationalist doctrine” as has been

argued. 726 Instead, it reproduced and promoted multiple nativisms or indigenismos and

hispanisms or hispanismos as part of its modernizing agenda, and to reestablish national pride.

Peru, noted Leguía in his 1924 speech to inaugurate Peru’s archaeological museum, could now

fell proud of all of its glorious pasts “which are symbolized by the Inca, the Viceroy, and the

Liberator.” 727 More importantly, the exaltation of Hispanic values and especially those of

Catholicism, as much as the view of the Inca Empire as an orderly society, played an important

role within the positivist framework of the Leguía years, for they could be used to criticize

individualism and to place collective state interests and social control above the cause of

liberty. 728

723
Once overthrown, a delegation of Callao dockworkers addressed Colonel Sánchez Cerro, the new President, to
ask him to “Free us, sir, from Yankee imperialism.” See “Ya ha Firmado,” Time, September 8, 1930.
724
“Ya ha Firmado,” Time, September 8, 1930.
725
Ibid.
726
Ascención Martínez, “El Perú y España durante el Oncenio.”
727
“Discurso del Presidente de la República,” El Perú en el Centenario de Ayacucho, 509.
728
For an earlier use of Catholicism in Republican reform, see Sarah Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor,
Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
1999).

281
 Concrete Discourses: A Lima Nueva for a Patria Nueva

As stated above, the transformations of Lima during the Leguía Era followed the basic

tenets the previous modernizations carried out during the Guano and Post-War of the Pacific

eras. The preoccupation with sanitary conditions continued, and Leguía’s administration

contracted a U.S. firm named The Foundation Company to manage Lima’s water system,

channel ditches, open new streets, and pave older ones. 729 The administration also followed the

hygienic prescriptions that characterized previous urban developments. New avenues had to be

wide and spacious to allow for the “circulation of air,” and to serve as paseos for pedestrians’

entertainment and enlightenment. Significantly, it was again argued that Lima lacked such

spaces, and that previously built paseos, such as the Alameda de los Descalzos and the

Exposition Park, “unfortunately do not possess the proper elements to deserve that name.” 730 In

order to launch a new beginning on the same grounds, the Patria Nueva had to erase older efforts

at modernization by recasting them as part of an obscure past to be transcended.

Leguia’s adminstration also demonstrated a special concern with Lima’s demographic

problems. Even while the population in the city was growing at an unprecedented rate –from

173,000 inhabitants in 1920 to 273,000 in 1931— 731 the central government saw it fit to

“stimulate the growth and the strengthening of the race, the basis for national betterment.” 732 It

did so by promoting sanitary studies in gynecology and child care –the new science of

puericulture was developed during the period In 1923, a Supreme Decree by Leguía ordered the

729
The Foundation Company was in charge of public works in “the 32 cities in the Republic.” The Central
Government gave the works to the company alleging that “no building company in the country has the necessary
elements to execute the important sanitation works in a short period of time.” Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento,
doctor Julio E. Ego-Aguirre, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1920 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1921), 349.
730
“Cuestiones de medicina e higiene. Las habitaciones y paseos de Lima. Al Sr. Pedro Mujica, Alcalde de Lima,”
La Prensa, June 2, 1921.
731
Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima, 105, 108.
732
Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, doctor Pío Max Medina, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1923 (Lima:
Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1923), 466.

282
Ministerio de Fomento to establish an annual prize named Maternidad y Patria (Maternity and

Fatherland) to award the two mothers with the largest number of healthy children –one from the

middle class and the other from the working class— with a new house. 733 Women were still

assigned the crucial role of giving citizens to the Patria, and their actions were as strictly

regulated as in the past. 734

The regime also paid special attention to disciplining the bodies of the population. To

“fortify the race,” but also to “militarize youth,” 735 Leguía promoted the development of sports,

and made them an integral part of the educational system. The concern about the population’s

lack of virility continued, as did the dissemination of shooting practice. All secondary schools in

the country had to include “military education” and shooting practice; the program for primary

schools of Lima also included such instruction. 736 Information about the number of schools that

actually taught students to use weapons is not available, but during the 1921 centennial

celebrations educator Cecilia Ortega received an honorary award for creating Peru’s “first child’s

shooting club.” 737

Immigration was also promoted. It was believed that immigrants would respond to the

call of Peru’s Patria Nueva and arrive in larger numbers than ever before. Accordingly, the

Ministerio de Fomento entertained a plan to build a “Hotel for Immigrants” in Lima that would

provide newcomers with temporary lodging. The old building where the mental asylum had

once functioned before the opening of the new Hospital Nacional de Insanos in Magdalena,

733
Ibid.
734
An article in the newspaper La Prensa argued that pregnant women must only receive guidance from “science,”
and suggested that women should not speak about their pregnancies with anybody but doctors, especially not with
their own mothers. La Prensa, May 26, 1921.
735
Mensaje presentado al Congreso Ordinario de 1929 por el Presidente señor don Augusto B. Leguía, 35, 45.
736
Memoria que el Ministro de Justicia, Culto, Instrucción y Beneficencia, doctor Arturo Osores, presenta al
Congreso Ordinario de 1919 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1919), xxviii.
737
La Prensa, July 28, 1921.

283
would now be converted into a gateway hotel. 738 No immigrant got to enjoy the comforts of the

old manicomio, however, for the anticipated wave of Europeans never materialized. Instead, the

building was renovated to host Peru’s first police academy, which was organized by a Spanish

mission. 739

The hygienic conditions of the lower class callejones received the same kind of attention

during Leguía’s regime as they did during the post-War of the Pacific period; the stable workers

also received special consideration regarding their housing, as they had to be safeguarded from

the pernicious influence of the poor. 740 The administration built casas modelo (prototype

houses) for workers who would make monthly payments to become proprietors. 741 The obreros

were also “cultured” through the dissemination of texts related to their trades and industries and

through temperance campaigns organized by the newly created Liga Nacional de Temperancia

(National Temperance League), which also printed handouts for workers. 742 The Liga counted

with the assistance of anarchist workers and students. Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, founding

ideologue of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), and then a university

student, created the Universidad Popular González Prada as a night school for workers, where

they could receive civilizational lessons from enlightened students. La Prensa, a Limeño

newspaper that the government expropriated in 1921, continuously praised the Universidades

Populares and the “intelligent jurisprudence student, Mr. Haya de la Torre” for teaching workers

such “transcendental matters” as botanic, elementary psychology, oral hygiene, the prevention

738
Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, doctor Julio E. Ego-Aguirre, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1920,
326.
739
Memoria que el Ministro de Gobierno y Policía, doctor Germán Leguía y Martínez, presenta al Congreso
Ordinario de 1922 (Lima: Imprenta del Estado, 1922), 100.
740
“Problemas de higiene social entre nosotros,” La Prensa, May 21, 1921.
741
La Prensa, May 27, 1921 refers to the first hundred houses built by the Leguía regime on the avenue to
Miraflores.
742
Memoria del Ministro de Fomento, doctor Pío Max Medina, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1923, 52.

284
and treatment of venereal diseases, and how to keep a medicine cabinet at home. 743 The course

“the medicine cabinet at home,” for instance, was run by “student-teachers” Chávez Herrera and

Haya de la Torre. Haya reserved for himself the “illustrative conferences” on the “destructive

effects of alcohol,” using photographs that showed damaged body parts and the “products of

alcoholic inheritance,” as well as statistics on the maladies associated with the vice. 744

“Vagrancy” was defined in an almost identical way, and it was condemned with the same old

rhetoric (see Chapter 4 above). 745

The regime also followed the previous design for the expansion of the city. It finished

the grand modernizing project of the Alamedas de Circunvalación (Beltway Avenues) that

surrounded extramural Lima when it completed construction on the Avenida Alfonso Ugarte,

which connected the Plaza Bolognesi with the Plaza Dos de Mayo. In 1907, the new home of the

Colegio Guadalupe had been erected on the dusty road that would become the Alfonso Ugarte

Avenue. In 1924 the Leguía regime paved the avenue and inaugurated the Hospital Loayza and

also Peru’s Archeological Museum as part of the centennial celebrations in commemoration of

the Battle of Ayacucho. But it was not until 1926 that the avenue was transformed into an

elegant paseo with gardens, marble benches, and public restrooms. 746 Another important avenue

was the Avenida del Progreso, which connected Lima with the port of Callao. It was intended to

be a road for heavy traffic that would help lead the expansion of an industrial area, as Henry

Meiggs had imagined it in the early 1870s. Factories and barrios obreros were constructed

along the avenue, including Chacra Colorada and Garden City. The name Garden City reflected

its modernist English inspiration as a planned, self-enclosed village.

