The Independent Republic of Arequipa

Arequipa, Perus second largest city, has the most intense regional culture in the central Andes. Arequipeos fiercely conceive of themselves as exceptional and distinctive, yet also broadly representative of the nations overall hybrid naturea blending of coast (modern, white) and sierra (traditional, indigenous). The Independent Republic of Arequipa investigates why and how this regional identity developed in a boom of cultural production after the War of the Pacific (18791884) through the mid-twentieth century. Drawing on decades of ethnographic fieldwork, Thomas F. Love offers the first anthropological history of southwestern Perus distinctive regional culture. He examines both its pre-Hispanic and colonial altiplano foundations (anchored in continuing pilgrimage to key Marian shrines) and the nature of its mid-nineteenth century revolutionary identity in cross-class resistance to Limas autocratic control of nation-building in the post-Independence state. Love then examines Arequipas early twentieth-century mestizo identity (an early and unusual case of browning of regional identity) in the context of raging debates about the national question and the Indian problem, as well as the post-WWII development of extravagant displays of distinctive bull-on-bull fighting that now constitute the very performance of regional identity. Loves research reveals that Arequipas traditional local culture, symbolically marked by populist, secular, and rural elements, was in fact a project of urban-based, largely middle-class cultural entrepreneurs, invented to counter continuing Limeo autocratic power, marked by nostalgia, and anxious about the inclusion of the nations indigenous majority as full modern citizens.