Framing a Shifting Landscape

Until the late nineteenth century, urban Lima comprised the territory within the city walls and the small suburb of Rimac, just across the homonymous river. These mud brick city walls served to distinguish two areas: an intramural section that was almost entirely urbanised, and a mainly rural area beyond. In the intramural area, from the sixteenth century until the 1861 reform, each cuadra (block) generally had a specific name, although these names changed with time. During this period the term calle (street) was typically used to refer to a single cuadra, which is confusing because after the 1861 reform calle was used to describe a group of cuadras. Bromley identified 357 names of cuadras for the period immediately prior to the reform.Footnote ¹⁸ His data suggest that these names were inspired by important or renowned residents (85 cases), religious places or motifs (61), commerce/industry (21), and canals and fountains (17), among others. To explain the context(s) in which these names were established, this article draws on Françoise Choay's helpful description for European cities: before the nineteenth century, the city constituted a semiotic system with elements synchronically related ‘within the context of rules and a code practiced by inhabitant and planner alike’. She indicates that the urban order was mainly syntagmatic (or metonymic), that is, based on relations of contiguity.Footnote ¹⁹ However, this old-style system was fundamentally altered during the nineteenth century and, even for locals, the city became unfamiliar, or strange, as will be shown to have happened in Lima too. In the same way as Choay, Rama suggests that old-style street names resulted from metonymy, giving the example of Monjitas (‘Nuns’) Street in Santiago de Chile named after a convent situated there.Footnote ²⁰ This referential frame sets the stage for the transformation that happened in Lima.

For colonial and early republican Lima, at least three naming strategies can be identified. First, a descriptive one, as in ‘the block that runs from the Chapel of the Water that is across from the houses of don Juan de la Cueba to Conception Street towards the Jesuit mill’.Footnote ²¹ The second strategy was via synecdoche (because a specific feature was used to name the whole cuadra), or metonymy (because the name of one thing was used ‘for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated’).Footnote ²² For instance, the Calle de las Aldabas was a block named after a house with distinguishably artistic doorknockers, signalling that it was the first place where those artifacts were made in Lima. However, were those aldabas a specific feature of that street or something related to it?Footnote ²³ In fact here the naming took place in two stages: first the house was known as ‘house of the aldabas’ (an element became the distinctive feature of the house) and then the cuadra received the name of the distinctive house.

The third strategy was the commemorative, with three variants related to geographic scale: the immediate, commemorating something that happened on that cuadra (like Calle del Huevo, evoking the apparition of an extraordinary being from an egg);Footnote ²⁴ the local, referencing something that happened within the city; and the wider one, memorialising something beyond the city. In colonial times, street names (and naming strategies) sometimes changed, although in an inconsistent manner. For example, in cases where the street was named after an important resident, change happened (potentially) faster. In cases where the name came from a natural feature, a structure, or a building, it may have lasted longer. The whole set of street names can be understood as an asynchronous palimpsest: no naming system was fully superimposed upon another; rather, each specific block or set of blocks followed its own timetable. Nevertheless, we can discern some chronological patterns. While in the colonial period the first two strategies (descriptive and metonymical/synecdochal) and the first variant of the third (commemorative: immediate) were common, the final variant of the third strategy (wider commemoration) is particularly noticeable from the beginning of the early republican period, and is related to a specific figure: the nation.Footnote ²⁵

Who actually named the cuadras? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was no official involvement in street names; their designations arrived by ‘popular baptism’.Footnote ²⁶ The first systematic naming project dates to the Bourbon period in the second half of the eighteenth century. As with other Hispanic American cities, between 1785 and 1787 the authorities in Lima promulgated policies designed to increase the visibility of their subjects: the ‘Reglamento de Policía’, containing instructions for how people should behave; the ‘Division de Quarteles y Barrios’, apportioning the administration of the city to the local authorities; and finally, the ‘Plano Topográfico’, a city plan that included the administrative divisions and street names.Footnote ²⁷ As part of the same project the Juez de Policía was in charge of the correct placement of the plaques displaying the street names, of the replacement of missing house numbers and of ensuring that none were painted over and that the ‘numeration was always complete and unobstructed’.Footnote ²⁸ The information included on one of those plaques is enlightening: ‘5a calle de Santa Rosa Q[uarte]l 2o B[arri]o 5o’ (‘5th block, Santa Rosa Street, 2nd Quarter, 5th Neighbourhood’).Footnote ²⁹ In 1813 one Alcalde de Barrio (neighbourhood mayor) complained:

The urban authorities were following the metonymical/synecdochal approach, with close communication between inhabitants and planner, sensu Choay. With respect to street nomenclature, the Bourbons aimed not to impose new external names but to register, locate and verify the already existing ones.

