![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The Peruvian parliament was a central institution in the early republic, but so far very little has been written on its history. This is due to the fact that military leaders took control of power for most of the nineteenth century. This article reflects on three main questions: what was the role of the legislative in nineteenth-century Peru? What was its relationship with the executive power? And what part did conflict play in these relationships? Most initial congresses were tasked with writing up constitutions, because institutions had to be created, and there was a strong belief that having a written charter mattered. The strongmen who took power felt the need to obtain legitimacy from both constitutions, and elections, but often did not see eye to eye with congress. This led congress to be closed, particularly when legislators refused to bow down to presidential power.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Eduardo Posada Carbó for his comments on the content and Peter Smith for his help editing this article.
Notes
1 V. Paniagüa Corazao, Los orígenes del gobierno representativo en el Perú. Las elecciones (1809–1826) (Lima, 2003), has details of these debates, pp. 283–6.
2 For debates after 1860 see http://www4.congreso.gob.pe/dgp/DiarioDebates/historia.htm, accessed 23 May 2016.
3 For my doctoral dissertation I reviewed most of the congressional debates between 1840 and 1860, see N. Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Caudillismo in the Age of Guano: A Study in Political Culture of Mid-nineteenth Century Peru, 1840–1860’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 2005).
4 J. Basadre, Historia de la República del Perú, 12 vols (Lima, 1961).
5 R. Tizón y Bueno, Apuntes para la historia el parlamento peruano (Lima, 1903); P. Macera, Parlamento y Sociedad en el Perú. Bases Documentales Siglo XIX. Selección y estudio preliminar, 4 vols (Lima, 1998).
6 One of the first works that tackles this topic is C. Aljovín de Losada, Caudillos y Constituciones (Lima, 2000).
7 Aljovín’s Caudillos y constituciones covers this issue, as well as A. del Águila, Ciudadanía Corporativa en el Perú (Lima, 2013). Also on the topic is my essay ‘Batallas por la legitimidad: constitucionalismo y conflicto político en el Perú del siglo diecinueve (1812–1860)’, Revista de Indias 69, (2009), pp. 101–28.
8 See Paniagüa Corazao, Los orígenes; C. Aljovín and S. López (eds), Las elecciones en el Perú (Lima, 2005) and G. Chiaramonte, Ciudadanía y representación en el Perú (1808–1860). Los itinerarios de la soberanía (Lima, 2005).
9 U. Muecke, ‘El Congreso, las elecciones y la cultura política peruana antes de la guerra con Chile’, in M. Irurozqui (ed.), La mirada esquiva. Reflexiones históricas sobre la interacción del estado y la ciudadanía en los Andes (Bolivia, Ecuador y Peru) siglo XIX (Madrid, 2005).
10 Representantes al Congreso Edición conmemorativa (Lima, 1999).
11 See C. Villanueva, Francisco Javier de Luna Pizarro. Parlamentario y primer presidente del Congreso Peruano (Lima, 2016).
12 C. Aljovín, ‘La Constitucion de 1823’, in S. O’Phelan (ed.), De los Borbones a Bolívar (Lima, 2001), pp. 351–78.
13 A medic by training, Unanue had been one of the minds behind the enlightened journal El Mercurio Peruano and had been in charge of the 1791 census. For how his ideas developed see C. McEvoy, ‘No una sino muchas repúblicas: una aproximación a las bases teóricas del republicanismo peruano, 1821–1834’, Revista de Indias 71, (2011), pp. 759–91.
14 H. Unanue, ‘Soberanía del Pueblo’, in Colección Documental de la Independencia del Perú (CDIP), 88 vols (Lima, 1971–76), I: 8 (1974), p. 857.
15 H. Unanue, ‘Instrucción pública’, in Nuevo día del Perú, nos. 2, 5, 6, 11 (Trujillo, 1824); reprinted in CDIP I: 8, p. 847.
