It is painful to record the passing of a great person; that pain intensifies when one was personally close to the individual. Such are my feelings in reporting the death of Dr. Jorge Basadre on June 29, 1980. On that day Peruvian history lost one of its true giants and Peruvianists everywhere lost a mentor. I know I speak for many when I say that future visits to Lima will not be the same; gone is a vital ingredient of the intellectual excitement that so many of us always felt.
Scholar, teacher, and educator of international renown, Basadre was clearly the outstanding historian in twentieth-century Peru and possibly in all of South America.
Born in Chilean-occupied Tacna in 1903, Basadre first attended clandestine Peruvian schools before moving to Lima, where he was graduated from the Colegio Nacional “Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.” In 1928 he received both his bachelor and doctoral degrees in letters from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Later he earned bachelor and doctoral degrees in law (in 1931 and 1936). It was also in 1928 that he began a long and distinguished career on the faculty of San Marcos. There he held the chair in Peruvian history (1928-54) as well as the chair in the history of Peruvian law (1935-54). From 1930 to 1931, and again from 1935 to 1942, he served as Director of the San Marcos library. Following the disastrous fire, which all but destroyed the Biblioteca Nacional in Lima in 1943, Basadre was appointed Director and given the herculean task of rebuilding. For the next five years he directed a remarkably successful national and international campaign to replace lost books, manuscripts, and periodicals. Unbeknownst to the public, and so typically in character, Basadre donated the majority of his own library to the cause. The excellence of the Biblioteca’s holdings will stand as a permanent memorial to Basadre’s skill, energy, and generosity.
Twice Basadre held the portfolio of Minister of Public Education (1945 and 1956-58); he served as the Director of Cultural Relations of the Pan American Union (1948-50) and as President of the Instituto Histórico del Perú (1956-62). Despite his many teaching and administrative duties, Basadre somehow found the time to produce a truly remarkable number of scholarly publications. His monumental Historia de la República del Perú, considered by many the best history of any Latin American nation in any language, grew from a two-volume 1939 edition to the seventeen-volume sixth edition that appeared in 1968. This basic research tool for all Peruvianists, like all of Basadre’s work, combines careful attention to detail with brilliant and incisive analysis.
Two other of Basadre’s works merit special attention. His three-volume Introducción a las bases documentales para la historia de la República del Perú con algunas reflexiones (1971) is one of the most important and comprehensive bibliographic tools in Latin American historiography. Equally important is Los fundamentos de la historia del derecho (1957, 1967), in which he combined the skills of the research historian with those of the legal scholar to produce a brilliant synthesis of the development of Western and Peruvian legal thought.
Jorge Basadre was an extraordinary scholar, an inspiring and dedicated teacher, and an administrator of superior talents. Throughout his long life he unselfishly helped other scholars, Peruvian and foreign, young and old. In a very real sense he was the father of modern Peruvian history.
The words of Angelo Patri seem most fitting in closing this tribute. “You will always feel that life touching yours, that voice speaking to you, that spirit looking out from other eyes, talking to you in the familiar things he touched, worked with, loved as familiar friends. He lives on in your life and in the lives of all others who knew him.”
Selected Ribliography
Author notes
The author is Professor of Latin American History at San Diego State University.