During the wars of independence in Latin America, the arrival of patriotic troops in Lima and the installation of the new regime in 1821 was accompanied by intense rhetorical fervour that focused on public symbols. The change started with the city itself, which evolved from ‘City of the Kings’ into ‘Heroic and Striving City of the Free’. The main square, the Plaza de Armas, became ‘Independence Square’. In the port of Callao, the Real (‘Royal’) Felipe military fortress was renamed ‘Independence Castle’ and its bastions were also renamed with national motifs: ‘The King’ became ‘Manco Capac’, after the first Inca. The term ‘Indio’ was replaced by ‘Peruvian’ in official political discourse.Footnote ³¹ The patriots applied the widest-scale commemorative strategy, focusing on characters, dates and ideals. In general, the aim was to erase the royal or colonial presence from the public space.Footnote ³² However, changes to street names were minimal. There were only two cases of historical commemorations: Ayacucho and Siete de Setiembre. The former cuadra received that name in 1825 to commemorate the final battle to achieve independence from Spain; the latter celebrated a popular demonstration (1822) to defend Lima from a new invasion by royalist troops.Footnote ³³ In both cases, the traditionally used metonymic strategy was absent. Even if there were previous cases of street names related to events, in these two cases something new was happening: the names officially commemorated events of wider significance; they were related to the nation.

The practice of memorialising events linked to the war against Spain was also occurring in other South American cities. In 1822, a street in Buenos Aires was named Cangallo, to commemorate a massacre in that southern Peruvian village by royalist troops. In 1825 an official decree ordered the renaming of streets in Santiago de Chile after battles for emancipation (e.g. Ayacucho, Chacabuco, Carabobo and Membrillar). As pointed out by Magdalena Chocano, cities were celebrating a ‘common history with an American dimension’.Footnote ³⁴

Almost no streets were given commemorative names in the Peruvian capital city during the first decades of the republican period because of a hiatus in construction: Lima had been destroyed and there were no economic resources available for carrying out urban projects.Footnote ³⁵ Construction of the Siete de Setiembre cuadra and plaza was finally concluded in 1847 when resources from guano fertiliser exports bolstered the national budget. The construction hiatus had a clear correlation with politics. Nearly all of the 57 people in charge of the national government between 1821 and 1858 were from the military and only two actually served their entire terms. In those decades, there were 47 treasury ministers and 49 war/navy ministers. The average time a minister (201 in total) held office was about ten weeks. The national territory was not clearly defined. There were civil wars during nine of those years (1834, 1835, 1836, 1838, 1842, 1843, 1844, 1854, 1856), with competing governments in southern and northern Peru. In 1838 there were four presidents in office, all generals: Andrés de Santa Cruz, Luis Orbegoso, José de la Riva Agüero and Agustín Gamarra. Regarding urban administration, the municipality of Lima was disbanded between 1839 and 1857 and administration was overseen by the Intendencia de Policía. The reinstatement of the municipality in 1857 coincided with the enormous impact of guano exports on the national economy. This was also the basis for the urban transformation of Lima, resulting in the most impressive constructive cycle of the nineteenth century, which included urban expansion and a population increase from 58,326 inhabitants in 1827 to 105,167 in 1862. The precise ethnic composition of the city is still a matter for debate, but the drastic population increase was most likely related to both external (international) and internal (national) migration due to the rising importance of Lima as an economic and political centre. According to a partial sample of the census of 1860, 10 per cent of Lima's urban population was foreign, and 24 per cent originated in other parts of Peru. The reform of street names took place during this transformative period.Footnote ³⁶

Figuring the Nation through Renaming the Streets: From History to Geography

In the mid-nineteenth century a reformist wave impacted street nomenclature across South America. Although specific official name changes had marked the beginnings of the national period, now the process was more systematic. In 1843 the Montevideo Jefe Político y de Policía, Andrés Lamas, reformed street names, emphasising historical figures, battles against Spain or Brazil, historical dates and institutions, among others, while avoiding controversial figures, such as postcolonial personages. The same year the intendant José Miguel de la Barra was charged with establishing house numbers and making changes to street names in Santiago de Chile. Here, Morande Street was renamed ‘Junín’, to commemorate one of the last battles against royalist troops in Peru. In 1849, during the administration of the provincial governor Vicente Lombana, a new nomenclature was introduced in Bogotá with names of Colombian provinces, nations that had participated in the wars of independence against Spain, and associated battles. That same year the government of Carlos Antonio López named 45 streets in Asunción by presidential decree.Footnote ³⁷ During this period, the concept of ‘nation’ in countries like Peru was like a nearly empty box, to be filled in various ways. Street nomenclature contributed to the nation-building objective, and within the commemorative naming strategy history and geography provided key references. Within the historical approach names were inspired by individuals (mostly heroes) and by dates (battles or remarkable occasions). Geographic inspiration came from the predominantly Indigenous names of departments, provinces and rivers. In between the two were battlegrounds, which seem geographical but which were actually historical (for instance, Chacabuco, commemorating the triumph of the Argentine and Chilean patriots against royalist forces in 1817). There was also a third alternative: ideals such as ‘Libertad’, ‘Progreso’, ‘Unión’.

