The Second Liberation? Military Nationalism and the Sesquicentennial Commemoration of Peruvian Independence, 1821–1971

Between 1968 and 1975, Peru was ruled by a nationalistic and allegedly revolutionary military regime, whose goals included massive land reform, expropriation of foreign-owned industries, redistribution of wealth, abolition of quasi-feudal conditions for Peruvian rural workers, educational reform, and much more. Influenced by various local and international political and ideological currents –the Cuban revolution, dependency theory, decolonization, Liberation Theology, and others- the “Peruvian Revolution” questioned foreign dependency and sought to “liberate” Peru from it. In 1971, Peru commemorated the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of its independence by Argentine general José de San Martín. The occasion was used by the military regime to attempt to consolidate a unified and nationalist view of the independence process and to reinforce its claims of completing the "liberation" of Peru from foreign domination, a process that, it was argued, had started 150 years before with the end of Spanish colonialism. In doing that, however, the military relied on old-fashioned and conservative historiographical views about the Peruvian nation and the process of independence. This paper attempts to reconstruct the political and ideological agenda set forth by the military and its collaborators during the 1971 commemoration, the main images and tropes that circulated during that period, and the debates it generated among historians, intellectuals, and the larger public.