ABSTRACT
The process of forming nationhood is abetted by the geographical and economic evolution of the population. The total population has grown by 63 percent in a period of twenty years; and the urban population has risen 130 percent. All the effects of demographic evolution are being counteracted by population growth. The family is the most solid base of Peruvian life, despite the failure of half of the sexual unions to be legalized. Yet, many of these unformalized unions are as stable as legal ones. The woman is the axis around which the practical life of the family turns. The father may be the authority but the mother is the force that keeps the family running. In Peru, 1.6 percent of the people are protestants, 3 percent call themselves agnostics, and the rest are Catholics. Country Indians and mestizos, though Catholics, practice a syncretic type of religion, in which pre-Hispanic and Catholic beliefs and rituals are mingled.