Peru belongs to this continental panorama of street names and national representation. A brief comparison between Lima and three coastal cities suggests some trends (Table 1).Footnote ³⁸ In general, Callao, Chorrillos and Iquique were, around 1860, far more impacted by the historical commemorative strategy than was Lima. Generals from the beginning of the republican era were the most frequently commemorated persons. In Callao, nine of the street names included the word ‘General’ (as in ‘General Bolívar’); in Chorrillos there were 12, and Gamarra was even called ‘Generalísimo’. In Iquique only two (Castilla, Nieto) include the word ‘General’; however, other streets are named after generals. Seven generals (Bolívar, Castilla, Gamarra, Necochea, Salaverry, San Martín, Sucre) are simultaneously celebrated in these three cities, suggesting the ingredients for an embryonic national pantheon. Indigenous personages (Atahualpa, Manco Capac, Montezuma, José Olaya) are celebrated only once each, the first three in the cosmopolitan Callao. The case of the Chorrillos street dedicated to the patriotic fisherman Olaya shows how not all potential national heroes become widely popular; some remained referents only at a local level. Beyond these exceptions, the street nomenclature of these coastal cities supports Earle's hypothesis: creole generals celebrating themselves.Footnote ³⁹

Table 1.

Dates and Individuals (Excluding Saints) Officially Commemorated in the Street Names of Four Peruvian Cities, c. 1860.

Source: Paz Soldán, Atlas Geográfico del Perú, Plates LXI (Callao), XXI (Chorrillos), XLIX (Iquique) and XX (Lima).

Note: Names in square brackets added for clarification.

Abbreviations: g, ‘General’; l, local personage.

Lima, however, was quite different. On 15 May 1857, the municipality of Lima resumed activities after being officially shut down for two decades. Attentive to what was happening across South America, on 17 August the renowned polymath Manuel Atanasio Fuentes presented a project to the City Council, as a private citizen, to reform Lima's street names. Discussion of this project (the aims of which were not published until 1858) was delayed several times.Footnote ⁴⁰ He started by rejecting the existing nomenclature:

Fuentes's portrayal of Lima's street names emphasises a rupture (sensu Choay), which closely recalls Jean-Baptiste Pujoulx's description of Paris street names in 1801.Footnote ⁴² Fuentes argued for the economy of his proposal, which would replace 355 terms that mostly ‘mean nothing’ by ‘80 or 90 historical ones’. Finally, he recommended that these names be drawn from ‘memorable characters or events in our history’.Footnote ⁴³ Over the course of the next two decades, the municipality received many offers to repair, install or replace the plaques of the house numbers and street names; however only the proposals to actually reform the street nomenclature, like the one by Fuentes, will be considered in the following.

In 1859 two articles on street name reform appeared in El Comercio. On 30 May, an anonymous author presented suggestions for improvement. Like Fuentes, this author criticised the current situation, particularly the ‘hubbub and confusion in the nomenclature of our streets’, the peculiar fact that in Lima – unlike in European cities – names were by block and not by street, the lack of consistency in the display of the street signs within the block (variously at the centre, left or right), and that street names were not spelled uniformly. According to the author, some streets had ‘such unpleasant names, some of which not even Barrabas would be able to give as an address’. His proposal was that street signs needed to be placed uniformly and that the same names should be used for several blocks (approximately six, not the entire length).Footnote ⁴⁴ The following month the same writer commented on three proposals presented to the City Council by two Europeans and a Chilean named Álvarez to replace the plaques displaying house numbers. Discounting the first two proposals as overly expensive, the writer focused on that of Álvarez. This proposal was technically more feasible since it proposed using zinc plaques instead of tiles, which were more expensive and also easily breakable (by ‘naughty rascals’). Also in its favour, zinc had been used in Argentina, Chile, England and the United States. A second technical aspect was that the plaques would be placed at the street corners. Regarding street nomenclature, Álvarez offered to do the ‘historical and mental work’ for free, to replace quirky names, such as ‘Ya Parió, Siete Jeringas, Faltriquera del Diablo, Los Borricos’ (‘Has Already Given Birth, Seven Syringes, The Devil's Purse, The Donkeys’), with ‘names that remind the people of glorious deeds, such as names of battles won, etc.’. By doing so, the pueblo would ‘preserve its patriotism, having before it and at all times events that commemorate worthy deeds’.Footnote ⁴⁵ Like Fuentes, Álvarez followed the historical approach. However, Fuentes proposed a reduction in number of street names, which was not specified by Álvarez. In both cases the proponents offered to perform the historical research, but it remained unclear who would decide on the names.

On 10 September 1861, the Libro de Actas contains information about Bolognesi's new proposal for the naming of the streets and numbering of the houses. It was reported that the previous administration had already accepted the proposal but that the current administration was requesting additional information. Four days later, the commission in charge of considering the proposal invited Bolognesi to explain the ‘form and method of the work’ to the municipal authorities. Five days later, the municipal councillor Pedro Ayllón presented a report strongly supporting Bolognesi's proposal, clearly responding to the objections raised within the Council. His arguments covered the legal capacity of the institution to change street names, observing that since it was authorised to name new streets it also had the ‘authority to change current rude, ridiculous and muddled names’. Ayllón referred to the case of Chorrillos City Council, where street names had also been changed. The previous administration had known that the City Council had intended to approve Bolognesi's proposal in its last session, but since the minutes were never approved and that administration's term had ended, the proposal had not been officially accepted. Ayllón claimed that it needed to be approved or rejected without delay. Bolognesi's proposal was finally accepted on 5 October 1861, although not without conflict: three days later City Councillor Francisco Garfias claimed he would appeal to the government to block it.

