Incredulidad y disidencia religiosa en el Perú de entresiglos, 1880-1904

Abstract

In Peru, after the defeat in the war with Chile, religious unity embodied by Catholicism was considered by the elites as the only factor granting national unity in a ruined country with weakened institutions. This approach did not succeed in eliminating the manifestations of scepticism or different beliefs, such as deism, freethinking and spiritualism, by individuals or groups that, despite being a minority, had a significant public profile. This article examines the debates of the freemasons and freethinkers, as well as the activities of other dissidents, in order to offer a more complex portrait of the history of the circulation of ideas in Republican Peru.