The Quest for Virile National Progress: Modernity, Masculinity, and Intraclass Disputes in Peruvian Intellectual Elites, 1884–1912

Abstract

This article focuses on how Peruvian elites mobilized representations of masculinities as part of discourses on national progress and as essential elements in their assertions of hierarchy. By addressing intellectual elites’ discourses in two cultural magazines, El Perú Ilustrado and Variedades, and various literary works during the 1884–1912 period, the article presents three arguments. First, elites’ diagnosis of the country’s backwardness emphasized Peruvian men’s deficient masculinity, which included the elites’ own white creole masculinity. Thus, intellectual elites placed great importance on catching up with European “masculine” traits as pathways to progress and modernization. Second, discourses on masculinity were central elements by which elites asserted their legitimacy. Elites mobilized discourses on masculinity selectively—either as self-restraint or as physical prowess—to reinforce their hierarchical status vis-à-vis subaltern men. Third, intergenerational conflicts between the elites’ younger and older cohorts also transpired in terms of masculinity. Each generation depicted the other as embodying abject effeminacy. As a whole, by incorporating the analytical lens of masculinity, the article provides new insights into the construction of elites’ identities and of long-standing hierarchies in Latin America.

Resumen

Este artículo se enfoca en cómo las élites peruanas movilizaron representaciones alrededor de masculinidades como parte de disputas sobre progreso nacional y como elementos críticos en cómo afirmaban su posición jerárquica. A través del estudio de discursos provenientes de las élites intelectuales en dos revistas culturales —El Perú Ilustrado y Variedades— y varias piezas literarias durante el periodo de 1884–1912, el artículo demuestras tres argumentos. Primero, los diagnósticos de las élites sobre el atraso del país enfatizaban el estado deficiente de la masculinidad nacional, lo cual incluía su propia masculinidad criolla blanca. Segundo, pese a las dudas sobre su propia masculinidad, las élites peruanas movilizaron discursos sobre masculinidad de manera selectiva —como temple o como vigor físico— para reforzar su estatus jerárquico frente a hombres subalternos. Tercero, conflictos intergeneracionales entre grupos más jóvenes frente a otros mayores dentro de la misma élite también transpiraron en términos de masculinidad. Para deslegitimar a su contraparte, cada generación retrataba a la otra como encarnando una feminidad abyecta. En suma, al incorporar el lente analítico de género y masculinidad, el artículo introduce nuevos elementos para comprender la construcción de identidades de élite y para comprender la reproducción de jerarquías duraderas en América Latina.

In a country like Peru, whose population is accustomed to being utterly disappointed by its political officials, it is no surprise that the aristocrat turned anarchist intellectual Manuel González Prada and his vitriolic attacks against the elites have remained so popular. In the aftermath of the “War of the Pacific”—and the crisis that came with it—González Prada represented the voice of despair for his generation. The imagery around González Prada revolves around his antielitism, but his essays were saturated by gendered ideas on masculinity as well.

González Prada explained the martial defeat as a result of the lack of strenuous manhood in Peru. Oligarchic elites were the ones to blame. They were “pygmies,” lethargic, prone to laziness, feeble, relinquished, and full of “pleasant complacency.” To undermine their status, González Prada described political elites as effeminate and willing to engage in homosexual acts. He referred to Piérola as possessed by “a feminine, puerile, indescribable frivolity” (González Prada 1908, 183), whereas his followers’ position in the public apparatus depended on their “flexibility for low feats under the sheets” (González Prada 1908, 221). Indigenous men’s character was part of the problem, too. He described indigenous subjects as weak, lethargic, and excessively emotional. The key to Peruvian resurgence thus lay in a warlike masculinity, one that emphasized virile and aggressive qualities (González Prada 1894, 1908, 1938). At the same time, given his prominent status as an intellectual, González Prada favored high culture and erudition. He stressed that Peruvian problems were also due to the elites’ lack of moral conviction, intellect, responsibility and to their tempered character (González Prada 1908). In contrast, a national resurgence required Peruvian men to be humble, honorable, calm, courteous, courageous, and good fathers. ¹

González Prada’s gendered assertions provide a great example of how intellectual elites mobilized tropes on masculinity to assert their status in this period. First, they illustrate the salience of imagery of masculinity for elites’ concerns about national progress and their leading role in the country. Second, González Prada’s claims show that the models of proper masculinity that elites emphasized were far from uniform. Scholars have associated González Prada with a model of virile warlike masculinity (Peluffo 2019; Velásquez 2021), yet he also extolled self-restraint and calmness as masculine virtues that could restore national honor. Last, Gonzalez Prada’s “strategy” of describing political opponents as effeminate also exemplifies how intraelite disputes transpired in terms of questioning other men’s masculinity in order to delegitimize them.

This article explores how Peru’s intellectual elites mobilized gendered assertions around masculinity as essential pathways to construct their hierarchical identity during the 1884–1912 period. By “intellectual elites,” I mean people who belonged to exclusive circles whose notoriety was anchored in their cultural capital, particularly in literary writings and scholarly works. ² Even if these years witnessed the emergence of prominent female intellectuals, the article focuses on two generations of intellectual elite men. These two generations, though with some nuances, did not represent two distinct social groups, but the old and new cadres of similar elites. The intellectual figures I follow here greatly influenced the discourses that circulated in the public arena while also occupying top positions in public institutions that regulated the lives of popular classes in the country. The gendered imageries they advanced thus shaped public opinion and hegemonic ideals, becoming fundamental components of power relations in Peru.

