At the dawn of the twentieth century, the initiative of a group of peasants from the province of Chucuito (Department of Puno, Southeastern Peru) produced a wave of peasant mobilization that shook the control hacendados had over the area establishing an unprecedented dialogue with the state. Peruvian peasants historically have been denied a political role in the nation: their political contributions being reduced to violent revolts. This study, focusing on a southern highland region characterized by indigenous majorities and ethnic diversity (Aymaras and Quechuas), aims at showing the existence of an alternative peasant national project based on ethnic citizenship. Peasants developed short and long term strategies and projects, which argue against the images of irrationality and millenarian thought that have characterized peasant studies. I will argue that revolts were far from being the main political tool of Puno’s peasantry. Instead, they countered abuse mainly through the means of litigation, civil disobedience, and renegotiation of the ‘tributary pact’ with the state.

I have tried to retrieve the peasant voices that claimed justice and full citizen rights from 1900 to 1930, by drawing information from the documents presented by peasant representatives to the state, administrative reports, official correspondence, lawsuits, national and regional newspapers and secondary sources. Following the footsteps of traveling messengers, I have analyzed their proposals, petitions, and actions—particularly the building of communal schools and creation of defensive organizations. I have also tried to understand why this projected multiethnic nation slammed up against a wall of repression due to hacendado, peasant, and state misconceptions and clientelistic relations of power. By adopting hacendado racial prejudices, the Peruvian state forced the peasantry to abandon its discourses on ethnic citizenship and move on to class-oriented discourses with very different consequences for the country.