743
See, for instance, La Prensa, June 2, 1921; June 10, 1921; June 21, 1921; July 8, 1921.
744
La Prensa, June 10, 1921.
745
Memoria que el Ministro de Gobierno y Policía, doctor Germán Leguía y Martínez, presenta al Congreso
Ordinario de 1922, 126-8.
746
Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima, 107.

285
 The regime’s most important avenue, however, was the one that connected Lima with the

coastal town of Miraflores. The city was already connected to Magdalena (to the north of

Miraflores) and the sea shore by Brazil Avenue (called Piérola during Piérola’s administration),

which ended in the vicinity of the national mental asylum. A new avenue had been built to

connect that avenue with the coastal town of Miraflores and, by the early twentieth century,

planners argued that Lima and Miraflores should be connected by a more direct avenue. 747 The

Leguía administration speedily constructed the fifty-two block road to Miraflores, contracting the

ubiquitous Foundation Company to that effect in March, 1921. The President wanted it ready

for the centennial celebrations in July. It was a grand avenue with a central garden that ran the

length of the boulevard, designed to be a paseo adorned with grass and trees, and with different

species of trees planted every three blocks. Its use was regulated to give it architectural

homogeneity, and regularity; façades, for instance, had to be uniformly aligned at a distance of

five meters from the sidewalks (Figure 7-1). 748 The boulevard to Miraflores reflected the idea

that avenues should be aesthetic and hygienic, that is, open and cultured spaces and not just

arteries for rapid communication. 749 By the end of May 1921 newspapers reported that one of

the vehicle lanes of the avenue had been completed and was open to circulation. 750 In a parallel

development, the first one hundred casas modelo for workers were constructed. 751 The second

lane and the houses were inaugurated by Leguía as part of the centennial celebrations. The

747
The Anales de las obras públicas delPerú. Años 1905 y 1906 (Lima: Empresa Tipográfica Lertiga, 1918), 510-
24, has a description of the future avenue to connect Magdalena del Mar with Miraflores. The Memoria de la
Municipalidad de Lima. 1905 (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1905), 49, already mentions the opening of the avenue
from Lima to Miraflores for the future expansion of the city. The Boletín del Ministerio de Fomento. Dirección de
obras públicas, II, no. 7 (1906): 67 reports that the Central Government declared the work of “public interest” to
start expropriations.
748
Juan Bromley and José Barbagelata, Evolución urbana de Lima, 106.
749
Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, ingeniero Manuel Masías, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1924 (Lima:
Casa Editora de la Opinión Nacional, 1925); “Memoria de inspección de obras” in Memoria de la Municipalidad de
Lima. 1920 (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1921).
750
La Prensa, May 27, 1921.
751
Ibid.

286
avenue received the name of the Avenida Leguía and it included a bust of the President

strategically placed at the head of the avenue. 752

The avenue opened a large area for urban development between the older city and the

seashore. Indeed, soon after the inauguration of Leguía Avenue, the administration proposed to

prolong the Avenida Leguía to connect Miraflores with the seaside resort and fishing villages of

Barranco and Chorrillos to the south. 753 The idea was to make the Leguía Avenue meet up with

the Malecón Leguía, a long, seaside avenue that would connect the town of La Punta at the port

of Callao with the fishing village of Chorrillos. The result would be the incorporation of a huge

new area for the expansion of Lima. The area around the Leguía Avenue would set aside zones

for the workers “who invest their savings to acquire land.” 754 Other areas were reserved for

middle-class empleados (white-collar workers) who worked for the state and could pay for their

homes with salary deductions. 755 These areas formed the urbanización Santa Beatriz,

neighboring the Escuela de Agricultura y Veterinaria.

New mansions for upper sectors were also constructed along the Leguía Avenue during

the 1920s. By 1926, a new Country Club had been constructed with a “residential district, the

most select that anyone could aspire to in the vicinity of Lima.” The area was developed by the

Sociedad Anónima Propietaria del Country Club whose director was Walter Hebard, Vice-

President of the Foundation Company, to become “the center of the social, cultural, and sports

life of the City of the Kings,” according to an advertisement placed in Lima’s newspapers. 756

Becoming a resident in the neighborhood included membership in the Country Club, where

752
The bust was made at the School of Arts and Trades by Manuel Aymar, who also made the plaque
commemorating the event. See La Prensa, May 22, 1921.
753
Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, doctor Pío Max Medina, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1923, 277.
754
Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, doctor Pío Max Medina, presenta al Congreso Ordinario, 273.
755
Ibid, 274.
756
El Comercio, May 9, 1926.

287
members could play “the most modern and healthy sports, such as golf, polo, tennis, swimming

and squash,” and socialize in the club’s salons “which will not be inferior to any other in the

world in width, comfort, amenities, elegance, and service.” 757 The neighborhood attempted to

include everything a rich Limeño could dream of. The facilities had been designed and built with

the “last word in modern engineering,” and residents could enjoy a luxurious exclusivity. The

advertisement for the neighborhood highlighted its modern facilities and compared them

favorably with the “most advanced ones in Europe and the United States,” and at the same time it

resonated with the aristocratic, colonial designation of Lima as “The City of the Kings.” That

name had been despised and changed to “The City of the Free” because of its kingly connotation

during the early republican years (see Chapter 1 above). Now it was once again in vogue

precisely for its regal resonances. The Country Club development offered a kingly environment

for Lima’s bourgeoisie, but its rhetoric was not uncommon during the Leguía years. As we saw

above, colonial Hispanic images had been comfortably incorporated within a modern and

progressive discursive framework.

The Leguía regime had an unprecedented concern for the growing white-collar sector,

and planned housing projects in areas such as San Miguel. 758 The regime also created a National

Commission for Economical Housing to study alternatives for both the working and middle

classes. 759 Indeed, during these years the “idea of the middle class” was developed in Peru 760 as

white-collar workers struggled to distinguish themselves from the working class, which in turn

made repeated efforts to distance itself from the poor.

757
Ibid.
758
Communication 937 from Lima’s Police Intendant to the Department’s Prefect dated on December 22, 1921,
notified him that a marble plaque commemorating Leguía’s placement of the cornerstone for white-collar houses
had been stolen. AGN Ministerio del Interior, Dirección General de Gobierno, 3.9.5.1.15.1.16.38.
759
Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, doctor Pío Max Medina, presenta al Congreso Ordinario, 18-9.
760
David Parker, The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).

288
 Leguía Avenue also spurred the development of the town of Miraflores, where new and

comfortable chalets –“garden houses” is the word used by newspaper La Prensa— 761 were

being built in the “Leuro” development. This development was a comfortable citadel of

artistically designed chalets, and which demonstrated the influence of the U.S. Mission Revival

and the British neo-Tudor styles (Figure 7-2). The village’s decorations were imported from the

United States. The effect was to create a suburban environment previously unknown in Lima.

The Organizing Committee for the Celebration of the Centennial of Independence decided to use

the newly constructed development to host the foreign delegations coming to the celebrations, 762

and contracted Maple and Company, a London-based furnishing establishment, to decorate the

chalets for the occasion. 763 Different architectural styles were eclectically used in other new

areas opened by the Avenida Leguía. While the English neo-Tudor style was popular along the

avenue and in Miraflores and Barranco, other residences sought rural European, “Medieval,”

Mission revival, and Andalusian styles, forming a historicist pastiche of neighborhood styles that

nevertheless conformed to modern conceptions of hygiene and spatial distribution.

