VI.

History

Evidence of settlement in Peru dates back thousands of years. Recent archaeological findings in the Norte Chico region north of Lima suggest that the earliest civilizations in the Americas developed in Peru as early as 3000 bc. The Norte Chico people built step pyramids of stone and irrigation systems and appear to have grown cotton and traded with neighboring peoples. By around 1800 bc they abandoned Norte Chico but likely influenced later cultures in Peru. In about 1250 bc groups such as the Chavín, Chimú, Nazca, and Tiwanaku migrated into Peru from the north. The Chimú built the city of Chan Chan about ad 1000, ruins of which remain today.

A.

Inca Empire

The Inca, sometimes called peoples of the sun, were originally a warlike tribe living in a semiarid region of the southern sierra. From 1100 to 1300 the Inca moved north into the fertile Cuzco Valley. From there they overran the neighboring lands. By 1500 the Inca Empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean east to the sources of the Paraguay and Amazon rivers and from the region of modern Quito in Ecuador south to the Maule River in Chile. This vast empire was a theocracy, organized along socialistic lines and ruled by an Inca, or emperor, who was worshiped as a divinity. Because the Inca realm contained extensive deposits of gold and silver, it became in the early 16th century a target of Spanish imperial ambitions in the Americas.

In November 1995 anthropologists announced the discovery of the 500-year-old remains of two Inca women and one Inca man frozen in the snow on a mountain peak in Peru. Scientists concluded that the trio were part of a human sacrifice ritual on Ampato, a sacred peak in the Andes mountain range. Artifacts from the find unveiled new information about the Inca and indicated the use of poles and tents rather than traditional stone structures. The arrangement of doll-size statuettes dressed in feathers and fine woolens provided clues about Inca religious and sacrificial practices.

B.

Spanish Rule

In 1532 Spanish soldier and adventurer Francisco Pizarro landed in Peru with a force of about 180 men. Conditions were favorable to conquest, for the empire was debilitated by a just-concluded civil war between the heirs to the Inca throne, Atahualpa and Huascar, each of whom was seeking to control the empire. This internal dissension, plus the terror inspired by Spanish guns and horses—unknown to the indigenous peoples until then—made it relatively easy for only a handful of Spaniards to conquer this vast empire.

The Spaniards met Atahualpa, the victor in the civil war, and his army at a prearranged conference at Cajamarca in 1532. When Atahualpa arrived, the Spaniards ambushed and seized him, and killed thousands of his followers. Although Atahualpa paid the most fabulous ransom known to history—a room full of gold and another full of silver—for his freedom, the Spaniards murdered him in 1533.

The Spanish destroyed many of the irrigation projects and the north-south roads that had knit the empire together, speeding the disintegration of the empire. By November 1533 Cuzco had fallen with little resistance. In addition, the indigenous population declined rapidly as a result of new diseases brought by the Spaniards, diseases to which the Inca had no immunity. Members of the Inca dynasty took refuge in the mountains and were able to resist the Spaniards for about four decades. However, by 1572 the Spaniards had executed the last Inca ruler, Tupac Amarú, along with his advisers and his family.

In 1535 Pizarro founded on the banks of the Rímac River the Peruvian capital city of Ciudad de los Reyes (Spanish for “City of the Kings”; present-day Lima). Subsequently, disputes over jurisdictional powers broke out among the Spanish conquerors, or conquistadors, and in 1541 a member of one of the conflicting Spanish factions assassinated Pizarro in Lima.

The Inca civilization had unified what are now Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia and created an integrated society. The Spanish, whose main aims were plunder and the conversion of native tribes to Christianity, stopped the development of the indigenous civilization. The Spaniards treated the Inca ruthlessly, using their labor to produce the minerals needed in Spain. The result was the creation of a psychic chasm between the Inca and the Europeanized population, a chasm that has endured for more than 400 years.

The Spanish introduced a system of land tenure consisting of European landlords and indigenous workers. This system succeeded in solidly establishing a privileged and wealthy landed aristocracy early in the colonial period. Little was done to educate the rest of the people. As a result, colonial Peru was a divided society, consisting of a small class that owned the land and controlled education, political, military, and religious power, and of a large, mostly indigenous class (about 90 percent of the total population) that remained landless, illiterate, and exploited.

