El miedo en el Perú: Siglos XVI al XX

Abstract

These essays were originally presented at a conference that explored the phenomenon of fear from an interdisciplinary perspective. In the introduction, the editor explains that the aim is to approach fear not as a field in itself but as a window into the study of violence and conflict in Peru. Most of the contributors are historians, and most of them center their attention on the period before the 1850s.Fernando Rosas Moscoso’s opening essay aims to offer some theoretical guidelines for the study of fear from a historical perspective. He starts from the premise that all human beings experience fear — an assertion hard to contest. However, we should wonder whether the way human beings experience fear is universal. The author points out the fact that fear changes throughout time, but his view does not account for cultural or social differences within society. Discussing fear in a country historically as complex and divided as Peru requires an awareness and further inquiry of these differences. Ramiro Flores’s piece on the threat represented by piracy in the seventeenth century and Susy Sánchez’s article on the effects of the 1746 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Lima and the port of Callao provide interesting accounts of the state of mind of a significant part of the population of the viceregal capital. Limeños were quick to succumb to anxiety and desolation at the real threat brought by natural disasters and the (possibly at times exaggerated) menace of foreign invaders. Both authors are sensitive to aspects closely connected to the genesis and spread of fear in society: the role of rumor and xenophobia. They rightly refer to the acute social differences — with a strong ethnic component — that characterized colonial society and that exacerbated panic and distrust among the elite. Unfortunately, neither of them examines how these junctures were experienced by the lower classes or nonwhites. Scarlett O’Phelan’s study of colonial elite attitudes toward the lower classes during the eighteenth century discusses in detail the variety of situations and means through which the ruling classes expressed and lived their fear throughout this period of great political turmoil in the Andes. At the end of the eighteenth century, news from the French Revolution arrived late, and at times gravely distorted, to the Spanish colonies in South America. Claudia Rosas Lauro’s essay studies its impact in Peru, prioritizing the ideological debates of the time, as well as the viceregal government’s efforts to counter and control the information arriving from Europe. The collapse of the colonial regime and the War of Independence caused great anxiety among Lima’s elites for a period of about four years. Cristina Mazzeo and Arnaldo Mera both study this juncture. Mazzeo’s analysis makes original use of social psychology to explore the collective behavior of the most privileged. Her piece represents the volume’s most consistent effort to analyze the phenomenon of fear from a historical perspective. Jeffrey Klaiber’s essay on the fear of the APRA, the oldest political party in Peru, provides a brief yet efficient overview of the various ways the party has been perceived throughout its history. He examines the roots of the party’s popularity and winding trajectory, as well as the extreme reactions it has elicited, and continues to elicit, among large sectors of the Peruvian population: both tremendous passion and great fear.The volume’s organizing theme is not easy to approach, and not all the essays put fear at the center of their inquiry. What is specific about the experience of fear in Peru appears to be the great cultural and social divides enveloped in racial discourse, but this is taken as a given and not carefully scrutinized. The experience of the elite is the center of attention, and most of book’s essays deal with Lima. A concluding remark could have helped the reader see how all these studies are connected and how they advance our understanding of violence and conflict in Peru.