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Peru American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
APRA, Peru's oldest and only well-institutionalized
party,
was founded by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre in Mexico City
in May
1924. The APRA program espoused an anti-imperialist,
Marxistoriented but uniquely Latin American-based solution to
Peru's and
Latin America's problems. APRA influenced several
political
movements throughout Latin America, including Bolivia's
Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento
Nacionalista
Revolucionario--MNR) and Costa Rica's National Liberation
Party
(Partido Liberación Nacional--PLN). Years of repression
and
clandestinity, as well as single-handed dominance of the
party by
Haya de la Torre, resulted in sectarian and hierarchical
traits
that were analogous to some communist parties. In
addition,
opportunistic ideological swings to the right by Haya de
la Torre
in the 1950s, in exchange for attaining legal status for
the
party, resulted in an exodus of some of APRA's most
talented
young leaders to the Marxist left. These shifts created
cleavages
between APRA and the rest of society, and were significant
obstacles to democratic consensus-building during APRA's
1985-90
tenure in government.
In any case, the party maintained a devoted core of
followers
that remained permanent party loyalists. In May 1989, APRA
chose
as its standard bearer Luis Alva Castro, a long-time rival
to
President García. APRA was as much a social phenomenon as
a
political movement, with a significant sector of society
among
its membership whose loyalty to the party and its legacy
was
unwavering. Despite APRA's disastrous tenure in power, in
the
first round of the 1990 elections it obtained 19.6 percent
of the
vote, more than any other of the traditional parties.
Data as of September 1992
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