This article focuses on the history of Peru’s Congress in the 1860s and 1870s. It analyzes the roll-call voting of these years as well as some congressional debates that show how members of Congress interpreted their own political behavior. The main concern of this article is to place Congress within the broader political conflicts of the time. [The author] wants to show that Congress did not only serve as a platform for political debate but that it was also an important arena for the formation and/or consolidation of political factions and parties. I will concentrate on the Chamber of Deputies because individual political behavior remained strong in the Senate, whereas political action in the Chamber of Deputies was heavily influenced by strong parliamentary parties and their leaders. [The author argues] that the formation of parliamentary parties was a response to the concrete requirements of political conflict.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25675916?seq=1