Academic Historian

Carlos Aguirre is Professor of History at the University of Oregon. He obtained his MA at the Universidad Católica del Perú and his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of six books: Agentes de su propia libertad. Los esclavos de Lima y la desintegración de la esclavitud, 1821-1854 (Agents of their Own Freedom. The Slaves of Lima and the Disintegration of Slavery, 1821-1854, Lima, 1993), Breve historia de la esclavitud en el Perú. Una herida que no deja de sangrar (A Brief History of Slavery in Peru. A Wound that Continues to Bleed, Lima, 2005; reprinted in 2022), The Criminals of Lima and their Worlds: The Prison Experience (1850-1935) (Durham, 2005), Dénle duro que no siente. Poder y transgresión en el Perú republicano (Hit Her Harshly. She Doesn’t Feel it. Power and Transgression in Republican Peru, Lima, 2008), La ciudad y los perros. Biografía de una novela (The Time of the Hero. The Biography of a Novel, Seville, 2017), and Alberto Flores Galindo. Utopía, historia y revolución (with Charles Walker, Lima, 2020). He is also co-editor of ten books on banditry, crime, prisons, and intellectuals, among other publications. He was a MacArthur Fellow at the University of Minnesota (1990-1996) and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 1999. He is currently working on a history of Latin American intellectuals and the Cuban Revolution.

Personal site in Academia.edu: https://uoregon.academia.edu/CarlosAguirre

Nicomedes Santa Cruz: A Black Public Intellectual in Twentieth-Century Peru

In the following article University of Oregon historian Carlos Aguirre describes the self-taught poet, writer, and folklorist Nicomedes Santa Cruz, one of the understudied black intellectual leaders in Peru and Latin America. Nicomedes Santa Cruz was, without a doubt, the most important black intellectual in … Read MoreNicomedes Santa Cruz: A Black Public Intellectual in Twentieth-Century Peru