🇵🇪 Peru

The Caral-Supe civilization developed along Peru's Pacific coastline, forming the earliest known complex society in the territory. Its emergence established the Andean pattern of coastal urbanism supported by irrigation agriculture and fishing.

The Chavín culture spread across the Andean region as a predominantly religious rather than political phenomenon. Its decline around the beginning of the 1st century CE was followed by a millennium of localised regional cultures on the coast and in the highlands.

The Chimu were the principal city builders of pre-Inca Peru, ruling a loose confederation of walled cities along the northern coast from their capital at Chan Chan near modern Trujillo. Their urban engineering marked the high point of coastal state organisation before Inca conquest.

Beginning under Pachacuti and his son Topa Inca Yupanqui, the Incas expanded rapidly from a minor Quechua group to control western South America from southern Colombia to northern Chile, ruling 9 to 16 million people. Pachacuti promulgated a comprehensive legal code and consolidated absolute temporal and spiritual authority, with Quechua as the official language of Tawantinsuyu.

According to historian Noble David Cook, Peru's Amerindian population fell from nearly 5–9 million in the 1520s to about 600,000 by 1620, chiefly through introduced epidemic disease alongside exploitation and socio-economic upheaval. African slaves were imported to supplement the depleted labour force.

The Capitulation of Toledo designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru, fixing the territory's name in law. It formalised Spanish claims ahead of the conquest.

Pizarro's small conquistador force, supported by Chanka, Huanca, Cañari and Chachapoya auxiliaries, ambushed and captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca on 16 November 1532; despite receiving a vast ransom in gold and silver they executed him the following year. It was the first step in a decades-long campaign that ended in Spanish victory and the establishment of the Viceroyalty of Peru with its capital at Lima.

Officially established in Lima during the Viceroyalty of Peru, San Marcos began higher education in the Americas and remains the oldest continuously functioning university on the continent. It anchored Lima's role as the intellectual centre of Spanish South America.

The rebel Lope de Aguirre proclaimed an independent Peru under his own princely rule. The revolt was cut short by his arrest and execution.

Toledo restructured Peru's economy so that mining became the principal activity, sustained by compulsory indigenous labour. With the great lodes at Potosí and Huancavelica, the viceroyalty became a leading supplier of bullion, funding the Spanish Crown and a trade network reaching Europe and the Philippines.

The last organised Inca resistance was destroyed at Vilcabamba, completing the Spanish military subjugation of the Andes. It ended four decades of indigenous armed opposition to colonial rule.

While Spain controlled Portugal, the Tordesillas line ceased to constrain Portuguese expansion of Brazil westwards. Spain did not resist, permanently shaping South American borders at the expense of Spanish claims.

Faced with declining silver output and falling royal income, the Crown increased taxation and split the Viceroyalty of Peru through the creation of New Granada and Rio de la Plata. This stripped Lima of prominence, shifted Andean trade to Buenos Aires and Bogotá, and accelerated the decay of mining and textile production.

One of the two most important indigenous rebellions of colonial Peru, the rising challenged Spanish authority in the interior. It presaged the far larger Túpac Amaru revolt four decades later.

Beginning in the Cusco region, the rebellion spread to modern-day Bolivia and Argentina and cooperated with the risings of Tomás and Túpac Katari. Provoked by the Bourbon Reforms' new taxes, it was the most devastating uprising the viceroyalty faced and was ultimately suppressed.

Direct commerce was officially established between Manila in the Philippines and Callao in Peru. It formalised a transpacific link that had long operated indirectly through the Manila Galleons and Acapulco.

A fleet of eight warships under San Martín and Thomas Cochrane arrived at Paracas, taking Pisco on 26 October and blockading Callao. San Martín established headquarters at Huacho while attempting unsuccessfully to negotiate independence with the Viceroy.

San Martín's Protectorate created the National Library, approved the National Anthem and abolished the mita forced-labour system in favour of the indigenous population. On 27 December 1821 he established three ministries — Foreign Affairs, War and Navy, and Finance — laying the administrative foundations of the new state.

After Viceroy José de la Serna abandoned the capital, San Martín entered Lima on 12 July 1821 and proclaimed Peru's independence from Spain on 28 July. He created the first Peruvian flag and was declared Protector of Peru, assuming military-political command by decree of 3 August 1821, though Spanish forces continued fighting inland until their final defeat at Ayacucho three years later.

Following victory at Junín on 6 August 1824, the patriot army under Bolívar and Sucre decisively defeated the larger Spanish force at Ayacucho on 9 December 1824, destroying the last major royalist army in South America. The battles secured the independence of Peru, of Upper Peru (which became Bolivia) and of the wider continent from Spanish rule.