The article’s main argument can be divided into three parts. First, elites’ diagnosis of the country’s backwardness emphasized Peruvian men’s—including white creole men’s—deficient masculinity. Thus, intellectual elites placed great importance on catching up with European “masculine” traits as pathways to progress and modernization. This is an aspect that is often overlooked in Peruvian historiography, which is mostly focused on race. Second, discourses on masculinity were also central elements for elites to assert their hegemony and dominance in the country. Despite self-doubts about their own masculinity, intellectual elites mobilized discourses on masculinity selectively—either as self-restraint or as physical prowess—to reinforce their hierarchical status against indigenous men. The emphasis on malleability challenges the historiography of masculinity around this time, which stresses the transition from one model of masculinity to another. Third, amid modernization processes, intergenerational conflicts between younger and older elite cohorts also emerged. To delegitimize its counterpart, each generation depicted the latter as embodying abject effeminacy. As a whole, the article shows that while intellectual elites internalized notions of a deficient masculinity in Peru, tropes of masculinity were also fundamental components in how elites legitimized their privileged position in the country. The three parts of the argument thus demonstrate the centrality of discourses on masculinity as constitutive elements in the formation of identity, hierarchies, and power relations in fin-de-siècle Peru.

The article relies on two types of sources concerning Peruvian intellectual elites. The first is magazines produced by intellectual elites as conduits for advancing modernity and civilization. I use El Perú Ilustrado (1887–1891) and Variedades (1908–1912) to address two subperiods. Although Variedades devoted more attention to day-to-day political events, both magazines printed relevant news on global modern advances and promoted literary pieces, leisure activities, and quotidian events associated with modernity. In both cases, the editorial boards mostly included male intellectual elites, while the audience consisted of urban middle- and upper-class individuals. In addition, I explore the extensive writing of intellectual figures who collaborated on these magazines and also published diverse literary works throughout the period. The article is grounded in theoretical and empirical works on gender and masculinities, which I introduce in each section.

The case: The quest for modernity in Peru

The second half of the nineteenth century in Peru was marked by vicissitudes, not all of which were for the best. After independence, and twenty-five years of profound political and economic instability, an enormous amount of wealth fell almost literally from the sky in the form of guano, nitrogen-rich bird feces. The guano boom brought an unprecedented influx of resources to the Peruvian state, but the period ended badly. By the 1880s, an ever-increasing cycle of external debt accompanied by the exhaustion of guano resources led to a severe economic crisis, while defeat in the war against Chile implied political calamity and the occupation of several cities, including Lima.

After the war, Peru experienced two very distinct phases. Two civil wars marked the 1885–1895 decade. A civic-military coalition tried to secure some degree of political stability and to establish the foundations for economic recovery, yet the political alliance was rather frail, and the country experienced only a timid economic recovery (McEvoy 1997). After 1895, the two main factions of the political elite formed a pact to inaugurate a period of strong oligarchic political rule, founded on excluding the illiterate population, which included most of the indigenous population, from voting. The protagonists of the political arena were members of a very small elite, as cohesive among themselves as they were distant from the rest of the country’s population. The period also witnessed export-led economic growth based on primary resources controlled by national economic elites alongside increasingly influential foreign capital (Quiroz 1993). Although the period known as the República Aristocrática ended in 1919, I consider the period only until 1912. In that year, the election as president of Guillermo Billinghurst, a political leader from elite circles but with an agenda aligned with the urban working classes, exhibited significant cracks in the political system, and the most significant transformations in fin-de-siècle Lima had already taken place.

During this time, Lima’s elites occupied the most prominent spaces in the private and public arenas. Public and semipublic institutions, such as Lima’s Public Beneficence and Lima’s Provincial Council, became essential spaces where elites interacted and defined key policies affecting everyday life in the capital city. For their part, elite social clubs and professional and cultural circles, where mostly elite men concurred, appeared or consolidated in the period (Del Águila 1997; Gilbert 2017), while elites created new channels to spread their views, such as bulletins and magazines (Velásquez 2005; Torres Espinosa 2021).

Membership and participation in such institutions were mostly circumscribed to the gente decente (respectable people) of Lima. In a city characterized by an informal yet strong hierarchical order, being gente decente involved a combination of cultural, economic, and social aspects. Being perceived as decente rested on the multifaceted combination of different criteria, such as light skin—very contentious in itself—wealth, ancestry and lineage, landownership, rites of Catholicism, education, and manners and lifestyle (Parker 1998b; Portocarrero 2013; Whipple 2022). As in other countries with the experience of mestizaje, the loose but ever-present criteria of respectability allowed people to aspire to pass as white and respectable, yet the stigma of subaltern status always threatened.

Intellectual elites were members of the gente decente, but they also emphasized their role as the vanguard of national progress. During the 1880s, most intellectuals believed that even if the war had put national progress on hold, the elements to recommence the (elite-led) modernization process were present. Two decades later, optimism around national progress reigned. Economic progress was made possible through the exploitation of the country’s abundant natural resources, and modernizing elites considered themselves capable of transforming the country and its population.

Peruvian intellectual elites shared in the fin-de-siècle frenzy around newfound possibilities for human intervention into their surroundings, including nature and subaltern groups deemed inferior. As in other countries, elites grasped fin-de-siècle modernity as foreign processes associated with European (and, increasingly, US) whiteness and Western progress (Stoler 2010; Saler 2014). Peruvian elites engaged in painstaking efforts to shape their lifestyle in ways that asserted their belonging to Western modernity. Nonetheless, intellectual elites’ optimism around progress matched their assessments of national deficiencies. By recognizing the nation’s many and deep-rooted shortcomings, they stressed the need for urgent and strong intervention, and they established themselves as the only enlightened group capable of rectifying such shortcomings.

