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Peru Reformer and Agent of Change
If hostility to APRA extended the FF.AA.'s role as
guardian
of the liberal elite, it also combined with a number of
other
developments to move the military in the 1960s in the
direction
of reformer and agent of change. United States military
assistance during and after World War II, which
contributed to
modernization and professionalization and encouraged such
new
activities as civic action, was one factor. A second
factor was
the establishment of a specialized advanced military
officer
training center in 1951 that slowly made officers more
aware of
Peru's own national reality. The Advanced Military Studies
Center
(Centro de Altos Estudios Militares--CAEM) in Lima offered
an
annual concentrated program of study to selected officers
and a
few civilian government counterparts that was largely
devoted to
important social, political, and economic issues. A third
element
was the emergence in the 1956 elections of a non-APRA
civilian
reformist political alternative, Fernando Belaúnde Terry's
Popular Action (Acción Popular--AP) party, as APRA moved
right in
its attempt to gain political power. A fourth important
influence
on changing military perspectives was the brief rural
insurgency
in 1962-63 and again in 1965, which helped the military
appreciate the potential future costs of continued
government
failure to respond to local needs and demands in a timely
fashion. The armed forces' awareness of Peru's external
dependency was heightened by two decisions by the United
States:
first, the United States government's unwillingness to
sell
Northrop F5 jets to Peru in 1967 and, second, its
involvement on
an ongoing basis in the 1960s with the International
Petroleum
Company (IPC) negotiations with Peru over nationalization.
Then the first elected government of Belaúnde
(1963-68),
which the military supported and helped make possible
during its
junta (1962-63), stumbled in its reformist efforts and
mismanaged
the IPC nationalization. Thus, the stage was set for the
October
3, 1968, coup by the armed forces that had widespread
popular
support. For most of the military docenio
(twelve-year
rule) that was to follow (1968-80), Peru had a reformist
military
government. Led by the army, the FF.AA. became agents of
change
and state expansion based on a concept of security that
they had
gradually developed, a concept that defined national
defense in
terms of national development.
Even though the military regime under army General Juan
Velasco Alvarado (1968-75) and army General Francisco
Morales
Bermúdez Cerrutti (1975-80) carried out a number of
significant
and far-reaching reforms, it ultimately failed. The
military
rulers tried to do too much too quickly and with
insufficient
resources. They overextended themselves with foreign loans
when
domestic capital came up short. They had more than their
share of
bad luck, from General Velasco's fatal illness to floods,
droughts, and earthquakes, to delays in getting oil
exports
underway. They preached full participation, but often
imposed
reforms made in Lima rather than being responsive to local
circumstances and implemented them with central-government
bureaucrats rather than local leaders. They stretched
their
military officers too thin over too many responsibilities
and ran
them to the point of exhaustion.
Data as of September 1992
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