Imagining Peru and the Motherland from the Barracks

This article examines a school textbook, the Manual de Instrucción Primaria, which the Peruvian military created in the 1930s in order to help to redeem their indigenous recruits from their racialized backgrounds. On the one hand, the textbook echoed Peruvian elites’ anxieties about the suitability of their indigenous contingents to become part of the nation. On the other hand, the textbook recognized that indigenous people also had the capacity to contribute to Peru's modernization, especially when they supported the fight against illiteracy. What made this textbook different from others? That the publication was centered around recruits’ daily experience in the barracks. Both text and images may have allowed recruits to develop awareness about themselves and the country that they lived in.