In 1542 a Spanish imperial council promulgated statutes called New Laws for the Indies, which were designed to put a stop to cruelties inflicted on the Native Americans. In the same year Spain created the Viceroyalty of Peru, which comprised all Spanish South America and Panama, except what is now Venezuela.

The first Spanish viceroy arrived in Peru in 1544 and attempted to enforce the New Laws, but the conquistadors rebelled and, in 1546, killed the viceroy. Although the Spanish government crushed the rebellion in 1548, the New Laws were never put into effect.

In 1569 Spanish colonial administrator Francisco de Toledo arrived in Peru. During the ensuing 14 years he established a highly effective, although harshly repressive, system of government. Toledo’s method of administration consisted of a government of Spanish officials ruling through lower-level officials made up of Native Americans who dealt directly with the indigenous population. This system lasted for almost 200 years. See also Spanish Empire.

C.

Revolts for Independence

In 1780 a force of 60,000 Native Americans revolted against Spanish rule under the leadership of Peruvian patriot José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who adopted the name of an ancestor, the Inca Tupac Amarú. Although initially successful, the uprising was crushed in 1781. The Spanish tortured and executed Condorcanqui and thousands of his fellow revolutionaries. The Spanish suppressed another revolt in 1814.

Subsequently, however, opposition to imperial rule grew throughout Spanish South America. The opposition was led largely by Creoles, people of Spanish descent born in South America. Creoles grew to resent the fact that the Spanish government awarded all important government positions in the colonies to Spaniards born in Spain, who were called peninsulares.

Freedom from Spanish rule, however, was imported to Peru by outsiders. In September 1820 Argentine soldier and patriot José de San Martín, who had defeated the Spanish forces in Chile, landed an invasion army at the seaport of Pisco, Peru. On July 12, 1821, San Martín’s forces entered Lima, which had been abandoned by Spanish troops. Peruvian independence was proclaimed formally on July 28, 1821. The struggle against the Spanish was continued later by Venezuelan revolutionary hero Simón Bolívar, who entered Peru with his armies in 1822. In 1824, in the battles of Junín on August 6 and of Ayacucho on December 9, Bolívar’s forces routed the Spanish. See Ayacucho, Battle of; Junín, Battle of; See Latin American Independence.

D.

Succession of Rulers

Independence brought few institutional changes to Peru aside from the transfer of power. Whereas before independence peninsulares held the important government posts, after independence Creoles monopolized power. The economic and social life of the country continued as before, with two groups–Europeans and indigenous people–living side by side but strongly divided. In 1822 leaders of the colony’s independence movement created a centralized government consisting of a president and a single-chambered legislature. However, Spain’s refusal to allow Peruvian-born citizens a voice in the colonial administration had done little to prepare Peru for democracy.

The years following independence were extremely chaotic. Bolívar left Peru in 1826, and a series of military commanders who had served under him ruled over the nation. Andrés Santa Cruz served until 1827, when he was replaced by José de La Mar, who was in turn supplanted by Agustín Gamarra in 1829. Gamarra ruled until 1833. In the meantime Santa Cruz had become president of Bolivia, and in 1836 he invaded Peru, establishing a confederation of the two countries that lasted three years. After that, Gamarra took power again.

The country, however, enjoyed no peace until 1845, when Ramón Castilla seized the presidency. Fortunately, he proved to be an able ruler, who during his two terms in office (1845 to 1851 and 1855 to 1862) initiated many important reforms, including the abolition of slavery, the construction of railroads and telegraph facilities, and the adoption in 1860 of a liberal constitution. Castilla also began exploitation of the country’s rich guano and nitrate deposits, which were highly valued as an ingredient in fertilizer. In 1864 these deposits involved Peru in a war with Spain, which had seized the guano-rich Chincha Islands. Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile aided Peru, defeating the Spanish forces in 1866. The resulting treaty of 1879 constituted the first formal Spanish recognition of Peruvian sovereignty.