The most strenuous elite-led efforts focused on Lima, the capital city. During this time period, Lima’s population grew from 103,000 in the 1890s to 173,000 people in 1920, while the city in itself changed dramatically in an attempt to mirror contemporary cosmopolitan metropoles. Efforts to transform the city dated back to the 1850s (Majluf 1994; Ramón Joffré 1999), but in this period, Lima grew in different directions, well beyond the confines of the walled colonial city, and the scale of urban reforms significantly increased. As the city grew, concerns over public hygiene evidenced the poor living conditions of most limeños, which gave renewed impetus to efforts to intervene in public and private spaces (Parker 1998a).

Peruvian elites tried to build an elegant, European-like, and enlightened city based on scientific advancements. Intellectuals and proto-technocrats, mostly from the upper middle class, became a prominent elite subgroup and saturated public institutions in an attempt to professionalize the state apparatus (Sala-i-Vila 2006; Cueto 1997). Scholars have shown public elites’ efforts to regulate women’s roles, uplift educational levels, alter the hygienic and health practices of the population, beautify the city, “modernize” leisure activities, regulate prostitution and sexuality, and control mental health issues (Ruiz Zevallos 1997; Mannarelli 1999; Muñoz 2001; Drinot 2004, 2020; Ccahuana Córdova 2020). Even if most of these projects failed, the underlying imaginaries left a significant imprint on Peruvian elites and the modernizing projects of subsequent decades.

The historiography of Peru and Latin America has traditionally privileged a racial lens when addressing the ideals of modernity held by elites. This is not surprising, as Peruvian elites deemed indigenous populations unsuitable for civilization, physically weak, and lacking mental abilities. Following their own traditions of racism in tandem with the scientific racism of the time, they conceived of “improving” the race and “civilizing” the people as imbricated projects (García Jordán 1992; Portocarrero 2004; Parker 1998a). However, the racialized imageries and projects regarding the Peruvian population were profoundly gendered. Concerns related to masculinity shaped elite-led national policies affecting everyday life in the country, became central in how elites presented and legitimized themselves, and were prominent elements in inter- and intraclass conflicts. It is, therefore, necessary to incorporate the analytical lens of masculinity to fully grasp elites’ imageries of the time and how they influenced the dominance they attempted to exert over the rest of the country.

The gender of the lack of modernity: Deficient masculinity in the Peruvian quest for progress

Gender was clearly embedded in debates regarding modernity in Peru. Several works on modern Latin America have addressed the regulation of women’s lives and the patriarchal nature of state apparatus and public policies in Latin America (Dore and Molyneux 2000; Suárez Findlay 2000), while others have highlighted how issues concerning masculinity stood out in national formation processes (Guerra 2012; Guardino 2017). In the period I study, notions of vigor, virility, honor, patriotism, bravery, duty, and temperance saturated discourses on national progress. Modernizing elites referenced their fellow countrymen’s lack of physical and mental robustness to stress the need to invigorate the nation (Beattie 2001; Armus 2011).

Following prevailing ideologies of the time, Peruvian intellectual elites considered issues concerning race and climate fundamental components of the deficient nature of the country’s population. Elites’ imageries, however, were clearly gendered in terms of the national lack of virility, strenuous activity, and reason (Oliart 2004; Peluffo 2019). Scholars have shown how Western powers in this period legitimized imperial rule partly on the basis of the unmanly character of colonial racialized Others, who were deemed effeminate, feeble, and incapable of governing themselves (McClintock 1995; Sinha 1995; Nagel 2010). Closer to our case study, while Chilean officers described Peruvian men as effeminate, treacherous, and waiting to be seduced and conquered (McEvoy 2012; Tinsman 2018), foreign travelers described Lima’s creole men as feminine, shallow, physically weak, and lacking the ability for productive work (Groussac 1897; Middendorf [1893] 1973, 146–147). ³ What stands out in this case is that Peruvian elites reproduced such discourses on the deficient masculinity of Peru, its capital city, and its inhabitants. Elites repeatedly framed the most pressing issues hindering national progress in terms of the insufficient masculinity of Peruvian men, themselves included.

Elites did not leave themselves, white creole men, out of their notion of Peruvian men’s insufficient masculinity. Intellectual elites framed their Latin and Hispanic racial heritage in terms of lacking vigor, energy, work ethic, reflexive abilities, pragmatism, strenuous activity, autonomy, and resolute character. They considered Peruvian creole men vain, shallow, fanatic, and quixotic (Prado y Ugarteche 1894; García Calderón [1907] 1981). ⁴ Moreover, young intellectuals like Francisco García Calderon Rey (2003) argued that the Spanish population that came to America represented a decadent latinidad. The Muslim conquest of Spain, the proximity to Africa, and Spanish isolation from other European countries instilled the conquistadors’ race with a nervous character, “oriental” spirit, “African fanaticism,” and atrophied intelligence. Another common trope among Peruvian elites contrasted their Latin and Hispanic heritage with the “Anglo-Saxon race.” Whereas the creole race was “volatile,” “lyric,” “sensual and susceptible, … nervous,” and inadequate for “plain, abstract, philosophical, and conceptual thought,” intellectual elites deemed the Anglo-Saxon character to be energetic, tenacious, audacious, disciplined, pragmatic, and vigorous (Fuentes 1892). Elites also replicated discourses on “the strenuous life” and extolled men from the US as examples of vivacity, intensity, and active character (García Calderón [1907] 1981).

