Juan Velasco Alvarado

Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (June 16, 1910 – December 24, 1977) was a left-wing Peruvian general turned dictator who served as the 58th President of Peru during the dictatorship from 1968 to 1975 as the "[1st] President of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces".

General EP Juan Velasco Alvarado
President of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Government of Peru
In office October 3, 1968 – August 30, 1975
Prime Minister	Ernesto Montagne Sánchez Luis Edgardo Mercado Jarrín Francisco Morales Bermúdez
Preceded by	Fernando Belaúnde
Succeeded by	Francisco Morales Bermúdez (Constitutional President)
General Commander of the Peruvian Army
In office 1967–1968
President	Fernando Belaúnde Terry
Preceded by	Julio Doig Sánchez
Succeeded by	Ernesto Montagne Sánchez
Personal details
Born	16 June 1910 Piura, Peru
Died	24 December 1977 (aged 67) Lima, Peru
Nationality	Peruvian
Spouse(s)	Consuelo Gonzáles Arriola
Profession	Army General

Early life

Juan Velasco was born in Castilla, a city near Piura on Peru's north coast. He was the son of Manuel José Velasco, a medical assistant, and Clara Luz Alvarado, who had 11 children. Velasco described his youth as one of "dignified poverty, working as a shoeshine boy in Piura."[1]

He was married to Consuelo Gonzáles Arriola, and had four children.

In 1929, he stowed away on a ship to Lima, Peru, falsified his age, and tried to enlist as an officer in the Peruvian Army. However, he arrived late to the exam, so he joined as a private on April 5, 1929. A year later, he took a competitive exam for entrance into the Escuela Militar de Chorrillos ("Chorrillos Military School"), and got the highest score of all applicants. In 1934,[2] he graduated with high honors and at the head of his class.[1]

Coup d'etat against President Fernando Belaunde

During the Belaúnde administration (1963–1968), political disputes became a norm as he held no majority in Congress. Serious arguments between President Belaúnde and Congress, dominated by the APRA-UNO (Unión Nacional Odríista) coalition, and even between the President and his own Acción Popular (Popular Action) party were common. Congress went on to censure several cabinets of the Belaunde administration, and a general political instability was perceived.

Also, between 1964 and 1965 the army had been sent to deal with two military uprisings inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Through the use of guerrilla tactics, both the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) tried to instigate a revolution, but those movements were quickly crushed by the armed forces. Nevertheless, these conflicts led several military officers to the most impoverished parts of the country, and after witnessing the reality of the country-side and studying the reasons which led to the uprisings, they began to consider social inequality and poverty as a danger to national security.[3]

A dispute with the International Petroleum Company over licenses to the La Brea y Pariñas oil fields in northern Peru sparked a national scandal when a key page of a contract (the 11th) was found missing.[4] The Armed Forces, fearing that this scandal might lead to another uprising or a takeover from the APRA party, seized absolute power and close down Congress, almost all of whose members were briefly incarcerated. General Velasco seized power on October 3, 1968, in a bloodless military coup, deposing the democratically elected administration of Fernando Belaúnde, under which he served as Commander of the Armed Forces. President Belaúnde was sent into exile. Initial reaction against the coup evaporated after five days when on October 8, 1968, the oil fields in dispute were taken over by the Army.

Military revolution and dictatorship (1968–1975)

The coup leaders named their administration the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, with Velasco at its helm as President. Velasco's administration articulated a desire to give justice to the poor through a regime of nationalization known as Peruanismo. Velasco's rule was characterized by Collectivist policies, which aimed to create a strong national industry to increase the international independence of Peru. To that end, he nationalised entire industries, expropriated companies in a wide range of activities from fisheries to mining to telecommunications to power production and consolidated them into single industry-centric government-run entities (PescaPeru, MineroPeru, Petroperú, SiderPeru,Centromin Peru, ElectroPeru, Enapu, EnatruPeru, Enafer, Compañia Peruana de Telefonos, EntelPeru, Correos del Peru, etc.), and increased government control over economic activity by enforcing those entities as monopolies and disincentivized private activity in those sectors. Most reforms were planned by leftist intellectuals of the time.

