A difícil construção de um Nós: eleições e reconhecimento no Peru

Resumo

Peruvian presidential elections are often accompanied by narratives that attribute electoral outcomes to the alleged political incapacity of part of the citizenry. Such interpretations, however, presuppose a homogeneous image of the nation that hardly corresponds to Peru’s historical and social reality. Drawing on Luis Alberto Sánchez’s reflections on the coexistence of different regional attitudes, Augusto Salazar Bondy’s critique of the culture of domination, the Hegelian concept of recognition, and Jorge Basadre’s notion of Peru as a historical possibility, this essay examines the relationship between electoral behavior and national fragmentation. Elections emerge as a space in which distinct historical experiences, divergent understandings of reality, and competing demands for recognition are expressed. From this perspective, electoral conflict does not oppose rationality to irrationality, but rather different forms of rationality rooted in specific social and historical trajectories. Rather than revealing voters’ ignorance, electoral outcomes expose the historical difficulty of constituting a political community capable of recognizing itself as a shared project.