Christian Mission in Urban Context: Identifying Main Conditioning Factors in the Growth of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Lima, Peru

By Amador Israel Caviedes Mandujano

This book is the result of a socio-theological analysis of the substantial membership growth of the Christian and Missionary Alliance – C&MA – in Lima, Peru, since 1973. The C&MA is a Christian Protestant denomination with a worldwide work, particularly in North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and lately in Europe. The focus here is on its work in Lima, Peru. The C&MA started its work in Lima in 1957, and by 1973 had 120 members. Today’s membership has grown to about 60,000 with heterogeneous social backgrounds. It is this substantial membership growth, starting at the end of 1973, which has motivated the main research question: What are the main conditioning factors that have led to the substantial growth of the C&MA in Lima since 1973?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Regnum Books International
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781913363154

Amador Israel Caviedes Mandujano

Israel Mandujano Ph.D. is a minister of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and currently a missionary in Peru with the Norwegian Lutheran Mission Society. He has worked through the years as pastor and missionary with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Peru, Spain and Norway, as well as serving two years with OM Ship Ministries. He left Peru as a missionary at the age of 23, after working as a pastor with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and then served in Europe for almost 25 years. In Spain – Zaragoza and Barcelona – he worked with the Christian and Missionary Alliance doing church planting efforts, and with the Spanish IFES Movement, serving among Christian students in the University of Barcelona and Cataluña. In Norway, he begun serving in the Christian mission among Immigrants in Bergen, and later, as a teacher on Intercultural Communication and Missiology at the NLA University College. He is married to Anne Marie Akslen Mandujano, and have three adult children.

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Chapter 1

Introduction, Methodology and Theoretical Frame

Introduction

The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) in Peru started its work in the 1920s, in the Amazon areas of the country.¹ At the end of the 1950s the C&MA began its work in Lima.² In the early 1970s in Lima, the C&MA started to have a meaningful membership growth, with remarkable multiplication of congregations in the city of nearly 8 million people in 2007,³ now estimated in nearly 9 million.⁴ What happened in Lima, and particularly in the C&MA, that produced this unexpected growth from one single congregation of around 120 members⁵ in the beginning of the 1970s to the large Christian denomination the C&MA is now, both in Lima and Peru? The numeral growth of the C&MA in Lima from 120 members in the early 1970s to nearly 40,000 members in 2012, and in the whole of Peru to nearly 56,000 members by 2012,⁶ causes one to wonder why the growth took place, and how it came about.

In order to understand the reasons behind the vast growth of the C&MA, one must look for factors both in the surrounding society and within the congregations that were established. In other words, one needs to identify some important conditioning factors.

Research Question

My principal inquiry or main research question is therefore, What are the main conditioning factors that have led to the substantial growth of the C&MA in Lima since 1973? Accordingly, the objective in my research work is to identify these factors. In the identification and analysis of the main conditioning factors I will include both church-external and church-internal perspectives. This is in line with the view of the missiologist Stephen B. Bevans (2011), who has emphasized that both external and internal perspectives⁷ are important in the effort of relating theology to context.

Conditioning Factors

The external perspective relates the subject matter to the socio-cultural context, and the internal perspective relates the subject matter to the Christian faith itself.⁸ In the case of the church growth in Lima, Peru, the external perspective seeks conditioning factors found in the socio-cultural situation of the society. The internal perspective seeks conditioning factors which are caused by faith expressions within the churches – theology and ethos. In my analysis I regard conditioning factors as both pushing and pulling forces which influence people to adopt Christian faith or activate their Christian faith within a new church community. In this process the pushing forces are mainly – if not exclusively – related to the external, socio-cultural context in which the churches exist. They are forces which discriminate against people in society, alienate them, or otherwise push them to seek a new community of belonging. The pulling forces are mainly – if not exclusively – related to the internal life of the churches and their members, which attract outsiders and motivate them to join these communities. Since the pushing and pulling forces work together, my research will seek to demonstrate how the dynamic interaction between the realities of the external social conditioning factors and the internal conditioning factors promote increased membership. These conditioning factors will be identified by hermeneutical analysis of interviews and participatory field observations, done among church members and in social contexts. Thus the present work is basically an analysis of people’s experiences of how they joined these churches through meaningful events in their lives.