A root and branch education reform was in march looking to include all Peruvians and move them towards to a new national thinking and feeling; the poor and the most excluded were prioritized in this system and the Día del Indio or Peruvian Indian's day name was changed to Día del Campesino or Peruvian Peasant's day every June 24, a traditional holiday of the land, the day of winter solstice.

The education reform of 1972 provided for bilingual education for the indigenous people of the Andes and the Amazon, which consisted nearly half of the population. In 1975, the Velasco government enacted a law making Quechua an official language of Peru equal to Spanish. However, this law was never enforced and ceased to be valid when the 1979 constitution became effective, according to which Quechua and Aymara are official only where they predominate, as mandated by law – a law that was never enacted.[5]

Peruanismo was also characterized by authoritarianism, as the administration grew away from tolerating any level of dissent, periodically jailing, deporting and harassing suspected political opponents and repeatedly closing and censoring broadcast and print news media, finally expropriating all of the newspapers in 1974 and sending the publishers into exile.

A cornerstone of Velasco's political and economic strategy was the implementation by dictate of an agrarian reform program to expropriate farms and diversify land ownership. In its first ten years in power, the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces (GRFA) expropriated 15,000 properties (totaling nine million hectares) and benefited some 300,000 families.[6] Peru's agrarian reform under Velasco was the second-largest Land reform in Latin American history, after Cuba. The former landlords who opposed this program believed that they did not receive adequate compensation for their confiscated assets and lamented that the state officials and peasant beneficiaries mismanaged their properties after the expropriation.[7] The owners who opposed his program also claimed that the expropriation was more akin to confiscation, as they were paid in agrarian reform bonds, a sovereign debt obligation of which the government defaulted payment due to the hyperinflationary period that affected Peru's economy in the late 1980s, leaving the current value of the bonds up for debate and resulting in a decade-long lawsuit against the Peruvian government.

The deposed Belaúnde administration had attempted to implement a milder agrarian reform program, but it was defeated in Congress by the APRA-UNO coalition with support of the major landowners. Within this framework, the Velasco administration engaged in an aggressive program of import substitution industrialization, imposing tight foreign exchange and trade controls.

The success of the Velasco administration's economic policies is still debated today.[8] As the Peruvian military government ran deeper into debt, it was forced to devalue the currency and run inflationary policies. This however, was in part due to the 1970s Energy Crisis, which also affected Peru and made it impossible for the Velasco administration to fund some of its most ambitious reforms. Economic growth under the administration was steady if unremarkable - real per capita GDP (constant 2000 US$) increased 3.2% per year from 1968 to 1975, compared to 3.9% per year over the same period for Latin America & the Caribbean as a whole.[9]

Foreign and military policies

General Velasco meeting with President Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, in 1973.

In foreign policy, in contrast with his 1970s Latin American contemporaries, which were mostly right-wing military dictatorships, he pursued a partnership with the Soviet bloc, tightening relations with Cuba and Fidel Castro and undertaking major purchases of Soviet military hardware.

Relations between the United States and Peru were tense and even hostile, beginning as soon as General Velasco and his junta took power.

Just five days after Velasco seized power in 1968, the General began the nationalization of the Peruvian Economy with the expropriation and nationalization of the American International Petroleum Company (IPC) oil fields located in the northern Peruvian oil port and refinery of Talara, Piura, near the Peruvian border with Ecuador, Piura, being the region where Velasco was born.

IPC was a subsidiary of Standard Oil, and although the claims over the IPC were ultimately resolved in negotiations between the two governments, the US after this seizure no longer considered Peru an ally or a friendly country. Instead, the CIA started to organize plans to destabilize and to overthrow General Velasco.

US–Peru disagreements continued over a broad range of issues including even Peru's claim to a 200-mile fishing limit that resulted in the seizure of several US commercial fishing boats and the expropriation of the American copper mining company Cerro de Pasco Corporation.

