‘Republicanos’ and ‘la Communidad de Peruanos’: Unimagined Political Communities in Postcolonial Andean Peru

Although unimagined and unanticipated within the Creole nationalist ‘discursive frameworks’ of the liberal-republican state, nineteenth-century Andean peasant communities sought mediated re-insertion in the postcolonial Peruvian Republic. Key to peasant political engagement in the Andean region of Huaylas-Ancash was the tactical deployment of ‘Indian rights’ of colonial origin to make moral and material claims on the postcolonial caudillo state. In Huaylas-Ancash peasant claims and political practices destabilised liberal notions of ‘republic’ and ‘republican’ citizenship, and eventually challenged the teleogical historicity of Creole nation-building itself.