What was Bolognesi proposing? Like the authors of previous schemes, he was reacting to ‘the ridiculous catalogue of street names’. However, unlike their focus on long-ago battles and heroes, his plan emphasised geography: Lima streets would be named after departments, provinces and rivers of Peru. The principal axis would be the street running from the Rimac district (today Trujillo Street) across the Rimac river over an historic bridge and turning into what would later be called Calle de la Unión. From that axis names of departments would be given to parallel streets to the east and west. Streets named after provinces and rivers would run perpendicularly, from north to south, starting at the banks of the river. The names of these geographical elements would be placed within the city in positions analogous to their actual locations on the map of Peru. For example, since the department of Puno is south of the department of Ayacucho, Puno Street would be located to the south of Ayacucho Street. Streets named after provinces would intersect streets named after the departments to which they belonged: for instance, the street named Arica (province) would intersect with Moquegua (department).Footnote ⁴⁶ House numbering would begin at the central axis (Trujillo and Union) and from the river, thus avoiding problems for future urban expansion. The geographic content of the plan included some exceptions: 28 de Julio (the official Independence Day) and two historical figures (the first and last Incas, Manco Capac and Atahualpa). Union Street could be considered another exception, since it apparently invokes an ideal (union), but according to Bolognesi himself it referenced a province in his native Arequipa department.Footnote ⁴⁷ As part of the proposal, Bolognesi was charged with fixing the plaques with the house numbers and street names. He also created, and sold, a map (Figure 1) with the new names. The map was presented to the City Council in 1862 and a partial version appeared in 1864 in the journal El Hijo del Pueblo published by the society Los Hijos del Pueblo. Both the journal and the society – established by liberal intellectuals specifically interested in the education of the artisan class – were run by Bolognesi.Footnote ⁴⁸

Figure 1.

Bolognesi's Map of Lima with Proposed New Street Names

Source: El Hijo del Pueblo, 14 April 1864 (redrawn by Martha Bell; spellings as in original)

A Plethora of Clashes: From the Municipality to the State

Bolognesi's proposal included several novelties. It was a new naming system and it supported a specific symbolism related to national geography that incorporated place names of Indigenous origin. However, it was also practical, in that it dealt with the actual work of fixing the house numbers and street names using paint, marble or zinc plaques or tiles. Additionally, it addressed the location of the plaques naming the streets. All of this was related to issues of official visibility. Equivalence devices needed to be created, like Bolognesi's city map with the new names. From the moment of implementation until the end of the nineteenth century, all maps and guides to the city included the equivalences between the old and new nomenclatures (Figure 2).Footnote ⁴⁹ Businesses and residents needed to consider the practical implications of addresses for mail delivery and other purposes (Figure 3).Footnote ⁵⁰

Figure 2.

Map with Equivalences between Old and New Street Names. (a) Top part of map showing title, legend and equivalences. (b) The detail shows new street names identified by numbers (e.g. Ayacucho Street, 75), with the older divisions of the streets listed on the right-hand side of the map (e.g. Ayacucho Street's 14 cuadras).

Source: Detail from Jouanny, Plano de Lima

Figure 3.

Classified Ads Showing Strategies for Dealing with Street Name Reform

Note: The second and third advertisements (reading from the top) give the equivalences between old and new street names. The fourth uses only the family name to identify the house. The fifth uses the old street name but with the new house number.

Source: El Comercio, 10 August 1863

Legal concerns regarding the registration of real estate were also raised. In November 1862, the government decreed that all documents dealing with properties in Lima must include the new and old street names. Moreover, all notaries public had to have a certified copy of Antonio Dupard's Lima map to resolve any ‘doubts related to locations: that is, to avoid obscurity or confusion that over time could result, in relation to the situation of the properties, with concomitant prejudice to property rights, through changes to the names of the streets of Lima’.Footnote ⁵¹ In my evaluation of the success of the reform, I take into account all these considerations – including any negative reactions – since they were not all dealt with in the same way.

The City Council's discussion of Bolognesi's proposal soon developed into a high-level confrontation. On 7 March 1862, the Ministry of Government, Policy and Public Works and the Postmaster General presented to the City Council a new proposal for street name reform.Footnote ⁵² Although this was rejected (since Bolognesi's had already been accepted), the Postmaster General still insisted that it be considered. Almost four months later, the Municipal Design Commission presented a report on the Postmaster General's proposal, which criticised Bolognesi's plan and instead suggested that a European method be applied.Footnote ⁵³ This plan would give new names to the streets, but preserve the old names of the blocks, a solution that would assist ‘civil, municipal and police’ management. This solution included the placement of an equivalence device on street corners, in the form of a plaque or tile that stated both the new and old street names. The City Council accepted this ‘double system’ within Bolognesi's proposal. As reported in the Libro de Actas, early in 1863 various minor discussions related to the application of the new nomenclature were taking place, but in April 1863 inter-institutional confrontations between the City Council and the national government reached a peak, raising the spectre of getting rid of all of the new names.

