How did Peru celebrate the bicentennial of its independence?
Peru's bicentennial
El Bicentenario del Perú
28 July 2021–9 December 2024. Two hundred years after San Martín's proclamation in Lima, Peru named 2021 the 'Year of the Bicentennial of Peru: 200 years of Independence', with 28 July as…
Draft: not yet checked against its sources.
Where: The whole Spanish-speaking world, Peru, Lima
What happened
Two hundred years after San Martín's proclamation in Lima, Peru named 2021 the 'Year of the Bicentennial of Peru: 200 years of Independence', with 28 July as the central day. The celebration came in the middle of the pandemic, which hit Peru harder than almost any country, and in a political storm: five presidents in five years, and on 28 July 2021 itself the inauguration of Pedro Castillo, a rural schoolteacher, removed in December 2022. Where the centenary of 1921 had celebrated San Martín and the generals, the bicentennial programme tried to tell independence as a plural story, with Indigenous, Black and women's voices, and ran until the two hundredth anniversary of Ayacucho on 9 December 2024.
Say it
En 2021 el Perú celebró doscientos años de independencia.
In 2021 Peru celebrated two hundred years of independence.
Why it matters
Peru's bicentennial, like Mexico's and Argentina's in 2010 and Colombia's in 2019, asked who the republic had been for; the decision to name the year in Quechua and Aymara as well as Spanish said something new about who counts as Peruvian.
Read about it
Connected
- San Martín proclaims Peru's independence (28 July 1821)
- San Martín proclaims Peru's independence (28 July 1821)
- Ayacucho: the end of Spanish rule in South America (9 December 1824)
- The Instituto Cervantes is created (March 1991)
- The Venezuelan exodus (c. 2015)
Sources
- Gobierno declara al 2021 como 'Año del Bicentenario del Perú: 200 años de Independencia' — Presidencia del Consejo de Ministros (gob.pe)