‘Global Peru’: How the great events in world history shaped the country’s course

A young man carrying a Peruvian flag in the Vatican.

What do the Túpac Amaru Revolution, Peruvian independence, the seizure of women’s suffrage in the country, or the expansion of the Peruvian state into the Amazon region have in common?

The first answer might be that these are all relevant cases in Peruvian history, but an equally correct answer is that in each of them there were global forces that decisively influenced its historical future.

Political scientist and analyst Alberto Vergara (Lima, 1974) edited the collective book “Perú global”, published by Planeta Publishing House, an effort by Peruvian and foreign scholars to uncover the external forces influencing the most relevant Peruvian historical processes, a work that raises awareness of something not often highlighted in Peru: the global dimension and the implications for its history.

From the Chinese immigration that arrived in the nineteenth century to compensate for the shortage of labor on farms as a result of the abolition of slavery, to the role of American feminists in achieving the right to vote for Peruvian women, through the journey of the Andean rebel character Tupac Amaru to a symbol demanded by African-American rappers.

Everything at Global Peru connects Peru to the world.

BBC Mundo spoke with Vergara on the occasion of her participation in the Hay Festival in Arequipa.

Alberto Vergara, sitting with his arms folded, bookshelves and work desk behind him. — photo caption, Alberto Vergara is the editor of the “Perú global” teamwork.

He has co-ordinated a book by a number of authors on the influence of external global forces on a country like Peru, which sometimes gives the impression that it is too self-absorbed and focused on its internal problems. Does Peru have an outside look?

However, this book addresses the entire series of historical episodes and processes that were crucial in shaping Peruvian reality and describes how external forces had a decisive influence.

We had a project to write a global history of Peru that would overcome the strict traditional dichotomy that exists between global history and national history in the history taught in schools in Peru and many other Latin American countries.

We pass through classrooms in schools and universities and observe these two worlds as if they were two hermetic chambers that never touched each other, and in recent years there has been a boom in so-called global history, the effort to try in some way to mitigate this difference and to see that national stories can be told from other spatial points of reference.

The proposal is an attempt to tell a story that is not restricted and limited by the borders of the national state, but rather a global story of the country, in which its characters and episodes are analyzed from the point of view of exchange and negotiation between the national and the global.

The book explains how events such as the invasion of Spain by Napoleon’s French forces, and figures such as the Venezuelan Simón Bolívar and the Argentine José de San Martín, from Peru’s inception as a nation, and since its independence, played a major role in this. Were these external influences properly weighed in Peru at its birth as a country?

I think it has been taken into account, but perhaps not included in a more solidary view. It mentions the origin of Peru, but in fact the conquest from the first moment is also a meeting of two people like Atahualpa and Pizarro who represent two empires, which we could call “transnational” with some misuse of the word. Even before that, when Pizarro first arrived in Peru in 1528 and sent some men to explore Tumbes, there were two African slaves who got off the ship.

The book also deals with pre-Columbian cultures whose extinction occurred due to climate change and ocean currents. In short, none of this originates in the national world. It’s all about a much more global dimension of history.

The role of San Martin and Bolívar in Peruvian independence is widely assumed even in the national anthem, and there is even a series of local processes that are not well known and not part of the common sense of the national story.

Between 1812 and 1815, there were a series of revolts in favor of national independence, more or less in keeping with what was happening on the continent, many in the mountains of Peru, and all of them were suppressed. The Viceroy of Lima was able to put an end to them. But strangely enough, the other dimension of independence is more accepted.

We must give space in building historical memory to these liberation attempts, which were clearly national, even though they failed at the military level.

Cover of the first volume of the work "Peru Global". — photo caption, Global Peru analyzes the external influence on Peru’s history.

One attempt was that of Tupac Amaru. The book tells how he failed in his rebellion against Spanish rule in 1780, but he succeeded in becoming a symbol that went beyond the borders of modern Peru. How did he end up becoming a figure that was sought after by these different people internationally?

This is Charles Walker’s chapter, which shows for the first time how Túpac Amaru is part of the era of Atlantic revolutions. But on the other hand, it traces how the figure of Túpac Amaru, his family and his rebellion, despite the desire to completely hide it, became a symbol of Latin America.

