Peru

THE Peruvian military junta, which in July nullified the results of the presidential elections and assumed civil power, remains in effective control of the nation. The junta of General Manuel Perez Godoy, chairman of the Peruvian Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Nicolas Lindley Lopez, head of the army, Vice Admiral Juan Francisco Torres Matos, the navy chief, and Pedro Vargas Prada, commander of the air force, is one of the most thoroughly misunderstood forces on the confusing Latin American scene.

Washington and a number of South American governments vigorously denounced the junta when it took over, on the stated grounds that the military had interfered with due electoral process. It must have been especially embarrassing to Washington to find General Lindley on the junta, because Secretary of Defense McNamara had in 1961 awarded him the U.S. Legion of Merit for, among other cited virtues, his “consistent support of democratic principles.” The United States stopped $81 million in Alliance for Progress economic aid to Peru, canceled military assistance running at the rate of $5 million a year, and threatened to cut off Peru’s privilege of selling $19 million worth of sugar to the United States at preferential prices.

But the outrage in Washington and the eight other nations that had broken diplomatic relations with Peru was short-lived. Within a few weeks, after the junta had made some conciliatory gestures and had demonstrated its grip on power, it was recognized as the effective government.

The left-wing junta

Far from being the conservative and right-wing force that Latin American military establishments have been generally assumed to be, the junta is actually far to the left.

The generals of the junta quickly allowed the Communist priest Father Salamon Bolo Hidalgo to return to Peru. Father Bolo had been exiled by the outgoing government of the moderate President Manuel Prado for violating a decree that required Peruvian citizens to receive official permission before making trips to Communist countries. The junta not only restored Father Bolo’s civic privileges but also voided the regulation that he had broken by attending a Communist congress in Russia.

Once back in Peru, Father Bolo gave thanks by attacking the papal nuncio and the United States and praising Russia and Khrushchev, and he advised General Perez Godoy to make a pilgrimage to Moscow before taking a stand on the issue of Communism. The junta’s tolerance of the Red father represents some degree of acquiescence to his views, or at the very least an instance of the distasteful neutralist habit of blackmailing the United States by allowing local Communists to carry on their agitational activities.

There are other grounds for fearing that the junta has a strong penchant for leftist extremism. The Peruvian armed forces have, rightly or wrongly, considered themselves the toughest in South America, and have taken it for granted that they therefore deserved a major voice in national political affairs. This voice they had under a succession of dictatorships — dictatorships which, incidentally, always enjoyed the support of the Communists because it was in the interest of the far left to collaborate with the far right in crushing the democratic center. But the political power of the military waned during the moderate 1956— 1962 government of President Prado, and the soldiers did not like it. Prado’s reliance on civilian support undermined the old alliance of the military. the well-to-do, and the Church, which, like Prado, drifted away from association with the armed forces.

As a result, the military, and, in particular, a restive corps of younger officers and noncoms, sought a new political place to stand. These soldiers decided that if the well-to-do and the Church no longer wanted them, they would embrace the ideology that sneered at their former friends. Given the military’s past collaboration with Communism, the shift was not too hard to make. The leftist trend in the Peruvian armed forces led directly to the junta’s coup.

Three-way fight

Before the coup, three political forces bid for presidential power in Peru: Victor Raul Haya de la Torre and his well-known, slightly left-ofcenter APRA party; rightist ex-dictator General Manuel Odría; and Fernando Belaúnde Terry, with his far-left AP (Acción Popular) party. Acción Popular had been organized in 1956 with heavy Communist assistance, and Belaúnde. an architect with the looks of a matinee idol and a degree from the University of Texas, narrowly lost that year’s presidential election to Prado.

The army and APRA have been bitter, perennial enemies. Haya de la Torre began his political career right after World War I as a Communist. But while he was in exile during the 1 20s he visited the Soviet Union and became convinced that Communism was not the answer for South America. Ever since, he and APRA have stood for a reasonable program of land reform, labor legislation, industrialization, incorporation of Peru’s neglected 50 percent Indian population into modern civic life, and constitutional democracy.

This program has been a threat and a challenge to both the army and the aristocracy, as well as to the Communists, who in the past found the ground being cut out from under them by APRA, and who have for thirty years attacked Haya as a “social fascist.” The feud between the army and APRA was fanned to white heat by repeated military exilings of Haya and especially by a bloody clash in 1932 in the city of Trujillo. There APRA revolted: its goon squads were massacred by the military: and the gulf between the two enemies has been unbridgeable ever since.

Two million votes were cast in the election; and at the end of the count, Haya led by a whisker, although he lacked the legally required one third of the votes to win. The decision, therefore, was due to be thrown into the Congress, according to the law. As he saw the vote running against him, Belaúnde charged fraud. The army agreed with him.

