Local Democracy and the Radical Challenge: 1870–1914

Abstract

The future of municipal government came under intense scrutiny in Lima in the mid-nineteenth century. Opinions among nation-builders were divided, as was abundantly clear in the debate in Congress in 1860 over the new constitution. ¹ Some Congress members supported decentralization and local government, praising the work of honest, dynamic municipalities in the interior of the country, naming Tarma, Junín, Huánuco, Cerro de Pasco, Jauja, Concepción, Huancayo, Azángaro, and Huacho. But other members were skeptical of local government on the grounds that there were too few men capable of taking office and insufficient mechanisms of control through which central government could discipline wayward or inefficient local institutions. Though posed in Lima in terms of competencies and governance, at heart we see a clash between two opposing political philosophies (Chiaramonti 2007). While the latter stressed the need to build a strong, sovereign nation-state that could extend the rule of law over national territory, the former adhered to the view that personal liberties, civil rights, and citizenship would be best safeguarded by reformed local government institutions and electoral democracy. The debate did not only take place in the capital, but it was also the driving force of local politics in Tarma in the late nineteenth century.