School, Historiography and the Nation. The Representation of both the Cases of Francisco Pizarro and the Conquest of Spain

Abstract

“Spanish Conquest of Peru” (or “The Invansion of Spain”) is currently one of the most crucial issues in Peruvian History taught at school. Francisco Pizarro is the main character in this episode, commonly situated between a pro-hispanic discourse and an unflagging anti-hispanic speech in Peruvian historiography. This gave place, to an extended degree, to historical representations in school texts; thus images about Pizarro and Conquest are constantly being reproduced through educative spaces such as the Peruvian schools. Based on this point, moreover, we could distinguish different conceptions about what is a nation, from the perspective of both historians and school text authors. Pizarro is known, on one hand, as a founding character of both Lima and Peru and the very first initiator of what is called “miscegenation” and, on the other hand, as the person who destroys the prominent Inca civilization and the genocide of the “true nation”, that is, the indigenous nation. Therefore, we could make an approach, based on school texts of divulgation and their authors, to various historical conflicts, either to the “official Creole history” or to the national-indigenous versions which contains a lot of criticism of the first view. Finally, this article also scrutinizes the changes throughout Peruvian historiography and, hence, the new historical narratives came out in the very few last decades.