If the Hispanic heritage was burdensome for elites themselves, the quantitative predominance of indigenous men in the country was excruciating. Numerous magazine editorials, echoing well-established narratives of the time, regarded indigenous populations as unsuitable for civilization due to their absence of manly traits. Indigenous men were apathetic, lethargic, unmotivated, submissive, and lacking the capacity for abstract thought. Elites also considered indigenous men to be physically feeble, weak, and with inert muscles. ⁵ Moreover, elite men embraced a discourse that extolled the ancient Inca manhood while disdaining contemporary indigenous populations. ⁶ Whereas ancient “Peruvians” exhibited virtuous qualities of industriousness, conquering activity, and physical vigor, contemporary “Indians” were physically decadent, used to passive obedience, alcoholic, and, in summary, “degenerated sons of a courageous and abundant race, completely ignorant of their origins.” ⁷ Other intellectuals, like José de la Riva Agüero, did recognize Incan masculine traits in some “Indian” communities—that is, the morochucos—alongside the possibility of redeeming indigenous men, yet gendered references to indigenous men’s pitiful melancholy, primitive spirit, and miserable passivity were the norm (Riva Agüero 1955). Intellectual discourses on Peruvian racial composition also vilified Afro-Peruvian men (deemed lascivious, immoral, idle, with inconsistent character, and without proper intelligence) and Chinese and Chinese-descent men in the country with as many derogatory terms as one can imagine and as having no virtues whatsoever (Palma 1897; García 1908).

Discourses emphasizing the interrelated nature of deficient racial and gender traits in the Peruvian population fueled public modernization projects. The most obvious example refers to projects (some of which materialized in formal laws and institutions) aimed at attracting white European immigration, as a pathway to the country’s racial improvement and the spread of civilized values. Elites argued that white immigration would “enrich and fortify our blood and spirit with that of the strongest race … add tenacity and vigor,” while advancing the contagion of the “western men’s combatant and audacious energies.” ⁸ In a gendered, win-win global exchange, while Peruvian resources were passively waiting to be exploited by white immigrant men (García Jordán 1992; Marcone 1995), these resources promised to be the key to the regeneration of Latin nations, or even the revival of Western civilization’s energies. ⁹

Another structural issue that caught the elites’ attention was Lima’s climate. Under a neo-Lamarckian influence, the elites argued that Lima’s climate shaped the flawed character of the men who inhabited the city. Descriptions of Lima’s climate—either from foreign travelers or from national observers—usually extolled its invariable and mild nature. There was a downside, though. Such a benevolent climate gave way to limeños’ physical weakness and a decline in energy, to the point of stillness. ¹⁰ Again, fin-de-siècle Peruvian intellectual elites embraced and amplified such a narrative. The historian and geographer Alejandro Garland provided a thorough argument on the topic. He pointed out the uniformity of Lima’s climate—with “infrequent and slow changes of temperature” and no rain—and its ever-clouded atmosphere, which prevented the direct action of the sun’s rays on the population. Such phenomena made men from Lima prone to laziness, monotony, and lethargy, if not open imbecility. The weather also had depressing effects on men’s vigor, leading to “the weak physical constitution of its inhabitants and their indolent habits” (Garland 1908, 95). ¹¹ Likewise, in a piece in Variedades, the playwright Leonidas Yerovi summed up the traits of limeños due to the city’s climate: effortless, feeble, sleepy, decadent, delicate, volatile, fickle, inconstant, and without vigor. ¹²

On top of racial and climate issues, intellectual elites stressed the importance of sports and physical activity as part of “private hygiene” and cultural concerns. Attention to such aspects was, according to Peruvian elites, particularly relevant in Peru, given the aforementioned “fatalities” of the Peruvian race and Lima’s climate. Editorials from El Peru Ilustrado lamented the lack of gymnasiums and childrearing habits in Lima as giving way to feeble men. Parents did not want their children to get dirty, become agitated, or develop calluses on their hands, while mothers were often extremely affectionate and prone to spoiling their children with candy or biscuits rather than encouraging physical activity. ¹³ Such a combination explained the lymphatic character that prevailed in Lima’s men, as “a weak, sickly kid usually grows up to be timid, pusillanimous.” ¹⁴ Likewise, Javier Prado y Ugarteche (1899, 9) emphasized the necessity of physical education to shape “healthy, muscular, vigorous men, capable of prevailing in material and spiritual struggles.”

Throughout this period, public attention to physical exercise and modern sports significantly increased. Peruvian national holidays became the epicenter of this process through the incorporation of gymnastic exercises, target shooting, and, in time, football matches as central elements of the celebration. Variedades’ coverage of the 1908 independence celebrations illustrates how physical exercises functioned as instruments to invigorate the nation. One editorial argued that, because of the structural racial and climate issues, alongside the lack of “hygienic” practices in Lima, gymnastic activities held a particularly great importance in Peru. Other pieces in Variedades celebrated the public attention to physical education and advocated for its expansion to transform Peruvian young men into strong, virile, and useful beings, “so that they can recuperate with interest fees what we have lost. Let’s turn them into soldiers … audacious laborers of regeneration.” ¹⁵

It is noteworthy that the imagery around deficient masculinity paralleled traits that elites associated with “proper” middle-class womanhood. In Peru, as in many parts of the world, middle-class urban women have been perceived as markers of national honor and as those in charge of enhancing and reproducing national values (Mannarelli 1999; Yuval-Davis 1997; Sinha 2016). When intellectual elites “praised” national womanhood, they emphasized women’s fragility, vulnerability, “weak constitution,” and delicacy. ¹⁶ In even more belittling portrayals, women appeared as superficial, frivolous, irresolute, and dishonest. ¹⁷ Such an equivalence between women and inadequate men reaffirms the gendered nature of intellectual elites’ assessments.

