G. Antonio Espinoza. Education and the State in Modern Peru

As in most of Latin America, nation-building in early republican Peru engendered significant political, social, and cultural tensions. Recent scholarship has analyzed this process from the position of those who stood outside the center of power. Cecilia Méndez's The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State, 1820–1850 (2005) examines the Huanta rebellion of 1825–1828 in Ayacucho, in which an alliance of local peasants, Spanish elites, and mestizo landowners fought for a return to Spanish rule, while Marisol de la Cadena's Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991 (2000) analyzes how policies of “constructive miscegenation” attempted to fashion “mestizos” out of “Indians” in order to create a modern Peruvian nation. With Education and the State in Modern Peru: Primary Schooling in Lima, 1821–c. 1921, G. Antonio Espinoza offers a different perspective on the contested dynamics of state making: one that focuses on the policies and legislation conceived in Lima. Espinoza places patrimonialism and patronage at the center of elite efforts to establish a state-run education system, and simultaneously demonstrates how trends in education reflected broader dynamics of Peruvian nation-building. The work's century-long time frame allows Espinoza to effectively trace the shaky transition from colonialism to independence, the vicissitudes of creating a modern society and economy, and the eventual stabilization of an industrializing nation in the twentieth century.

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