No matter how detached and objective historians try to be in evaluating the factors that brought a definitive end to Spanish rule in Peru by December 1824, it remains difficult to provide an analysis of this process without commenting upon shifting establishment ideology, popular consciousness, and the articulation of national identity in not only the new republic but also in the Peru of the late-twentieth century. At the risk of over-simplifying the issues it is probably legitimate to suggest that they are faced at the outset with the stark choice of choosing between two contrasting interpretations of how (and perhaps even when – 1821 or 1824?) Peru secured its independence. The first is that which characterizes the late-colonial period in terms of conservatism, lethargy and economic stagnation, and dismisses the rebellion of Túpac Amaru and other manifestations of discontent prior to 1810 as incoherent, rural protest movements which, far from uniting Peruvians of all races and regions behind a quest for national independence, had the contrary effect of alienating the viceroyalty's creole minority and frightening it into supporting the maintenance of Spanish rule. Even Heraclio Bonilla's iconoclastic 1972 study of independence, although sensitive to the need to differentiate between the interests and attitudes of the peninsula-oriented elite of the viceregal capital on the one hand and, on the other, those of the provincial elites, especially in Cusco and Arequipa, whose motivation often seemed to be to secure emancipation from Lima rather than Madrid, concludes that ‘toda coalición de los criollos … con los grupos más bajos de la sociedad colonial fue tentativa y efímera’.

The alternative interpretation, which has grown in popularity in Peru during the last three decades, is that which identifies Túpac Amaru as the first of the great precursors of South American independence and depicts the 40 years that followed his execution in terms such as ‘casi medio siglo de incesante lucha por la libertad política’, a process that reached its natural and glorious conclusion with the entry of José de San Martín into Lima in 1821.