Imagery of masculinity saturated Peruvian intellectual elites’ concern over national progress or the lack thereof. Elites’ assessments of Peruvian masculinity, including their own creole masculinity, were based in deficits, always lacking in contrast to the so-called manly character of Anglo-Saxon nations. The men who embraced and spread such views were far from marginal in Peruvian society. Their imagery of a deficient national masculinity thus became a critical element in national modernizing projects that affected everyday life in the country. Nonetheless, issues regarding masculinity did not only refer to inadequacies.

Warlike but refined: The ambivalent nature of hegemonic masculinity in Peruvian elites

Peruvian elites did not define themselves solely in terms of their inferior masculinity. Far from it: While they exhibited self-doubts about their own masculinity, elites still demarcated hierarchical frontiers between them and the rest of the country in gendered ways. Moreover, tropes of masculinity were critical in elite men’s efforts to assert their dominance and superior status against other men in the country. This might seem paradoxical: The same aspect that triggered a sense of inferiority (vis-à-vis foreign men) functioned as a mechanism for elite men to assert their preeminence (vis-à-vis subaltern men in Peru). That is hardly a surprise if we consider the inherent, unequivocal, and malleable nature of masculinity discourses. In the previous section, traits associated with masculinity sometimes emphasized rationality, serenity, and self-restraint; at other times, the focus relied mostly on masculine ideals of physical strength, vigorous energy, and even aggressiveness. This section addresses how the intrinsic ambivalence of masculinity traits was essential to how intellectual elites legitimized their privileged position. To fully grasp this process, I engage with a close reading of the works of two intellectual figures, Carlos Germán Amézaga and Clemente Palma, in the light of theoretical works on gender and masculinities.

Given our focus on intellectual elite men, Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity is especially relevant. Hegemonic masculinity refers to assertions of power and legitimized privilege—against both women and subaltern men—by male individuals with a significant amount of status in their respective societies. Being socially and historically constructed, hegemonic masculinity traits are inherently relational; they vary according to each situation and encounter, and they operate on a casuistic basis (Connell 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). This framework is consistent with the gender-as-performance approach. The latter understand gender as everyday performances and situated doings that, through repetition, as an ongoing process, and always in a relational fashion, constitute one’s identity (West and Zimmerman 1987; Butler 1990, 1991). In the case of masculinities, such performances always conjure notions of power, status, legitimacy, and privilege (Halberstam 1998; Segato 2016). Hegemonic masculinity traits are thus assembled relationally to establish domination vis-à-vis femininity, subaltern men, and anything deemed effeminate and effeminizing, which makes them mutable and contradictory (Demetriou 2001; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005).

Scholars studying modern masculinities have emphasized two different forms of hegemonic masculinity traits. One version of civilized manliness referred to self-restraint, honor and chivalry, the domestication of natural impulses, and proper fatherhood (Mosse 1996; Nye 1998). In contrast, another model of modern masculinity emphasized virility, physical strength, sexual prowess, and strenuous activity, associated with a more untamed manhood (Bederman 1995; Jacob 2010). Most works around fin-de-siècle masculinities argue that a shift from the civilized model of masculinity to the model of strenuous manhood took place. In the case of non-Western countries, the emphasis on physical strength and aggressiveness appeared as a way to catch up with Western modern strenuous masculinity (De Groot 2004; Tikhonov 2007; Lei 2020).

I argue instead that a shift in models of masculinity did not occur fully in fin-de-siècle Peru. Throughout the period, Peruvian intellectual elites mobilized one version of masculinity or the other according to the specific assertions of hierarchy they aimed to establish against subaltern groups. Rather than being consistent, hegemonic traits around masculinity functioned like a repertoire of meanings that elite men could selectively mobilize to assert their dominance. This is not surprising for various reasons. First, the whimsical mobilization of masculinity tropes coincides with the gender-as-performance approach and with works on the history of sexuality that emphasize the situational and localized character of identity formation (Cocks 2006). Second, modern masculinities have typically included diverse and conflicting norms and mandates, which people highlight according to each context (Camellia and Roodsaz 2023). Third, most historical shifts in the meanings of masculinity have not been clear-cut but have included elements from different models to protect elite hegemonic masculinity (Cohen 2005). Fourth, modern masculinities in Latin America have consistently combined aspects of a strenuous, untamed energy in the public sphere with responsibility, morality, and order in the domestic realm (Fuller 2001; Viveros 1998; Gutmann 1996). Finally, the particular racial and social composition of Peru, where assertions of power operate around infinite degrees of fluid hierarchical classifications (De la Cadena 2000, 6), invites such malleability.

The close reading of two authors illustrates how this phenomenon operated. The first case refers to Carlos G. Amézaga, one of the leading literary figures of the period after the War of the Pacific. Amézaga became a widely recognized figure for his participation in Lima’s literary circles and the editorial board of El Perú Ilustrado. Here we focus on Los poetas mexicanos (The Mexican Poets), an 1896 literary critique on leading Mexican poets of the time. One such poet was Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, whom Amézaga described as a “pure Indian,” which compelled him to make a digression on indigenous men in Mexico in comparison to those in other Latin American countries.

The first contrast referred to Chilean araucanos, or Araucanians. Amézaga described them as courageous but “lacking intellect,” with “untamable energy [that] is actually the marker of organic stupidity and plain savagery.” Moreover, he added that “an entirely ferocious man is an incomplete being and, thus, he is doomed to perish in the fields requiring the activity of other energies” (Amézaga 1896, 90–91). ¹⁸ In contrast, Mexican indigenous men were “courageous but not indomitable.” They “subjected themselves to Aztec civilization first and Spanish civilization later since they had extraordinary conditions of viability in contrast to other Indians” (Amézaga 1896, 91–92). Thus, the fact that indigenous men in Mexico had accepted colonization was a sign of intellect, self-restraint, and civilization.