16 On this period see N. Sobrevilla Perea, The Caudillo of the Andes: Andrés de Santa Cruz (Cambridge, 2011).
17 Basadre, Historia, vol. I, p. 254.
18 http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/constituciones_ordenado/CONSTIT_1828/Cons1828_TEXTO.pdf, accessed 12 June 2016.
19 These tensions can be seen in the work of P. Gootenberg, ‘North and South: Trade Policy, Regionalism and Caudillismo in Post-Independence Peru’, Journal of Latin American Studies 23, (1991), pp. 273–308 and N. Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Conflicto regional, guano y poder’, in P. Drinot and L. Garofalo (eds), Mas allá de la dominación y la dependencia (Lima, 2005), pp. 181–213.
20 Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Conflicto’.
21 Basadre, Historia, vol. I, p. 259.
22 http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/constituciones_ordenado/CONSTIT_1828/Cons1828_TEXTO.pdf, accessed 12 June 2016.
23 Basadre, Historia, vol. II, p. 63.
24 http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/constituciones_ordenado/CONSTIT_1834/Cons1834_TEXTO.pdf, accessed 12 June 2016.
25 These tensions are seen in Gootenberg, ‘North and South’ and Sobrevilla, ‘Conflicto’.
26 See Sobrevilla Perea, Caudillo, ch. 3.
27 http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/constituciones_ordenado/CONSTIT_1839/Cons1839_TEXTO.pdf, accessed 12 June 2016.
28 For more on this see Peloso, 'Liberals, Electoral Reform and the Popular Vote in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Peru', in V. C. Peloso and B. A. Tenenbaum (eds.), Liberals, Politics & Power. State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Athens, 1996), pp. 186–211.
29 For this see N. Sobrevilla Perea, ‘The Influence of the 1848 Revolutions in Perú’, in G. Thomson (ed.), The 1848 European Revolution in the Americas (London, 2002), pp. 191–216.
30 J. Ragas, ‘Cultura política, Representación y Modernidad en el Perú: La campaña electoral de 1850’, (unpublished licenciatura thesis, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, 2004).
31 N. Sobrevilla Perea, ‘El proyecto Liberal, la Revolución de 1854 y la Convención de 1855’, in C. McEvoy (ed.), La Experiencia Burguesa Peruana (Madrid and Frankfurt, 2004), pp. 223–43.
32 Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Batallas’; http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/constituciones_ordenado/CONSTIT_1855/Cons1855_TEXTO.pdf, accessed 12 June 2016.
33 Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Conflicto’.
34 J. Basadre, ‘Los hombres de traje negro’, Letras (Lima, 1929), pp. 29–59.
35 Sobrevilla Perea, Caudillo.
36 Basadre, Historia, vol. I, p. 142.
37 Representantes.
38 N. Sobrevilla Perea, ‘From Europe to the Americas and Back: Becoming Los Ayacuchos’, European History Quarterly 41, (2011), pp. 472–88.
39 Basadre, Historia, vol. I, p. 143.
40 Unanue called for the elected deputies to meet in March 1826 with this decree, http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/LeyesXIX/1826004.pdf, accessed 12 June 2016.
41 Basadre, Historia, vol. I, p. 149.
42 http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/LeyesXIX/1826011.pdf, accessed 12 June 2016.
43 Basadre, Historia, vol. I, p. 151.
44 http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/constituciones_ordenado/CONSTIT_1826/Cons1826_TEXTO.pdf, accessed 12 June 2016.
45 Basadre, Historia, vol. I, p. 299.
46 Tizón y Bueno, Apuntes, p. 40.
47 Representantes.
48 For details of the incident see Basadre, Historia, vol. II, p. 49 and J.G. Leguia, Hombres e Ideas en el Perú (Santiago, 1941).
49 These issues were vigorously debated in the press, mainly in the newspaper edited by González Vigil, El Constitucional, in 1833.
50 N. Sobrevilla Perea, ‘La Repatriación del Generalísimo: Agustín Gamarra y la construcción del imaginario nacional en Perú’, in C. McEvoy (ed.), Funerales Republicanos en América del Sur: Tradición, ritual y nación, 1832–1896 (Santiago, 2006), pp. 57–80.