It was in the midst of this eclectic architectural wave of modernist revivalism that “Neo-

Colonial” and “Neo-Prehispanic” styles began to appear in Lima. Revivalism and historic

restoration had become important trends in European architecture since the 1830s, especially in

regard to medieval structures and the Gothic style in Germany, the United Kingdom, and France,

but also across the continent. Revivalism would also find its way to the United States through

the neo-Gothic, neo-Renaissance, Mediterranean, and Mission revival movements in

architecture. In Spain, a group of architects were vindicating the Spanish Baroque as a valid

761
La Prensa, July 7, 1921.
762
Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, doctor Julio E. Ego-Aguirre, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1920, 49.
763
Presupuesto de los señores Maple y Cía. De Londres al señor Presidente de la Comisión del Centenario (Lima:
n/e, 1921).

289
architectural legacy after the centuries-long predominance of “Academicism.” 764 All European

revivals were inspired by international modernism and they revalued traditions in attempts to

find expressions for modern national uniqueness. The most important theoretician of the

Castilian baroque revivalism was Vicente Lampérez, who argued that architecture had to

recuperate “traditional” styles to express the distinctiveness of a nation’s “climatic and racial

idiosyncracies.” 765 The quest for an adequate vehicle of modern national distinctiveness gave

rise to a profusion of “neo” styles that sought to make eclectic stylistic adaptations of “national

models” in accordance with modernist notions of space. The British neo-Tudor of the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for instance, has properly been labeled “mock-Tudor”

for its evident indifference to its namesake fifteenth- and sixteenth-century predecessors.

In Peru, the modern quest for vehicles of national uniqueness was central to the cultural

politics of the Leguía regime. An early experiment in “Neocolonial” architecture was made in

1911 by Rafael Marquina, who designed and built a home in this style upon his return to Lima

after studies at Cornell University. 766 Marquina’s neocolonial house earned the praise of Teófilo

Castillo, a romantic painter who had studied in Europe and who was now using Ricardo Palma’s

famous Tradiciones (a set of picaresque literary sketches of Limeno life) as the inspiration for an

“authentic national style.” 767 It was not until the 1920s, however, that the style fully developed.

The Leguía administration decided to restore colonial buildings, many of which were in a

calamitous state or had received successive, partial restorations that in effect had made them into

764
Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, “Manuel Piqueras Cotolí, Neoperuano de ambos mundos,” in Manuel Piqueras Cotolí
(1885-1937): arquitecto, escultor y urbanista entre España y el Perú (Lima: Museo de Arte de Lima, 2003), 23-4.
765
Quoted by Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, “Manuel Piqueras Cotolí, Neoperuano de ambos mundos,” 24.
766
For a biography of Marquina, see Luis Jiménez and Miguel Santiváñez, Rafael Marquina, arquitecto (Lima:
Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, 2005).
767
Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, “Manuel Piqueras Cotolí, Neoperuano de ambos mundos,” 38.

290
stylistic monsters. The regime also commissioned the construction of important public buildings

in the neo-colonial style.

In 1921, La Prensa announced the government’s decision to restore the Torre Tagle

home –an early eighteenth-century baroque mansion with ornate balconies, emblematic of the

once vilified but now revived colonial style of the “City of Kings.”. The renovation included the

placement of Sevillian glazed tiles and mosaics, and was complemented with “colonial”

furniture and household items, some of which was in fact from the colonial period –such as the

furniture from the Aliaga family that impressed the newspaper writer for its title of nobility— 768

and some of which would have to be made to order. The newspaper congratulated the regime for

the renovation, expressing its opinion that it was time for the “defense of the vestiges of colonial

grandeur,” and for “the restoration of those [buildings] that have not yet been destroyed by the

[waves of] anti-archaeological epidemics.” 769 The choice of words here is perhaps suggestive,

for it may be read to convey that desire among the Hispanist elite, and characteristic of the

Leguía regime, to make parts of Lima into an inhabited archaeological museum that could

proudly exhibit Peru’s glorious colonial past.

Polish architect Ricardo Jaxa Malachowski and Spanish sculptor Manuel Piqueras were

commissioned for the Torre Tagle restoration. Malachowski had come to Peru in 1910 during

Leguía’s first regime, when he was put in charge of the new “Special Section of Architects and

Builders” of the School of Engineering. Piqueras, for his part, had arrived in Peru in 1919 to

direct the first classes of sculpture at the newly created Fine Arts School. Soon he became

involved in architectural, decoration, and urbanism projects. Marquina, Malachowski, Piqueras,

and the French architect Claudio Sahut were all able professionals trained abroad, and they

768
La Prensa, June 12, 1921.
769
Ibid.

291
would become the leading figures in the modernist architectural quest for a Peruvian style. Jaxa

Malachowski had a particular affinity for the Torre Tagle house; indeed, it served as the

inspiration for his design for the Archbishop’s Palace in Lima’s main square (Figure 7-3). The

demolition of the old residence of Lima’s Archbishop was begun in 1898 under the Piérola

administration, but was never finished so that the building still stood albeit with a ruinous

appearance. In 1916, the administration of José Pardo opened a competition with a jury

composed, among others, by former Mayor of Lima Federico Elguera, painter Teófilo Castillo,

and Monsignor Belisario Phillips. Jaxa Malachowski’s winning proposal was a version of the

Torre Tagle house only larger, keeping proportions with the adjacent Cathedral. It included two

large wooden and shuttered balconies of the kind Elguera had so much despised and opposed

during his administration of Lima (see Chapter 6 above). Jaxa Malachowski had commenced

construction in October 1917 but by 1921 work was paralyzed. The Leguía administration

provided the impulse to finish it, and hired engineer Enrique Mogrovejo and architect Sahut to

do the job. 770 The new Archbishop’s Palace initiated the transformation of Lima’s Plaza de

Armas into a space that would symbolize the nation’s harmonious reconciliation with Spanish

colonialism. It was inaugurated during the centennial celebrations of 1924. Alejandrino

Maguiña, Minister of Justice, Education, Worship, and Charity noted that the building paid “a

deeply felt homage to the historic epoch in which the virtues of Santo Toribio and Santa Rosa de

Lima had flourished.” 771

Another important sign of the reconciliation with Spain was the inauguration of the

Panteón de los Próceres (Mausoleum or Pantheon of the Heroes) in the same year. The

770
“Discurso del doctor Alejandrino Maguiña, Ministro de Justicia, Instrucción, Culto y Beneficencia, al inaugurar
el Palacio Arzobispal,” in El Perú en el Centenario de Ayacucho. Recopilación efectuada por la Secretaría del
señor Presidente de la República de los discursos pronunciados en las ceremonias conmemorativas (Lima: Editorial
Garcilaso, 1925).
771
Ibid, 467.

292
Pantheon was a national shrine or tomb for the bodies of the heroes of the independence wars.

Symbolically or perhaps ironically, the chosen venue for the tomb was the seventeenth-century

colonial church of San Carlos located adjacent to the University of San Marcos. In 1890 the

State Engineer Teodoro Elmore had proposed the use of “suppressed temples” for a national

memorial. Elmore had been commissioned to select a suitable site within Lima’s sprawling

suburban cemetery for a mausoleum to honor the victims of the War of the Pacific but the

engineer’s report proposed to honor all national heroes in a single shrine located in the center of

the old city. He suggested using the San Carlos Church, which had been “suppressed” by liberal

legislation during the nineteenth century, as a place of nationalist worship. 772 Elmore’s proposal,

however, came decades too early. The Ministerio de Fomento discarded it, for at the time it was

unacceptable –indeed sacriligious-- to honor fallen republican heroes within the premises of a

colonial temple. In any case, it was decided that a Cripta de los Héroes would be built in the

cemetery for the heroes of the War of the Pacific.773 In 1921, however, the Leguía

administration unearthed Elmore’s old proposal: the abandoned church would be used to honor

the heroes of Independence. Anticipating criticism, La Prensa published Leguía’s decree along

with an article that argued that the regime’s decision to use the church was not treason to

republican ideals; after all, Revolutionary France had transformed Saint Genevieve Church into a

nationalist Pantheon for the internment of its heroes. 774 The old colonial temple as national

shrine would signal Peru’s rupture with Spanish colonialism but also its debt to the church.