When the conditioning factors have been identified by interpretation of the collected data through interviews, observation and literary sources, the next step will be to understand how the two kinds of conditioning forces interact dynamically, leading people to convert, resulting in a new ethos. Ethos is understood as the tone, character, and quality of life as well as its moral and aesthetic style and mood,⁹ essentially the dominant attitude and emphasis towards life and reality. As Bevans has aptly put it, Reality is not just ‘out there;’ reality is ‘mediated by meaning,’ a meaning that we give it in the context of our culture or our own historical period, interpreted from our own particular horizon and in our own particular thought forms.¹⁰ Hence, it is the relationship between context and the internalization of its influence on people that creates new patterns of living. Consequently, my research work will pursue an understanding of the nature of the new ethos, modified by the new Christian view. In order to achieve this understanding I shall make use of a qualitative analysis of descriptions and interpretations¹¹ of relevant events in my informants’ cultural and social context.

Lima and the Christian and Missionary Alliance – C&MA

To know the social and historical contexts is relevant for understanding this church growth experience. The C&MA congregations in Lima are not alienated or isolated from the complex social and cultural environment that surrounds them. The members of these congregations reflect diverse backgrounds. People in the C&MA in Lima represent a variety of geographical as well as cultural backgrounds. Lima is a cosmopolitan city, which started to experience an influx of new migrants from all the regions of Peru in the 1950s. The well-known Peruvian anthropologist, José Matos Mar has called it, the desborde popular¹² – in English, the overflow of people.

Beginning in the 1950s, the demographic face of Lima changed into a rainbow of Peruvians with many kinds of cultural, economic, social, religious, geographic and historic backgrounds. It is in the midst of this complex society that the C&MA experienced its main changes since the mid-1970s.

In the early 1970s, the C&MA in Lima was represented by a small congregation of 120 members¹³ in a city of nearly three million people.¹⁴ It was not a big group in the already large society of Lima. Nevertheless, this congregation had particular marks in its church life that seem to have influenced the ways in which the membership grew. The C&MA in Lima is an evangelical denomination that is coloured both by universal Christian values and by such local distinctives as any Christian church may have, influenced as it is by its cultural setting. Andrew Walls has explained this phenomenon as follows: All churches are culture churches, even our own.¹⁵ In the case of Lima this cultural influence was Peruvian.

The C&MA in Lima has a membership comprised mostly of Peruvians but there are also some foreigners. The latter have become Christians without a former Peruvian cultural heritage.

Methodological Considerations

Ethical Demands of the Investigation

As required, this PhD research project has been reported to ‘Personvernombudet for forskning – Norsk samfunnsvitenskapelig datatjeneste AS (NSD Data Protection Official for Research),’ and is registered as project number 15025. Hence the project has followed the NSD ethical guidelines for research, in particular its guidelines for preserving the anonymity of the interviewees. Thus, all the informants are referred to by fictitious names in the dissertation.

Qualitative Approach

This dissertation is mainly an investigation that makes use of a qualitative methodological approach, which is a way to find a deeper understanding of experiences and thoughts people may have about a particular subject or event.¹⁶ It supplements interviews and participatory observation with scholarly resource material. The latter contains both the theological sources and research publications in related fields, such as socio-historical and socio-anthropological studies. The task of interpreting the collected data, which I obtained through interviews and participatory observations, is central to the overall analysis. These interviews and observations were collected while taking part in peoples’ local situations and they provided data which has been processed through structured thematic groups, analysed, categorised and interpreted in relationship to theories on the subjects.¹⁷ Regarding the art of interpreting data, Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote: The understanding and the interpretation of texts is not merely a concern of science, but is obviously part of the total human experience of the world.¹⁸ We interpret in order to understand, and as human beings we do it all the time in all societies, many times in the form of reflection.