In 1873 Peru signed a secret defensive alliance with Bolivia, the purpose of which was to defend Bolivia’s nitrate interests against Chile. When a quarrel arose between Chile and Bolivia over the Atacama nitrate fields along the disputed border of the two nations, Peru was drawn into the War of the Pacific, fighting against Chile on the side of its ally, Bolivia.

Chile defeated its opponents, occupied Lima, and, under the Treaty of Ancón (1884), was awarded Peru’s nitrate province of Tarapacá. Chile also occupied the provinces of Tacna and Arica. A plebiscite was supposed to decide ten years later which country would get these provinces, but the Tacna-Arica Dispute did not end until 1929, with Chile keeping Arica and Peru regaining Tacna. The war severely depleted Peruvian financial reserves and placed continuing strain on subsequent relations between the two countries. For the next 25 years Peru was ruled by a succession of dictators.

E.

Foundation of APRA

In 1908 a program of economic reform was instituted by President Augusto Leguía y Salcedo. After his first term, from 1908 to 1912, Leguía traveled in the United Kingdom and the United States, where he learned methods of banking and finance, which he later applied in Peru, and made many friends in the business community. He regained the presidency in 1919 by means of a military coup and thereafter ruled as virtual dictator. Leguía preserved the country’s old class organization. However, he brought material progress to Peru, broadened education, and improved labor conditions.

In 1924, during Leguía’s rule, some exiled Peruvian intellectuals founded the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), which Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre led for more than 40 years. APRA called for basic reforms—especially in the conditions of the Native Americans. Leguía banned APRA, but the alliance managed nevertheless to become the most influential of Peru’s political parties.

Leguía stayed in power until 1930, when the world depression ended the flow of foreign investments. He was deposed and jailed by an army revolt. On April 9, 1933, a new constitution was adopted. Shortly thereafter Leguía’s successor, Luis Sánchez Cerro, was assassinated. The next chief executive, General Óscar Raimundo Benavides, followed the new pattern of harsh political rule combined with marked economic advances. When the APRA won the election of 1936, Benavides ignored the results and extended his own term in office. In 1939, in controlled elections, he installed Manuel Prado as president. Prado was forced, however, to make concessions to the powerful reform sentiment fostered by APRA.

F.

World War II and After

During World War II (1939-1945) Peru gave limited support to the Allied cause. It broke off relations with the Axis powers in January 1942, but declared war against Germany and Japan only in February 1945 in order to be accepted as a charter member of the United Nations.

In 1945 the National Democratic Front, a coalition of liberal and leftist parties, including APRA, supported José Luis Bustamante y Rivero, who won the presidential election. The National Democratic Front also won a majority in both houses of the legislature. The new government instituted numerous liberal reforms, strengthened civil rights and freedom of the press, and passed a constitutional amendment abolishing certain dictatorial powers formerly held by the president.

In 1948, however, rightist revolutionary leaders unseated Bustamante, seized the government, and outlawed APRA. In 1950, Manuel A. Odría, the leader of the 1948 coup d’état, won the presidential election. Odría’s chief opponent was not placed on the ballot.

Along with Chile and Ecuador, Peru extended the country’s territorial waters to 320 km (200 mi) off the mainland. This action brought sharp protests from the United States, as many U.S. fishing vessels operated in South American waters.

The Odría administration disbanded Peru’s labor unions, outlawed all opposition, and imposed tight censorship. It also strengthened Peru’s defenses, initiated a large public-works program, and concluded a series of economic and cultural pacts with Brazil that provided for closer cooperation between the two countries. The demand for a return to civilian rule was so great, however, that in 1956 free elections were held.

G.

Liberal Period

In the elections of 1956, former president Prado was again victorious. He immediately effected sweeping liberal reforms, but was soon hampered by strikes and riots occasioned by economic instability and runaway inflation. In 1959 the government introduced a program to restrict the outflow of dollars and encourage domestic industries by various means, including facilitating the import of capital goods. By May 1960 the economy had improved markedly, and foreign capital flowed into Peru in the form of loans and development contracts. In October of that year the government won approval of its policy of gradual nationalization of most Peruvian oil-production facilities.

