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Peru The Aristocratic Republic, 1895-1914
The Aristocratic Republic began with the popular
"Revolution
of 1895," led by the charismatic and irrepressible José
Nicolás
de Piérola (1895-99). He overthrew the increasingly
dictatorial
Cáceres, who had gained the presidency again in 1894 after
having
placed his crony Colonel Remigio Morales Bermúdez
(1890-94) in
power in 1890. Piérola, an aristocratic and patriarchal
figure,
was fond of saying that "when the people are in danger,
they come
to me." Although he had gained the intense enmity of the
Civilistas in 1869 when, as minister of finance in the
Balta
government, he had transferred the lucrative guano
consignment
contract to the foreign firm of Dreyfus and Company of
Paris, he
now succeeded in forging an alliance with his former
opponents.
This began a period known as the Aristocratic Republic
(1895-
1914), during which Peru was characterized not only by
relative
political harmony and rapid economic growth and
modernization,
but also by social and political change.
From the ruins of the War of the Pacific, new elites
had
emerged along the coast and coalesced to form a powerful
oligarchy, based on the reemergence of sugar, cotton, and
mining
exports, as well as the reintegration of Peru into the
international economy. Its political expression was the
reconstituted Civilista Party, which had revived its
antimilitary
and proexport program during the period of intense
national
disillusion and introspection that followed the country's
defeat
in the war. By the time the term of Piérola's successor,
Eduardo
López de Romaña (1899-1903), came to an end, the
Civilistas had
cleverly managed to gain control of the national electoral
process and proceeded to elect their own candidate and
party
leader, the astute Manuel Candamo (1903-1904), to the
presidency.
Thereafter, they virtually controlled the presidency up
until
World War I, although Candamo died a few months after
assuming
office. Elections, however, were restricted, subject to
strict
property and literacy qualifications, and more often than
not
manipulated by the incumbent Civilista regime.
The Civilistas were the architects of unprecedented
political
stability and economic growth, but they also set in motion
profound social changes that would, in time, alter the
political
panorama. With the gradual advance of export capitalism,
peasants
migrated and became proletarians, laboring in industrial
enclaves
that arose not only in Lima, but in areas of the
countryside as
well. The traditional haciendas and small-scale mining
complexes
that could be connected to the international market gave
way
increasingly to modern agroindustrial plantations and
mining
enclaves. With the advent of World War I, Peru's
international
markets were temporarily disrupted and social unrest
intensified,
particularly in urban centers where a modern labor
movement began
to take shape.
Data as of September 1992
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