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Peru MASS POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE, 1930-68
Impact of the Depression and World War II
After 1930 both the military, now firmly allied with
the
oligarchy, and the forces of the left, particularly APRA,
became
important new actors in Peruvian politics. This period
(1930-68)
has been characterized in political terms by sociologist
Dennis
Gilbert as operating under essentially a "tripartite"
political
system, with the military often ruling at the behest of
the
oligarchy to suppress the "unruly" masses represented by
APRA and
the PCP. Lieutenant Colonel Luis M. Sánchez Cerro and then
General Benavides led another period of military rule
during the
turbulent 1930s.
In the presidential election of 1931, Sánchez Cerro
(1931-
33), capitalizing on his popularity from having deposed
the
dictator Leguía, barely defeated APRA's Haya de la Torre,
who
claimed to have been defrauded out of his first bid for
office.
In July 1932, APRA rose in a bloody popular rebellion in
Trujillo, Haya de la Torre's hometown and an APRA
stronghold,
that resulted in the execution of some sixty army officers
by the
insurgents. Enraged, the army unleashed a brutal
suppression that
cost the lives of at least 1,000 Apristas (APRA members)
and
their sympathizers (partly from aerial bombing, used for
the
first time in South American history). Thus began what
would
become a virtual vendetta between the armed forces and
APRA that
would last for at least a generation and on several
occasions
prevented the party from coming to power.
Politically, the Trujillo uprising was followed shortly
by
another crisis, this time a border conflict with Colombia
over
disputed territory in the Letícia region of the Amazon.
Before it
could be settled, Sánchez Cerro was assassinated in April
1933 by
a militant Aprista, and Congress quickly elected former
president
Benavides to complete Sánchez Cerro's five-year term.
Benavides
managed to settle the thorny Letícia dispute peacefully,
with
assistance from the League of Nations, when a Protocol of
Peace,
Friendship, and Cooperation was signed in May 1934
ratifying
Colombia's original claim. After a disputed election in
1936, in
which Haya de la Torre was prevented from running and
which
Benavides nullified with the reluctant consent of
Congress,
Benavides remained in power and extended his term until
1939.
During the 1930s, Peru's economy was one of the least
affected by the Great Depression. Thanks to a relatively
diversified range of exports, led by cotton and new
industrial
metals (particularly lead and zinc), the country began a
rapid
recovery of export earnings as early as 1933. As a result,
unlike
many other Latin American countries that adopted Keynesian
and
import-substitution industrialization (see Glossary)
measures to
counteract the decline, Peru's policymakers made
relatively few
alterations in their long-term model of export-oriented
growth.
Under Sánchez Cerro, Peru did take measures to
reorganize its
debt-ridden finances by inviting Edwin Kemmerer, a
well-known
United States financial consultant, to recommend reforms.
Following his advice, Peru returned to the gold standard,
but
could not avoid declaring a moratorium on its
US$180-million debt
on April 1, 1931. For the next thirty years, Peru was
barred from
the United States capital market.
Benavides's policies combined strict economic
orthodoxy,
measures of limited social reform designed to attract the
middle
classes away from APRA, and repression against the left,
particularly APRA. For much of the rest of the decade,
APRA
continued to be persecuted and remained underground.
Almost from
the moment APRA appeared, the party and Haya de la Torre
had been
attacked by the oligarchy as antimilitary, anticlerical,
and
"communistic." Indeed, the official reason often given for
APRA's
proscription was its "internationalism," because the party
began
as a continent-wide alliance "against Yankee
imperialism"--
suggesting that it was somehow subversively un-Peruvian.
Haya de la Torre had also flirted with the Communists
during
his exile in the 1920s, and his early writings were
influenced by
a number of radical thinkers, including Marx.
