My dissertation will study some of the indigenous peasant political discourses developed in the area of Puno and their articulation within the local, regional, and national spheres during the first decades of the twentieth century. In a period of rising capitalist penetration and land concentration, a wave of popular mobilization led to the formation of alliances between peasant groups and a rising group of mestizo and white intellectuals and activists concerned with the plight and perceived backwardness of the indigenous masses. These alliances reached their peak with the consolidation of Augusto Leguia’s paternalist regime in 1919. This period of febrile political activity and circulation of ideas allows us to look at the way peasants expressed and interweaved their political discourses with other political projects and thus find out some of the ways in which they influenced and were influenced by local, regional, and national discourses on the role of the state and the nation. Through this regional study, I hope to show the continuity of peasant political culture throughout the republican period, and bring new elements to analyze elite and populist discourses, mainly the way they were influenced by popular ideology.