A Review of Peruvian History

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Pre-Columbian Peru

Colonial Peru
When the Spaniards came to Peru, the census taken by the last Quipucamayoc¹ indicated that there were twelve million inhabitants. Just 45 years later, under viceroy Toledo, the census figures amounted to only 1,100,000 Indians.

Nine tenth's of the population had been killed off.

The causes of such dreadful genocide were many. Disproportionate taxes exploited and impoverished the Indians. Rebellions were suppressed by incredible cruelty, and were punished by hard slave labour in mines and "obrajes"². Neither were the Indians able to withstand the multiple diseases brought from Europe, against which they had no immunological defences.
The Andean world was turned upside down. From their original dwellings, at mid-mountain level, where they could be sure of food all year round, Indians were relocated down in the valleys to facilitate tax collection. Whole families were scattered, for tax purposes to "obrajes", mines, haciendas, and as servants in urban mansions. Their crops were abandoned and the women were considered as part of the booty for soldiers and landowners. Families disintegrated, and Indian communities were severely stricken.
Religion became another important instrument of conquest. Incas and pre-Inca cultures had worshipped gods directly related to their lives: the Sun, which sustained life; the Moon, which revealed when the season was right for sowing; water which fertilised the land; the mountains around their homes; and certain animals, for their strength. This entire set of beliefs was attacked with blood and iron, and replaced by an invisible foreign god.
The colonial period in Peru destroyed an economic and social system based on the rational and harmonic utilisation of natural resources. In its place was established an irrational economy, based on the extraction of raw materials, and the exploitation of Peru's native population.
Within just 50 of the period's total 286 years, Spain robbed Peru of a wealth of minerals that exceeded 185,000 kilograms of gold, and 16 million kilograms of silver.
However, the Peruvian native population did not take this European Conquest lying down. On the contrary, the Indians resisted the Colonial penetration right from the beginning. In the 18th. Century alone, there were fourteen large uprisings, the most outstanding of which were the Jungle uprising led by Juan Santos Atahualpa in 1742, and in 1780 the Sierra uprising, led by Tupac Amaru.
While overcoming these insurrections, and in an attempt to crush their underlying ideals, the Spaniards ordered the destruction of all traditions and manifestations of Inca identity. As well as other cultural expressions, they prohibited the use of Indian languages, clothes and musical instruments. It is therefore remarkable that, despite such cruel repression and the decimation of their population, so many indigenous traditions and aesthetic assets have survived to modern times.

Republican Peru
The Independence process was very complex, involving not only ideological changes and military campaigns, but also the interests of various sectors of Colonial society.
Independence from Spain came in 1821. It was followed by a long period of instability, during which civilian leaders and military officers struggled for power to govern a country in chaos. During its first 32 years of life as a Republic, Peru had 51 rulers.
World-wide imperialist conflicts, between 1814 and 1914, extended from Latin America - now abandoned by Spain - to Africa. The Peruvian dominant class served English Imperialism, and based its wealth on large estates which became prosperous at the expense of Indian communities' lands and serfs' labour, Indians were deprived of every right whatsoever. The Peruvian economy was ruled by an oligarchy of landowners, whose efforts were aimed exclusively at the exportation of raw materials, annihilating any possibility of Peruvian industrialisation.
The Republic maintained a certain stability, and facilitated a greater entry into world imperialist economy. In Peru, England made way for the United States. New mining "enclaves" robbed peasant communities of their lands, and enslaved Indians for work in sugar plantations on the Coast or rubber plantations in the Jungle, which endangered the future of peasant families, and brought their lives to a premature and miserable end.
By the end of the war with Chile, which lasted from 1879 to 1883, the resulting political confusion allowed the military to take over the State for a ten year period.
Between 1919 and 1930, the first flow of migrants from the mountains to Lima took place, comprising mainly members of the small-landowner and middle-classes of the population. There was a remarkable increase in the urban middle class, especially in the textile proletariat. The Anarchist-Unionist wave was particularly noticeable among the groups of Lima's first manufacturing and handicraft workers, and strongly influenced the first organised mobilisations of those groups. This process was additionally strengthened by the ideological and political influence of the main events of that time: the Mexican and the Russian Revolutions.
Between 1918 and 1933 the number of workers increased from 12,000 to 18,000. During this period, mainly in Lima, an incipient industry appeared.
This was a time of outstanding organisational development of the working class. In 1924 the Apra party was founded, in 1925 the Railway Confederation was created, in 1926 Jose Carlos Mariategui published the Amauta magazine, and in 1929 the Central General de Trabajadores del Peru (General Workers' Union) was born.
Elsewhere, Indian peasants were forced to fight landowners in defence of their lands, usurped by violence or by supposedly 'legal' measures, in the aggressive land concentration process in the Sierra.
Between 1922 and 1930, 697 revolts took place in Peru: an uprising every 5 days, in demand of better living and working conditions.
The peasants' revolts stimulated the development of certain intellectual trends which recognised the need for a revaluation of the natives' culture and history. This was known as the "indigenista" trend.

