Peru Modern History 1883-1980 - Recovery and Growth
Following independence, Peru was embroiled in a number of territorial disputes with its neighbours. Most seriously, Peru and Bolivia engaged in a 4-year war against Chile (1879-83). Chile's victory in this 'War of the Pacific' resulted in a territorial settlement with Peru ceding the province of Tarapaca. Peru and Ecuador clashed in 1941 after which the Rio Protocol sought to establish an agreed boundary. However, continued disagreement led to further bouts of armed conflict in early 1981 and again in early 1995. A historic peace accord signed in 1998 finally demarcated the Peru/Ecuador border and in 1999 Peru and Chile implemented the last outstanding article of their 1929 border agreement.
Coups have been a feature of Peru's history and intermittently disturbed civilian constitutional government. The most recent period of military rule (1968-80) began when General Juan Velasco Alvarado overthrew elected President Fernando Belaunde and embarked on an ambitious program of radical reforms. General Franciso Morales Bermundez replaced him in 1975 and presided over the return to civilian government in accordance with a new constitution created in 1979. In elections held in May 1980, Belaunde was re-elected by a large majority.
In the early 1980s, El Niño weather phenomenon-related problems, a continued economic crisis and hyperinflation caused Belaunde's popularity to slide. More seriously, cultivation of illegal coca in the eastern Andes and the emergence of the left-wing terrorist organisations, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and Movimento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) seriously destabilised the country. In 1985, Alan Garcia, backed by his APRA party, won the presidential race witnessing the first democratic succession for 40 years. Continuing economic problems during this administration led to a further bout of hyperinflation in the late 1980s.
In the 1990 elections, voters turned to college lecturer, Alberto Fujimori, who surprised many in coming from obscurity to the Presidency. He quickly introduced heterodox economic measures to stabilise inflation. Faced with opposition in Congress, Fujimori staged an 'auto-coup' in April 1992, revising the constitution, calling new congressional elections and pushing through free-market economic reforms. Fujimori's government also took a hard line against domestic terrorism. During his Presidency, Shining Path's leader, Abimael Guzman, was captured and imprisoned.
Fujimori's decision to seek a constitutionally questionable third term and his subsequent tainted victory in June 2000 bought political and economic turmoil. A major corruption scandal linked to his Security Chief Vladimiro Montesinos broke in September 2000, weeks after his inauguration, which forced Fujimori to announce new elections in which he would not participate.
By the late 20th century there was notable diversity and maturity of the historical scholarship on Republican Peru. There was an increasingly cosmopolitan nature of the literature, with the development of the "new political history" which drew upon the work of European, particularly French, historians. Also significant were the additions of discourse analysis and hegemony, which emerged in literature on Latin American history more than a decade after these themes came to dominate the historical literature on modern Europe and to a lesser extent the US.
As is often the case with trends in historical interpretation, reliance on these approaches waned in recent years. Additionally, dependency theory and Marxist structuralism no longer dominate the literature as they did in previous decades. This may well reflect the failure of statist economic policies throughout Latin America and the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it is still too early to be certain that these will be lasting trends.
Some past mainstays of historical scholarship continue to garner careful attention. During the last years of the 20th century, studies of local and regional history, often sponsored by municipalities or departmental governments, continued to appear. Intellectual, political and, more recently, better-quality social histories are appearing regularly. As noted earlier, many of these studies are now less paradigmatic than in the past.
Immigration histories, which have always been uneven with the exception of the Italians and the Chinese, are now becoming rapidly focused on the Japanese, although some interesting studies on smaller immigrant groups, such as the Croatians, are finally beginning to appear. The Alberto Fujimori phenomenon, as well as financial support from the Japanese community, particularly the JINAI Cultural Center in Lima, helps explain the surge of interest in Peru's relatively small nikkei (overseas Japanese) community. As might be expected, the Japanese-Peruvian scholars in Peru are responsible for much of the best work on the topic.
There remains much scholarly space for the history of slavery in Peru. Blanchard's work on slavery and abolition has been followed most notably by Hunefelt's analysis of Lima's slaves and their resistance patterns, but has not yet been augmented by works of similar magnitude. The 19th-century social and political evolution of Peru, a field that has not received the attention it deserves until recently, continues to mature with the appearance of excellent studies on the rise of Civilismo and the role of the peasantry in the transition from colonial to republican rule.
The history of women and gender has yet to appear as a mature field of study. Biographical studies, always a mainstay of Peruvian historiography, have not been significant in the past few years. Aside from the expected studies of Peru's Marxist icon, José Carlos Mariátegui, and the valuable but abbreviated biographies of prominent Peruvians by the Lima publisher BRASA, this field has suffered, possibly as a result of the greater diversity of historical scholarship.
The historical literature on peasant consciousness and resistance in the republican era is still a field requiring further study. Important studies on peasant resistance and adaption in Ica, and on liberalism and traditional Indian communities provides evidence that this is still an area of serious scholarly concern. Significantly, very few biographies of APRA leader Victor Raul Haya de la Torre have been published two decades after his death. This may be explained in part by the decline of APRA as a significant political force in Peru in the aftermath of the Alan García's presidential debacle of the late 1980s.
Peter Flindell Klarén's Oxford history of Peru will stand as the standard survey of Peru for decades to come. The broad range of his research is quite impressive. Unlike most studies in the Oxford series, which heavily stress economic developments, often at the expense of social and political aspects, Klarén's work offers a more balanced account. In addition, significant attention is paid to the role of the military in 20th-century affairs. The bibliography is a model of completeness and will be a valuable aid to scholars.
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