The Petty-Bourgeois Ideology of the Peruvian Aprista Party

Abstract

Scholars have long recognized the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) as one of the most important political movements in modern Latin America, with an impact extending far beyond Peru itself. The history of the Peruvian Aprista Party as a political movement provides a classic illustration of how the Latin American petty bourgeoisie has responded to its own crisis in the twentieth century under the impact of monopoly capitalism. Thus derives the importance of the following article by Victor Villanueva, the foremost historian of the Aprista phenomenon and of the Peruvian military. Since APRA is a creature of a historically specific era, it is essential to situate this political movement in the context of the crisis which enveloped Latin America's middle sectors as monopoly capital penetrated the continent after 1900. Imperialism is a necessary stage of capitalist development as capital becomes increasingly centralized and the export of capital replaces the export of commodities in the international expansion of this mode of production. With the expansion of the social relation capital, alongside