Accordingly, I have followed a reflection-based analysis of the local events and the dialogues with my informants. I have approached the dialogue in each interview with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s words in mind: a conversation has a spirit of its own… the language used in it bears its own truth within it, i.e. that it reveals something that henceforth exists.¹⁹ Conversations in this sense can create understandings through dynamic personal interaction. This is because – as Paul G. Hiebert has put it – Spoken words are more immediate, relational, and intimate than printed ones.²⁰ Thus both Gadamer and Hiebert underline the lively interaction that takes place through conversation and language communication; it is a personal kind of creative source that leads us towards understanding and knowledge. In my research the data came from dialogues with members of the C&MA churches, some of whom were interviewed twice. The observations were related to activities among the participants as well as to the society of Lima. Even though I have used some helpful statistics, the core of the empirical source material has been the interviews. Through the conversations we had, my informants participated actively in this research work; they were able to give their thoughts a room and a voice. This voice is related to their singular experience of joining the C&MA churches in Lima; hence this is a method that channels a particular respect toward the local research environment – towards the subject or subjects of the research work.²¹ Thus I have mainly followed an emic approach, which has given explicit room to the local views²² on the growth of the C&MA in Lima.

The Pursuit of an Emic Perspective

One risk a researcher coming from outside the research field often faces is the tendency to reflect within the frame of his own research context, shaped by his own cultural and historical bias, since it is often understood as the safest research place; nevertheless, the outcome in that case can be one-sided and biased. For example, Bevans argued in his book Models of Contextual Theology that one main need for contemporary contextualization in theological research is to overcome the historical dominance of theological research standing-points from the West or the so called ‘First’ world:

[There] is a general dissatisfaction, in both the First and Third Worlds, with classical approach to theology. In the First World, the various classical philosophies that have served as the bases of theology in the past do not seem to resonate with contemporary experience… In Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania, Christians are becoming increasingly convinced that traditional approaches to theology do not really make sense within their own cultural patterns and thought forms.²³

This observation, about wearing strong western glasses in theological research, is a warning about the need to seek balance in our research approach from Europe towards non-European societies, both in attitude and method. This awareness of being arbitrary in cross-cultural research activities is similar to worries about arbitrary interpretation. Gadamer as well as Martin Heidegger found that the personal and subjective role of a researcher’s background creates prejudices in his or her hermeneutical analysis, which Heidegger identifies as the fore-having, fore-sight and the fore-conception²⁴ of the interpreter. Nevertheless, these prejudices can be turned into an advantage in our interpretative task when we acknowledge them. In Gadamer’s words, This recognition that all understanding involves some prejudice gives the hermeneutical problem its real thrust.²⁵ Thus neither Heidegger nor Gadamer discredit prejudice as a useful element in the scientific research process, but show both its limitations and its relevance. The acceptance of one’s own ‘cultural prejudice,’ described as cultural glasses by Charles H. Kraft, can for instance help us from falling into ethnocentric attitudes at the moment of interpreting other cultural views of reality.²⁶ Thus the non-acceptance of one’s own prejudices can play a negative role in our hermeneutical task. If we do not accept it openly, we risk becoming one sided. According to Gadamer the interpreter’s own prejudices can be distracting to his task:

A person who is trying to understand [and interpret] is exposed to distraction from fore-meanings that are not borne out by the things themselves. The working-out of appropriate projects, anticipatory in nature, to be confirmed ‘by the things’ themselves, is the constant task of understanding. The only ‘objectivity’ here is the confirmation of a fore-meaning in its being worked out.²⁷

Gadamer obviously aims at achieving a credible balance in the interpretation task. He acknowledges the existence of prejudices or fore-meanings in the mind of the researcher. In his view, however – which is similar to that of Heidegger’s in this case – the researcher has to work out the fore-conceptions while he or she meets the things themselves, i.e. in a constant interaction between his or her personal background and the background of the subject matter itself.

Accordingly, the task of interpretation is not a neutral business; on the contrary, there is an obvious unavoidable influence of the interpreter’s own biases in the process. Hiebert wrote, There is no such a thing as totally objective knowledge… Science is built on the cultural assumptions of the West and is deeply influenced by social and psychological processes.²⁸ Even though Hiebert refers to bias among western researchers, this same principle can be applied to any research. This is the dialectic creative frame in hermeneutics, namely the interaction between the interpreter’s capacity to interpret, dealing with one’s own bias, and the essence of the subject matter itself as the hermeneutical circle of his or her interpretation. Hence the interpreter must be aware of and recognize his or her biases, since they influence the entire process of interpretation. About this process, Gadamer says, This constant process of new projection is the [circular] movement of understanding and interpretation.²⁹ We understand as we interpret, and we interpret as we are aware of our own bias in this process.