During the 1860s, Lima was in the process of expansion and renovation paid for by guano income. Members of the military who had been leaders during the agitated first three decades of the republican regime still held powerful positions (and even left their imprint on street names; see Table 1). For instance, Gran Mariscal Antonio Gutiérrez de la Fuente was Mayor of Lima in 1863, during the transitional government of another member of the military, Brigadier General Pedro Diez Canseco. Gutiérrez had started out in the royalist army but later switched to the patriotic side, occupied several high-level positions, including President (1829, 1830 and 1831), and participated actively in the civil war (1834) and in the war against the Peruvian–Bolivian Confederacy (1837–9). In the 1860s heated discussions were taking place between the Ministry of Government and the municipality regarding urban nomenclature. The first dispatch from that Ministry to the Prefect of the Department of Lima (Colonel Francisco Diez Canseco, nominated by his brother Pedro) was signed by the Minister, Colonel Manuel Freyre. His letter dated 23 April 1863, which was printed on 1 May 1863 in El Comercio and on 29 April in the official journal El Peruano, begins with a legal argument: according to his reading of the Law of Municipalities (Chapter 3, Article 44, Subsection 8) a municipality could name new streets but not rename old ones.Footnote ⁵⁴ According to Freyre, if ‘such an irregular nomenclature’ were left in place it could over time result in ‘appreciable inconveniences and even harm to the interests of the citizens, caused by [confusion in] the contracts and other transactions of urban properties’. As a solution, he believed that this kind of reform should apply a ‘natural and convenient’ naming system taken from a ‘notable building, located at that address or in the vicinity of each street’ (i.e. the metonymical/synecdochal strategy), and, when this was not possible, names should be derived from ‘a famous event of the country, a deed that lifts up the nation, or a department of the Republic’ (i.e. firstly the commemorative strategy and only finally a partially geographical one). For Freyre and the Ministry of Government, the naming system should be organised by streets and not by blocks, but without forgetting the ‘traditions that named the streets and were worthy of being preserved for the honourable memories of the country’.Footnote ⁵⁵

Freyre's letter elicited an immediate public reaction that included two supportive anonymous texts printed in the same issue of El Comercio. The first was a brief text suggesting that the names of Lima streets introduced by Bolognesi's reform would soon be withdrawn, with only a third being renamed. The second, a longer text, praised Freyre for opposing the reform while most authorities had remained silent. Like other critics, the anonymous author accepted that certain names must be changed: ‘Siete Jeringas, Ya Parió, Monopinta (possibly ‘Monkey Paints’), Mata-moros (‘Moor-killer’), and similar ones [must be changed] and replaced by the glorious Pichincha, Junín, Ayacucho, Yungay and others of equal significance.’ In other words, he proposed a shift from the metonymical/synecdochal approach to the historical, specifically commemorating battles. Then the author launched into a blatant criticism of Bolognesi, whom he mockingly called a ‘project designer, colonel, musician, geographer, etc.’, for trying to ‘fit within Lima [places like] Canchis and Urubamba [both in the Cuzco department], the Misti [the volcano above Arequipa] and the Monzón [a district in the Huánuco department]’. He also called out the City Council for supporting Bolognesi's plan ‘without considering that the ancient names were sacred because they guarantee property limits and [because] many of them were introduced by special laws, or preserved the name of illustrious Peruvians such as [the lawyer] Olavide, [the jurist] Baquíjano and others’, as was the case with Parisian street names like ‘Racine, Voltaire, Mazarino, Richeliu [sic]’, among others. The anonymous letter writer clearly supported names derived from individuals and battles. He criticised Bolognesi's street names not only because they belonged to the geographical tendency, but because they were Indigenous toponyms not consecrated by war. Finally, the anonymous author defended the preservation of some old names in the new nomenclature, but suggested their place and orientation be changed in order to correct alleged errors in Bolognesi's geographically analogous model for street naming.Footnote ⁵⁶

On 5 May 1863, Lima's Mayor, Gutiérrez, replied to the Prefect, Diez Canseco, regarding the letter from the Ministry of Government. While his communication began by agreeing with its author Freyre, by recognising that the new urban nomenclature deserved reform, it sustained that the municipality was not exceeding its authority in renaming old streets. Specifically, Article 44, Subsection 13 of the Law of Municipalities established that the municipality had oversight of public works of renovation, and that street naming fell into this category. Moreover, Gutiérrez, referring to the reform of 1861, asked: ‘Will the Minister or you [the Prefect] deny the urgent need that exists to change names of the streets of the capital?’ Finally, the Mayor confirmed that further reform was needed and that a commission established by the municipality would coordinate this with the Prefect.Footnote ⁵⁷