In the presidential elections of 1962 none of the three major candidates, Haya de la Torre of APRA, Fernando Belaúnde Terry of the Popular Action Party, and Manuel Odría, received the necessary one-third of the votes to win the election. The task of choosing a president thus went to the newly elected congress. The military, which favored Belaúnde, overthrew the government to forestall an agreement between Odrístas and the APRA to elect Odría president with an APRA vice-president. A military junta took control. To appease the Peruvian people and foreign governments, the junta promised new elections. The junta installed General Ricardo Pío Pérez Godoy as president in July 1962, but deposed him in March 1963.

Elections in 1963 brought Belaúnde to the presidency. President Belaúnde and the APRA, which dominated congress, competed to introduce reforms. Progress was made in public works and social benefits. However, the government’s programs resulted in budgetary deficits and a spiraling inflation. Belaúnde was also unable to create a stable government coalition.

H.

Military Rule

A long dispute over the claims of the International Petroleum Company (IPC), a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), in the operation of the rich La Brea y Pariñas oil fields was finally settled by the Belaúnde government in August 1968. Widespread disapproval of this settlement, however, forced the resignation of the Cabinet on October 1, and two days later the armed forces ousted Belaúnde and suspended the constitution. A military junta formed, headed by General Juan Velasco Alvarado. His government expropriated the IPC’s assets, seriously straining relations with the United States. Relations deteriorated still further in February 1969, when a Peruvian gunboat accosted two U.S. fishing vessels off the Peruvian coast, claiming they were poaching in Peruvian waters. In 1970, despite these differences, U.S. relief supplies were quickly sent to Peru following an earthquake that killed about 67,000 people and left some 600,000 homeless.

In the early 1970s the Velasco government began a radical reform of the social and economic system. Among the major actions were seizure of foreign-owned ranchlands, the imposition of price controls on basic goods and services, and a sweeping land-reform law. The anchovy fishing industry, seriously hurt in 1972 by alteration of ocean currents, was nationalized in 1973. The 1973-1974 budget provided a 35 percent increase in spending to build up and diversify private industry. In 1973 the World Bank extended credits of $470 million to Peru, and the Inter-American Development Bank lent Peru $30 million. Relations with the United States and with U.S. investors were largely normalized, but U.S. economic aid was sharply reduced.

I.

Return to Democracy

Another military coup toppled the Peruvian government in 1975, after a series of strikes and demonstrations expressed popular discontent with the ailing President Velasco. General Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who had been prime minister and minister of war under Velasco, was sworn in as president. His government announced that the country would be returned to democratic rule in 1980. Morales pledged to continue the “revolutionary process” begun in 1968. However, the military government was unable to cope with Peru’s deepening economic crisis, which was marked by an immense national debt, rampant inflation, and massive unemployment. In 1978 it received a loan from the International Monetary Fund to ease its debt burden, but only in exchange for imposing economic austerity measures, which worsened the lot of most Peruvians.

In 1980, as promised, presidential elections were held. The winner, former president Belaúnde, took office in July, when a new constitution came into effect. Belaúnde immediately adopted a conservative program that aimed to reverse many of the reforms of the Velasco era, and he began a series of extravagantly costly large-scale construction projects in the rain forest region. Belaúnde was immediately overtaken by political crisis and economic disaster. An extreme left-wing guerrilla movement, Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), began activity in the highlands and gained strength. At the United States’ behest the government tried to suppress production of coca, further alienating the Native Americans whose main source of income it was. Output of the anchovy fisheries collapsed as a result of ecological devastation from earlier overfishing. The country entered a deep depression accompanied by runaway inflation, and it had to suspend payments on its enormous foreign debt. By the time presidential elections were held in 1985, Belaúnde and his government were completely discredited. His party got only 5 percent of the vote.

In the 1985 presidential elections, voters chose the APRA candidate, Alan García Pérez. García tried to reverse the economic decline. He introduced policies that attempted to reduce imports and limit annual payments on foreign debts. Despite some temporary success, by 1987 Peru had been cut off from international financing, and inflation again began to increase. In an attempt to limit inflation, García nationalized private banks and insurance companies and tightened government controls over the economy, but by 1990 the annual rate of inflation was approaching 3,000 percent. Meanwhile, despite unabated repression by the security forces, the Shining Path remained powerful.

