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At the turn of the 20th century the university was a locus for social and political protest in Peru. Professors and student activists called for university reform, education of the masses, agrarian reform, and the rights of the worker and indigenous populations. A significant protest was mounted in Lima by University of San Marcos students in 1909 to protest the dictatorship of Augusto Leguía (1908-1912; 1919-1930). In 1916, the student organization formed the Peruvian Student Federation (FEP) incorporating students from all of Peru’s universities to direct future student protests.

On 29 September 2011 about 1,200 miners at Freeport’s Cerro Verde mining site began a 75-day strike. The participants were scheduled to walk off their jobs at 8:30 am Eastern Time. At midnight on the same day, 8,000 miners at Freeport’s Grasberg mine planned to begin a one month strike. The workers at both of these mines were part of the same miners union, all working towards the same goals. 

The strikes began after wage talk attempts had failed. The union’s general secretary said, “Freeport’s offer was insufficient. There was no chance of reaching an agreement”. 

Male textile factory workers at El Inca factory in Lima, Peru walked off the job in December of 1918 to protest the effects of a law that enacted an eight-hour workday requirement for women and children.  The law was intended to protect the rights of children and particularly women laborers, but instead dissolved the set-up within the factories, slowing production and preventing the remaining male workers from meeting their quotas.

Today Villa El Salvador is a squatting community on the Southern outskirts of Lima, Peru, and is home to about 400,000 people. The shantytown, which was born of a small land invasion in 1971, has been recognized internationally as the largest continuously squatted area in the world.