He granted a monopoly of guano export to a French company and obtained large loans in Europe, yet the lavish expenditures of his administration plunged Peru deep in debt.

José Balta returned to Peru in 1867 and led a movement against the Prado in Chiclayo, which was echoed in Arequipa, where he rose with General Pedro Diez Canseco.

Mariano Ignacio Prado, then traveled south to quell the rebellion, but under pressure from both Balta and Diez-Canseco, and exercised by the Congress from Lima, he was forced to resign.

Nicolás de Piérola, the appointed Minister of Finance, tried to resolve the financial crisis that choked Peru by surrendering what would become the exploitation of Guano to the French-Jewish company Dreyfus.

However, not having enough money to pay contractors for railway construction, the government began to ask Dreyfus for advances in guano revenues, which led to a large increase in the already huge debt.

President José Balta, facing the economic crisis, appointed Nicolás de Piérola, a political conservative and a democrat, as finance minister in 1868.

Piérola requested authorization to Congress to negotiate directly (no consignment) the sale of guano abroad in a volume that bordered the two million metric tons.

In 1871, with very close elections, rumors circulated that Juan Francisco Balta, brother of head of state, and prime minister at the time, would run for president.

Although José Balta had been tempted to remain in power by the Gutiérrez brothers, one of whom was Minister of War, he ultimately declined to do so, a situation rare in the history of Peru.