J.

The Fujimori Years

In an upset in the 1990 presidential election, Alberto Fujimori, an agricultural economist of Japanese descent, defeated novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Fujimori, who ran in the runoff with left-wing support, imposed an austerity program to deal with hyperinflation and to restore Peru’s ability to borrow money internationally. Economic hardship led to an escalation of violence by the Shining Path.

In April 1992 Fujimori, alleging that congress and the judiciary had blocked his efforts to suppress the drug trade and the guerrillas, suspended parts of the constitution and took full control of the government. In September several key Shining Path guerrillas were captured, including Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán, and in November Fujimori’s supporters won a solid majority in a legislative election. In 1993 the United States and other creditor nations resumed loans to Peru. In October 1993 Peruvians voted to accept a new constitution, signed by Fujimori in December, that increased presidential power, changed the legislature from a bicameral body to a unicameral one, and allowed Fujimori to run for a second term.

By 1994 Peru’s economy had revived dramatically. Fujimori’s effort to privatize the economy moved forward with the sale of Interbanc, the largest national bank, and the national telephone service to private interests. The country also rejoined the Andean Community just as that group began negotiations to reduce tariffs among member nations. At the same time, the Fujimori government upheld its promise to crush the Shining Path movement, capturing several high-ranking members of the organization’s central committee.

In June 1994 former UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar announced that he would run for the presidency. As presidential elections neared, Fujimori lost momentum after feuding publicly with his wife, Susana Higuchi, a critic of his policies, and relieving her of her duties as first lady. In response she formed an opposition party and announced her intention to run for office in 1995. She was denied candidacy when her party failed to assemble the necessary number of signatures.

In January 1995 a series of skirmishes erupted along a contested section of the Ecuadorian border. Fujimori capitalized politically on the situation, gaining wide approval for his refusal to compromise with Ecuador. A cease-fire accord was signed in Montevideo, Uruguay, in March 1995. Peru and Ecuador entered into negotiations in 1998 and, toward the end of the year, signed a treaty settling the border dispute.

Prior to the 1995 elections Fujimori’s opponents attempted to undercut his popularity by challenging his human rights record. Despite those challenges, Fujimori’s accomplishments overwhelmed his critics at the polls, where he won the presidential elections outright, gaining more than 60 percent of the vote.

Fujimori declared a blanket amnesty in 1995 for all human rights abuses that may have been committed by members of the Peruvian military or police forces between 1980 and 1995. He pushed the measure through the Peruvian congress without a debate, outraging human rights activists and many Peruvian citizens, and provoking condemnation from governments around the world. The law absolved military personnel or civilians who had already been convicted, who were under investigation, or who were in the process of being tried for alleged crimes.

In November 1995 Peruvian authorities arrested 23 people, including a U.S. citizen, and alleged that they were members of the Tupac Amarú Revolutionary Movement and that they had been planning a terrorist attack on the Peruvian Congress. Tupac Amarú was never as powerful as the Shining Path, but it had been responsible for numerous guerrilla attacks in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. The trials were conducted in secret, and the accused were unable to cross-examine witnesses, challenge government evidence, or call witnesses on their behalf. All 23 defendants were convicted and many of them were given life sentences. International human rights groups and the U.S. government condemned the trials, saying that they illustrated a lack of justice and due process in Peru’s legal system.

In December 1996 Tupac Amarú rebels seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, taking hundreds of hostages, including foreign diplomats and Peruvian government officials. The rebels demanded the release of imprisoned comrades, and freed all but 72 of their hostages while negotiating with the government. After a four-month-long standoff, Fujimori ordered a military raid on the mansion to free the hostages. Commandos killed all of the rebels, and one hostage and two soldiers died in the attack.

A series of government scandals damaged the public’s perception of Fujimori’s government during mid-1997. In May Fujimori replaced three Constitutional Court justices who ruled that the congress acted unconstitutionally when it declared him eligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term despite a constitutional prohibition. Evidence also emerged that the government authorized telephone wire-tapping of prominent political opponents and paid Fujimori’s unofficial head of the intelligence service a salary of $600,000.