Architect Sahut was in charge of the adaptation of the San Carlos Church. His proposal

was approved in June, 1924, and the expenses charged to the special account named “expenses

772
Anales de las obras públicas del Perú. Año 1890 (Lima: Imprenta “La Industria,” 1897), 682.
773
The Cripta de los Héroes was designed by French architect Emile Robert and was inaugurated in 1908.
774
La Prensa, July 1, 1921.

293
for the Ayacucho centennial.” 775 Renovations included the church’s seventeenth-century

baroque cedar altar and pulpit. The figure of San Carlos, the patron saint of the church, was not

removed from its dominant location behind the main altar, but was instead symbolically

“nationalized.” A presidential slash, carrying the colors of Peru’s flag, was draped on the

shoulders of San Carlos. Moreover, this Peruvian San Carlos was flanked by Peruvian saints:

Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo (although born in Spain he was Lima’s second and most famous

Archbishop), San Martín de Porres, and Santa Rosa de Lima. The “Peruvianization” of San

Carlos was emblematic of a broader process by which the colonial was nationalized (Figure 7-4).

A neoclassical statue of the Patria by sculptor Artemio Ocaña, a pupil of the Italian Líbero

Valente at the School of Arts and Trades who had recently returned from Rome, Peruvianized

and secularized the Church’s façade.

Bronze busts of San Martín, Bolivar, Antonio José Sucre, and other heroes who had not

fallen in Peru were displayed in the hall above ground, while the tomb of Peruvian heroes was

appropriately located beneath the altar. 776 At the time of the Panteón’s inauguration, however, it

had yet to house any corpse. 777 The eclecticism of this national shrine was highlighted by four

allegorical paintings by the nativist artist Jose Sabogal that adorned the inner vault of the

church’s dome. The paintings represented the four Catholic cardinal virtues of prudence, justice,

temperance, and fortitude. Sabogal had studied in Rome, and was recently returned from

Mexico where he had met with Diego Rivera, Carlos Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Sabogal chose to paint the christian virtues in a classical Greco-Roman style, but the features of

775
Memoria que el Ministro de Fomento, ingeniero Manuel Masías, presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1924, 311.
776
Jorge Carlín Arce, Centro de Estudios Histórico-Militares del Perú. Historia, organización, fines y posibilidades
(Lima: Centro de Estudios Histórico-Militares del Perú, 1999).
777
Centro de Estudios Histórico-Militares del Perú, Guía Histórica y biográfica del Panteón Nacional de los
Próceres (Lima: Centro de Estudios Histórico-Militares del Perú, 1999), 6.

294
the figures were also conspicuously indigenous, a stylistic reminder of Peru’s “prehispanic

classical era.” 778

This nationalist memorial condensed much of the historical narrative crafted during the

Leguía regime. Now, a colonial temple could become a sanctuary to celebrate the rupture with

colonial rule, and the indigenous could be celebrated as a manifestation of a native or

“prehispanic” classical endowed with the cardinal virtues of christianity. At the inauguration of

the Panteón the Venezuelan Ambassador was the most important guest. Ambassador Pedro

Arcaya presented Leguía with “Pizarro’s Standard” and “Bolívar’s Sword.” The banner of the

Conqueror and the sword of the Liberator now represented

a long and transcendental historical process… [which was] the work of Spain…
[This work] consisted in the transmission of its soul, with torrents of its blood, to
the indigenous race of America, which since the beginnings of human evolution
was kept apart from the branch from Asia, North Africa, and Europe, that is, from
the groups that had produced all the ideas and engendered all the sentiments of
contemporary civilization. 779

Arcaya’s speech resonated with the now common notion that independence was a natural process

that began with conquest, and it highlighted the idea that it was Spanish colonialism that had

allowed for America’s entrance into the civilized world. Perhaps most importantly, Arcaya’s

allusion to the “transmission of blood” from Spain to the “indigenous race” marked the

emergence of a new discourse on mestizaje that the Leguía regime had yet to fully develop and

promote.

Alongside the emphasis on historical continuity the Leguía administration would also

strive to make clear statements regarding its rupture with the past. Thus, the Patria Nueva

focused its efforts on the construction of the new Plaza San Martín. This modern plaza and

778
For more information on Sabogal, see José Torres Bohl, Apuntes sobre José Sabogal. Vida y obra (Lima: Banco
Central de Reserva del Perú, 1989).
779
El Perú en el Centenario de Ayacucho, 373.

295
monument to independence would challenge the colonial hegemony of the central Plaza de

Armas. The proposed site had been occupied by the Convent and Hospital of San Juan de Dios

since the seventeenth century, and since the Guano Era it also hosted Lima’s train station. The

plan to transform the location into a space to honor San Martín was elaborated during Leguía’s

first administration in the early 1910s when the second phase of the Avenida La Colmena project

was still under construction. Mariano Benlliure’s monument to San Martín, which was to be the

centerpiece of the place, had been finished in 1909 (see Chapter 6). Demolition of the convent

and station began in 1911. Polish architect Bruno Paprocki presented a new proposal for the

Plaza in 1916, however. Paprocki’s plaza would be surrounded by monumental buildings in the

“neo-French” style, in tune with the Teatro Colón designed by Sahut and inaugurated in 1914,

and with the neighboring Avenida la Colmena (see Chapter 6). 780 A similar proposal was

drafted by Jaxa Malachowski in 1918, and it received the support of Mayor Luis Miró

Quesada. 781 The proposal was more a sign of continuity with the constructions carried out

during Piérola’s presidency and Elguera’s term as Mayor, and Leguía simply discarded it. In

1919, the President himself –not fond of open competitions for public works—appointed Manuel

Piqueras for the job, and formed a commission to supervise the construction of the Plaza, which

had to be rapidly constructed to play a central role in the celebrations of the Centennial of

Independence in 1921. Piqueras designed a wide plaza reminiscent of the renaissance plazas of

Madrid and Salamanca, with monumental buildings surrounding it. 782 The esplanade’s surface

was to be paved with granite tiles, and the balustrades and benches lined with marble from

Verona and Siena. The plaza included four circular reflecting pools, ornamental bronze lamps,

780
Lima. Municipalidad, Plaza San Martín, MCMXCVII (Lima: Municipalidad de Lima, 1997), 17.
781
Wiley Ludeña, “Piqueras urbanista en el Perú o la invención de una tradición,” in Manuel Piqueras Cotolí (1885-
1937), 232.
782
Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, “Manuel Piqueras Cotolí, Neoperuano de ambos mundos,” 35.

296
and Seville gardens. The Plaza San Martin was a coherent and ambitious project that

successfully broke with all previous interventions in the city. It created a modern, spacious

atmosphere in which Spanish renaissance monumentality harmonized with the neo-colonial

(Figure 7-7). 783

But such an ambitious project could not be finished in time for the Centennial

celebrations. For the inauguration, the surroundings were covered with columns and wooden

panels, which in turn were adorned with flags. The colossal San Martín monument designed and

made by Benlliure years before was shipped to Lima and erected by his closest disciple,

Gregorio Domingo, who had arrived with Piqueras in 1919. It was a grand depiction of a calm,

contemplative San Martín crossing the high Andes, and as such struck a contrast with the defiant

or triumphant statue of Bolívar (see Chapter 2 above). The 1921 monument to the Liberator did

not contain a single reference to the battles the hero had fought before the Declaration of

Independence. On the front of the base la Patria holds a crown of laurel, and on her head is not

the usual flame (the word for flame in Spanish is llama) but the Andean camellid. On the rear,

Argentine soldiers fraternize with a Peruvian soldier, and the flags of both countries are shown.

