Sculptural commemoration of the Battle of Ayacucho. Defaulted proposals and Peruvian state apathy (1824-1974)

Abstract

With the Battle of Ayacucho in 1824, the South American Independence was sealed in the southern highlands of Peru. To perpetuate it, Simón Bolívar proposed, that year, to erect a monument on the scene of the confrontation, the pampa de la Quinua (3600 masl). After 150 years of unfulfilled promises the Peruvian State managed to inaugurate it in 1974. During that time, thanks to the local initiative, two “modest” monuments were erected in Ayacucho (1852 and 1897), which hardly lasted a short time. In this text we analyze the sculptural projects of the central and regional government during the first sesquicentennial of republican life, characterized by government instability, state corruption, centralization of powers in Lima and apathy towards the Peruvian highlands, which influenced the Lima sculptural proposals to erect a monument in Ayacucho and that, at the same time, affected the two nineteenth-century Ayacucho monuments.