Rising state revenues from guano allowed Peru to modernise: civil and military bureaucracy expanded, indigenous tribute ended, slaves were freed and European migration policies were promoted. The boom ended by the 1870s with resources depleted, the country heavily indebted and political infighting resurgent.

Emancipation ended slavery in Peru during the guano-funded reform era. The resulting labour shortage was met from the 1850s by Chinese and Japanese immigrants, who became a lasting influence in Peruvian society.

After a Spanish expedition occupied the guano-rich Chincha Islands in 1864, Peru, with Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador, declared war on Spain. The Spanish Navy withdrew following the battle of Callao on 2 May 1866; the crisis had already provoked a coup against President Juan Antonio Pezet.

Chile declared war on Peru, which was bound by its 1873 Treaty of Defensive Alliance with Bolivia after a Bolivian–Chilean tax dispute; Peruvian historiography holds the war stemmed from Chile's ambition for the nitrate and guano territories of southern Peru. Peru ceded Tarapacá and lost the provinces of Tacna and Arica for decades, and the naval defeat at Angamos on 8 October 1879 and the death of Admiral Miguel Grau became defining national memories, still commemorated as a public holiday each 8 October. It was the bloodiest war Peru has fought, and political stability was regained only in the early 1900s.

The American explorer was guided to the abandoned Inca citadel above the Urubamba valley on 24 July 1911, and his accounts and Yale-sponsored excavations made the site a global symbol of Peru's Inca heritage.

Following the discovery of oil in the Peruvian Amazon and on the northern coast in the early 20th century, Peru briefly became one of the region's leading producers. Petroleum later became a state-controlled sector after the 1968 nationalisation.

The final peace treaty settled the long-running dispute left by the War of the Pacific, restoring Tacna to Peru while Arica remained Chilean. It closed a territorial question that had poisoned relations for four decades.

Officially established on 20 May 1929 under the name Peruvian Aviation Corps, it became the third branch of the armed forces alongside the Army and Navy. It gave Peru an independent air capability.

Economic collapse ended the authoritarian regime of Augusto B. Leguía and renewed political turmoil, producing the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance. The rivalry between APRA and a coalition of the elite and the military defined Peruvian politics for three decades.

Peru was engulfed in a year-long conflict with Colombia over a territorial dispute involving the Amazonas Department and its capital Leticia. The war reflected unresolved Amazonian boundaries inherited from the colonial period.

The conflict was followed by the Rio Protocol, which sought to formalise the boundary between the two countries. The demarcation remained contested for over half a century.

Odría took the presidency on 29 October 1948, repressing APRA while pursuing populist social spending that won favour with the poor. A thriving economy funded costly programmes, but civil rights were severely restricted and corruption was rampant.

Widespread allegations of electoral fraud prompted the armed forces to remove President Manuel Prado Ugarteche. Godoy ran a short transitional government and held new elections in 1963, won by Fernando Belaúnde Terry.

Belaúnde won the elections held by the transitional military government and governed until 1968. He was recognised for his commitment to the democratic process.

State control of oil followed the seizure of the International Petroleum Corporation, placing a strategic resource in national hands. By the 1980s almost a quarter of Peru's exports were oil.

A group of officers led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado overthrew elected President Fernando Belaúnde on 3 October 1968, aiming at 'social progress and integral development' and influenced by UNECLAC dependency theses. Six days later Velasco nationalised the International Petroleum Corporation and began a sweeping reform of the state apparatus, leading a leftist military government that nationalised industries and redistributed land from large estates to peasants and cooperatives.

The latifundia system was abolished and land redistributed to those who worked it, with 90% of peasants forming cooperatives or agricultural societies of social interest; 325,000 families received land averaging 29.8 hectares. The regime also invested massively in education, raised Quechua to a status equivalent to Spanish and established equal rights for natural children.

Washington had responded to Velasco's third-world foreign policy and expropriations with commercial, economic and diplomatic pressure. Securing the loan to finance agricultural and mining development appeared to defeat the blockade.

Morales Bermúdez reversed the direction of the revolutionary government, beginning the retreat from its reforms. His regime occasionally participated in Operation Condor alongside other American military dictatorships.

The state changed its denomination from the Peruvian Republic, used since independence, to the Republic of Peru. The change accompanied the constitutional settlement following the military governments.

Economic turbulence and social tension fuelled the rise of the Maoist Shining Path, which began its campaign in Ayacucho in 1980, and of the MRTA, both causing havoc nationwide. The conflict was marked by atrocities on both sides, including the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres by government paramilitaries and the Tarata and Frecuencia Latina bombings by Sendero; an estimated 69,000 people were killed before the capture of Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán in September 1992.

