Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana Research Articles

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

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.

With Masses and Arms: Peru's Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement

By the end of the first two pages of With Masses and Arms, Miguel La Serna has drawn his reader into the world of the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA). Néstor Cerpa Cartolini, a leading Túpac Amarista with a labor organizing background, and 13 other members of the MRTA have taken over the home of the Japanese ambassador to Peru with a sizable number of hostages. We learn of Cerpa's stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise, of the MRTA's precarious position, and of their reason for being at the ambassador's home in the first place: to negotiate a release of imprisoned comrades. The story of this occupation is well-known but is often told quickly, tacked on to the end of an in-depth history of Shining Path. According to La Serna, this emphasis on Shining Path has resulted in a relative dearth of scholarship on the MRTA. With Masses and Arms seeks to counteract this lack.La Serna is quite familiar with the literature on Shining Path, having previously written extensively on the group, and he uses some of the methods derived from this literature, as well as its gaps, to work on the MRTA. With Masses and Arms, for instance, addresses the everyday lived experience of militants and the place of women in guerrilla organizations, topics that much of the existing scholarship on Shining Path has found difficult to cover. The focus on Shining Path has also, according to La Serna, created an image of the Andean militant Left as “dogmatic, cultlike maniacs at the fringes of the global left” (p. 7). La Serna's history provides a close-up view of the reasons that some joined the MRTA and the political-ideological calculations of its leaders, in a way that portrays the organization as comprised of real people rather than caricatures. The vast number of interviews and group conversations conducted by La Serna paid off in revealing personal and collective motivations.Founded in 1982, the MRTA must be studied, as La Serna argues, within a broader history of the Left in Peru and the Cold War in Latin America. To do this, With Masses and Arms points to the deep roots of those involved in the organization. For instance, Víctor Polay Campos, one of the MRTA's founders, grew up in a household in the port of Callao deeply supportive of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA). Some thought that he might succeed Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre as APRA's next leader, though that would fall to Alan García, with whom Polay roomed while in Madrid. While in Paris, Polay moved further to the left, eventually joining the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. It was out of these experiences—and the rise of Shining Path—that Polay and others organized the MRTA. Over the course of 15 years the MRTA slowly moved toward a more hard-line position, shifting from redistributing goods to those in need to assassinations (of figures both outside and inside the organization), a process that Nelson Manrique calls the “‘Senderization’ of the MRTA” (p. 74).The three parts of the book represent, roughly, the geography of the MRTA. Parts 1 and 3 take place mostly in Lima, and part 2 focuses on the department of San Martín, in the northern Amazon. This allows La Serna to vividly depict the trajectories of actions across neighborhoods and on specific streets in Lima, the violent history of local labor organizing, the long history of Asháninka communities, and the racist and homophobic perspectives of some Túpac Amaristas in San Martín. The book would work well in a class on modern Peru or Lima—I have decided to use it in such a course. With connections and comparisons to other Left organizations in Latin America, the book would also easily fit in a class on modern Latin America or the Left in Latin America.The book is useful for the classroom in part due to its style. This is a narrative history, split into 22 chapters, in which people are fully developed, with descriptive language when needed, and the narrative arc is built with pacing in mind. Some chapters patiently build, while others (such as the chapter on the Canto Grande prison escape) pull the reader across the pages. The book is, in no uncertain terms, hard to put down. While La Serna is interested in writing history that is enjoyable to read, he also pauses to remind the reader of his central arguments. While at points I do think the emphasis on battles over the symbolic in the MRTA is a stretch, this in no way detracts from the book. With Masses and Arms is elegantly written and analytically sharp, and it will surely be the key book on the MRTA for years to come.

Corruption Now and Then: Managing Threats to the Nation in Twentieth-Century Peru

In this paper, I draw on Peruvian government responses circa 1950 to the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, an underground political party, to identify the features of a distinctive, mid-twe...

Transnational Activist: Magda Mortal and the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), 1926–1950

In March of 1929, die young Peruvian poet and political activist Magda Portal departed from die Yucatan in Mexico to give a series of lectures in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. She traveled as an emissary of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, APRA), a recendy founded political organization that sought to transform Latin America by creating a united front against foreign imperialism. On July 14, in Santo Domingo she gave a lecture titled “Latin America Confronted by Imperialism,” at “the largest theater in town” to an audience of about 200. Her presence as an intelligent, energetic, and beautiful woman, standing on stages normally reserved to men, enhanced the power of her words, and she was well aware of the striking effect on audiences of seeing a woman in the traditionally male role of political orator

Transnational Activist: Magda Mortal and the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), 1926–1950

