Summary

This article describes and analyzes the characteristics that the independence process had in the district of Tarapacá, at the southern end of the viceroyalty of Peru, between the occupation of the town of San Lorenzo by Julián Peñaranda in 1815 and the uprising led by Pascual Flores in the mineral of Huantajaya in 1822. Being that both events manifested the intent of patriots to spread the revolution in this remote region, the article investigates, using administrative records, church documentation, reports and memoirs, the impact that the war had such as on the stances local residents took. This paper argues that the struggles for independence took place when the inhabitants of Tarapacá were in difficult economic circumstances as a result of the end of the silver cycle, that determined to an important degree the levels of adhesion or rejection as much to the realist as to the rebels' cause.