Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
DICTATORSHIPS & REVOLUTIONARIES
After the start of the Great Depression in 1929, the country's history becomes a blur of dic-
tatorships punctuated by periods of democracy. Leguía, a sugar baron from the north coast,
ruled on a couple of occasions: for his first period in office (1908-1912) he was elected; for
the second (1919-1930), he made it in via coup d'état. He spent his first term dealing with
a morass of border conflicts and the second, stifling press freedoms and political dissidents.
Legúia was followed by Colonel Luis Sánchez Cerro, who served a couple of short terms
in the 1930s. (Though his time in office was turbulent, Sánchez would be celebrated in
some sectors for abolishing a conscription law that required able-bodied men from having
to labor on road-building projects. The law affected poor indigenous men disproportion-
ately, since they couldn't afford to pay the exemption fee.) By 1948 another dictator had
taken power: former army colonel Manuel Odría, who spent his time in office cracking
down on APRA and encouraging US foreign investment.
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 in 1968. Though he was expected
to lead a conservative regime, Velasco turned
out to be an inveterate populist - so much so
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 major-
ity ownership) various industries. 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.
Shining Path founder Abimael Guzmán took the
name 'Sendero Luminoso' - 'Shining Path' - from
a maxim by writer and Communist Party founder
José Carlos Mariátegui: 'Marxism-Leninism will
open the shining path to revolution.'