Were passivity and the acceptance of rule positive features, then? If, as addressed in the previous section, intellectual elites disparaged indigenous men’s so-called passivity as a marker of their effeminacy and unsuitability for progress, one must wonder how they fit into Amézaga’s description. He provided the answer only a few lines later. In his view, indigenous men in Peru were “colder and more apathetic than their Mexican counterparts,” possessing a “historical meekness.” Peruvian indigenous men exhibited flock-like behavior, “always willing to serve and even to be oppressed” and lacking “genuine manhood and any distinctive feature of individuality” (Amézaga 1896, 92–94).

These passages illustrate the malleability of hegemonic ideas about (the lack of) masculinity. From one page to the other, the discourses on masculinity radically changed. While the existence of indigenous intellectual men in Mexico was due to their obedient character, Peruvian indigenous men’s alleged passivity worked as proof of their lack of civilization and manhood. The shift in masculinity traits worked to consolidate “proper” hierarchies in which indigenous men, because of their meekness or their untamable energy, always occupied inferior echelons, legitimizing elites’ rule over them.

A generation later, Clemente Palma offered another great case in point. Being the son of the widely praised Ricardo Palma certainly favored Clemente Palma’s position, but he cemented his prominence in 1904 with the publication of a compilation of short stories, Cuentos malévolos, and with the founding of the political-cultural magazines Prisma in 1906 and Variedades in 1908. Palma’s editorials in Variedades and his intellectual work offer a great window into the imbrication of discourses on race and gender or masculinity.

Clemente Palma’s bachelor’s thesis is one of the most diaphanous examples of the circulation of “scientific” racism in this period. In his thesis, even if the Hispanic racial component was riddled with vices—parallel to the discourses on the creole race addressed previously—it was the only superior and civilized element present in the Peruvian race due to its courage, vehemence, and superior self-restraint in comparison to indigenous men. In stark contrast, the Indian race was the receptacle for numerous derogations: superstition, a lack of virility, servility, scraggliness, mental disability, and a leaning toward savagery and drunkenness. He summed it up by saying that in opposition to white men’s virility and energy, “[the Indian race] possesses all the traits of decrepitude and ineptitude for civilized life. Without character, with almost no mental activity, apathetic, without aspirations, unsuitable for education” (Palma 1897, 11). Hence, Clemente Palma’s hierarchy of races reconciled the creole or Hispanic deficient masculinity vis-à-vis “Anglo-Saxon” men with the unquestionable superior masculinity of creole men in Peru against every other “race” in the country.

Still, Clemente Palma’s assessment of the lack of masculinity of subaltern men was quite ambivalent. We can use Variedades editorials regarding two potential international conflicts of the time to illustrate this point. The first case refers to a dispute with Bolivia, a country that Peruvian elites associated with indigenous populations. When the Bolivian government advanced some claims over what Peruvian authorities considered Peruvian territory in August 1909, Palma stated that the Bolivian “bellicose spirit” was due to their lack of civilization, rational thought, and moral fiber. Bolivian citizens were being manipulated by the devious influence of other countries—Chile—which were exploiting their unrestrained passions. While Chile embodied “an irresistible seducer,” a manly, gallant, and forward-thinking persona who took advantage of Bolivian backwardness, Bolivians exhibited a deficient masculinity, subject to manipulation and without physical and mental strength. ¹⁹

The second case referred to Ecuadorian territorial claims—a country that Peruvian intellectual elites linked with the indigenous and African-descendant population—over “Peruvian” Amazon territories. According to Variedades editorials, Ecuadorian men were scraggly, “hordes of delusional men who feel invincible with their machetes,” and people with an “infantile psychology” who made nonsense threats. ²⁰ The editorial attempted to downplay Ecuadorian geopolitical intentions by emphasizing their lack of masculinity, but in this case, it was not feasible for Palma to assert Ecuador’s passive character. Rather, Palma signified Ecuadorian men’s aggressiveness and strenuous claims as proof of their unmanliness, in contrast to the so-called Peruvian superior masculinity, with its calm, rational, and serene behavior.

These cases illustrate the ways intellectual elites mobilized different traits of masculinity relationally to reaffirm their hierarchical and privileged position. Far from being exceptional, records show the recurrent nature of such back-and-forth transitions from extolling one model of masculinity to the other. These discourses evidence that while Peruvian elites were extremely wary of their own masculinity, the ambivalent nature of gendered discourses still allowed them to legitimize their dominant position in the country in terms of being more masculine than other groups, such as indigenous men. Elites deemed the latter effeminate, feeble, and incapable of governing themselves, yet when the latter participated in revolts or violent efforts to alter their situation, elites shifted the discourse to depict subaltern men as barbaric, savage, or idiotized by alcohol. ²¹ Hegemonic representations functioned as powerful devices precisely because their malleability allowed for elites to assert their status—as legitimate and masculine leaders of the country—by emphasizing particular traits from a comprehensive repertoire in a situational, relational, and hierarchical fashion.