51 Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Influence’, pp. 196–9.
52 Peloso, ‘Liberals’, pp. 192–3.
53 On the links between the election and the revolution see N. Sobrevilla Perea, ‘The Contested Peruvian Election of 1850 and the 1854 Revolution’, in A. Robertson and E. Posada Carbó (eds), Oxford Handbook of Revolutionary Elections in the Americas (Oxford, forthcoming).
54 H. Sánchez, Vencer o morir (Arequipa, 1857), p. 7.
55 Salva, El Despertador del proyecto de Rehabilitación de los Jefes y Oficiales vencidos en la Palma presentado a la H. Convención por el S. Consejo de Ministros el 7 de Abril de 1857 (Lima, 1857), p. 5, attributed to M. Mendiburu by R. Moreno.
56 Letter from P. Arguedas to R. Castilla, Callao, 13 November 1857, Archivo Castilla, vol. III, p. 252.
57 Letter from R. Castilla to P. Arguedas, Sacacha, 17 November 1857, Archivo Castilla, vol. III, p. 251.
58 Letter from R. Castilla to M. Ortiz de Zevallos, Sachaca, 20 November 1857, Archivo Castilla, vol. VI, p. 129.
59 M.N. Corpancho and J.H. del Campo, Siga la Disolución de la Convención porque ella es justa, firmada por patriotas de corazón (Lima, 1857).
60 Letter from Castilla to Ortiz de Zevallos, Sacacha, 2 December 1857, Archivo Castilla, vol. VI, p. 131.
61 M. Monsalve, ‘Del sufragio a la sociedad civil’, in Drinot and Garofalo (eds), Mas alla, pp. 214–245.
62 M. Morales, Memoria que presenta al Congreso Extraordinario el Ministro de Gobierno, culto y obras públicas (Lima, 1858), p. 11.
63 M. San Román, M. Ortiz de Zevallos, M. Morales and L. María Cano, ‘Mensaje del Consejo de Ministros al Congreso Extraordinario de 1858’, in Mensajes de los Presidentes del Perú (Lima, 1941), p. 321.
64 San Román et al., ‘Mensaje’, p. 323.
65 For more details on this congress see Basadre, Historia de la República, vol. III, pp. 1153–63.
66 La Zamacueca Política, no. 26, Lima, 20 April 1859.
67 J. Rufino, Echenique wrote in his memoirs that even though Zevallos had led the opposition against him in Cuzco in 1854, by 1859 he wrote to him asking if he could be part of the uprising. Memorias (Lima, 1951), vol. II, p. 241. Zevallos had also helped Diez Canseco end with a revolution in Ayacucho in 1857 – see El Registro Oficial, Cuzco, 11 February 1857, p. 20.
68 La Opinión en Triunfo, periódico político y popular, no. 2, Cuzco, 9 July 1859.
69 Letter from J.A. de Abrile to R. Castilla, Arequipa, 6 June 1859, Archivo Castilla, vol. VIII, p. 112.
70 Letter from R. Castilla to M. Ortiz de Zevallos, Sacacha, 2 December 1857, Archivo Castilla, vol. VI, p. 131.
71 La Zamacueca Política, no. 37, Lima, 1 June 1859.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Natalia Sobrevilla Perea
Natalia Sobrevilla Perea is a Reader in Hispanic Studies at the University of Kent. She obtained her PhD at the University of London, has been a visiting fellow at the John Carter Brown Library and held grants from the British Academy, the British Library and the Leverhulme Trust. Her book The Caudillo of the Andes: Andrés de Santa Cruz was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011 and it was also published in Spanish by the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos in 2015. She is the co-editor of The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World, The Impact of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812, published by Alabama University Press in 2015. She has published extensively on the creation of the state in Peru, focusing on elections, constitutions and the importance of the armed forces. She is currently finalizing a book on the armed forces and the creation of the Peruvian state in the nineteenth century.