After twelve years of military government, Peru restored democratic rule in 1980, but the country then experienced economic problems and the growth of a violent insurgency.

Frustrated by the García administration's handling of the crises, the military prepared a plan involving the genocide of impoverished and indigenous Peruvians, media control and the establishment of a neoliberal economy under a military junta. Much of its content was later adopted in government policy.

The Peruvian diplomat held the UN's highest office for a decade. His tenure marked the peak of Peruvian influence in international institutions.

After advancing from a delayed first round and winning a tight second round on 7 June, Fujimori took office on 28 July 2026. Her Popular Force also emerged as the single-largest party in both chambers of the restored bicameral Congress.

The National Office of Electoral Processes completed its count on 29 June 2026, giving Fujimori about 50,000 more votes than Roberto Sánchez out of millions cast; Sánchez did not concede and alleged irregularities in the counting of votes from abroad.

Carlos Díaz Dañino and Hugo de Zela quit in protest after President Balcázar deferred a deal to buy 24 F-16 aircraft from the United States until after the presidential election was decided.

Congress voted out Jerí and elected José María Balcázar as the new interim president. Balcázar was to lead the country until general elections scheduled for 12 April 2026.

Jerí was impeached on 17 February 2026 for holding undisclosed meetings with a Chinese businessman under scrutiny by the Peruvian government, after just over four months as interim president.

The measure, announced on 25 February 2026, responded to severe rains, flooding and landslides affecting the Andes, the Amazon and the Pacific coast, following a mudslide that had already killed two people in Arequipa.

Congress replaced the previous unicameral body with a 130-member Chamber of Deputies and a 60-member Senate. The change restructured the branch that had dominated Peruvian politics since 1993.

An emergency decree issued on 31 December 2025 opened the debt-laden state oil company to private capital, part of an effort to address years of losses and stalled refinery investment.

The break, announced on 3 November 2025, followed Mexico's decision to grant asylum to former prime minister Betssy Chávez at its embassy in Lima while she faced investigation over the 2022 self-coup attempt.

Castillo, president until his December 2022 attempt to dissolve Congress, was convicted of conspiracy to commit rebellion alongside former prime minister Betssy Chávez, who received the same sentence.

The measure, announced on 28 November 2025, responded to a rising influx of migrants crossing from Chile, and allowed the deployment of additional security forces to the frontier.

On 10 October 2025 Congress voted to remove Boluarte, and José Jerí was sworn in as interim president. It continued the pattern of legislative removal of presidents under the 1993 Constitution.

The shooting at the Círculo Militar in Lima on 8 October 2025 was linked to an extortion demand against the cumbia group, and the attack became a catalyst for the impeachment of President Boluarte days later.

Lawmakers voted Boluarte out on grounds of permanent moral incapacity on 10 October 2025 amid public anger over crime and corruption, making José Jerí, the president of Congress, interim head of state.

A naturalised Peruvian citizen was elected to the papacy. The elevation gave Peru unprecedented prominence within the global Catholic Church, to which 76% of the population adhered at the 2017 census.

Opened on 14 November 2024, Chancay serves as a key gateway for trade between South America and Asia. It significantly reduces shipping times across the Pacific.

A ruling by the court, whose members are elected by Congress, stripped away judicial supervision of the legislature. Commentators held that this gave Congress effectively absolute control of Peru's government.

On 7 December 2022, hours before a third impeachment vote, Castillo accused Congress of creating a 'congressional dictatorship' and announced the closure of Congress and the judiciary in favour of an emergency government. The move collapsed within hours: Congress voted the same day to remove him and installed Vice President Dina Boluarte as Peru's first female president, while Castillo was arrested, charged with rebellion and later sentenced to over 11 years in prison.

Protesters demanded Boluarte's removal, immediate general elections and a new constitution; authorities responded violently, producing the worst bloodshed in over two decades. The severity of the response raised concerns that the Lima political elite sought an authoritarian or civilian-military government.

Castillo of the Free Peru party won the first round on 11 April 2021 and narrowly beat Keiko Fujimori in the run-off, taking office on 28 July 2021 as Peru marked its bicentenary of independence. He was targeted from the outset by a right-wing Congress determined to remove him.

Vizcarra's removal was widely seen as a coup by Congress, and its head Manuel Merino took the presidency only to face nationwide protests, resigning after five days. Francisco Sagasti then led a provisional centrist government enforcing many of Vizcarra's policies.

