was the relation between communication and religion. Several research projects
in this field were begun at the University of Lima. The first publication to result
was Gogin (1997), which studies the radio programs of four religious groups:
the Catholic church, the Evangelical church, the Dios es Amor Pentecostal
church, and the Hermandad del Cordero de Dios. A further subject of interest
was Taqi Onqoy, a sixteenth-century native protest movement that extended
over a wide region in the southern Andes (Millones et al.1990). The movement
consisted of preachers with numerous followers who expressed themselves in
a sort of collective ecstasy preceded by songs and dances.
A topic little studied in Peru is that of relations between church, society,
and the state in light of modernization and secularization. Pilar García (1991)
made an important contribution, highlighting the enormous social and political
influence exercised by the Catholic church in shaping the Peruvian state,
beginning with its indepenence from Spain. Fernando Armas Asin (1998) has
studied nineteenth-century polemics surrounding religious tolerance, ending
with 1915, the year in which reforms to the Constitution prohibited forms of
public worship other than Catholicism. Armas finds here a symptom of
modernization: mobilized, more or less organized sectors of the population,
each with its own interests, but each making a positive contribution by affirming
the need for specific new developments. Fonseca (2002) examines the topic of
modernization between the years 1915 and 1930, analyzing the role of
Protestant missionaries and churches in the project of modernizing a nation
shaken by the emergence of new ideas and new organizations, including
political parties and unions. Imelda Vega-Centeno’s (1991) study of the Aprista
Party^2 offered a different perspective on the social and political functions of
religion, as a system of ultimate meanings defining forms of political
participation: she studied the party’s ‘doctrine’ and the ‘mystique’ elaborated
and transmitted by its leaders. Karen Sanders (1997) also studied religious,
mythical, and messianic elements in the discourse of the Aprista Party. She
found in the speeches its founder, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, elements of
an entire ‘project of salvation’.
Messianism has been an important theme in Peruvian studies of religion.
Juan Manuel Ossio (1973) underlined its importance in ancient and
contemporary Andean society. Several other works demonstrate the centrality
of the myth of the return of the Inca for utopian and political projects in the
Andean region (Salomón 1990; Szeminski 1984, 1990; Flores Galindo 1994;
Fernández and Brown 2001). According to Rostworowski (1978), this myth
appears repeatedly in the cosmovision and power relations of pre-Hispanic
peoples. Her analysis (1992) of relations of domination and hegemony in the
Lima region makes a case that political defeat and domination always implied
the subjugation of the gods of the defeated, with defeated gods sometimes
conflated with the divinities of the victors or re-emerging with new vigor.284
ENGLER, MOLINA, DE LA TORRE, RIVERA AND MARCOS