Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru: Some Revisions

Abstract

All numbers on the makeup of Peru's republican population are wrong, the one point on which historians can agree. Peruvian governments had neither the capacity nor the will to mount thorough surveys of their scattered and elusive Andean subjects. Between the late viceregal census of 1791 (reporting a population of 1,076,000) and the first modern effort of 1876 (yielding a count of 2,699,000) lies a century of demographic no man's land, despite partial surveys claimed for 1812, 1836, 1850, and 1862. Unfortunately, historians cannot fly back in time and redo the head counts missed or mismanaged by successive governments, although this miracle has seemingly been worked for the older Incan and conquest periods.1 The best scholars can attempt at this point is to untangle the confusions of existing census documents and bring new evidence to bear on their strengths and weaknesses.

Under one roof: Material changes and familial estrangement in Puno, Peru

“…Puno is home to two Indigenous populations and languages: Quechua and Aymara. Despite its status as a regional capital, the city of Puno was always relatively small with the majority of the Quechua and Aymara Indigenous populace residing in rural communities around the city for most of the 20th century (Gootenberg, 1991; Primov, 1974). The city's growth can be traced to Indigenous migration away from rural communities to the urban center beginning in the mid-1970s.…”

Multidimensional Ethno-racial Status in Contexts of Mestizaje: Ethno-racial Stratification in Contemporary Peru

“…Nevertheless, mestizaje and mestizo ethno-racial identification should not be exclusively tied to the inclusive “myth” of mestizaje and the national depiction of the mestizo as the empowered mixed-race citizen, respectively. While the impact of mestizaje ideologies on contemporary ethnic and racial issues in Latin America is undoubtedly significant, this perspective confidently relies on the capabilities and intentions of governments and elites for efficiently orchestrating mestizaje as racial projects of assimilation (see Gonzales 1987; Gootenberg 1991). Moreover, the core meanings of the terms mestizo as mixed-race person and mestizaje as mixture are commonly disregarded.…”