At the same time that architects developed the neo-colonial style they were exploring

prehispanic motifs in architecture and other arts. European architects had been experimenting

with “exotic” styles from the colonial territories, most notably in those epitomes and showcases

of modernity that were the Universal Expositions. Latin American “wizards of progress” also

contributed to these expositions with a mixture of prehispanic, Gothic, and Roman motifs that

served to universalize their nations by presenting them as part of the cosmopolitan world, and

783
Wiley Ludeña, “Piqueras urbanista en el Perú o la invención de una tradición,”

297
with a classical era comparable to that of the Roman Empire. 784 By the late nineteenth century

the mexicain and peruvien styles had already acquired respectability in Paris, where the notable

Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc designed “Aztec” and “Inca” rooms in 1884. 785 In turn, Barberot had

added these to the manuals of the Beaux Arts School in Paris by 1891. 786

In Peru the development of archaeology as an academic discipline with support from the

state gave an impulse to the spread of prehispanic motifs across a wide array of artistic

expression. In 1921 for example a set of “Tiahuanaco style” furniture was being made in the

carpentry workshop of the School of Arts and Trades. The set would be exhibited at the

International Industry Exposition organized for the 1921 centennial celebrations. 787 Months later,

the National Museum opened an exhibit on “Inca decore.” It was a room designed with

“authentic Inca themes,” including painted skirting boards and a ceiling frieze, a stained glass

window with the “Sun of the Incas,” silk and leather cushions, and furniture of a “genuinely

archaic style,” according to a La Prensa reporter, who noted, however, that “it is impossible to

tell if the Incas really had furniture.” 788 The exhibit of Inca decore had been prepared by “the

distinguished señoritas of our society, Elena and Victoria Izcue,” with the help of the Minister of

Education, C. Barrós, as an effort “to demonstrate the glories of our past.” Indeed, the reporter

noted, “to promote a genuinely Peruvian art manifestation is the most noble aspiration of a true

nationalism.” 789 Elena Izcue had studied at the Fine Arts School under Piqueras and Sabogal,

784
Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Mexico at the World’s Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation, (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1996).
785
Rodrígo Gutiérrez Viñuales, “La arquitectura neo-prehispánica: manifestación de la identidad nacional y
americana,” in Arquitextos, 041 (2003).
786
Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, “Manuel Piqueras Cotolí, Neoperuano de ambos mundos,” 27.
787
La Prensa, May 22, 1921.
788
La Prensa, August 4, 1921.
789
La Prensa, August 4, 1921.

298
where students were instructed to copy ornamental motifs from pre-Hispanic architecture,

textiles, and pottery. 790

Sculptors and architects could not be absent in the wave of artistic Incaismo of the Patria

Nueva. Carlo Líbero Valente, the Italian sculptor hired by Leguía’s first administration to work

at the School of Arts and Trades, made a statue of Inca Manco Capac to be erected atop the San

Cristobal hill overlooking Lima. According to a contemporary newspaper report, Valente

studied the “legends regarding the mythical founder… and has penetrated with affection in the

soul of our origins.” The sculpture “is an admirable sample of the Inca race before suffering the

numbing influence of conquest.” Manco was placed on a stone block, “without the expression of

defeat caused by the servitude of three centuries, nor the gesture that reveals the spiritual

limitation caused by alcohol and ignorance.” 791 The sculpture, which was read by the reporter as

a symbol of what the Indian race was before its decadence, had been commissioned by the

Mayor of Rimac. Rimac was now a district independent from the Municipality of Lima, but

apparently the statue was never erected. By 1921 Valente had also prepared a maquette for a

monument of Inca Atahualpa. 792 Artemio Ocaña, a pupil of Valente who also studied in Italy

with state support, made his first indigenista work with a representation of the Indian warrior

Cahuide, exhibited at the International Industrial Exposition in 1921. 793

The most important nativist monument of this period, however, would be the one erected

by the Japanese colony for the centennial of independence. The immigrant colonies in Peru were

important participants in the celebration of the centennial, presenting their host country with

gifts. The Italian colony sponsored an art museum, the Germans a clock tower, the Chinese a

790
Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, “Manuel Piqueras Cotolí, Neoperuano de ambos mundos,” 39-42.
791
“Estatua de Manco Capac para el Cerro San Cristobal,” La Prensa, June 19, 1921.
792
La Prensa, May 22, 1921
793
“La Escuela de Artes y Oficios y la Exposición Industrial,” La Prensa, August 18, 1921.

299
fountain, the British a soccer stadium, the Spaniards a commemorative arch in the Moorish style

(placed at the entrance to Leguía Avenue), and the U.S. colony a system of traveling libraries.

According to Federico Elguera, who was part of the organizing commission for the celebrations,

the leaders of the Japanese colony had sought his advice on what their gift to Peru should be.

Elguera’s response was that they should erect a monument to Manco Capac, since the first Inca

was the “son of the Sun, founder of the grand Inca Empire. It is your job, sons of the Rising Sun,

to erect that memento because of that similarity and also for ethnic reasons.” 794 Here the former

Mayor of Lima was alluding to the belief, widely held in the nineteenth-century, that the Inca

dynasty had originated in Asia and that Manco may have come from Japan. 795

Elguera also recommended that the leaders of the colony contact Cuzco historian Horacio

Urteaga for information on Manco, and sculptor David Lozano to create the monument. Lozano

designed a Manco who held aloft a gold scepter in one hand and in the other “the sun, explaining

the mission entrusted by Father Sun to the sons of the soil.” 796 The monument also included four

reliefs representing Manco Capac and his wife Mama Ocllo’s civilizing mission (Figure 7-5).

The monument’s base made reference to Inca constructions for it resembled a stonehewn

building with trapezoids and engravings of mythical figures, plus two bronze representations of

the Andean condor and the llama, respectively. 797 The monument was not erected until 1926

however, when it was located at the intersection of the Grau thoroughfare and Avenida Santa

Teresa. According to a reporter, Leguía had entertained the idea of erecting a monument to

Manco in the Plaza then under constructed behind the Legislative Palace, where the founder of

794
“El monumento a Manco Capac,” in La Independencia del Perú y la colonia japonesa, 68.
795
See Mark Thurner, “Peruvian Genealogies of History and Nation,” in After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial
Predicaments of the Americas, ed. Mark Thurner and Andrés Guerrero (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
796
“La colonia japonesa del Perú y nuestro Centenario. La estatua de Manco Cápac por el Sr. David Lozano,” La
Prensa, July 23, 1921.
797
A complete description can be found in La Prensa, July 23, 1921.

300
the Inca Empire would serve as an ancient counterpoint to Bolívar (see Chapter 2 above), so that

“our representatives would deliberate under the influence of the great initiators of the greatest

epochs of our history.” 798

The inauguration of the monument epitomized the theatricality of the Leguía regime.

Speeches by the President of the Executive Committee for the Monument, and for the Japanese

Central Society, Ichitaro Morimoto, and the Ambassador from Japan, M. Yamazaki, were

complemented by speeches delivered by Mayor Andrés Dasso and Minister Pedro Rada y

Gamio. As noted above, Rada y Gamio drew a pompous comparison between Manco and

Leguía, the founder of the Patria Nueva. The President, who had been an influential force

behind the arrival of Japanese immigrants by the late nineteenth century, compared Manco with

the Emperor Mutsuhito as great leaders of “miraculous empires.” Always fond of the familial –

he had already spoken of Peru as the son of France and Spain, and brother of the United States

and all “Hispanic” republics— the President now made reference to the “racial community”

between Japan and Peru, which apparently extended to the common colors of the countries’

respective flags. Most importantly, Leguía had a token group of indígenas attend the ceremony

and present a laurel wreath to the monument, while the band of the Republican Guard played

pieces by Daniel Alomía Robles and parts of the opera Ollanta composed by Valle Riestra. 799

Perhaps the most significant example of a neo-prehispanic building in Lima was that

designed by Jaxa Malachowski to house the private collection of Víctor Larco Herrera. A

wealthy sugar baron from the northern coast Larco had accumulated a large collection of Moche

ceramics, and his collection was enlarged when he purchased other private collections. In 1919

Larco initiated the project to construct an archaeology museum. He called for an open

798
La Prensa, June 19, 1921.
799
“Inauguración del monumento a Manco Capac,” in La Independencia del Perú y la colonia japonesa, 24, 47-8.