The age of masculinity: (Lack of) masculinity in intraelite disputes

We need to go one step further to fully assess how intellectual elite men mobilized tropes on masculinity in this period. Elites were not a monolithic and completely unified group whose power disputes were based solely in defending their hierarchical position against the rest of the population. Intraelite quarrels frequently arose from different factions within the elite, varying political affiliations, or different generations. In this case, I focus on disputes between older and younger generations that transpired in terms of masculinity. Save for the age factor, the two generations were not very distinct social groups. They shared similar social origins and educational trajectories, and they belonged to exclusive circles and social clubs. Among the differences, older elites had been the protagonists of the economic rise and decline of the country in the second half of the nineteenth century, while younger elites’ transition to adulthood occurred amid the post–War of the Pacific enthusiasm. Younger elites were also more familiar with modern Western leisure activities and lifestyles. In this section, I use literary works from prominent intellectuals of the time to analyze the intraelite clashes according to how each generation mobilized gendered tropes to depict the other as effeminate.

The existence of conflicts and disputes within the elite was far from anomalous. Following Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of multiple capitals and fields, elites include individuals who possess the dominant position in their respective fields. Together, such individuals constitute the “field of power,” that is, the social space in which the dynamics of collaboration and competition among different elites operate. Thus, even if elites share a “family resemblance,” they also engage in disputes, antagonisms, and divisions without losing their elite character (Bourdieu 1996; Wacquant 1993). Most works around disputes within the field of power usually refer to factions of the elite depending on the field (or capital) over which they occupy outstanding positions (Ellersgaard et al. 2013; Rentería y Zárate 2022; Reeves and Friedman 2024), yet generational differences have also been a key source of intraelite clashes.

Intergenerational disputes among elites emerged in terms of masculinity. Aiming to delegitimize one another, each generation of Peruvian intellectual elites depicted the other as effeminate, unmanly, and degenerate in terms of masculinity. This is far from surprising. Being masculine necessarily implies the strenuous rejection of abject effeminacy (Fuller 2001). Masculine subjects demarcate the frontiers of their own identity, which occupies an advantageous position with unequal relations of power, in contrast to anything remotely effeminate, “sissy-like,” or sexually deviant (Mosse 1996; Kimmel 2005; Pascoe 2007). In Peru and Latin America, several works have also stressed the centrality of homophobia and the rejection of any association with homosexuality and effeminacy in the construction of masculine identities (Del Castillo 2001; Fuller 2001; Viveros 2003).

In the intraelite disputes I analyze here, both generations mobilized tropes around masculinity and modernity to portray the contending side as effeminate and decadent. While older elites targeted the new generation of upper- and middle-class men as excessively Europeanized and refined, younger elites attacked the older generation for its lack of energy. In both cases, elites mobilized tropes on deficient masculinity already addressed in this article, but now targeting other groups while still guarding their own masculinity. Moreover, the critique of the other generation—either as rancid aristocrats or as immature afrancesaditos (Frenchified)—demarcated the frontiers of legitimate upper-class masculinity around notions of productive work, energetic activity, and physical prowess. Hence, while elites were defining what masculinity ought to be, claims around masculinity appeared again as essential mechanisms for elite men to assert their dominance and as key components of power relations.

The emerging generation of intellectual elite men in Peru distanced themselves from their older counterparts, deemed lackadaisical, to assert their role as the legitimate voices of modernity and the ones called to reinvigorate the nation. Several voices stressed the lack of energy, physical strength, and resolute character of older aristocratic elites. ²² New cadres of elites highlighted the superficial, aged, and languishing quality of Peruvian leaders whose “virility extinguishes in their muscles as a result of a life of excessive idleness.” ²³ In other cases, the attacks targeted public authorities more directly. For instance, even if not precisely young, Pedro Dávalos y Lissón asserted that the elite men who composed the immediately previous Lima’s Provincial Council were “drowsy, lacking faith and initiative.” They focused on menial and useless tasks, employing antiquated and impractical methods (Dávalos y Lissón 1908, 37). Likewise, he criticized the men who composed Lima’s Public Beneficence Board for their lethargic, battered, and conservative character (Dávalos y Lissón 1908, 32).

New cadres of elite men also linked their predecessors with the colonial past to undermine their status. Just like intellectual elites lamented their Hispanic or Latin heritage, younger generations pointed out that previous elites had inherited the stagnant and outdated values of colonial authorities. According to Prado y Ugarteche, due to Lima’s aristocratic ethos, elites had traditionally rejected industrial labor, mundane jobs, and vigorous activity. Republican elites had inherited colonial vices, namely overbearing consumption and idleness. They were accustomed to effortless earnings—based on property rather than industriousness—and they squandered the financial resources they acquired (Prado y Ugarteche 1894). Privileged boys who grew up in such a pompous atmosphere adopted the aforementioned undesirable traits and ultimately became spoiled, weakened, and soft men. Francisco García Calderón Rey offered a similar assessment. In his view, the colonial heritage explained the moral exhaustion and the delicate and sluggish character of Republican elites. Colonial institutions had hindered individual development and strenuous action, giving way to men possessed by an infantile, simplistic, and irrational mentality, accustomed to effortless earnings, and characterized by a fickle will and dreamy personality (García Calderón [1907] 1981). In summary, younger elites described previous generations as stagnant, unmanly, and incapable of leading the way toward national progress.

Far from being a one-sided process, older elites also mobilized tropes around masculinity, or the lack thereof, to assert their position in contrast to what they conceived as feminine and soft younger elite men. Veteran elites commonly conceived modernity in terms of degeneracy, effeminacy, and the loss of traditional manly attributes. Modern civilization represented the idealized future to pursue, yet it was also the source of disruptive practices that threatened to erode traditional hierarchies (Berman 1982). Modernity raised concerns in terms of masculinity, too. Embodying an excessive modernity in terms of refinement, education, self-care, and civilized practices exposed oneself to being considered vain, self-obsessed, and effeminate. In particular, the association with French manners and civilization—being “Frenchified,” or afrancesadito—bore the risk of embodying effeminacy and unmanliness (Cohen 2005; Macías-González 2012; Alegre 2019).