Over the following days, no fewer than four notes were published in El Comercio on the confrontation between the Ministry of Government and the municipality regarding street nomenclature.Footnote ⁵⁸ Even if the notes were anonymous, it is clear that El Comercio was backing Freyre against Gutiérrez. In one of the articles, it was observed that even within the municipality opinion was ‘divided, enraged and hesitant’. The author accused the municipality of general dereliction of duty towards the city and of insubordination towards the higher national powers.Footnote ⁵⁹ In this agitated context the article dated 11 May referenced the symbolic aspects of street names, qualifying the reform as a ‘violent, damaging and unfounded step, at least in large part’. While it recognised that some names needed to be removed because they were ‘almost rude’, it went on to declare:

As in a previous anonymous article (1 May 1863), what this critic could not stand was that the reform brought into intramural Lima Indigenous toponymy, which he considered as lacking in significance and hard to pronounce.Footnote ⁶¹ Meanwhile, the official newspaper El Peruano also reported on the issue. In an official letter (dated 8 May), the Supreme Court Prosecutor, José Gregorio Paz Soldán, argued against the authority taken on itself by the municipality to change street names, insisting that the old ones ‘had legal meaning’ and guaranteed the limits and location of properties that ‘always have been regarded as sacred’.Footnote ⁶²

Bolognesi reacted to this official pressure (from the Ministry, the Prefect and the Supreme Court Prosecutor) and journalistic campaign (El Comercio, El Mercurio)Footnote ⁶³ by publishing a detailed justification of his proposal in El Comercio (11 May 1863). Before presenting and defending his plan, he argued that even if his original project had limitations, he had ‘the satisfaction of having made the interminable listing of indecent and ridiculous names disappear forever from the streets of Lima, which at every step reminded us, as a worthy inheritance, of a cruel and imbecile colonisation [coloniaje]’. He was explicitly referring to the old street names which harkened back to the colonial period (1532–1821/4). From his detailed defence of his project, it is evident that Bolognesi had a clear idea of the importance of reform. He drew attention to the incomprehensibility of the naming system which, he claimed, justified his reform ‘not only was there a frightening labyrinth of incoherent names, but also, because each block had its own name, any notable event that took place in it made that name change undetectably without leaving any written record’. He discarded, one by one, the methods for selecting new names suggested by others (e.g. use the name of one block or of a representative building for the whole street). He also rejected using religious names since doing so would transform the map of Lima into a ‘calendar [of saints’ days] without dates’, which would ‘provoke criticism from enlightened people and the mockery of foreigners’. Considering using ‘the names of our glorious deeds and our great men’, he confessed that this had actually been his first impulse, but that he ‘searched our history from top to bottom’, finding that of the former there were no more than those already included in the names of Peru's departments and that of the latter ‘we found no others than San Martín and Bolívar’. Since these were both foreigners, Bolognesi was implying that Peru was a land without heroes, an empty pantheon.Footnote ⁶⁴

While this lack could be explained by Peru's brief existence as an independent republic and its small population, he also believed that ‘our men in high positions would have had so little idea of true glory that they would have done their best to leave their names to posterity wrapped in a thousand doubts’. He was referring to the generals who had ruled Peru during its first 40 years, suggesting that more time must pass in order to make a better assessment of them or even to adapt to a new definition of ‘heroes’ that should include not only the destroyers but also the builders. The latter, he argued, would be more deserving of monuments. Finally, Bolognesi justified his geographical strategy, explaining that the names of departments, provinces and rivers ‘were in no way ugly’. He challenged his critics: ‘If we are Indians descended from Manco Capac, why should we find the resonant names Urubamba, Azángaro and Ucayali ridiculous? In such a case, those of Valladolid, Poitiers and Worcester would be no less so for the Spanish, French and English.’Footnote ⁶⁵ The mention of Manco Capac, the ‘first Inca’, should not be overlooked. On the one hand it gives a chronological, ethnic and historical frame to the figuration of the nation; on the other, the ur-hero is used to justify the presence of Indigenous nomenclature all over the city. Two Incas were included in Bolognesi's plan (Atahualpa and Manco Capac). This clearly differed from what was happening with public monuments at this time, when the only proposal, from 1868, to erect a monument to an Inca, Huayna Capac, was never progressed.Footnote ⁶⁶ Moreover, since most of Bolognesi's new street names were Aymara or Quechua placenames, the novelty of his proposal is evident, and the tone of the reactions too. His proposal regarding street names fit neatly with his views on education. As pointed out by Antonio Espinoza, this musician and teacher was a ‘lonely voice that proposed fostering national unity by using Quechua in highland schools’.Footnote ⁶⁷

As part of the justification for his reform, Bolognesi laid out its advantages. First, he suggested that using names of places rather than of people would avoid ‘inciting emulations’ that would lead to further changes in street nomenclature. Second, he argued that the proposed names were already known and, if they were not, this would ‘give the occasion to get to know them since this will be of general interest’. Third, he insisted on the analogous placement of the street names in relation with the national map, in order to ‘imperceptibly and easily teach’ the main features of the nation's geography. Fourth, he aimed to ‘centralise’ the names of all the departments and of many provinces in the Peruvian capital, thus ‘exciting the patriotism of the capital’ and contributing ‘to the preservation of national integrity’. Bolognesi's text continued with explanations of the technical details of his proposal regarding the disposition and organisation of names and numbers, but at this point it is already clear that he was using urban nomenclature to prefigure a different kind of nation from that envisaged by his critics: one that incorporated Indigenous elements in the capital. Moreover, he proposed a nation not as a static symbol, but as part of a pedagogical process, a daily performance.Footnote ⁶⁸