In March of 1929, die young Peruvian poet and political activist Magda Portal departed from die Yucatan in Mexico to give a series of lectures in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. She traveled as an emissary of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, APRA), a recendy founded political organization that sought to transform Latin America by creating a united front against foreign imperialism. On July 14, in Santo Domingo she gave a lecture titled “Latin America Confronted by Imperialism,” at “the largest theater in town” to an audience of about 200. Her presence as an intelligent, energetic, and beautiful woman, standing on stages normally reserved to men, enhanced the power of her words, and she was well aware of the striking effect on audiences of seeing a woman in the traditionally male role of political orator

The Rise of APRA in Peru: Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre and Inter-American Intellectual Connections, 1918-1935

This paper explores the rise of Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) by examining Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre's formative years as a student leader. Haya de la Torre's philosophy of anti-imperialism developed out of a Latin American intellectual trend known as neo-arielismo and embodied the aspirations and frustrations of a new generation of young intellectuals and working class people. However, APRA also represented a unique response among Peruvian intellectuals to the nation's defeat in the War of the Pacific. Haya de la Torre's calls for a politically united Latin America rested on a unifying idea of racial ancestry known as Indoamericanismo and increasing evidence of the debilitating force of U.S. imperialism. Unlike his predecessors, Haya traveled extensively throughout the Americas and in Europe to generate intellectual and political connections. Despite the ultimate failure of APRA to achieve its objectives, the founder and head of the movement was warmly welcomed and encouraged by students and intellectuals while traveling. Haya's defeat in the 1930 presidential election sparked protests among his followers based on allegations of fraud. The violent repression that resulted, with tacit support from the U.S. government, exemplifies the confluence of power that APRA faced. His reception among U.S. academics highlights the stark contrast between U.S. foreign policy and academic understandings of Latin America.

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In This Issue

Creole Anti-Communism: Labor, the Peruvian Communist Party, and Apra, 1930–1934

Abstract Recent research has reminded us of the centrality of anti-Communism to the politics of the Cold War in Latin America. This article focuses on a form of anti-Communism that I call creole anti-Communism, which predated the Cold War and was not imposed from abroad or indeed from above. In Peru, anti-Communism proved a key idiom through which the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) sought to gain control over organized labor and to challenge the Peruvian Communist Party’s claims to represent and lead workers. APRA’s anti-Communism grew out of Víctor Haya de la Torre’s polemics with José Carlos Mariátegui and with the Comintern. But it was also shaped by APRA’s evolving strategy in relation to organized labor in the early 1930s. I focus on the ways in which APRA came to view labor autonomy vis-à-vis the party and, more generally, workers’ rejection of Communist attempts to politically control the labor movement as key tactics in its broader struggle against the Peruvian Communist Party. In a context of growing repression of everything associated with Communism, APRA proved adept at channeling, and benefiting from, a form of labor anti-Communism, or anti-Communism from below, by adapting its own strategy toward labor.

Latinoamericanos en el Congreso Antiimperialista de 1927: Afinidades, disensos y rupturas

The Anti-Imperialist Congress held in Brussels in February 1927 became the most significant effort in respect of the periphery through which the Communist International sought to develop and consolidate its position in the American, Asian and African continents—territories over which it had little or no influence. The objectives of the Congress included the establishment of links with the most progressive cores in Europe, while keeping the communist allegiances of the organisers under cover. This meeting gave impetus to the revolutionary movements that existed in most countries considered to be on the periphery. The Congress allowed further analysis of the effects of imperialism in Latin America, one of its major consequences being the political differentiation between the communist movement and the populism of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), represented respectively at the Congress by the Cuban Julio Antonio Mella and the Peruvian Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre.

The origins of APRA in Cajamarca, 1928–1935

From its foundation in 1930 until the late 1980s, the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) comprised the largest and best organised political party in Peru, but surprisingly few studies exist on how the organisation was established and built up a mass following at the provincial level. This article examines the birth of APRA in the Andean department of Cajamarca. It highlights the support the organisation obtained among key middle-class groups (i.e. lawyers, schoolteachers, cattle dealers, etc.), and the links they forged with the rural and urban poor. APRA's efforts to mobilise “new” social actors, such as women and students, are also described.

Modernity at the Edge of Empire: State, Individual, and Nation in the Northern Peruvian Andes, 1885-1935

1. Introduction: tradition, modernity, nation and state 2. State, region and Casta 3. The contradictions of Casta rule 4. Casta contradictions historicized 5. The cultural politics of Casta rule 6. Modernity as emancipation I: the 'partido laboral independiente Amazonense' 7. Modernity as emancipation II: the 'alianza popular revolucionaria Americana' 8. The disintegration of the Casta order 9. Conclusion: modernity at the edge of empire Notes Bibliography Index.