However, in spite these provocations, the U.S. responded immediately with humanitarian aid in 1970, when an earthquake killed about 50,000 persons and left over 600,000 homeless.

Chile

General Velasco's other main goal besides the nationalization of the main areas of the Peruvian economy and the agrarial reforms, was to strengthen Peru militarily. Despite Chilean fears that Velasco planned on reconquering the lands lost by Peru to Chile in the 1879 War of the Pacific, this was not Velasco's intention.[10] It is estimated that from 1970 to 1975 Peru spent up to US$2 Billion (roughly US$20 Billion in 2010's valuation) on Soviet armament.[11] According to various sources Velasco's government bought between 600 and 1200 T-55 Main Battle Tanks, APCs, 60 to 90 Sukhoi 22 warplanes, 500,000 assault rifles, and even considered the purchase of a British carrier Centaur-class light fleet carrier HMS Bulwark.[11]

The enormous amount of weaponry purchased by Peru caused a meeting between former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chilean president, general and US-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1976. In 1999, General Pinochet claimed that if Peru had attacked Chile during 1973 or even 1978, Peruvian forces could have penetrated deep south into Chilean territory, possibly military taking the Chilean city of Copiapó located half way to Santiago.[10] The Chilean Armed Forces considered launching a preventive war to defend itself. Though, Pinochet's Chilean Air Force General Fernando Matthei opposed a preventive war and responded that "I can guarantee that the Peruvians would destroy the Chilean Air Force in the first five minutes of the war".[10] Some analysts believe the fear of attack by Chilean and US officials as largely unjustified but logical for them to experience, considering the Pinochet dictatorship had come into power with a coup against democratically elected president Salvador Allende. According to sources, the alleged invasion scheme could be seen from the Chilean's government perspective as a plan for some kind of leftist counterattack.[12] While acknowledging the Peruvian plans were revisionistic scholar Kalevi J. Holsti claim more important issues behind were the "ideological incompatibility" between the regimes of Velasco Alvarado and Pinochet and that Peru would have been concerned about Pinochet's geopolitical views on Chile's need of naval hegemony in the Southeastern Pacific.[13]

Chileans should stop with the bullshit or tomorrow I shall eat breakfast in Santiago

—Juan Velasco Alvarado[1]

Overthrow

Economic difficulties such as inflation, unemployment, food shortages and increased political opposition after the 1974 crackdown on the press ultimately increased pressures on the Velasco Administration and led to its downfall. On August 29, 1975, a number of prominent military commanders initiated a coup in the southern city of Tacna, nicknamed El Tacnazo.[14]

The military commanders of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th military regions declared that Velasco had not achieved most of what the "Peruvian Revolution" had stood for and was unable to continue in his functions. Prime Minister Francisco Morales Bermúdez was then appointed president, by unanimous decision of the new military junta.

Prior to being deposed, Velasco had been seriously ill for at least a year. He had lost a leg to an embolism, and his cognitive abilities and personality were rumoured to have been affected by related circulatory problems. At the time of the coup, he was convalescing in the Presidential winter residence at Chaclacayo, countryside 20 kilometers east of Lima.

General Velasco immediately called for a meeting with his council of ministers, at Government Palace in downtown Lima, where he discovered that there was little or nothing to do. He made a last speech to the nation on the evening of August 29, 1975, announcing his decision not to resist the coup because "Peruvians cannot fight against each other".

Death and legacy

Grave of General Velasco.

General Velasco kept a low profile in Peruvian politics until his death in 1977. Following his death, Velasco was carried on the shoulders of farmers for six hours around Lima.[15]

Although General Velasco is still remembered fondly by some left-leaning circles, his administration oversaw average economic growth and left Peru submerged in debt. Furthermore, his government is partly responsible for the centralization of the country. After the agrarian reform, urbanization began occurring across the country, as people moved into Lima and other coastal cities. The Velasco government's failure to adequately manage the influx of people, as well as the indifference of subsequent governments to the issue, contributed to the creation of slums around Peru's cities.

