Originally named "La Ciudad de Los Reyes" (The City of Kings), Lima was the most important city in Spanish South America (the name Lima is a corruption of the Quechua name "Rimac"). Even before the Spanish conquest, Lima was a key commercial center while Peru was part of the Incan empire (which stretched from Ecuador to Chile), which ended when the Spanish captured the Incan capital, Cusco, in 1533.

part of the Spanish Empire, slavery even touched the western parts of South America, though not to the degree as the Atlantic and Caribbean coasts. However, repression in Peru was among the harshest, with prohibitions on criollos (mixed race) from holding public office while black Peruvian slaves even had most of their culture stripped from them, including bans in drums. Peru declared its independence from Spain in 1821, followed by full independence in 1824, although it wasn't until 1854 when slavery was abolished in Peru that black Peruvians gained their own freedom.