This continued in Latin America in a series of plays, poems and films. Even in the famous American rapper Tupac Shakur (whose name was given by his mother in honor of the Andean rebel).

It is clear that this has nothing to do with the initial context of this rebellion, but rather is the gradual construction of an international icon based on a concrete national experience.

American rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur performs a live concert shirtless in 1994. — photo caption, Peruvian rebel Tupac Amaru became such a global icon that American rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur took his name.

All official histories, and national histories, contain some uncritical glorification, and the book highlights some of what was done in the case of Peru, such as the idealization of the abolition of slavery. , which in Peru was actually a late process and met with resistance from a large part of the Creole oligarchy that promoted independence. Do Afro-Peruvians receive due recognition? Is your story written correctly?

No no. Unfortunately, apartheid and a series of prejudices against Peru’s African population, who have made an essential contribution to the country, persist.

There is no historical rehabilitation of these communities. In the second volume of the book, which will be published next year, we have another chapter on the importance of African culture in Peruvian construction and its relations with the rest of the world.

And in 2025, what are the forces inside and outside Peru that continue to prevent this from happening, from recognizing the role of those other Peru, such as black and Andean Peru, which is not the official Peru of independence led by Lima?

There have been some efforts to tell many of those stories. What does not exist is integration in a sense other than second-class citizenship in official history, in the distribution of roles in the national drama.

This has not been built yet, but it is undoubtedly something that the academy is doing little by little, and it is part of its intellectual and cultural missions.

In the same way that there has been less attention to the history of these Africans or indigenous Peruvians, today there are voices denouncing that their descendants are not receiving due attention either. He insisted on asking: What are the forces that make this equality difficult in 2025?

It is clear that there is an inequality of resources and power that manifests itself in those who appear and those who do not appear in the history of countries. This does not only happen in the case of Peru.

History is dominated by a way of telling it that focuses more on particular political elites than on sectors like the ones he refers to.

However, since the 1980s, there has been a huge rise in so-called subaltern stories, which focus on the other side’s perspective; The expression “defeated” was used. All this has been the subject of much production in recent decades.

An indigenous woman in Peru at a spice stand in this file photo. — photo caption, Vergara believes that in recent years efforts have been made to write the history of the indigenous and Andean people of Peru.

The book also addresses current processes to which Peru seems particularly vulnerable, such as climate change. Do you think that Peruvians today truly understand the seriousness of this threat and the international actors that contribute to it?

People realize, even though they may not know the details of the seriousness of the matter. He knows full well that there is a growing water problem on the coast and that the glaciers that once provided small farmers with water supplies have long since begun to melt.

And the international bodies influencing this? We have seen how the current US government has radically changed its policy on this issue. Peru, with its frequent political crises and changes of president, sometimes gives the impression of not caring much about things that happen abroad that might affect it.

It is a distinctive feature of Latin America. All countries are involved in their own problems and all are convinced that their problems are unique. Public opinion is very nationalistic and the level of awareness of international life is really low.

The book shows how massive international tourism to Machu Picchu turned the city into a national symbol of Peru. His fame contributed to the integration of the indigenous and Andean elements into Peruvian identity. But at the same time, there is a need to idealize the Inca past as the missing essence of primitive and authentic Peru. Does the challenge of defining a modern and republican Peruvian identity, one that is inclusive and recognized abroad, still remain?

This has been the challenge our countries have been facing for 200 years. They are countries that, at their birth, do not have practically any cultural characteristics that distinguish them from each other.

This has been the challenge our countries have been facing for 200 years. At the time of independence, the people of Quito, Buenos Aires and Caracas pray to the same god and speak the same language. The new nation-states have the task of constructing a national distinction that in many cases did not exist.

In Latin America there has been success in building national communities of citizens, but this does not mean that a society of equal citizens, with similar degrees of influence in the public sphere and with equal respect for rights, has been built.

In Peru, it was possible to build a national idea from symbolic artifacts, such as Machu Picchu. More recently, food has been for Peru the most successful tool in nation building in recent decades. These cultural and symbolic dimensions are necessary for building the national community.

The thing is that I think we shouldn’t have too much hope for the nation, because the nation can be liberating and inclusive, but also tyrannical and oppressive.