The political process of decentralization in Peru, 1985–1990

AbstractThis paper, using Peru as a case study, argues that the most potent factor in the implementation of decentralization in developing countries is ‘political’ in nature and operation. The legislative process of decentralization under President Alan García's regime went through three major steps, controlled by his party, APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana,): (1) The 1986 Bill of the Basic Law of Regionalization; (2) The 1987 Basic Law of Regionalization; and (3) The 1988 Modified Law of Regionalization. Why did Alan García push for decentralization, unlike his predecessors? The 1985 elections produced García, a populist demagogue, and a loose political party system dominated by APRA. However, the legislation of decentralization was possible paradoxically because García, who was desperately looking for a political issue to distract people's minds from his misgovernment, needed to control APRA for a regional power base after 1990. Thus, the whole decentralization process was highly politicized, and García's strategy was ‘successful’ in that regional governments came to be controlled by APRA after the 1989 and 1990 regional elections. The Peruvian case shows how far decentralization can be used for personalistic or partisan interests in a fragile democracy.

The consolidation of Alan Garcia's Government in Peru

When Alan GarcLa Perez received the presidential sash from Fernando Belauinde on 28 July 1985, most observers thought that the 'honeymoon' period of the new government would not last for long. Despite the size of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) victory in the 1985 elections, the problems faced by the new president were formidable. There were problems with debt repayments to foreign creditors, many of whom had not received interest let alone principal during the last year of the Belaunde government. There were also problems in fulfilling election promises to reactivate the economy and to reverse the sharp fall in living standards experienced over the previous ten years. Garcia also faced a growing guerrilla presence in the highlands, a movement which appeared to be spreading to the cities. In addition, there was the problem of how to handle the military, which historically had shown strong anti-Aprista sentiments. A year and a half after his inauguration, GarcLa had not only shown the capacity to survive and to deal with some of these problems, but had also done much to build up a powerful political machine with himself firmly in control. The opinion polls continued to show Garcia enjoying strong popularity, mnore so than his political rivals to the left or to the right of APRA. The November 1986 municipal elections saw APRA gaining control of nearly all the municipalities in the country. The election was a further endorsement of the President and his Administration. Indeed, such was Garcla's public profile that his opposition critics declared that his ambition was to turn Peru from a republic into a kingdom. The jibe was given added force when in November 1986, just after the elections, a proposal was floated in Congress which, if passed, would have changed the Constitution to permit Garcia a second consecutive term in office, assuming that APRA won the 1990 elections. Rather than reviewing individual policies and their success or failure, the central purpose of this article is to identify the ways in which Garcia and his associates have attempted to build on this popularity so as to strengthen the position of the ruling party within the framework of Peruvian politics. In particular it examines the ways in which the party

The Petty-Bourgeois Ideology of the Peruvian Aprista Party

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

The Indigenismo of the Peruvian Aprista Party: A Reinterpretation

FOR OVER FORTY YEARS, scholars studying Latin America and Peru have been bombarded with hundreds of books, pamphlets, broadsides, and articles supporting, condemning, or explaining the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (Apra). However, even a casual glance at the literature reveals that it is almost totally polarized between the fervent supporters of the party and its equally fervent detractors. Apra has been pictured by its admirers as a grass-roots lowerand middle-class reform movement designed end foreign and oligarchical domination of the economy, incorporate the Indian mass into national life, and democratize the socio-political structure of the country. One United States scholar wrote: The Apristas have demonstrated the vigor of their ideas. Their slogan in 1966, just as it has been for over four decades, is 'Apra Si, Comunismo No.' They continue, as always, teaching, organizing, and working for the Peru of their ideal-free, just, and happy.-1 Critics of Apra have long characterized the party as being composed of communistic terrorists who desire not the betterment of Peruvian society, but rather its total destruction. One historian recently wrote that Apra sought to tear down the whole Peruvian social, economic, and political structure so as replace it with one based exclusively on their own esoteric theories, rather than on a consensus of national opinion. They were in Peru fully as subversive an element as is the Communist Party today in the United States.2

APRA: An Appraisal

Had the military not ousted President Fernando Belaúnde Terry and substituted their rule for constitutional processes, 1969 would have been an election year in Peru. According to Belaúnde, the probable winner of those elections would have been Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the perennial candidate of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA). Therefore, to paraphrase the comment attributed to Mark Twain on arising from his sickbed and reading his obituary in the local newspaper, announcements of Apra's demise are somewhat premature.Few political movements in Latin America have enjoyed a comparable fame, and none has matched that of theapristasin having contributed a nonpersonalistic genre to the family of Latin America political parties.