ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of a Peruvian national art and literature from Independence through the Revolutionary Government of the Armed forces. It examines the emergence of elite and popular artistic and literary forms in light of the political and economic context in which such aesthetic expression unfolded and the relationships between rival artistic genres and political ideologies as reflections of the tensions between groups seeking to assert political and cultural hegemony over the nation. It foregrounds Peruvian cultural-political movements such as Indianismo, Indigenismo, and Neo-Indigenismo, which centered the image of the Indian at the forefront of their attempts to reformulate aesthetic and political thought from a national perspective, examining their relationship to cosmopolitan currents, the state, as well as to Indigenous expressive and political culture.
