Etnografía constitucional del Perú: Sociedad multicultural y tendencias del derecho constitucional

Abstract

After the independence of Peru from the Spanish Crown at the beginning of 19 the century, the victorious of the contest met in the need to found an imaginary political society which would give a juridical sustenance to the 'Peruvian nation', it might seem that only the original nations or indigenous peoples might have filled this need. Nevertheless, due to the political depletion that the indigenous groups had suffered after the wars of independence, the Creole/western social pre-eminent group developed a process of national construction based only on its cultural and political precepts. The constitution of republican Peru as a political society is founded on the post colonial reality of the Peruvian history, and on the juridical relegation of the ethnic/national difference that crosses the whole society in favour of the enthronement of the Creole as political 'normal' model of citizen. This relegation has taken form of seventeen constitutional documents that have governed the life of republican Peru. This article exposes, from a socio juridical perspective, the treatment that the Peruvian Constitutional law has given to the multiculturality. With this objective it describes the postcolonial multicultural Peruvian society characterized by the existence of a society composed by several cultural groups (nations) in big territorial spaces, and also for diverse ethnic groups present in the big cities. It summarizes the answers that the State has given to the cultural difference. It identifies, in to big features, two trends of the social and political thought that have influenced the Peruvian constitutionalism on the cultural difference, planning a proposal about the period that has crossed its development. Finally, I propose some ideas to overcome the juridical cultural trend of relegation of the multicultural reality of Peru.