This dissertation examines the practices of self-representation and denial deployed by Lima’s popular classes to challenge, from the musical sphere, their marginal place in late 19th and early 20th-century Peruvian society. It demonstrates how the consolidation of the "vals criollo" allowed this social group to project a new image of the "popularsubject", now integrated into the civilized body of the Nation. For this purpose, I examine the role of the waltz and the generation of musicians known as "la Guarda Vieja" in Lima's cultural universe. To understand the process of inclusion of the waltz in the musical capital of the popular classes in Lima, I study the different musical spaces that allowed the migration of this genre from the elite...