The Economic and Political Crisis of 1930-1933
The most recent background to the various conflicts currently taking place in Peru, were those rooted in the early 1930s: a result of the economic effects of the crisis, together with the changes that had been affecting Peruvian society since the end of the war with Chile, and especially since the end of World War I.
The capitalist economic crisis began in October 1929 with the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange panic, which immediately affected Peru and all Latin America. Its first effect on the Peruvian economy was the drop in the main agricultural and livestock exports: cotton, sugar and wool on the international market. This resulted in a sudden reduction in imports, and a drop in the national currency. Credit restrictions, caused by the unstable currency and the lack of circulating capital, decreased the domestic - particularly the urban - market. The illusion of wealth and progress, encouraged by President Leguia since 1920, gave way to general discontent.
Elsewhere in other Latin American countries, nationally-owned capital resources strengthened industrial activity: undoubtedly the most important Latin American economic phenomenon during the crisis. However, during the same period, Peruvian capitalists sent their money abroad, afraid of the unstable monetary effect, and thereby completely deprived the country of the entrepreneurial capacity and national identification enjoyed by their counterparts in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile.
In Peru, this was a time when governments were at the beck and call of US enclaves and agro-exporters. The market was monopolistic. In 1940 6% of all corporations controlled 65% of nation-wide sales.
Politically, the period between 1940 and 1956 was one of an intellectual obscurantism: the annihilating of the mining trade unions and of the CGTP; the defeat of the Apra party; and the recession of San Marcos University, under the stern rightist dictatorship of general Odria. Centralism was emphasised, and 75% of all bank credits were concentrated in Lima.
At the end of the '50s, and the beginning of the '60s, Peru acquired a new political and social character:
The manufacturing sector emerged, and haciendas became more technical to replace peasant labour. Cities were swollen by thousands of migrants, expelled from their lands, or attracted by education and job opportunities, creating the Barriadas³ later called Pueblos Jovenes⁴ and today Asentamientos Humanos⁵.
From 1956-59, peasant movements resumed a vigorous struggle to recover their lands; and around 1965, influenced by the Cuban revolution, a guerrilla movement emerged, but was soon defeated.
A military group, led by Velasco Alvarado, realised the socialist potential of these experiences, and took over the country on 3 October, 1968 in a nationalist and reformist process, aimed at developing national capitalism. It introduced agrarian reform in order to placate peasants' claims. This incomplete project handed over the land, but lacked technical training, agroindustrial development, and supply of inputs.
Velasco tried to transform the landowner's feudal class into an efficient industrial bourgeoisie, but the latter was only interested in short-term profits and, instead of promoting industrialisation, sent its money abroad or invested it in unproductive sectors (banks, financial corporations and insurance companies proliferated) maintaining itself as a middlemen class, and once again Peru found its opportunity for industrialisation squandered.
Velasco promoted an important cultural valuation, vindicating the country's historical traditions, and arousing social and political awareness.
In 1978, after 10 years of military government, an Assembly was convened to draft a new Constitution. The largest number of votes were won by Hugo Blanco, a Trotskyst activist, who organised peasant unions in Cusco during the 1965 guerrillas. Since 1980 the Constitutional Presidents of the Republic included Fernando Belaunde, chivalrously elected by the people. During his government the Shining Path movement started its activities, and was regarded by Belaunde as a bunch of cattle thieves. He was later replaced by Alan Garcia, voted by most Peruvians as the 'young' alternative the country needed. In five years of his Administration Peru experienced 2 million per cent inflation; the Shining Path took vast sectors of the country, killing local authorities; and the leader of the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru, 'escaped' from the high security prison through a famous tunnel, the construction of which would have required heavy loads of dynamite.
In 1990 Peruvians had a choice among some twenty candidates, and their decision narrowed to two: world famous writer Vargas Llosa, and 'dark horse' Alberto Fujimori. After remarkable efforts to pacify the country and restore national economy, in 1995 Fujimori was reelected, and successfully put an end to terrorism by capturing the Shining Path's head, Abimael Guzman, and the MRTA leaders. Inflation was dramatically reduced, and Peru leapt into liberalism and the privatisation of state-owned companies.