Six days after Bolognesi's article, on 17 May 1863, the most extensive contribution to this debate was published in El Comercio by an anonymous writer (‘JFE’). This author reiterated the well-known problems with the pre-1861 street names (the names themselves were unsatisfactory and even vulgar, each block had its own name, and house numbers were not continuous) and agreed that reform was needed. According to this author, Bolognesi's original – but undeclared – idea was to follow a system from the United States, which he explained with reference to the cities of New York and Washington DC. He outlined several problems with the application of Bolognesi's plan. First, he found the division of the streets into two groups, one on each side of Union Street, to be confusing (see Figure 1). Second, he argued that the name ‘Callao Street’ ought to have been given to the thoroughfare that led to the Gate of Callao (in a way returning to Bolognesi's metonymical/synecdochal strategy). Third, he believed the plan erred in introducing ‘an infinity of unknown names, particularly of insignificant rivers, and provinces, whose names, if not barely known, are at least not very euphonious’.Footnote ⁶⁹ As did previous critics, JFE disapproved of the sound (‘noise’) of Indigenous names in the capital. Finally, JFE maintained that the municipality had the legal authority to change street names, because this was ‘a measure of general interest for the municipality and not for the nation’.Footnote ⁷⁰

On 23 May 1863 Bolognesi published his second (and final) response in El Comercio, describing JFE's criticism, the second text from 1 May, and Freyre's note to the Prefect (discussed above) as one and the same. He declared that he was not following a US model and that he had tried to be as original as possible. He did not, however, disclose that he was actually following Pujoulx's proposal for Paris. In 1801, this French author had suggested that Paris streets and cul-de-sacs be named after the cities, towns and villages of France, maintaining their general, and potentially relative, locations. Names of rivers and mountains used for administrative and territorial divisions could be used for streets that traversed several neighbourhoods. Pujoulx specifically mentioned the pedagogical value of the nomenclature, especially in the context of early Republican instability: ‘This proposal, moreover, is independent of any particular system, whether political or religious; which protects it from hatred, from the changes too often brought by partisanship.’Footnote ⁷¹ It is obvious that Bolognesi was inspired by Pujoulx. However, if the geographical approach seemed less volatile than the historical, the Lima experience shows that not even this was neutral.

The legal debate between the central government and the municipality continued. After several exchanges, on 14 July, the Minister of Government, Freyre, gave a deadline of 30 days for the municipality to apply the 23 April and 15 May resolutions.Footnote ⁷² On 5 August, Pedro Diez Canseco passed on the presidency of Peru to Colonel Juan Antonio Pezet, as required by the Constitution. That same day Freyre resigned as minister. The inter-institutional debate faded away. In 1864, Peru joined Chile to repel the Spanish invasion of the Chincha Islands, an important source of guano. The war ended with a famous battle on 2 May 1866. On 25 May 1866 a proposal was presented to the municipality to replace ‘Calle de la Unión’ with ‘Calle Dos de Mayo’. Bolognesi wrote the music for a hymn to commemorate the combat. Both symbolic gestures belonged to a new phase of patriotism, which culminated in the creation of the splendid Dos de Mayo monument and plaza located on the extreme western edge of Lima (1874), on the former site of the city walls.Footnote ⁷³

Imprints of a Reform

The thorny reception of Bolognesi's proposal shows the intricacies of configuring a nation in the public space of a capital city. Since the city offers a large scenario (with many spaces to fill), it requires a considerable number of names. In the case of Lima, the most obvious methodology (the historical approach) was inadequate because the chronological timeframe defining the post-Hispanic nation and the selection of its representatives was too narrow. Geography was a safer means by which to represent the Peruvian nation, and pictorial references were available for use: a map had been created as early as 1822.Footnote ⁷⁴ To be representative, the pool of names needed to include elements from all over the selected unit (i.e. the national territory), but that implied the official replacement of metonymic connections with wider commemorations: nationalism required disconnection from tradition. If the nation is considered as the new referential whole, a new theoretical kind of bond is created (i.e. every part of the nation, including the city, is linked with any other part of that same entity). However, this becomes problematic if not all the ingredients of the new entity are equally welcome. Bolognesi placed elements of the nation on the street corners of the capital in order to introduce new ‘contexts of experience’ (sensu Benjamin) for future citizens. Nevertheless, some of the national authorities in Lima could not accept these innovations in the intramural area.Footnote ⁷⁵

In the short run, the geographical approach to representing the nation through street names triumphed on paper, but was not accepted in the daily life of the city dwellers. Two resounding testimonies from 25 years after the reform are illustrative. A Lima resident, Juan de Arona, explained that:

A German doctor, Ernst Middendorf, who had lived in Peru for several decades, observed:

These testimonies, and data from correspondence sent in the second half of the nineteenth century, speak to different aspects of the reform process, and explain the persistence of equivalence devices (see Figures 4 and 5).Footnote ⁷⁸

Figure 4.

