Haya de la Torre and the Pursuit of Power in Twentieth-Century Peru and Latin America

Abstract

Recent global political trends are inevitably spurring reappraisals of classic twentieth-century Latin American “populist” politics and politicians—such as Peru's Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (1895–1979) and his Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) party. Long shrouded by partisan polemics, the enigmas of clandestine politics and exile, and a cultivated “cult of personality,” Haya is approached by Iñigo García-Bryce as a multiple historical personality in this well-conceived and clearly written political-intellectual biography. Instead of modern Peru's essentialized “hero” or “betrayer,” Haya assumes over time various shape-shifting personalities: the student revolutionary leader, the Marxist and transnational propagandist of the Mexican Revolution, the Peruvian party builder and compromiser politician, and the elder statesman, among other labels (p. 2).After a lucid brief introduction, the book is organized into five topical chapters, which at times circle around the same chronology of Haya's long career. Chapter 1 explores the internationalist origins and ramifications of the party from Haya's youth in the early twentieth century through the 1970s. Chapter 2 examines the long and twisting hate-love relationship between APRA as an initially insurrectionist force and the Peruvian military, which is finally resolved in the late 1960s when Juan Velasco Alvarado's regime embraces many of APRA's long-sought developmentalist reforms. Chapter 3 traces the shifting relationship of APRA with imperialism—that is, the United States—from Haya's fascinating critique of foreign capital as the “first stage of capitalism” in Latin America to their often veiled mutual embrace as anticommunist partners in the post-1940 era (p. 14). Chapter 4 traces the impact of Haya's organizational strategies and prowess on the political fortunes of APRA and its devolution into a Haya-centered “cult of personality.” Chapter 5, as elaborated below, brings gender politics into the equation, uncovering the roles of female activists in the party and their abandonment by the 1940s.There are three standout innovations here. First, this is the first book to comprehensively delve into APRA as a transnational political force and intellectual network, at least in its early decades, the 1920s and 1930s, before the party turned inward to focus on political power in Peru (forced exiles aside). García-Bryce links the early dynamism of APRA to inspiration from the ideology of the Mexican Revolution as an original multiclass Latin American political model—if begging the question of which of the many Mexican revolutionary movements or phases Haya was enamored with. Haya also attracted over the decades the solidarity and friendship of scores of well-known European and US intellectuals, if at times his connections were willfully exaggerated. One gets the sense, not fully articulated here, that APRA's compromising conservatism after the 1930s paralleled the turn of Joseph Stalin (Haya's Comintern nemesis) to a statist one-country model when forced to abandon initial Soviet dreams of global revolution.Second, the book takes a stab at approaching the still-sensitive issue of Haya's sexual politics, as a deeply closeted gay man in the socially conservative machista milieu of Peruvian society. A political metaphor is established in chapter 4: that Haya's concealed sexuality colored his increasingly puritanical party discipline and the concealment politics of APRA party cells generally. But these linkages are never clearly developed. The book is more successful in dealing with gender politics generally in chapter 5, which strongly builds from oral histories and testimonials of women long active in the Aprista ranks or leadership, such as Magda Portal. However, the powerful contributions to party building by women activists and supporters were betrayed by Haya and other male party elites, who by the late 1940s downplayed their initial equalitarian ethos and prosuffrage politics, allowing women's suffrage in Peru to be co-opted by conservative elites in the following decade. So, while the story is now well illustrated from a gendered perspective, the master narrative is clearly familiar: a once revolutionary party progressively shedding its leftist cred in the pursuit of centrist power, particularly as Peruvian politics as a whole shifted leftward by the turbulent 1960s.At times, I wish that this book had ventured beyond Haya's intellectual personae into connecting with the party's deeper social history (which has attracted much research into its long-standing regional and class bases) or, alternatively, APRA's allure in the realm of cultural and aesthetic politics, the latter topics creatively pursued by recent historians in the populist or utopian cultures of Peronism in Argentina and Cardenismo in Mexico. Haya's ideas could not have been the only factor in deep-seated APRA allegiances. Written before the horrific demise of Haya's political heir Alan García in 2019 and the party's electoral collapse, the book may overstate APRA's ideological durability. As a stand-alone twentieth-century-style intellectual biography, however, this book is unmatched.