The chapters included in this volume address gaps in the scholarship on President Augusto B. Leguía's second administration (1919-30), also known as La Patria Nueva or El Oncenio. This volume builds upon long-established perspectives, while also introducing new insights about diverse priorities within the regime. The interaction between government and different interlocutors shaped official actions over time. Underlying all chapters are the concepts of modernization and modernity, which some authors explicitly problematize, contributing to the theoretical discussion on Peruvian history.

In the introduction, Drinot notes that studies on La Patria Nueva adopted modernization theory in the 1950s. The modernization paradigm was modeled after the histories of the United States and Western European countries. From this perspective, El Oncenio was a key, but deficient, stage in Peru's modernization. Although capitalist expansion occurred, institutional renewal was incomplete, and middle-class political participation was premature. In the 1970s, academics informed by dependency theory, tacitly accepted this interpretation, while arguing that the defining feature of the period was the rise of a national industrial bourgeoisie subordinated to US interests. Hiett and Moore each problematize these interpretations. Hiett studies how domestic elites promoted the early development of aviation. By emulating foreign countries, they aspired to participate in a modernity that was supposedly universal. Insufficient resources caused practical challenges that put into question such an assumption. Hiett illustrates the anxiety that modernizing aspirations elicited in a peripheral world region, as well as the existence of alternative interpretations of modernity within Peru. From a cultural studies perspective, Moore examines José Carlos Mariátegui's use of the terms lo nacional and lo peruano. In contrast to the top-down modernizing processes after the War of the Pacific, which further stratified Peruvian society, Mariátegui sought to elaborate a hegemonic project from below. He appropriated and recreated avant-garde and Marxist ideas, posing a more inclusive concept of national community that was also anti-oligarchic and anti-imperialist.

One of the features of El Oncenio was that the government adopted an indigenista rhetoric that also influenced its policies. Ben David, Wilson, and Heilman each examine the ramifications of this stance. Ben David analyzes the norms on sentencing included in the 1924 Penal Code. Seeking to “rehabilitate” Indians, and bring them closer to the nation, the code encouraged judges to practice leniency toward indigenous defendants. Indians deserved a special legal status because they presumably were “semi-civilized,” and had been degraded by exploitation and acquired vices. Both judges and defendants appropriated this argument in trials. Wilson and Heilman study the activities of the Comité Pro Derecho Indígena Tawantinsuyu in Junín and Ayacucho. The Comité was an advocacy organization founded in 1920 that received initial support from Leguía. The organization's founders were indigenous activists, in contrast to earlier pro-indigenous groups, and their general goal was equal access to political rights for Indians. Local branches of the Comité had different specific priorities, according to their location and membership. The government eventually withdrew its support of the Comité and repressed its members.

Taking on very different topics, the essays by Luna and Rengifo Carpio elaborate on the workings of Leguía's regime. Examining economic policy, Luna argues that La Patria Nueva represented a “stunted modernization” of public finance. On one hand, it continued some existing trends such as increased state intervention in the economy and reliance on indirect taxes and charges for administrative services. On the other hand, the government increased foreign debt and unified tax collection under a single agency, albeit one that represented both public and private interests. Rengifo Carpio, for his part, studies the 1920 revival of the opera Ollanta, two decades after an unsuccessful premier. Leguía's regime sponsored the revival of this piece, which glorified the Inca past, as a means to bring the indigenous population into the national historical narrative, without challenging its contemporary exploitation. Urban audiences, who conceived of opera as an educated artistic form, cheered the stylized revival.

This volume highlights the complexity of La Patria Nueva. The emergence of new political and intellectual actors, the various groups the government sought to engage, and the demands of these groups, all defy easy interpretations. This volume is an important historiographical contribution, enriching our picture of El Oncenio and problematizing the concepts of modernization and modernity.