The pandemic exposed deep inequalities persisting since the Fujimori administration and triggered an economic crisis. Military personnel and reservists were used to enforce strict quarantine measures.

Exercising the presidential power to pose questions of confidence, Vizcarra ordered the dissolution of the legislature, as Fujimori had done in 1992. The move intensified the executive–legislative conflict at the heart of Peru's political crisis.

Congress used the 1993 Constitution's broadly interpreted impeachment wording to pressure the president without needing cause, forcing his resignation amid controversies. Vice president Martín Vizcarra assumed office in March 2018 and led an anti-corruption constitutional referendum movement.

The 2017 census asked respondents to identify their ethnicity, a first for Peruvian statistics. It recorded that 79.3% of the population lived in urban areas and detailed religious affiliation.

Venezuelan residents in Peru rose from 6,615 in 2016 to around 820,000 by mid-June 2019. The influx reshaped the country's labour market and urban demography.

Former army officer Ollanta Humala Tasso won the presidency on 5 June 2011, defeating Keiko Fujimori Higuchi, daughter of Alberto Fujimori, and continued the market-oriented economic policies of the preceding administrations. His cabinet was successfully censured by the Fujimorist-dominated legislature, beginning a decade in which Congress systematically obstructed sitting presidents.

An initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism with Peruvian companies and startups, it promoted the purchase and consumption of domestically made products. It supported tourism and export promotion during the growth decade.

The former president was found guilty of human rights violations for killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina death squad during the 1990s counterinsurgency. The conviction was a landmark in Peruvian accountability for state violence.

Joining UNASUR embedded Peru in regional integration structures. It reflected the country's broader diplomatic engagement during the growth years of the 2000s.

The agreement, signed on 12 April 2006, was expected to increase trade substantially. It reinforced Peru's export-oriented, investment-friendly economic model.

Alberto Fujimori's daughter began her political career espousing her father's legacy. She would go on to lead the right-wing congressional bloc that dominated Peruvian politics for the following two decades.

The 2006 presidential election returned Alan García Pérez, whose earlier 1985–90 term had been a disappointment; his second term saw a robust economic rebound.

After the caretaker government oversaw new elections in the spring of 2001, Alejandro Toledo Manrique became head of government, the first democratically elected Peruvian president of indigenous ethnicity. He governed from 2001 to 2006 as Peru sought to fight corruption while sustaining economic growth, and was later accused of receiving bribes from the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht during his government.

Fujimori fled the country and sent his resignation by fax from Japan in November 2000 after a videotape emerged showing his intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, bribing a congressman, ending a decade in power engulfed by corruption scandal. He went into self-imposed exile, initially escaping prosecution for human rights violations and corruption, while a caretaker government under Valentín Paniagua organised new presidential and congressional elections.

Compulsory military service was ended and replaced with a volunteer system. The armed forces subsequently comprised the Navy, Army and Air Force under the Ministry of Defence.

The agreement finally fixed the international boundary between the two states after decades of intermittent conflict. It removed Peru's most persistent territorial dispute.

Fighting resumed over the long-disputed border in early 1995. In 1998 both governments signed a peace treaty that clearly demarcated the international boundary, closing a dispute dating from 1941.

The new charter replaced a constitution that had leaned towards federation, concentrating authority and embedding broadly interpreted impeachment wording allowing Congress to remove presidents without cause. It remains the framework through which Fujimorism has held power over Peruvian institutions.

Facing opposition to his reforms and citing gridlock and the fight against the Shining Path, Fujimori dissolved Congress on 5 April 1992, suspended the constitution and the judiciary, arrested opposition leaders and assumed full powers. He then ruled by decree, revised the constitution (approved in 1993), called new congressional elections and privatised numerous state-owned companies.

The nuevo sol replaced the inti at a rate reflecting a cumulative value of one billion old soles. It marked the monetary consolidation of the stabilisation programme.

The Programa Nacional de Población resulted in mass forced sterilisation targeting poor and indigenous women. It became one of the defining human rights abuses of the regime.

Alberto Fujimori won the 1990 election, taking office with an understanding reached with Montesinos and Plan Verde officers, and adopted many of that plan's policies in a neoliberal shock programme. Inflation fell from 7,650% at the start of 1990 to 139% in 1991 and 57% in 1992, opening a decade of dramatic economic turnaround and significant progress in curtailing the Shining Path insurgency, though the poorest benefited little and inequality persisted.

García's economic policies distanced Peru from international markets and reduced foreign investment, and the currency was changed in mid-1985. By the end of the 1980s per capita income had fallen to $720, below the 1960 level, GDP had dropped 20% and reserves ran a $900 million deficit.