Thus, it seems impossible to speak of only one type of theology since all scientific research or analysis is contextually and paradigmatically affected. This is reflected by Bevans who begins his book Models of contextual theology, by writing, There is no such a thing as ‘theology’; there is only contextual theology.³⁰ Hiebert shares this view, saying, Technically, we should speak of theologies, for each theology is an understanding of divine revelation within a particular historical and cultural context.³¹ This is a concern that I deem especially relevant to the task of interpretation, which has immediate bearing on my own analysis of the ethos of the C&MA church in Lima in the context of its growth. Hence I have to take into consideration not only my presuppositions – shaped as they are by Peruvian and Norwegian cultural contexts, and which I will soon clarify³² – but mainly I have to consider those that originate in the Lima context and whose importance it is therefore necessary to recognize when conducting the socio-theological analysis. Walls gives two main reasons for the importance of such awareness; first because the Scriptures are read with different eyes by people in different times and places,³³ and secondly, because The Christian Scriptures… are open to translation; nay, the great Act on which Christian faith rests, the Word becoming flesh and pitching tent among us, is itself an act of translation. And this principle brings Christ to the heart of each culture where he finds acceptance.³⁴ Henceforth the translatability of the Christian message, not only to other languages but also to other cultural ways of understanding it, may lead us to different perspectives of interpretation and focus, expressed in contextual forms. Having this understanding, my hypothesis is, that both the events in the C&MA congregations and those which took place in the cultural and historical context of the society of Lima must have acted as conditioning factors that have, in turn, led to a particular way of understanding Christianity³⁵ as a faith and movement with Peruvian characteristics. As we proceed, I intend to show the nature of these characteristics.

The Researcher’s Background

Qualitative research interviews, when following an interview guide, can provide the needed framework for a fruitful dialogue – an interaction between the researcher and the informants, where the interviewer seeks to find a balanced understanding of the subject matter in a contextual approach.³⁶ The semi-structured type of interview guide³⁷ which I followed in my dialogue with the informants is enclosed as an Appendix. Qualitative interviews, as a methodological approach, have been an important tool for my research process since my research background is somewhat peculiar, culturally speaking. I am a Peruvian researcher from Norway. I have lived the first half of my life in Peru and the other half in Europe. My first cultural background is that of a Peruvian from Lima; nevertheless that first background has been influenced afterwards by my living and working in Europe for nearly 30 years.³⁸ So, what is my starting point as a researcher? Am I an outsider or an insider in my relationship to my subject matter and the informants I interview? I perceive my background as researcher as that of a person representing a hybrid culture,³⁹ with cultural elements and patterns of thinking which derive from both Peru and Norway. This fact has played an important role in my approach to the subject matter while I wrestled with the question of how I could pursue understanding and fairness in the interpretation of the collected data. This has provided me with a space for fruitful interaction with my informants and helps me deal with possible arbitrary tendencies when analysing my findings. I share some of the Peruvian background with my informants and therefore have the cultural background which helps me to understand what they inform me about. In this way the cultural familiarity with the subject matter has been an advantage in understanding the information in its local context; at the same time, my background as a Nordic researcher has provided me with a wider cultural perspective than simply Peruvian. Hence, I approach my task as a person who has been trained in a western academic environment, having also gained relevant complementary training in academic research. It is with this two-fold background – Peruvian and Norwegian – that I have engaged in the task of understanding ‘the other.’ Gadamer argued that a main challenge in the hermeneutical task is the lack of familiarity between the researcher and the informants in the process of communication. He wrote, The hermeneutical problem is not one of the correct mastery of language, but of the proper understanding of that which takes place through the medium of language.⁴⁰ In his statement Gadamer does not neglect the importance of a correct mastery of the language, but stresses instead the proper understanding of what is being said through this vehicle, i.e. its meaning. Hence the familiarity which I have with the subject matter in terms of speaking and using the same mother tongue as my informants, and coming from the same cultural sphere, has provided me with a peculiar familiarity to understand that which took place through the medium of language in our interview meetings. Thus a proper cultural and socio-historic understanding of my subject matter and of my informants is relevant to the hermeneutical task of interpreting what I hear and observe.