The army pulls the strings

Between the counting and the scheduled convocation of Congress, the negotiating among the three political factions was intense. Haya, knowing that he had the army and its man, Belaúnde, to reckon with, tried to arrive at an arrangement. One possibility was for Haya to let Belaúnde have the presidency in return for a dominant APRA voice in the Cabinet. From the beginning of their negotiations. Haya was conciliatory in the extreme to Belaúnde. But after Haya had met all of his stipulations, Belaunde abruptly broke off the talks. He fled to the city of Arequipa and melodramatically had his followers erect barricades around his unendangered local headquarters.

The army was pulling the strings. It had told Belaúnde to go through the motions of negotiations with APRA but not to reach an accord under any circumstances. It had ordered Belaúnde’s histrionic hegira to Arequipa. Finally, the army wrote the script with which Belaúnde, the civilian, called on the military to overthrow the Prado government.

The army bided its time for a bit, while Haya turned to negotiations with the third presidential candidate, General Odría. The meetings went well; it was virtually understood that APRA would throw its votes in Congress to Odna for the presidency, as balm to the military, in return for an APRA majority in the Cabinet. When the military saw that an Haya-Odrta accord was at hand—an accord that would have spelled a term of stability and moderation for Peru—they struck on their own behalf. They arrested President Prado, jailed the officials of the electoral tribunal, dissolved Congress, suspended constitutional guarantees temporarily, and scheduled their dictatorship to last at least until the new elections that they promised for June, 1963.

While the armed forces are not unanimous in their heading toward the far left, it is to be expected that the junta w ill use the coming months to fortify Belaunde and to erode his political rivals. However, the military and Belaúnde do not have a clear field before them. Much will depend on how well the moderate forces of Peru can rally their individual strengths and on how well they can forge a democratic front together.

The need for new blood

APRA, the classic moderate political force of Peru, has a lot of rebuilding to do. APRA’s decline from its past peaks of popularity was measured by Haya’s failure to get one third of the vote (he beat Belaúnde by only 14,000) and, even more significantly, by its inability to mount a called general strike against the junta. Part of the trouble with APRA is that Haya is old (sixty-seven) and tired; a renovation of leadership is badly needed.

The former mass base of APRA has dwindled amid the frustrations of seeing power elude the parly’s grasp for decade after decade. The growing radicalization of Peru and South America has undercut APRA too; the most exciting political platforms, to the minds of the impatient and the untutored, are now advanced by the Communists and their fronts.

Oddly enough, in tandem with a revitalized APRA, General Odría can do a good deal to strengthen the center. The former dictator is favorably remembered by perhaps 30 percent of the electorate for his programs of public works and for a strong hand that spared Peru such political uncertainties as now beset it. Odría stands for the traditional personalism of South American politics. Constructively handled, such personalism can develop into the more modern political form of organized cooperation, and it can be a bar to the “collective leadership” that only thinly veils the Communist cult of personality.

An evolving Church also holds forth hope. Lima’s able and gallant Juan Cardinal Landazuri Ricketts did his best to promote calm before and during the elections with a series of cogent and moving appeals to the faithful. On the eve of the military coup, the cardinal spoke impassionedly to the generals: “In the name of our Holy Mother, the Church, I beg of you not to break the legal order.” The Peruvian hierarchy has taken the counsel of the encyclical Mater et Magistra deeply to heart and is making earnest strides in a progressive direction.

But the evolution of the Church still suffers from a lack of definition and control. While few of the Catholic clergy in Peru are as extreme as the notorious Father Bolo, there are many priests and nuns who have personally and mistakenly interpreted the encyclical as a signal to really to Belaúnde’s AP, and who ingood but naive faith are lending aid and comfort to a political movement whose victory will inevitably spell the extinction of the Church independent.

What We can do

U.S. policy can be a decisive factor in checking Peru’s unfortunate course, but first it must shift its own direction. The embassy created an impression among Peruvians that it had backed a loser, and it scarcely won the respect of the junta by first taking part in the U.S. break with it and then surrendering its stand and resuming relations.

A cool U.S. attitude toward the junta, rather than an obsequious effort to mend fences, seems called for, and the stick of aid reduction, no matter how poorly wielded during the summer, should not be abandoned.

Meanwhile, there is a good deal that can be done, without violating protocol, to shore up the forces of moderation. Members of the U.S. military mission to Peru, for example, can be chosen as much for their proficiency in democratic principles as for their facility with hardware and tactics. The recent directive which permits U.S. assistance, under appropriate circumstances, to be channeled through religious institutions abroad can be used to support beneficial secular programs of the Church in Peru. Concerted efforts by U.S. diplomats and private citizens resident in Peru may bring at least moral support to the enlightened members of the commercial and landowning establishment. And there should be no U.S. hesitation in exposing Communist inroads in Peru.