Viceroyalty of Peru on July 21, 1821. The independence of Peru was proclaimed on July 28, 1821. Viceroy José de la Serna e Hinojosa, still in command of a sizable military force, retired to Jauja, and later to Cusco. On July 26, 1822, San Martín and Simón Bolívar met in Guayaquil to define a strategy for the liberation of the rest of Peru. The meeting was secret, and exactly what occurred is not known. However, afterwards San Martín returned to Argentina while Bolívar prepared to launch an offensive against the remaining royalist forces in Peru and Upper Peru (Bolivia). In September 1823 Bolívar
Provinces of Peru Provinces of Peru The provinces of Peru () are the second-level administrative subdivisions of the country. They are divided into districts (). There are 196 provinces in Peru, grouped into 25 regions except for the Lima Province which does not belong to any region. This makes an average of seven provinces per region. The region with the fewest provinces is Callao (one) and the region with the most is Ancash (twenty). While provinces in the sparsely populated Amazon rain forest of eastern Peru tend to be larger, there is a large concentration of them in the north-central area of the