Law No. 32645 and professional recognition in the Peruvian music sector: a case study on mandatory licensing, cultural sustainability, and State responsibility

Abstract

Law No. 32645 (2026) sets up the Professional College of Artists of Peru and lays down a model of professional recognition grounded in professional membership and academic accreditation through a professional degree or bachelor’s degree. Although the law does not condition artistic practice itself, it introduces an institutional model of professional recognition that may produce exclusionary effects on representation, institutional legitimation, and access to certain spaces of participation and public policy. Through a mixed-method case study that brings together normative, dogmatic, and legal analysis with an examination of administrative microdata from the National Registry of Cultural and Arts Workers, RENTOCA (11,159 musicians), this article analyzes how and why such a requirement harms the Peruvian music sector. The findings show that the degree requirement would exclude the vast majority of musicians (85.6% in the baseline scenario) and would do so regressively, since it falls more heavily on popular, traditional, and Indigenous music, Indigenous peoples, women, and bearers of living heritage. The case draws on four lenses: cultural studies, cultural economics, sociology of recognition, and institutional theory. The article argues that the rule administratively redefines the artist, triggers social closure and indirect discrimination, rests on a mistaken premise about how the market values art, and proves unnecessary and disproportionate under the Inter-American standard (OC-5/85), since less restrictive protection mechanisms already exist. The article concludes by calling for repeal of the rule and for a policy shift toward inclusive recognition of non-formal artistic trajectories.