Professional Documents
Culture Documents
History of
Peru
Throughout history, many nations have stood out for their economic and
technical accomplishments; but only a handful of civilizationsincluding what is
now Peru did so autonomously. The first cultures created in this part of the
world date as early as 3,200 B.C.E. according to recent scholarship. Later the
Inca Empire, ruled from the historic city of Cusco, tapped the knowledge built in
the previous centuries and sprawled over an immense domain covering six
present-day South American countries. During such a protracted period of selfsufficient development, ancient Peruvians attained no little success.
Nevertheless,
a
robust
industrial
development proved elusive due to a deep
territorial fragmentation coupled with a
still considerable inequality in the
distribution of wealth, income, and
opportunities, which in turn prevented
the full formation of an integrated market
economy. On a brighter note, the 1920s
in particular were a time of important
Particularly,
that
period
saw
an
alternation
of
free-market
and
interventionist regimes, with a clear
predominance of the latter. Timidly
towards the end of the 1950s, and more
openly in the 1960s and 1970s, the
country adopted an import substitution
model under the view (upheld by the
schools
of
economic
thought
predominating in Latin America at the
time) that commodity export-oriented
strategies promoted growth but not