New and Old Nomenclatures on a Private Letter

Source: Detail from letter sent from Huancavelica city to Lima, 11 April 1889: Corinphila, auction 284-290, lot 1045 (www.corinphila.ch/en/home)

Figure 5.

Street Name Equivalence on Ayacucho Street Plaque (late nineteenth century/early twentieth century)

Note: Compare with Figure 2.

Source: Photo by author

De Arona and Middendorf are describing custom, inertia and resistance.Footnote ⁷⁹ Earlier testimonies allow for deeper analysis, describing the genesis of a new urban discourse intimately associated with the reaction to the reform and an alternative stance regarding the figuration of the nation. The first, signed by ‘Roberto’ in an 1874 almanac, asserted that Bolognesi's efforts to offer the people of Lima a ‘complete Peruvian geography course’ were in vain, because ‘we Limeños are happy with our routine, accustomed to our primitive patriarchal uses (at this point, we name the streets as our grandfathers did). “Azángaro” and “Lampa” and other modern names only appear on the street corners and on the topographic map.’Footnote ⁸⁰ Three years later, after explaining the old naming system of Lima's streets (comparing it to the esquinas system of his native Caracas),Footnote ⁸¹ the writer and diplomat Simón Camacho (writing under the pseudonym ‘Nazareno’) observed, ‘The names were changed to others. These were so different that they couldn't succeed, and the public turned a deaf ear’, adding that ‘the persistence of customs is as respectable as the rights of man. Therefore, I submit to the plurality of streets with the good will of Muslims to the plurality of wives.’Footnote ⁸² Also in 1874 a fictional narrative included a declaration against the reform:

The author, Ricardo Palma, adds some details relating to provenance and visibility:

Closing Remarks

Old names like those mentioned by Palma were locality markers and contexts of experience. Bolognesi's new names were too, but projecting towards the future. While Bolognesi was proposing the introduction of a national identity to Lima's public space that included Indigenous names, Palma was referring to an urban identity connected with the past, and more specifically with what Bolognesi called the ‘cruel and imbecile coloniaje’. Palma's writings mark the beginning of the ‘localist tendency’ of historiography;Footnote ⁸⁵ and are in direct conflict with those of Bolognesi. After Chile's defeat of Peru and occupation of Lima in 1881, Palma characterised Indians as an ‘abject and degraded race’, adding, ‘The Indian has no feeling for the homeland, he is the born enemy of the white and the coastal man.’Footnote ⁸⁶ Twenty-four years after his first text on street names, published in 1874, Palma maintained his antagonism towards Bolognesi's reform: moreover, he used two Quechua names as examples of its ineffectiveness (Chumbivilcas, Quispicanchi).Footnote ⁸⁷

In other regions of Peru nationalism implied identification with battles, heroes and symbols produced or selected in Lima. There was therefore serious resistance in the national capital when in 1861 the opposite happened, when Lima incorporated into its street names ‘insignificant places’ of a nation, populated and named by Indians. As already shown, reactions to the reform were multiple: while government authorities limited themselves to discussions of its legality, newspaper articles questioned the relevance of the chosen names. However, the two followed a similar path. Palma, on the other hand, supported the revival of the values of the idealised ‘Colonial Arcadia’ (sensu Salazar Bondy).Footnote ⁸⁸ The reaction to Bolognesi's proposal was also tinged by racism, as demonstrated by its aim to expel the ‘non-euphonious’ names, i.e. Indigenous names, from intramural Lima. In the long run, that aim blatantly failed.

At this point, it is fitting to compare Palma's reaction to Bolognesi's reform with Gramsci's criticism of the official replacement of traditional street names in Turin around 1917. Even if they seem comparable since both preferred the old nomenclature, they are actually false friends. In Gramsci's Turin the past meant working class, not colonial, not ‘pure blood’, as with Palma's Lima.Footnote ⁸⁹ In Turin the new names were what Gramsci called ‘medal names’ (basically an historical approach, of the heroic variety), while in Lima they were the opposite (mostly ‘insignificant’ locations in Indigenous languages). What would Gramsci's reaction have been if the new street names in Turin had been, for instance, Sardinian?Footnote ⁹⁰ Street names may be part of hegemony, but proposals for reform have varied, reflecting competing ideologies, as the reaction to Bolognesi's plan shows. Notably, Bolognesi's proposal (his ‘lonely voice’, according to Espinoza) triumphed over the will of several members of the Peruvian ruling class.

Despite the debate discussed above, the geographical approach to street names stuck in intramural Lima and, in the long run, it triumphed among the public. Street nomenclature was far ahead of other commemorative media celebrating a more representative kind of nation in the capital's public space. After the demolition of the city walls in the 1870s and urban expansion to the south, however, commemoration in the new extramural Lima was dominated by the historical approach of the heroic variety. This process began with the avenues laid out on the former city walls which were named after military heroes of the war against Chile, who were also memorialised in huge monuments and squares. Not without irony, the most impressive of these was devoted to Colonel Francisco Bolognesi, Mariano's elder brother.