The Field of Study

In the attempt to understand the growth of the C&MA in Lima, Peru, I have considered it important to look for both external and internal conditioning factors. Accordingly, I have included in my research work a chapter on history.⁴¹ It is a brief history of the C&MA, mainly in Lima and Peru, and of modern Peru, particularly related to Lima, where the church growth took place, beginning in 1973. This historical background provides the frame for understanding the momentum of the unexpected growth within the social contexts of the past and the present. As Karianne Skovholt and Aslaug Veum (2014) say: we analyse texts from the perspective of the social context [my translation].⁴² Both the social and historical context and development are relevant and important for my interpretation of the events and the experiences that my interviewees tell me about.

Therefore, I have also placed my research within the framework of Contextual Theology, which is an attempt to understand Christian faith in terms of a particular context.⁴³ It is contextual because it aims at finding the role of social and cultural elements that condition the growth of these congregations. It has to do with theology because it deals with spiritual issues in the experiences of these believers and relates them to the ethos building of these churches. In so doing I recognize the validity of the present experience as a truly theological experience.⁴⁴ In the words of Bevans, Theology that is contextual realizes that culture, history, contemporary thought forms, and so forth are to be considered, along with scripture and tradition, as valid sources for theological expression.⁴⁵ This means that theological research is inter-related with the contextual environments in which the theological reflection happens, when it interacts with the ‘cultural blinkers’⁴⁶ and the variety of local Limean factors which conditioned even their Christian understanding of God’s revelation.⁴⁷

Local Interviewees

The main data for the qualitative research has been obtained through personal interviews with eight members in three particular congregations of the C&MA in Lima, and two C&MA leaders for the whole zone of Lima. The first congregation is located in a low income area (L1), the second in a middle class area (M2), and the third in a rather wealthy zone – a high class area (H3). These three kinds of social categories are inheritances of Peruvian history, representing somehow fictitious social demarcations, which are useful only to understand the social divisions. D. S. Parker wrote:

By definition, the very use of the term [middle class] would seem to indicate the growing perception of society as comprised of three established classes; after all, ‘middle’ requires something above and something below. But in practice Peruvians who wrote and spoke of a middle class did not offer a full-blown alternative to the view of gente decente versus gente del pueblo. At best, they used a class terminology to pay closer attention to the people caught at the junction between the two fundamental castes.⁴⁸

Socio-economical divisions exist in Lima, the result of the development in Peruvian colonial history which brought about standards in society reflecting a class-thinking and a distinction between the rich and the poor and those who were neither rich nor poor. Geographically this has created zones in Lima which belong mainly to either of these classes or socio-economic groups. Because of this I have chosen to interview people in three C&MA congregations which represent distinctively different socio-economical areas or zones in Lima. The purpose of this is to investigate whether their location in different socio-economic areas has impacted them in such a way that they have developed distinct cultures from each other. Even though each of these three zones has its particular social distinction mainly based on its economic situation, the districts in which the three congregations are located do not represent pure zones; most districts in Lima have populations representing a variety of cultural and economic backgrounds. For example the area called El Cono Norte de Lima – The Northern Cone of Lima – was formerly considered a poor area because many poor families and migrants lived there. At present it is regarded as a prosperous area with a huge variety of social backgrounds.⁴⁹ Nonetheless within these mixed populations some main social representations can be perceived, like the wealthy district of Miraflores.⁵⁰

Thus, I have chosen three areas in Lima with distinct social differences in order to evaluate how the differences of social variables may or may not have influenced the growth of membership of these congregations, as conditioning factors. Accordingly, one important part of the research work has been to find out to what degree these conditioning factors have been influential in the process of growth in relationship to the social representation of these districts. For instance, it has been relevant to find out whether people in modest areas have been socially more responsive to these churches than people living in wealthy areas, and if so, why. In order to respect the anonymity of my informants, they are all referred to by fictitious names.⁵¹ As to the social areas where these three congregations are located, the distribution of my informants is as follows:

