Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [19]
* * *
Return to beginning of chapter
DICTATORSHIPS & REVOLUTIONARIES
Following the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929 (which hit the Peruvian economy very hard), the country’s history becomes a blur of military dictatorships punctuated by periods of democracy. Leguía was overthrown by Colonel Luis Sánchez Cerro, who came down hard on APRA –when the military gunned down and killed more than a thousand people at the ancient Chimú city of Chan Chan, following an uprising in Trujillo in 1932. By 1948 another dictator had taken power: Manuel Odría, who held APRA in high disdain, and spent his time in office encouraging US foreign investment in Peru. Haya de la Torre, in the meantime, spent five straight years hiding out at the Colombian embassy in Lima.
The most fascinating of Peru’s 20th-century dictators, however, is Juan Velasco Alvarado, the former commander-in-chief of the army who took control of Peru in 1968. Though the expectation was that he would lead a conservative regime, Velasco turned out to be an inveterate populist (to the point that some APRA members complained that he had stolen their party platform away from them). He established a nationalist agenda that included ‘Peruvianizing’ (securing Peruvian majority ownership) various industries and in his rhetoric he celebrated the indigenous peasantry, championed a radical program of agrarian reform and made Quechua an official language. He also severely restricted press freedoms, which drew the wrath of the power structure in Lima. Ultimately, his economic policies were failures – and in 1975, in declining health, he was replaced by another, more conservative military regime.
* * *
APRA founder Raúl Haya de la Torre would never see his party take executive power. He died in 1979 – six years before Alan García became the party’s first president.
* * *
Return to beginning of chapter
THE INTERNAL CONFLICT
Peru returned to civilian rule in 1980, when President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was elected into office – the first election in which leftist parties (including APRA) were allowed to participate. But with Velasco’s promised agrarian reform a thing of the past, and Belaúnde mired in trying to jump-start the moribund economy, the inequities facing indigenous campesinos (peasants) once again fell off the political radar.
* * *
Mid-20th-century dictator Manuel Odría was known as the ‘Happy General’ because he liked to throw extravagant parties.
* * *
At this time, a radical Maoist group from the poor region of Ayacucho began its unprecedented rise. Founded by philosophy professor Abimael Guzmán, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) wanted nothing less than an overthrow of the social order via violent armed struggle. Over the next two decades, the situation escalated into a phantasmagoria of violence, with Sendero Luminoso assassinating political leaders and community activists, carrying out attacks on police stations and universities and, at one point, stringing up dead dogs all over downtown Lima. During this time, another leftist guerilla group also sprung into action – the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA) – attacking police stations and military outposts. The government response was fierce: Belaúnde and his successor, APRA candidate Alan García, who took over as president in 1985, sent in the military – a heavy-handed outfit that knew little about how to handle a guerrilla insurgency. There was torture, rape, disappearances and massacres – none of which did anything to quell Sendero Luminoso. Caught in the middle were tens of thousands of poor campesinos who bore the brunt of the casualties.
* * *
The name Sendero Luminoso – ‘Shining Path’ – is taken from a piece of text by José Carlos Mariátegui: ‘Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to revolution.’
* * *
In the early days, García’s presidency generated a great deal of hope. He was young,