301
competition of proposals that Jaxa Malachowski won. 800 It was a unusual building that

combined architectural references to several prehispanic sites and cultures. The Pole’s museum

boasted faux-Incan walls –the concrete walls were cast to resemble the huge stones, and added

iconographical references from other pre-Inca cultures, most notably Tiahuanaco, but also

Chavín and Chimú (north highland and coast cultures) (Figure 7-6). Leguía had been born in

northern coastal Peru, and he had developed a sensibility towards the artifacts of archeology.

He supported the creation of the Brunning Museum in his native Lambayeque, and turned in into

a state museum. The President decided that the state should purchase Larco’s museum. It would

be the first Museo Arqueológico del Perú, and the President inaugurated it in 1924 as part of the

celebrations for the Ayacucho Centennial.

The neo-prehispanic museum offered a striking counterpoint to the neighboring Plaza

Dos de Mayo, whose surroundings were also built by Larco Herrera, and included a row of

elegant mansions that resembles the Parisian Place de l’Etoile, and which lent the plaza a

francophilic style. 801 The French mansions were the work of none other than Jaxa Malachowski,

who saw his three major works inaugurated in 1924: the neo-colonial Archbishop’s Palace, the

neo-prehispanic archaeological museum, and the French environs of the Plaza Dos de Mayo. It

was certainly a significant year for an architect whose versatility could only be rivaled by

President Leguía’s.

A New Modern Gesture to Forget

In 1930 Leguía was overthrown by a new dictator, General Sánchez Cerro. As a result

his name was quickly erased from Lima’s public spaces. Leguía Avenue was renamed Avenida

Arequipa, and the unfinished Malecón Leguía was now Avenida Costanera. It must have taken

800
Gabriel Ramón, “El guión de la cirugía urbana: Lima 1850-1940,” Ensayos en Ciencias Sociales (Lima: Fondo
Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2004), 28.
801
Ibid., 25.

302
considerable time and energy to remove all of the busts of Leguía that adorned plazas across the

entire country, however. All were made from the same 1921 cast prepared for the President’s

first bronze located at the entrance of Leguía Avenue. The large number of monuments erected

by the regime could not be so easily removed. Architects and engineers had been fully booked

during his regime, and they simultaneously developed all of the imaginable “neo” styles. The

regime’s discursive versatility materialized in multiple historicisms that alluded to multiple pasts.

the representations could all coexist in a city in which successive republican modernizations

processes soon came to symbolize the colonial past, and where the once rejected could suddenly

become the fashionable. The Leguía Era was one of temporal promiscuity, in which different

historical simulacra coexisted to promote Limeño’s pride and to express Peru’s cultural

“authenticities.” A good example was the Parque de la Reserva, Leguía’s new paseo

inaugurated in 1929. Indigenista José Sabogal created a ceremonial prehispanic site of worship

there, and Daniel Vásquez Paz deployed prehispanic motifs for his fountain. 802 The park seems

to have been inspired both by London’s Hyde Park and New York’s Central Park (Leguía had

lived in both cities). Limeños could now spend their leisure time in a cultured paseo that was

“theirs” in many senses, both modern and ancient, and in all cases “Peruvian.”

Days before the 1921 Centennial Celebrations a fire in the Government Palace destroyed

part of the “old and historical mansion of the Viceroys, so full of mementos, and deeply related

to our national life.” 803 Still, Leguía did not alter his plans for the celebration. During a gala

dance, the diminutive President occupied “the historic chair of Pizarro” from which he presided

over the many halls of the Palace. One of these halls resembled “some of the salons in the

Vatican, with “old-style chandeliers that resemble some sumptuous Spanish chapels,” another

802
José García Bryce, “La arquitectura de Manuel Piqueras Cotolí,” in Manuel Piqueras Cotolí (1885-1937), 119.
803
La Prensa, July 4, 1921.

303
had Louise XVI furniture, yet another hosted colonial-style wooden pieces. 804 For the Ayacucho

centennial, Leguía had commissioned Piqueras and Sabogal to create a hall for receptions in the

Government Palace. The result, after a month and a half of strenuous work, was a hall adorned

both by prehispanic and colonial motifs. This was an ephemeral construction, however, for the

Palace would be completely reconstructed after the design of Sahut, who was appointed by

Leguía in 1926. The elegant new Palace was not inaugurated until1938 –Jaxa Malachoswchi

directed the final works— and the final design included halls inspired in the Versailles Palace,

with a facade decorated with neo-colonial motifs. Still standing in Lima’s Plaza de Armas, the

Government Palace stands next to the 1924 Archbishop’s Palace, Lima’s Cathedral, and the

Municipalidad de Lima (the latter a 1940s neo-colonial design). This was the “neo” center of

what has come to be known, with immeasurable doses of amnesia, as “colonial Lima.”

The modern creation of “neo” pasts during the Leguía Era was a conciliatory gesture

toward Peru’s postcolonial dilemmas. Several definitions of Peruanidad could now coexist,

quite literally, next to each other. Walking Leguía’s Lima, one could gaze upon a mock

prehispanic temple, witness Manco Capac launching his founding civilizing mission, and visit

Pizarro’s grave –although it was never certain if the remains belonged to the conquistador. One

could also admire a new colonial Archbishop’s Palace, and greet a large number of Peruvian

history’s heroic figures. Heterogeneous temporalities coexisted in the city, and competed for the

gaze of Limeños and visitors. But it was a neo-city of modern constructions that had faux-

façades that made references to diverse pasts. A large number of monuments also stood,

allegedly to pay tribute to the Great Men that had contributed to the nation’s grandeur.

Thirteenth century Manco thus inhabited the city along with nineteenth century Liberators,

philosophers with soldiers, scientists with poets. In order to be made the Great Men of the
804
“Crónica sobre el grandioso baile en el Palacio de Gobierno,” La Prensa, August 3, 1921.

304
nation, however, they were all victims of arbitrary decontextualization. Buildings and

monuments made Lima an inhabitable museum of immobile, innocuous fetishes. A man who

enjoyed grandiloquent statements, Leguía attempted his own version of the modern gesture of

destroying history by making History concrete.

305
Figure 7-1. Leguía Avenue

Figure 7-2. Leuro Development

306
Figure 7-3. Archbishop’s Palace

Figure 7-4. Panteón de los Próceres

307
Figure 7-5. Manco Capac Monument

Figure 7-6. Museo Nacional de Arqueología

308
Figure 7-7. Plaza San Martín

309
 CHAPTER 8
UNFINAL REFLECTIONS

Parading History

Skimming through the dusty and yellowing pages of La Prensa, one morning at the

Archivo General de la Nación, in Lima, I came across the proposal of Augusto Gildemeister

(possibly the prominent sugar industrialist), for the organization of an “Inca parade or

procession” to be part of the celebrations of the centennial of Peru’s declaration of Independence

in 1921. Originally a letter to the Minister of Fomento, the proposal was published by the

newspaper, as were commentaries and suggestions from a wide array of citizens. Gildemester

argued for the convenience to stage a parade that should include

The Inca, carried in his gold litter, followed by his court and some men and
women dressed with the typical clothing of each of Peru’s regions, each group led
by dancers and bands playing regional musical tunes... It would also be
convenient to have Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors following the parade,
and San Martín with the grenadiers who are coming from Argentina.805

Gildemeister’s parade was not included in the already busy centennial celebration

program, but it was a “text” that pictorially synthesized the history of Peru. It indeed shared the

performative vein of the Leguía regime, as well as its taste for national rituals and historical

simulacra. In the absence of “records” one could only imagine the “procession:” an actor

representing an Inca, followed by “actual” 806 indigenous peoples dressed in “typical” clothes; a

faux-Pizarro with a supporting cast of conquistadors, followed by a faux-San Martín,

accompanied by the 1921 Argentine delegation of grenadiers that took part of the centennial

celebrations. All marching, proudly, along an avenue –perhaps the Leguía Avenue?—

temporarily converted into the page of History. That is, converted into the nation itself; into the

805
“Carta abierta de Augusto Gildemeister al Ministro de Fomento. La celebración del Centenario,” La Prensa,
June 24, 1921.
806
My use of the word actual is intended to express three simultaneous meanings: “current,” “factual,” that is, as a
socially and historically constructed fiction that is defined as “real,” and part of an “act.”

