He accompanied Castile on his trip to Lima, when he went to meet General Felipe Santiago Salaverry, and then followed him on his flight to Chile, after the establishment of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation.

He was a member of the Cazadores Battalion, and in the Battle of Cerro Barón of 1837, he helped defeat the mutineers who assassinated Chilean Minister Diego Portales.

Promoted to colonel in 1851, he became aide-de-camp to President José Rufino Echenique, but joined the revolution that Castilla led in Arequipa, participating throughout the campaign that concluded with the revolutionary triumph in the battle of La Palma, on the 5th January 1855.

Appointed chief of the military plaza in Lima, he was in charge of maintaining order while the naval squad, which had joined the Vivanquista revolution of 1856, raided the coast.

During the brief government of his brother, in 1863, General Pedro Diez Canseco was appointed prefect of Lima, a position in which he remained at the request of President Juan Antonio Pezet.

In 1865 he was promoted to brigadier general and took command in the capital when President Pezet had to leave to face the advance of the revolution led in the south by Mariano Ignacio Prado and Pedro Diez Canseco.

He received from his brother the appointment of political and military chief of the departments of the center, and had an important role in the fall of Prado, by taking Callao and then Lima, on January 8, 1868.

Later, he was elected second vice president of the Republic of the government headed by José Balta (1868-1872), and in such capacity, he assumed the supreme command in two brief opportunities: In compliance with the Constitution of 1860, he handed over the command to the first vice president, General Mariano Herencia Zevallos, on July 27, 1872, in order for him to conclude the presidential term of Colonel Balta, which ended on August 2 of the same year.