History Department

Alvaro is an interdisciplinary scholar of modern Latin America. He specializes in early 20th-century Peru and the history of gender, privilege, and masculinities.

His dissertation project addresses the constructions of whiteness, hegemonic masculinity, and (Western) civilization in Peruvian upper classes during the 1884-1919 period. The project focuses on how upper-class men collectively fashioned ideals of honor and status that prevailed in their intimate spaces (social clubs, universities, kinship relations, etc.), and how they deployed these ideals in the public institutions they controlled. With an emphasis on masculinities, this dual focus provides an innovative approach to assess the construction of structures of inequality. Moreover, since this period witnessed a strenuous oligarchic rule, the project will allow us to understand the consolidation of a regimented system of exclusion and some of the hegemonic understandings of gender, race, and class that transcended the period.

His last book (co-authored with Luciana Reátegui and Mauricio Rentería) addresses ) ¿De qué colegio eres? La reproducción social de la clase alta de Lima (What School Did You Go To? The Social Reproduction of upper classes in Lima) addresses the school-mediated reproduction of inequality in Peru. The book argues that upper-class high schools and the social connections that came with them were essential components of the reproduction of privilege in Peruvian upper classes. Questioning the myth of meritocracy, the book shows that social origins and early stages of educational careers functioned as markers that allow upper-class young people to attain upper-class positions later in life. 

Alvaro’s previous publications cover different topics from history and social sciences disciplines. They include technocracies and their ideological emphasis on economic efficiency and the reproduction of inequalities in the transition to higher education in contemporary Peru. As a historian, he has studied economic ideologies in the 19th century and the turn to liberalism, state building in the transition from the colonial to the republican regime, and state relations with indigenous communities in early Independent Peru.

Before coming to UC Davis, Alvaro worked as Professor in the Economics Department at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. His teaching experience include Economic History, History of Economic Thought, and Seminar on Peruvian Economy. He also worked for several years at the Institute for Peruvian Studies (IEP), a Lima-based social sciences research center. At IEP, he worked as researcher –developing various books and articles– and journal editor for Argumentos. Revista de Análisis y Crítica.