Nevertheless, the
1931 APRA program was essentially reformist, nationalist,
and
populist. It called, among other things, for a
redistributive and
interventionist state that would move to selectively
nationalize
land and industry. Although certainly radical from the
perspective of the oligarchy, the program was designed to
correct
the historical inequality of wealth and income in Peru, as
well
as to reduce and bring under greater governmental control
the
large-scale foreign investment in the country that was
high in
comparison with other Andean nations.
The intensity of the oligarchy's attacks was also a
response
to the extreme rhetoric of APRA polemicists and reflected
the
polarized state of Peruvian society and politics during
the
depression. Both sides readily resorted to force and
violence, as
the bloody events of the 1930s readily attested--the 1932
Trujillo revolt, the spate of prominent political
assassinations
(including Sánchez Cerro and Antonio Miró Quesada,
publisher of
El Comercio), and widespread imprisonment and
torture of
Apristas and their sympathizers. It also revealed the
oligarchy's
apprehension, indeed paranoia, at APRA's sustained attempt
to
mobilize the masses for the first time into the political
arena.
At bottom, Peru's richest, most powerful forty families
perceived
a direct challenge to their traditional privileges and
absolute
right to rule, a position they were not to yield easily.
When Benavides's extended term expired in 1939, Manuel
Prado
y Ugarteche (1939-45), a Lima banker from a prominent
family and
son of a former president, won the presidency. He was soon
confronted with a border conflict with Ecuador that led to
a
brief war in 1941. After independence, Ecuador had been
left
without access to either the Amazon or the region's other
major
waterway, the Río Marañón, and thus without direct access
to the
Atlantic Ocean. In an effort to assert its territorial
claims in
a region near the Río Marañón in the Amazon Basin, Ecuador
occupied militarily the town of Zarumilla along its
southwestern
border with Peru. However, the Peruvian Army (Ejército
Peruano--
EP) responded with a lightning victory against the
Ecuadorian
Army. At subsequent peace negotiations in Rio de Janeiro
in 1942,
Peru's ownership of most of the contested region was
affirmed.
On the domestic side, Prado gradually moved to soften
official opposition to APRA, as Haya de la Torre moved to
moderate the party's program in response to the changing
national
and international environment brought on by World War II.
For
example, he no longer proposed to radically redistribute
income,
but instead proposed to create new wealth, and he replaced
his
earlier strident "anti-imperialism" directed against the
United
States with more favorable calls for democracy, foreign
investment, and hemispheric harmony. As a result, in May
1945
Prado legalized the party that now reemerged on the
political
scene after thirteen years underground.
The Allied victory in World War II reinforced the
relative
democratic tendency in Peru, as Prado's term came to an
end in
1945. José Luis Bustamante y Rivero (1945-48), a liberal
and
prominent international jurist, was overwhelmingly elected
president on the basis of an alliance with the now legal
APRA.
Responding to his more reform- and populist-oriented
political
base, Bustamante and his Aprista minister of economy moved
Peru
away from the strictly orthodox, free-market policies that
had
characterized his predecessors. Increasing the state's
intervention in the economy in an effort to stimulate
growth and
redistribution, the new government embarked on a general
fiscal
expansion, increased wages, and established controls on
prices
and exchange rates. The policy, similar to APRA's later
approach
in the late 1980s, was neither well-conceived nor
efficiently
administered and came at a time when Peru's exports, after
an
initial upturn after the war, began to sag. This resulted
in a
surge of inflation and labor unrest that ultimately
destabilized
the government.
Bustamante also became embroiled in an escalating
political
conflict with the Aprista-controlled Congress, further
weakening
the administration. The political waters were also roiled
in 1947
by the assassination by Aprista militants of Francisco
Grana
Garland, the socially prominent director of the
conservative
newspaper La Prensa. When a naval mutiny organized
by
elements of APRA broke out in 1948, the military, under
pressure
from the oligarchy, overthrew the government and installed
General Manuel A. Odría (1948-50, 1950-56), hero of the
1941 war
with Ecuador, as president.
Data as of September 1992
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