The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State, 1820-1850

Combining social and political history, The Plebeian Republic challenges well-established interpretations of state-making, rural society, and caudillo politics during the early years of Peru’s republic. Cecilia Mendez presents the first in-depth reconstruction and analysis of the Huanta rebellion–an uprising of peasants from the Huanta province against the recently established Peruvian republic between 1825 and 1828. By situating the rebellion within the broader context of early nineteenth-century Peruvian politics and tracing the Huanta peasants’ transformation from monarchist rebels to liberal guerrillas, Mendez complicates understandings of what meant to be a patriot, a citizen, a monarchist, a liberal, and a Peruvian during a foundational moment in the history of South American nation-states. In addition to official sources such as trial dossiers, censuses, tax rolls, wills, and notary and military records, Mendez uses a wide variety of previously unexplored sources produced by the mostly Quechua-speaking rebels. She reveals the Huanta rebellion as a complex interaction of social, linguistic, economic, and demographic forces. Rejecting ideas of the Andean rebels as passive and reactionary, she depicts the barely literate insurgents as having had a relatively clear idea of national political struggles and contends that most leaders of the uprising invoked monarchism as a source of legitimacy but did not espouse it as a political system. She argues that despite their pronouncements of loyalty to the Spanish crown, the rebels’ behavior evinced a political vision that was quite different from both the colonial regime and the republic that followed it.