•From the congregation in the low income area (L1): Two lay (non-ordained) members – Carmen and Juan; one pastor – Gianni.⁵²

•From the congregation in the middle class area (M2): Two lay (non-ordained) members –Luisa and Maria; one pastor – Federico.⁵³

•From the congregation in the wealthy zone or high class area (H3): Two lay (non-ordained) members – Carlos and Amelia.⁵⁴

Besides these interviewees in the three congregations, I have also interviewed two main C&MA leaders in Lima (M2): Fernando and Francisco.⁵⁵

As the distribution of my informants illustrates, another variable for choosing them has been their status or degree of responsibility in the churches. There are three main groups; the first contains lay church members, the second its ordained ministers, and the third, those with main leadership responsibilities for the whole Lima area. This is because ordinary members may provide a different perception of the church-growth experience from those who represent the leadership or a more professional group (pastors).

Hence the main empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 adult informants from three congregations in the three different kinds of living-zones in Lima. The interviewees have different status in the church and they all know their churches well since they have been part of them for many years.

I conducted a second interview with some of them in order to complement the data I had collected in the first interviews in 2006.⁵⁶

Along with the interviews, I have collected some data from my participatory observations in the same three congregations. These have been done during three research trips to Lima: two while I conducted the first and second interviews, and the third during another research trip – from June 8th to 24th of 2010.⁵⁷ I participated in several church gatherings and observed the ways in which members relate to each other and to other people in their church environments. The gatherings consisted of official events as well as more spontaneous meetings. My background in one of the churches of the C&MA has been a helpful channel to have free entrance in these social environments of the churches, such as worship services and pastoral meetings. I have also been spending several periods visiting the city of Lima; this has deepened my knowledge of its society. I have made observations of the city life while moving and interacting with friends and strangers in this huge metropolis.

The process of analysis started with the findings I had collected from my interviews and my observations. Observations not only helped me in adding new data, but also actually became a necessary tool in the task of interpretation. Here I was able to observe the visible signs of socio-cultural interaction and spirituality that in turn broadened my horizons. I became more aware of and conscious of the importance of visible symbols and gestures. Using Gadamer’s term of proper understanding,⁵⁸ the subject matter can only be properly understood when the construction of these many building blocks of information makes sense through a process of analysis.

Theoretical Considerations

Since my research work is framed within the discipline of contextual theology, the theoretical considerations I make use of are mainly related to the fields of social anthropology and theology. Theories from these fields have been used in my hermeneutical analysis for interpreting the data.

In the history chapter⁵⁹ I have used Postcolonial Theory as a tool for historiographical reflection on Modern Peru in the time after the colonial period. In the chapter on External or Social Conditioning Factors⁶⁰ I have mainly used theories interconnected in three areas, which I have found to be relevant to my research and subject matter. The first is related to the Conditioning Factors, where I have used theoretical perspectives of the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire. For the second, the understanding of Worldviews, Culture, and Ethos, I have made use of theories developed by Andrew Walls, Paul G. Hiebert, Charles H. Kraft and Clifford Geertz. When it comes to the relationship between culture and Christianity, the theories of Helmut Richard Niebuhr have been particularly relevant. For the third, about Paradigms related to Christian movement, I have used ideas developed by Thomas Kuhn, later applied by Hans Küng and David J. Bosch in their investigation of Christianity. In my fourth chapter, on the Internal Conditioning Factors,⁶¹ I continued using theoretical resources that I considered relevant to the main theory in this chapter, which concerns the translatability of the Christian faith, and which has particularly been elaborated by Andrew F. Walls and David J Bosch. These two authors grant a particular relevance to the contextualized transmission and understanding of faith within the dimensions of space and time. They effectively use the paradigm shift understanding of Thomas Kuhn and Hans Küng in their efforts to understand the main changes in Christian history in general and within Christian communities in particular. I have also used theories developed by Avery Cardinal Dulles, in the conclusion chapter,⁶² in order to show implications of the C&MA experience of growth in Lima for the general understanding of ecclesiology.

