De marchas y contramarchas: apuntes sobre la institucion municipal en el Perù (1812-1861)

The article traces the evolution of municipal institutions in Peru, from the colonial period to 1861. In the viceroyalty of Peru, as far as in the other areas in which it was applied, the Cadiz constitution gave to a large number of collective social subjects, without ethnic discriminations, the right to elect municipal organisms, mutually independent, with a wide range of powers, first of all the administration of justice at a local level. When Peru acquired independence, municipalities faced different phases, according to laws and constitutions. Even when they were formaly abolished (1839), local communities kept on making collective decisions, using a traditional political language, similar to the one used by Spanish and Spanish-American juntas in the time of the crisis of the Spanish monarchy. In 1856 municipalities were reintroduced, but their great number and wide range of powers gave birth to several conflicts with local political authorities and to a great amount of complaints. Thus, the constitution of 1860 and the new ley de municipalidades reduced municipalities' number and powers, while they maintained their elective nature; liberal Peruvian legislators believed that municipalities were «the most glorious among the institutions profitably experimented in the pueblos», able to keep local peace and at the same time to avoid the risks of federalism. Moreover, these new dispositions provided for the election of municipal agencies even in small villages. Municipalities still also had the right to compile registers of enfranchised citizens, and the electoral law of 1861 gave to each pueblo the right to name a “second degree” elector, in order to be represented in the indirect two-level electoral system of the time.