Gilbert’s work on the formation and evolution of the Peruvian oligarchy, carried out during the 1970s and well known to Peruvianists through the Cornell dissertation series (The Oligarchy and the Old Regime in Peru, 1977), has now appeared in translation in Lima. It is a truly captivating story (and analysis) of Peru’s fabled 40 families (actually 30 by Gilbert’s count). While not his primary intention, Gilbert’s book, which focuses on the biographies of three principal Peruvian clans—the Aspíllaga sugar barons, the Prado financial empire, and the Miró Quesada newspaper family (El Comercio)—becomes an intimate and revealing portrait of the evolution of modern Peru. In this sense, it may be viewed favorably with the best interpretative histories of Peru, including Cotier’s Clases, estado y nación en el Perú (1977) and Palmer’s Peru: The Authoritarian Legacy (1980).
According to Gilbert, the Old Regime spanned a century, from its inception during the “guano age” of the mid-nineteenth century to its collapse in the after- math of the military revolution of 1968. It was built on an export economy (guano) which diversified after the Pacific War into sugar, cotton, and minerals. An oligarchical “golden age” emerged between 1895 and 1919, dominated by the “direct” rule of the Civilist party. Thereafter, a “tripartite” system of rule dominated in which the oligarchy governed indirectly through a compliant military which repressed and then assimilated the populist forces of APRA after the “convivencia” of 1956. This system finally collapsed after 1968 when a reformist military regime moved to systematically eliminate the foundations of oligarchical power through a series of major reforms that included land reform, nationalization of mining and the banking system, and the “statization” of the principal Lima newspapers.
These pillars of oligarchical power and their interconnection are strikingly revealed in the three individual biographies that constitute the core of the book. Each is based on a careful examination of primary sources—the Aspíllaga/Cayaltí papers in the Archivo del Fuero Agrario, the trial record of the state suit against the directors of the Banco Popular, and various informants close to these families. What follows is an absorbing account of the rise and fall of “Cayaltí,” the Aspíllaga sugar estate on the north coast; the Prado financial empire based on the Banco Popular which was run in a patrimonial rather than strictly capitalist fashion, not untypical of Peruvian capitalism in general; and the Miró Quesada control of El Comercio which, along with Pedro Beltrán’s La Prensa, formed the crucial ideological and propagandistic outlets that shaped and manipulated public opinion.
There is much more that could be said about this richly detailed and carefully documented hook. Suffice it to say that anyone interested in the structure and function of the Peruvian oligarchy and the state which it dominated for so long would do well to consult La oligarchía peruana.