These authors are therefore relevant for my case, which is connected with the C&MA in Lima. I will now briefly present the different theories and show how they are useful in my research.⁶³

On Postcolonial Theory

Postcolonial Theory can help us understand postcolonial societies, such as those in the Americas, Africa and Asia, which gained their freedom from mainly European powers. This set of theories started to achieve the status of a social discourse approach in the 1970s.⁶⁴ The objective of Postcolonial Theory is to provide new perspectives in the discourses⁶⁵ regarding social and historic understandings of colonised countries, from the perspective of colonised or marginalised people.⁶⁶

Edward Said became an important entrepreneur when this theory emerged. He contributed mainly to it through his book Orientalism,⁶⁷ which focused on the way Europeans have understood and/or rather created the image of the East or Orient through historical and social descriptions of non-Europeans in the Near and Far East. Said wrote, The Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and a vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West.⁶⁸ According to him, by creating the Orient through their views and discourses on it, historians and sociologists in Europe also created the West, or the understanding of it, with a focus on differences.

A main contribution of Postcolonial Theory has been in the field of historiography⁶⁹, implying that human (oral and) written history can have more than just the perspective of historians placed at or identified with the centre, the hegemonic elites of the world. In this way the history and descriptions of the world could involve more than just European or western colonial, often Eurocentric glasses. Diverse descriptions and understandings of world societies and cultures which include the perspective of the marginal or periphery can complement rather than compete with other views.

Within Postcolonial Theory, one feature is the relationship between Centre and Periphery.⁷⁰ The Centre is understood as the identification of those who were or are power holders, while Periphery refers commonly to subordinates. This identification of Centre and Periphery in one society opens up a discourse related to oppositional diversity between these two groups in a socio-historical perspective. This socio-historical oppositional diversity can potentially affect perspectives for the description of historical events. It is relevant, for instance, when versions of history show the perspective of the author, the position from which he or she writes – Centre or Periphery – which sometimes make official records of history debatable by those with a different experience of the event.⁷¹ Thus, a postcolonial historiographical perspective deals with events of postcolonial societies with a social construction of Centre and Periphery, and structures where hegemony has been part of the social system even after foreign colonial powers have left, as in Peru. Ania Loomba writes in her book Colonialism/Post-colonialism: It has been suggested that it is more helpful to think about post-colonialism not just as coming literally after colonialism and signifying its demise, but more flexible as the contestation of colonial domination and the legacies of colonialism.⁷²

Another important focus in Postcolonial Theory is the topic of gender. The importance of the female role in society is in some postcolonial societies a new thing since the male hegemony, expressed in patriarchal structures and concubinage, often oppressed women. This structure with male hegemony was not necessarily created by colonialism, yet colonialism often justified it or made it a modus operandi.⁷³ The freedom of colonized societies potentially contributed to the achievement of women’s rights in some countries, like democratic freedom of speech and the vote. In independent countries with a social system of female oppression, women still suffer the marks of colonial systems where they are kept subordinated to men’s power and control. In these cases maleness is still the centre, while women are at the periphery of a form of androcentric system. Nevertheless, women in postcolonial societies and developing countries have been effective in counteracting male domination by becoming more economically influential, especially through their use of the economic assistance resulting from microcredit projects,⁷⁴ such as in Bangladesh, where this model took root due to the efforts of people like Mohammad Yunus, whose relentless efforts were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.⁷⁵ In these situations women are often the ones who bring positive development to the whole family; nevertheless, gender equality in relationship to human rights and safety is still rather rarely found in postcolonial societies.⁷⁶ On the other hand many postcolonial societies have found ways to come out of gender inequality. For example, one clear sign of increased gender equality in Peru during the last decades has been the increasing presence of women in politically demanding roles, such as members of the government. In recent years Chile, Argentina and Brazil have had their first democratically elected female presidents.⁷⁷

In general, one of the main focuses of postcolonial theory is the marginalization and social divisions that came about as a result of social structures implanted by colonial powers in colonized territories, where cultural borders became the visible barriers against equal interaction between people. Marginalization in this way became a measure for the social classification and categorizations of people according to their background. Peru, being a postcolonial country, is not free from this