Fujimori’s public image was further damaged after a television station released information showing that the intelligence service had tortured two female intelligence agents who leaked information to the press about a government campaign to harass journalists. Fujimori’s approval rating dropped to 20 percent as a result of the scandals and the controversy surrounding the replacement of the justices on the Constitutional Court.

A particularly fierce El Niño struck Peru in late 1997. El Niño, which occurs periodically, caused severe rain and flooding that killed more than 200 Peruvians and caused extensive damage in many regions of the nation. Fujimori’s public image improved after he became personally involved in the crisis, making whirlwind tours to areas of the country that had been ravaged by storms and personally directing measures to control damage. The conflict between the government and the Shining Path continued into 1998, with Shining Path guerrillas engaging in sporadic acts of urban terrorism and attempting to establish or strengthen their bases in rural areas. In March 1998 police in Lima arrested four important leaders in the Shining Path organization.

In his bid for a third term in 2000, Fujimori drew international criticism for alleged campaign abuses and faced a surprisingly strong challenge from Alejandro Toledo, a business school professor. In the April elections neither of the two front-running candidates won 50 percent of the vote, and a runoff was scheduled for May. However, Toledo boycotted the race because of concerns about election fraud, and Fujimori was reelected. In the legislative elections Fujimori’s coalition, Peru 2000, won the most congressional seats but fell short of a majority.

Fujimori’s presidency began to unravel in September 2000 after his intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, was linked to a corruption scandal. After firing Montesinos, Fujimori called an early presidential election for April 2001 and promised not to run in it. By mid-November Fujimori faced a groundswell of political opposition as new charges of corruption and fraud continued to surface. While Fujimori was abroad for a trade summit of Pacific Rim nations, opposition parties took control of congress and elected a centrist legislator, Valentín Paniagua, as the leader of congress. Fujimori announced from Japan that he would resign as president, and Paniagua was chosen to lead an interim government pending new presidential and legislative elections. In a public rebuke of Fujimori, the legislature rejected the former president’s resignation and voted to remove him from office for being morally unfit.

K.

Toledo’s Presidency

Alejandro Toledo was elected president in June 2001 after a runoff with former president Alan García Pérez. Toledo vowed to reform Peru’s criminal justice system, promote foreign investment, and reduce unemployment. In legislative elections, held alongside the presidential election, Toledo’s Possible Peru Party emerged as the largest party in the congress, although it did not attain a majority. The American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), led by García, became the second largest party.

In 2003 a government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued the results of a two-year investigation into human rights abuses committed during Peru’s 20-year struggle with the Shining Path guerrillas. The commission found that nearly 70,000 people were killed or had disappeared from 1980 to 2000, twice as many as previously believed. Nearly 75 percent of those killed were Quechua-speaking Indians. Shining Path guerrillas caused most of the deaths by massacring villagers who refused to support them. However, Peru’s military, which attacked Indian villages in counterinsurgency operations, was found responsible for about 30 percent of the deaths and disappearances.

Unrest continued during Toledo’s presidency as he failed to deliver on an election promise to create jobs, and strikes and demonstrations against government policies became frequent. Corruption scandals undermined his administration, and he shuffled his cabinet several times in efforts to reclaim public support.

The June 2006 presidential elections required a runoff between APRA candidate Alan García Pérez and populist candidate Ollanta Humala, a former army officer. Regional politics played a significant role in the runoff as García used an endorsement of Humala by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to discredit Humala. Chávez was reportedly unpopular with most Peruvians, and García was said to have made gains by linking Humala to Chávez. García also sought to portray himself as a moderate and promised that he had learned the lessons of his first administration, which was economically disastrous for Peru.

The 2006 elections were also notable for the attempted political comeback of Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s president from 1990 to 2000 when he went into exile in disgrace. Fujimori’s supporters sought to place his name on the presidential ballot, but he was ruled ineligible. After Fujimori was extradited from Chile, where he had been placed under arrest, a Peruvian court found him guilty in December 2007 of ordering an illegal search and sentenced him to six years in prison. The same month he went on trial again on more serious charges of murder and forced disappearance, stemming from his alleged use of a secretive death squad that targeted leftists.