Who Were the Indigenous Leaders of the Rebelión de Juan Bustamante in Huancané and Azángaro, Puno, 1866–68?

The peasant communities of highland Peru experienced a relatively calm relationship with the new national state along most of the 19th century.  The weakness of successive central Peruvian governments between the Wars of Independence (1810-1825) and the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) may explain in part this rural calm, especially if compared with the well studied 18th-century rural rebelliousness that occurred in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the Bourbon Era.  Despite the numerous civil wars confronting different regionally-based “caudillos,” only two peasant rebellions occurred in this post-Independence period: in Huanta, Ayacucho (1827-1829), and in Huancané and Azángaro, Puno (1866-1868).  The Indian rebellion in these two Northern provinces of Puno involved the participation of a famous “mestizo” traveler, Liberal politician, and pro-Indian activist, Juan Bustamante (1808-1868).  His intermediation and eventual leadership of the movement, which actually cost him his life, has ironically obscured our knowledge and understanding of the indigenous leadership of the rebellion.  The paper explores the local system of indigenous community authority in the North of Puno, to better understand their actions in a rebellion that started as an anti-tax protest and ended as part of the civil war between Liberals and Conservatives in 1860s Peru.