The Enduring Power of Patronage in Peruvian elections: Quispicanchis 1860

Political patronage was at the very basis of society's functioning in nineteenth-century Latin America, yet we still know very little about its inner dynamics. Recent analyses of national politics have questioned the idea that Latin American elections were restrictive and fraudulent, or that there was no effective citizenship.1 These studies have widened the understanding of political participation, and have argued persuasively for the agency of those who had been previously reduced to the background. Leading scholars have stressed the importance of early widespread suffrage and electoral mobilization in Latin America, noting that detailed analysis of local power struggles promise to reveal the dynamics of social structures and electoral politics.2 This new literature has also firmly established that in Latin America the process through which this happened was not linear, as generous voting rights were often restricted over time.