In 1974, a then relatively unknown Hugo Chávez and around one dozen fellow cadets and soldiers, all youths, traveled to Ayacucho, Peru to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the eponymous Battle of Ayacucho. There, they were personally greeted by General Velasco. Velasco gave each of them a miniature pocket edition of La Revolución Nacional Peruana ("The Peruvian National Revolution"). The cadets also noted Velasco's perceived close relationship with both the Peruvian masses and the rank and file of the Peruvian military.[16] Chávez became attached to this book, and would both study its contents and constantly carry it on his person. However, Chávez later lost it after his arrest for leading the 1992 Venezuelan coup attempt.

Twenty-five years later, as president, Chávez ordered the printing of millions of copies of his government's new Bolivarian Constitution only in the form of miniature blue booklets, a partial tribute to Velasco's gift.[17]

Remarks

"Que los chilenos se dejen de cojudeces o mañana desayuno en Santiago" ("Chileans better stop with the bullshit or tomorrow I shall eat breakfast in [that is, conquer] Santiago"[1]

"¡Campesino, el patrón no comerá más de tu pobreza!" ("Farmer, the land owner will never again feed off your poverty!")[2]

See also

• Land reforms by country

References

1. Masterson, Daniel M. (1991). Militarism and politics in Latin America: Peru from Sánchez Cerro to Sendero Luminoso. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 228–229. ISBN 978-0-313-27213-4.
2. Masterson, Daniel M. (1991). Militarism and politics in Latin America: Peru from Sánchez Cerro to Sendero Luminoso. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-313-27213-4.
3. La Revolución por Decreto. Dirk Krujit, 1991.
4. The United States and Peru: cooperation at a cost. Cynthia McClintock, 2003, pg. 25.
5. David Brisson: Quechua Education in Peru. The Theory-Context Mergence Approach, pp. 13–14.
6. Enrique Mayer, Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.
7. Enrique Mayer, Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform. Durham:Duke University Press, 2009.
8. Anna Cant, Representations of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform, 1968–1975. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2015. See Tony Wood, "Peruvian Agrarian Reform, 1968–1975," Dissertation Reviews, April 18, 2016.
9. "World Development Indicators, GDP per capita (constant 2000 US$) for Peru, Latin America & Caribbean region". World Bank. Retrieved March 1, 2019 – via Google.
10. "La veces que Pinochet casi Ataca al Perú de Sorpresa" Archived December 2, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. caretas.com. June 3, 2004.
11. Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum. KISSINGER, HENRY
12. "La veces que Pinochet casi Ataca al Perú de Sorpresa" Archived December 2, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Caretas, June 3, 2004 (in Spanish)
13. Holsti, Kalevi J. (1996). The State, War and the State of War. Cambridge Studies in International Relations. p. 158.
14. "12 de julio: ¿Qué pasó un día como hoy?". El Comercio. July 12, 2016. Retrieved September 13, 2020.
15. Chiarenza, Daniel (December 19, 2009) El fin de la revolución nacionalista y antiimperalista peruana loquesomos.org (in Spanish)
16. Gott, Richard (2005). Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. London and New York: Verso. pp. 35–36. ISBN 978-1-84467-533-3.
17. Marcano, Christina; Tyszka, Alberto Barrera (2007). Hugo Chávez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President. New York: Random House. pp. 71–72. ISBN 978-0-679-45666-7.

Further reading

• Robert Jackson Alexander; Eldon M. Parker (2007). "Chapter 3. Unionism under the Reformist Military Regime of General Velasco". A history of organized labor in Peru and Ecuador. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-97741-2.
• Linda J. Seligmann (1995). "Chapter 2: The Agrarian Reform Project". Between reform & revolution: political struggles in the Peruvian Andes, 1969–1991. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-2443-2.
• Philip Mauceri (1998). "2. The Military and Popular Mobilization". State Under Siege: Development and Policy Making in Peru. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-3607-7.
• Carmen Diana Deere (1990). "9. The Agrarian Reform in Cajamarca: State Intervention, Capital, Land, and the Peasantry". Household and class relations: peasants and landlords in northern Peru. University of California Press. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-520-06675-5.