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linear stage on which historical actors perform the script provided and imposed by professional

and lay historians. Gildemeister’s parade also shared the temporal promiscuity and the

conciliatory mood of the Leguía Era, for the whole History of Peru could march, each epoch

succeeding the other, with no conflictive transitional moments.

I am almost certain Bernardo Monteagudo would not have liked Gildemeister’s parade.

The Tucumeño’s 1809 “Dialog between Atahualpa and Ferdinand VII in the Champs Elisées”

also displayed a temporal promiscuity of sorts; but the Tucumeño would not have accepted a

linear history without radical ruptures. In fact, Monteagudo’s Trajan’s Column for Lima was

intended for a different kind of national performance: to symbolize the new beginning of the new

nation, and the break with the undesirable (pre)historical time of Spanish colonialism.

Monteagudo’s modern and national gesture needed to forget modern (and national) late-colonial

precedents to announce that Peru inhabited contemporaneity and had a national future.

Lima played a central role in the postcolonial processes of imagining the nation and

creating modernity, as well as the simultaneous processes of imagining and creating History.

Ever a synecdoche for the nation, postcolonial elites attempted to recreate their city as an

experiment of the nation they wanted to achieve. Monteagudo’s national gesture of forgetting

would be actively forgotten by future gesturers, who would struggle to break with previous eras,

to announce, all anew, the nation’s entrance to contemporaneity. New beginnings canceled

previous times, throwing them to the same pre-historical time of Spanish colonialism

Monteagudo helped to construct. The new became an uncomfortable sign of the old all too

rapidly. The succession of modernizers of Lima performed not one unified, continuous parade,

like Gildemeister’s. In stead, each performed their own, asking their audience to forget the

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previous one. Yet, then they claimed to be carrying out the first parade ever performed, hoping

that their audience would not only forget, but forget that it had forgotten.

During the Guano Era, elites struggled to transform Lima into a city that did not resemble

the colonial past, recreating and regulating the city in similar terms as Monteagudo at a larger

scale. Elites wished to consolidate the national community and to define Peru as a nation coeval

with the international community of “civilized” and “advanced” nations. The transformations of

Lima inscribed in the city a narrative of a radical rupture that allowed the nation to enter the

secular, homogeneous time of history and modernity. The task of making Peruvians citizens of

the nation was, simultaneously, intended to make them citizens of the “universal” community of

civilization. It implied instilling republican values, and the physical transformation of the city

would be crucial to this effect. The construction of the Bolívar, Dos de Mayo, and Columbus

monuments, as well as the Penitentiary, the Botanical Garden, and the modernization of the

paseos, was an attempt to inscribe the modern narrative of republicanism utilizing a postcolonial

language of Peruvianness that was indeed part of the universal language of civilization.

Inculcating the values of discipline, self control, vigor, hard work, and respect for norms,

was imperative to create the national community, but also to develop industrial capitalism. The

homogeneous time of the nation ended up being identical to the time of abstract labor of the age

of capital. The universal forces of the nation and capital merged in a way Monteagudo may not

have anticipated. The International Exposition and Ruiz Gallo’s Clock, along with Paz Soldán’s

Penitentiary, expressed that secular and sacred junction.

The efforts to transform Lima in the post-War of the Pacific Era were indeed driven by

similar purposes; but the sense of urgency to attain coevalness with the universals of civilization

and industrial capitalism was marked by the sense that Peru and Lima had lost time in

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comparison with other Latin American nations. The defeat produced the sense that Peru had

neither formed a unified nation nor developed into an industrial and developed society; in short,

that the country was not coeval with the international and capitalist universal community. Elites

repeated previous modern space-clearing gestures to launch a new modernity, thus attempting to

recreate a new urban habitat. The reforms of the period were defined by the rise of sociological

thought, however; the lexicon developed to inscribe the city was dominated by the sociological

metaphors of the organism, the machine, and the military, along with the engendered languages

of race and virility. Elites discovered that the city suffered from demographic problems, arguing

that Lima and the country needed a larger and more virile population. They designed plans to

attract immigrants, to discipline the population’s bodies via education, and scrutinized sites that

had been previously defined as private.

The intervention of modernizers was not limited to streets and “public” spaces because

the “private” disappeared altogether. The empire of “the social” had unlimited jurisdiction,

allowing experts to physically penetrate into the neighborhoods and homes of the poor as well as

into women’s bodies to diagnose the nation’s maladies and design policies for the common

welfare. While those explorations were allegedly intended to provide with guidelines to solve

Lima’s demographic problems, that is, to design alternatives for healthy environments that would

help produce a healthy, vigorous and virile population; experts produced sensualized

ethnographies the territories of the poor that offered no environmental substitutes for them.

Experts drew the conclusion that the poor were racially corrupted and therefore, no

environmental change could uplift them from decadence. The unaesthetic proximity of the poor,

they argued, carried imminent dangers for “everybody,” that is, for the bodies of well-off

Limeños. In consequence, Lima’s upper classes had to relocate to the newer, spacious peripheral

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areas open to development after the demolition of the city walls. Organized workers claimed

they were part of the healthy part of the social body; that is, respectable, disciplined, and

hardworking patriarchs who deserved assistance from the state to relocate away from the

wretched. In cases, they claimed to be indispensable parts of the social machinery, therefore,

positioning themselves as more modern and national than elites.

The physical recreation of the city was informed by the desire to break with the past and

by sociological thought. Elites, led by Lima’s Mayor, Federico Elguera, strove to make Lima

more sanitary and to modernize Limeños’ habits. The dichotomy between the colonial and the

modern had been expressed in a lexicon that opposed closed environments to open ones since the

early days of Monteagudo, who suggested that the dungeons of the Inquisition were the most

representative space of Spanish colonialism: close, obscure and oppressive. In contrast, modern

times had to be characterized by the open flux of ideas, goods, and air. During the Post-War-of

the Pacific Era, Limeño elites worked this opposition to construct wide, open avenues which

were expected to help improve the population’s health and race. Lima experienced an

unprecedented period of expansion and modernization, as new neighborhoods were developed

towards the seashore and new means of transportation, lighting, and communication helped

create the delightful sensation that Lima was “already” catching up with cities like Buenos Aires.

The rapid transformations of the city and Limeños’ daily lives, however, generated

anxiety and discomforts too. Some argued that Lima was losing its unique personality to become

indistinguishable from any other modern, prosaic city. Others feared the effects of

industrialization, or complained that life was becoming grimmer as traditions faded and Limeños

lost their characteristically cheerful personality. The success of the efforts to modernize the city

and its inhabitants gave rise to a narrative of defeat: the lamentation about the Lima que se va

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(Lima of yesteryear). Some felt the compulsive need to recreate old colonial Lima as a peaceful,

paradisiacal Arcadia in literature, as to preserve it untouched by the corrupting forces of

modernity.

The Leguía Era responded to these anxieties by creating positive images of Lima’s and

Peru’s past. The Oncenio seems to have attempted a radical break: in stead of erasing the

vestiges of the past, it had an obsession for their preservation and for creating some anew.

Newly constructed “archeological” sites were erected in the city –a Pre-Hispanic ceremonial

center here, a colonial house for the Archbishop there. It also erected more monuments any

other regime ever before or after. Leguía, however, also led an intense process of

industrialization, which gained him the opposition of exporters of agricultural products, and

opened Peru’s economy to foreign investment, for which many accused him of selling-off Peru

to Yankee imperialism. His regime also attempted to expand and modernize the infrastructure

and services in cities throughout the country, for which he hired the U.S. based Foundation

Company, and attempted to transform Peru’s state institutions, most notably, its educational

system, with the aid of U.S. experts. Regarding Lima, Leguía carried out important works of

infrastructure and constructed spacious avenues that opened large areas for residential and

industrial development, having New York and London as inspirations.

