The change in distribution from rural to urban has been profound: the urban population rose from 47 % in 1961 to an around 70 % in 1990. By that time, Peru's population had reached a point where its configurations were thus substantially different than they were a generation earlier, largely because of the enormous growth of metropolitan Lima, which includes the seaport of Callao. Indeed, four of the largest political districts of greater Lima began as squatter settlements and now would rank among the nation's top ten cities if they had been counted separately. The leading cities in Peru represent a mix of old colonial places--Lima, Arequipa, Trujillo, Cusco (Cuzco), Piura, and Ica--and newly emergent ones, such as Huancayo, Chimbote, Iquitos, and Juliaca, whose new elites derive mostly from the highly mobile provincial middle and lower classes. In the Sierra, Juliaca, because of its role in marketing and transportation, surpassed the departmental capital of Puno in both size and importance to become the most valuable city south of Cusco.

The Spanish conquerors controlled Peruvian society, including politics, religion, and economics. They brought their European culture and transmitted their racial characteristics, Spanish language, and Roman Catholic religion to their descendants. The Spaniards introduced a few African slaves, but their number did not become remarkable. Following freedom and the prohibition of slavery, Chinese immigrants were imported as farm labourers, and new groups of Spaniards, northern Europeans, and Japanese were among other arrivals. These various racial and ethnic groups have tended to intermarry and produce a mix of racial types, which in modern Peru constitute a complex racial mosaic.