Some intellectuals expressed their disdain for the newer trends that the younger elite men were embracing. Clemente Palma, writing under the pseudonym “Corrales,” the Variedades bullfighting correspondent, illustrates this point. He challenged those who described bullfighting as backward by stressing the importance of “passion” for civilization. ²⁴ In Corrales’ words: “We need to concede something to the troglodyte nature that endures within us and that demands brute sensations. The blood, pain, and death have charms and prestige which we will hardly manage to subtract ourselves from, and when we do so, it is by guiding our passions through more dangerous paths.” ²⁵

Another unsettling trend for older elites involved the urban landscape and the loss of values and hierarchies associated with it. A passage in Leonidas Yerovi’s play Salsa roja illustrates such a threat. When Roberto, a timid young man, goes with his uncle to Lima—which everyone in his family associates with modernity and loose women—he changes dramatically the minute the carriage enters the city. Roberto takes his uncle’s hat without permission, and when the latter challenges his behavior, Roberto replies: “You said it yourself, Uncle, we are in the city. Here we are no longer uncle and nephew, but men, equal men.” ²⁶ Another example refers to carnival festivities in Lima. A columnist in Variedades evidenced his discomfort with the fact that younger men were increasingly throwing water at other men. In his words, it was understandable for young men to act on Lima’s “chicks,” precisely because they were in their years of “agitated blood and maddening enthusiasm”; however, the new conduct of targeting older men was not only distasteful, but even “grotesque and effeminate.” ²⁷

Satires on young men influenced by the increasing contact with Europe represented the epitome of narratives on the effeminacy of younger elites. As Drinot (2020, 78) shows, concerns over privileged young men’s effeminacy and sexual deviance were prevalent in public discourses and projects in fin-de-siècle Lima. ²⁸ In El Perú Ilustrado, Rufino V. García developed fictional characters that embodied unmanliness due to their excessive fixation with European manners. The protagonist of one piece is Josecito, a young man returning from Paris who has become the ultimate gossip among Lima’s high society due to the Parisian novelties he has brought with him. However, the piece rapidly shifts to mock Josecito. When Don Pedro, an older man from Lima, digs a bit deeper into Josecito’s viewpoints of Paris, the latter offers only a few empty phrases, making evident his shallowness. ²⁹ While Don Pedro mockingly invites him to go back to Paris, the only person who defends Josecito is Eudorito, a young man who possesses the taste, clothing, and culture associated with Europe, but in reality, he is an idle man—heavily indebted—who does nothing else than attending social events. ³⁰

Leonidas Yerovi condensed the perversion among young men in another one of his theater plays, Gente loca (Mad people). Gustavo, a spoiled individual who had just returned from France, is described as neurasthenic, ³¹ portraying the ill condition of excessively Europeanized young men. Gustavo is disdainful about being back in Lima. When he is confronted about his overbearing attitude, he responds: “Are we not allowed to return from Europe a little less creole than we used to be? Is it frowned upon that we can travel, that we can become enlightened?” Gustavo also embodies stupidity and perversion. He embarks on a mining enterprise influenced by someone he barely knows, but this person easily swindles him. Gustavo also shows himself sexually interested in his father’s fourteen-year-old goddaughter, saying that in Paris, girls engage in sexual activity from a very early age. ³² All these examples illustrate how Western modernity could also signify degeneracy and effeminacy. Young elite men who, apart from being well versed in European manners, represented utter shallowness were the ones being criticized for not being industrious, active, and manly.

This article does not address tropes about women, but the representations of effeminate or degenerated men matched depictions regarding modern women. The attack on older elites for their lack of energy corresponded with ideas of womanhood related to passivity and obedience. For its part, critiques of younger elites matched how intellectual elites described modern women as shallow, having only superficial conversations, and obsessed with attending social events and refined entertainment. ³³ Such a correspondence between deficient masculinity and effeminacy illustrates the gendered natures of the aforementioned disputes, and it shows how hegemonic masculinity operated simultaneously against women and other men.

Concluding remarks

Fin-de-siècle Peruvian intellectual elites’ discourses on masculinity saturated their notions of progress, their self-image, and the power relations they established. Even if discourses on race were particularly salient in this period, national progress and social hierarchies were also coded in terms of gender and masculinity. Intellectual elites activated discourses around masculinity in a variety of ways. One of these was as a matter of deficit. The exiguous masculinity in the country explained the lack of prosperity and hindered the prospects of progress. In another, masculinity operated within relations of dominance and assertions of status. Intellectual elites mobilized notions of masculinity in a selective, performative, and contradictory fashion. The malleability of hegemonic masculinity allowed for elites to mobilize these imaginaries to claim their superior position vis-à-vis subaltern men or other elites.

I have engaged with intellectual elites’ discourses on masculinity to enrich our understanding of the central role that gendered ideas fulfill in relations of power and dominance. I contend that masculinity not only provides a relevant lens for analyzing the period but also was a constitutive element of the consolidation of hierarchies and power relations. Through discourses on masculinity, elite men claimed a distinctive status in the country and legitimized their role as the only suitable group to lead Peru to progress and prosperity. Elites also advanced gendered notions of what represented desirable attributes for Peruvian men. Although elites exhibited self-doubt as adequate men against other nations’ masculinity, they engaged in painstaking efforts to present themselves as the best embodiments of hegemonic masculinity in the country. By incorporating the gender lens, we can better understand the construction of elites’ identity and, more importantly, the reproduction of long-standing hierarchies in Latin America.