Taking this into account it is easy to conclude that Leguía was not a pasadista –a man

clinging obsessively to the past— to follow José Carlos Mariátegui’s definition. 807

Interpretations and judgments of the Leguía regime are, in fact, as diverse as Leguia’s

discourses. After analyzing his accommodating discourses and his language of urbanism, my

own interpretation is that the Leguía’s regime at once expressed and attempted to reconcile

807
José Carlos Mariátegui, “Pasadismo y futurismo,” Peruanicemos al Perú (Lima: Empresa Editorial Amauta,
1970).

315
diverse discursive formations about Peru’s and Lima’s History and “essence,” as well as the

anxieties about modernization and the loss of “our” identity, with the ultimate purpose of

making industrialization and “progress” viable. His regime actively promoted and validated all

existing discourses on the city and the nation by making them concrete, and gained tremendous

political capital for doing so and for erecting dozens of monuments to a wide array of figures.

Leguía’s monuments served the imperative of forgetting, for their lessons of history were limited

to arbitrary, decontextualized, artistic representations. Monuments and buildings were concrete

signs removed altogether from their reference; that is, “honored” figures were removed from

their cultural and political milieus. Perhaps this was Leguía’s own version of the modern gesture

of erasing the past. Leguía’s regime might have discarded Gildemeister’s proposal for a reason:

it wanted Limeños and tourists to do the marching across a city that had multiple references to

the past, as museum goers browsing from one well-staged exhibit to another.

History on Every Corner

Leguía reached a point of no return. His large scale intervention on the city could not be

reversed. Ever since, different historicities have coexisted in Lima, where there is no clear line

between the old and the new, and where different processes of modernization rapidly ended up

symbolizing the past. Some of them were intended to do so: neo-colonial and neo-pre-Hispanic

buildings were contemporary, modern faux-recreations of the past. The neo-pre-Hispanic

maintained its simulacrum character, but the modern neo-colonial was easily “read” as

“authentic” vestiges of Peru’s viceregal past. Even the Government palace, built in 1938, is

easily believed to be the “real” Casa de Pizarro by common citizens and uninformed tourists.

Today’s Lima has grown to a scale unimaginable by 1930, as more than nine million

people –myself included—call it now home. More monuments, of course, have been erected,

and the overwhelming majority of the streets and plazas carry out names of historical events and

316
prominent national men –and, to a lesser extent, women. Historical references are, literally, on

every corner of the city. Monuments and streets and plaza names are allegedly meant to

“immortalize” the dead, honoring them for their contribution to the nation. There seems to be a

paucity of historical events and prominent men and women for the large metropolis, however, for

one can find many streets and plazas sharing the same name. To make things more labyrinthine,

names may be changed, falling pray to the desires of municipal authorities; and monuments, like

that of Francisco Pizarro (see Chapter 1 above), may also be removed or relocated. The city has

been made into a growing palimpsest, where history is obsessively and continuously written and

erased. In the process of writing history in streets and plazas, historical references have lost all

connection to the past. Limeños use the names as concrete spatial references devoid of historical

connotations. The Avenida Wilson –named by Leguía after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson—,

for instance, was later renamed as Avenida Garcilaso. In spite of all possible symbolisms,

Limeños identify that avenue as the main market of pirate software and smuggled computing

accessories. Both Wilson and Garcilaso, stand as names more related to computing software and

hardware than to any historical event or text.

Postcolonial Modernizations, Postcolonial Denials

Following the well established tradition of new beginnings, present-day historians and

sociologists of Peru have crafted a history of Lima that has thrown the processes of

modernization discussed in this study into the obscure pre-modern and pre-national time of

colonialism. In their efforts to oppose the Hispanista historical narratives that dominated

academic centers such as The Pontificia Universidad Católica and the Instituto Riva Aguero,

present-day dependentista and neo-Marxist historians have inadvertently reproduced the modern,

elitist gesture, creating a sweeping generalization of previous Limeño elites as fundamentally

conservative and traditional, and only open to cosmetic modernization. The transformations of

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the city have been interpreted as “traditional-modernizations,” that is, not as profound processes

of modernization, but as superficial reforms of façades that left social structures intact. Divorced

from the profound realities of their nations, elites attempted to mimic Europe, but only

aesthetically, creating a faux-modernity that hid their intentions of preserving the colonial status

quo.

The conception is part of the larger and stubborn master narrative still recreated to

understand Latin America, according to which the region’s Independence from Spanish

colonialism was only a political process carried out by Creole elites as a strategy to hold on to

their colonial privileges, and not a real social revolution intended to transform the societies they

inherited into integrated and modern nations. Guided by their colonial mentalities, they were not

a real bourgeoisie, but a conservative group interested in maintaining the colonial status quo.

They subsequently articulated their countries to the emerging empires of Britain, in the

nineteenth century, and the United States, in the twentieth century, thus perpetuating their

country’s colonial dependency and their position as intermediaries. As a natural consequence,

Latin American countries have not been real nations, but neo-colonial territories.

Perhaps inadvertently, critics of colonialism have constructed a rigid, idealized, and

ahistorical view of modernity and the nation. The real revolutions, led by real bourgeoisies who

built real nations are ideal norms that place Latin America in the perpetual waiting room of

history; in the eternal not yet of History. This study has discussed previous claims of not yets;

for each period of modernization of Lima started by disqualifying previous modernizing attempts

and by making the statement that the city and Peru was still inhabiting the not yet. These claims

served to support the idea that the new projects were the real ones; carried out by a real modern

318
leading class interested in creating a real nation: one who could secure a place in the modern and

national room of the already.

Considering nineteenth-century or early twentieth century elites as essentially

conservative requires an immense oblivion –or, rather, denial—of the processes of

modernization and nation making discussed in this study. The projects of intervention on Lima

and its population do not show elites eager to preserve the status quo; in fact, they show elites

obsessively attempting to erase the past to launch new beginnings. These projects do not seem to

exemplify the elites’ divorce with their “national reality,” but their efforts to constitute one fully

integrated to the emerging transnational concert. It is not, then, that elites were not Peruvian

enough; rather, they were struggling to define what it meant to be Peruvian. They do not show

elites trapped by their “colonial” legacy, but rather attempting to rid the country of colonial

vestiges. This may sound an implausible thesis for the Leguía era, but the regime’s hispanismo

did not mean that elite’s intended to reconstruct colonial times.

The sociological legacy of the Post-War of the Pacific (Chapter 4 above), especially

González Prada’s denunciations of “white” elites as unmodern and divorced from the rest of the

country, has shaped subsequent sociological readings of Peru, albeit mostly devoid of their

openly racist statements. The discourse of defeat has imposed rigid limits to sociological

imagination. It is expressed in Mariátegui’s denunciation of elites’ pasadismo, and in the

popular conception that there exist two Perus: a “profound Peru” and an “official Peru.”

“Profound Peru” being the real country composed by Indigenous populations, while “official

Peru” is centered in Lima and more connected to “the world” than to its profound counterpart. A

misreading of a metaphor used by historian Jorge Basadre, the idea synthesizes the view that

319
Limeño elites are disconnected from the realities of the country –although it is also used to

express the complementing argument that “indigenous” populations inhabit the past.

The processes of modernization of Lima and the sociological readings of Lima’s and

Peru’s history have all made the space-clearing gesture of disqualifying the past to launch new

beginnings. In stead of using the “traditional modernization” master line to analyze the urban

history of Lima, my study departed from the notion of postcolonial reinventions as to highlight

the postcolonial anxieties of the project of recreating a capital city that inherited that position

from the colonial era and thus symbolized it. The city was successively recreated to rid it from

Spanish colonialism, which appears as a stubborn ghost that never ceases to haunt Limeño

imagination. Conceiving them as postcolonial, this study has not departed from an abstract,

essentialist definition of modernity nor has wanted to delineate a teleological narrative of the

(failed) transition to it. It has, instead, attempted to highlight the irony embedded in the modern

statements that sought to transcend the colonial, thus keeping it alive. In short, this study has

only attempted to show that colonialism must in fact be conceived as ghost; as a spirit of a dead

entity we must allow to rest in peace.

320
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 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Juan Carlos Callirgos graduated from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú with a

Bachelor’s degree in anthropology. He obtained a Master of Arts degree in History at the

University of Florida. He is the author of publications about race, ethnicity, and masculinity, and

teaches at the Departamento de Ciencias Sociales at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del

Perú.

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