PERU 229
PERUVIAN POLITICS AND ECONOMY
Peru’s backward, stagnant economy, the profound
cleavage between the sierra and the coast, and the
absence of a governing class (such as arose in Chile)
that could give reliable and intelligent leadership
to the state produced chronic political turbulence
and civil wars. This provided abundant opportuni-
ties for slaves to initiate their self-liberation. First,
urban slavery increasingly emerged as an alterna-
tive to the declining productivity of coastal agri-
culture and highland mining. Rural slaveholders
could secure profi ts by renting their slaves in Lima
and other cities, where they performed a broad
range of skilled jobs and earned money to pay their
owners or purchase their freedom. Second, urban
slavery afforded black slaves greater mobility and
weakened the slaveholder’s direct control. Urban
slaves took advantage of this to challenge their
owners in court, claiming that their masters had
abused them physically in violation of republican
laws. One even claimed the right of manumission
because his owner was English and Protestant, an
argument designed to appeal to the prejudices of
Catholic criollo magistrates in Lima. Third, urban
slaves also participated in various conspiracies
like the 1835 plot, led by Juan de Dios Algorta, to
“overthrow the government and assassinate the
whites in Lima.” Lastly, although relatively rare
by comparison to Caribbean slave revolts, black
slaves played leading roles in armed rebellions
like the Chicama Revolt of 1851. In the context
of these “everyday forms of resistance” to slavery,
this violent armed rebellion doomed the “peculiar
institution” in Peru. Elite property owners could
no longer tolerate the social instability that slavery
seemed to produce, especially when its economic
advantages had long since been exhausted.
Under these conditions, military caudillos,
sometimes men of plebeian origin who had risen in
the ranks during the wars of independence, came
to play a decisive role in the political life of the new
state. Some were more than selfi sh careerists or in-
struments of aristocratic creole cliques. The ablest
and most enlightened of the military caudillos was
the mestizo general Ramón Castilla, who served
as president of Peru from 1845 to 1851 and again
from 1855 to 1862. Castilla presided over an ad-
vance of the Peruvian economy based on the rapid
growth of guano exports. This export trade was
dominated by British capitalists, who obtained the
right to sell guano to specifi ed regions of the world
in return for loans to the Peruvian government (se-
cured by guano shipments). Exorbitant interest and
commission rates swelled their profi ts. Although
Castilla gave some thought to direct government
exploitation of some guano deposits, setting con-
trols over the amount and price of guano to be sold,
and plowing guano revenues into development
projects, he never acted on any of these ideas. The
guano boom, however, stimulated some growth
of native Peruvian commerce and banking and
created the nucleus of a national capitalist class.
Guano prosperity also fi nanced the beginnings of
a modern infrastructure; thus, in 1851 the fi rst
railway line began to operate between Lima and its
port of Callao.
The rise of guano revenues enabled Castilla to
carry out a series of social reforms that also con-
tributed to the process of nation-building. In 1854
he abolished slavery and indigenous tribute, re-
lieving natives of a heavy fi scal burden and freeing
enslaved Africans, who numbered some twenty
thousand. Abolition was very advantageous to
the planter aristocracy, who received compensa-
tion of up to 40 percent of their slaves’ value. With
these indemnities, planters could buy seeds, plants,
and Chinese coolies brought to Peru on a contract
basis that made them virtual slaves. Meanwhile,
the freed blacks often became sharecroppers who
lived on the margins of the hacienda and supplied a
convenient unpaid labor force and a source of rent.
Stimulated by these developments, cotton, sugar
cane, and grain production expanded on the coast.
Highland economic life also quickened, though on
a smaller scale, with the rise of extensive livestock
breeding for the export of wool and leather through
Arequipa and Lima.
The general upward movement of the Peru-
vian economy after 1850 was aided by such fa-
vorable factors as the temporary dislocation of the
cotton industry of the southern United States and