During the Spanish foundation of
Cusco,
Francisco Pizarro established the first council and appointed Beltrán de Castro and Captain
Pedro de Candia as mayors, handing each of them their respective
varas of justice, along with the aldermen. Since then, the
Cabildo del Cusco became the local governing body of the city and the surrounding area. After the end of the
colonial period, the new republic decided that its local organization would depend on the structure established during the viceroyalty, using intendancies to form the new
departments of Peru. Thus, the
Intendancy of Cuzco led to the current
Department of Cusco, and the old districts gave rise to the contemporary
provinces. In the case of Cusco, on June 21, 1825,
Simón Bolívar issued a decree creating the
Cusco Province and establishing a municipality in it, which, in accordance with the provisions of the
Constitution of 1823, would be elected by electoral colleges. However, the following year, the
For-Life Constitution imposed by the Venezuelan dictator abolished councils and municipalities, which were reintroduced by the Constitution of 1828. Municipalities would be suppressed again in the constitution of 1839 and restored in the one of 1856. The Constitution of 1920 regulated for the first time the election of municipal authorities, although it was only in 1963, under the Constitution of 1933, that the first popular election for municipal authorities took place in Peru. Until then, the position was directly appointed by the government and had much less importance than the figure of the Prefect of Cusco, who represented the
executive power in the department. An example of this was the appointment of the American citizen
Albert Giesecke as mayor of Cusco in the 1920s. The first elected mayor was Alfredo Díaz Quintanilla, who won the municipal elections of 1963 as a candidate of the Alliance Acción Popular-Democracia Cristiana. The elections were suspended with the arrival of the
Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces and would not resume until 1980. == Organization ==