Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (June 16, 1910 – December 24, 1977) was a Peruvian general and politician who was the military leader of Peru from 1968 to 1975 after a successful coup d'état against Fernando Belaúnde's presidency. Under his government, nationalism, as well as some left-wing economic policies specifically concerning Peru's indigenous population, such as nationalization or agrarian reform were adopted. These policies were reversed after another coup d'état in 1975 led by his Prime Minister, Francisco Morales Bermúdez.
Velasco had a confrontational foreign policy towards the United States, as he pushed for renegotiation of treaties and criticized what he perceived as a pernicious dependence of Latin American states on the United States and strengthened relations with the Soviet Union. His foreign policy has been described as "third way." His reign was also described by Western analysts as "fascistic", "corporatist" or populist. The government denied to be fascistic however. Ideologically, he identified himself with socialism;DISCURSO DEL SENOR GENERAL DE DIVISION JUAN VELASCO ALVARADO, PRESIDENTE DE LA REPUBLICA, EN LA SESION INAUGURAL DE LA 11 REUNION MINISTERIAL DEL GRUPO DE LOS 77. 28 DE OCTUBRE DE 1971. once proclaiming that his government would be “a revolutionary government that is neither capitalist nor communist but authentically Peruvian—humanist, freedom loving, socialist and Christian.”Juan Velasco Alvarado, 67, Dies; Was Peru's President for 7 Years by C. Gerald Fraser, published in the New York Times, Dec. 25, 1977 Additionally, Velasco advocated what he called “ a social democracy of full participation.”The Politics of Workers' Participation The Peruvian Approach in Comparative Perspective By Evelyne Huber Stephens, Publisher: Elsevier Science, 2013, P.156
Early life Juan Velasco was born in Castilla, a city near Piura on Peru's north coast. He was the son of Manuel José Velasco, a medical assistant, and Clara Luz Alvarado, who had 11 children. Velasco described his youth as one of "dignified poverty, working as a shoeshine boy in Piura."
In 1929, he stowed away on a ship to Lima, Peru, falsified his age, and tried to enlist as an officer in the Peruvian Army. However, he arrived late to the exam, so he joined as a private on April 5, 1929. A year later, he took a competitive exam for entrance into the Escuela Militar de Chorrillos, and got the highest score of all applicants. In 1934, he graduated with high honors and at the head of his class.
He married Consuelo Gonzales Posada in 1940, with whom he had several children."Perú, Lima, Registro Civil, 1874-1996," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGXQ-SWXR : 11 April 2020), Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado and Maria Consuelo González Posada; citing Marriage Registration, 123, 123, Archivo General de la Nación (General Archives of the Nation), Lima; FHL microfilm.
Coup d'etat against President Fernando Belaunde
During the Fernando Belaúnde's administration (1963–1968), political disputes became a norm as he held no majority in Congress. Serious arguments between President Belaúnde and Congress, dominated by the APRA-UNO (Unión Nacional Odríista) coalition, and even between the President and his own Acción Popular (Popular Action) party were common. Congress went on to censure several cabinets of the Belaunde administration, and a general political instability was perceived.
Also, between 1964 and 1965 the army had been sent to deal with two military uprisings inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Through the use of guerrilla tactics, both the National Liberation Army (ELN) commanded by Héctor Béjar and Javier Heraud, and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), led by an APRA militant, Luis de la Puente Uceda, and Guillermo Lobatón, tried to instigate a revolution, being unsuccessful. Nevertheless, these conflicts led several military officers to the most impoverished parts of the country, and after witnessing the reality of the country-side and studying the reasons which led to the uprisings, they began to consider social inequality and poverty as a danger to national security.La Revolución por Decreto. Dirk Krujit, 1991.
A dispute with the International Petroleum Company over licenses to the La Brea y Pariñas oil fields in northern Peru sparked a national scandal when a key page of a contract (the 11th) was found missing.The United States and Peru: cooperation at a cost. Cynthia McClintock, 2003, pg. 25. The Armed Forces, fearing that this scandal might lead to another uprising or a takeover from the APRA party, seized absolute power and close down Congress, almost all of whose members were briefly incarcerated. General Velasco seized power on October 3, 1968, in a bloodless military coup, deposing the democratically elected administration of Fernando Belaúnde, under which he served as Commander of the Armed Forces. President Belaúnde was sent into exile. Initial reaction against the coup evaporated after five days when on October 8, 1968, the oil fields in dispute were taken over by the Army.
Military dictatorship (1968–1975) The coup leaders named their administration the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, with Velasco at its helm as President. Velasco's administration articulated a desire to give justice to the poor through a regime of nationalization known as Peruanismo. Velasco's rule was characterized by broadly social democratic, developmentalist, and independent nationalist policies, which aimed to create a strong national industry to increase the international independence of Peru. To that end, he nationalised entire industries, expropriated companies in a wide range of activities from fisheries to mining to telecommunications to power production and consolidated them into single industry-centric government-run entities, and increased government control over economic activity by enforcing those entities as monopolies and disincentivized private activity in those sectors. Most reforms were planned by leftist intellectuals of the time.
The cabinets that Velasco led were ideologically diverse,Ibero-Americana, Nordic Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. XII: 1-2, 1983, pp. 51-114 THE ROLE OF MILITARY EXPENDITURE IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS. PERU: A CASE STUDY, 1950-1980 by Jose A. Encinas del Pando, P.57-58 with the cabinet (according to one study) dominated by conservatives during the first six months of his presidency. In early 1969, a cabinet reshuffle took place which resulted in just over half of its members (including Velasco himself) being radicals or other allies of the president.The Rise and Fall of the Peruvian Military Radicals 1968-1976 By George D.E. Philip, Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, P.91-92
A root and branch education reform was implemented, seeking to promote inclusivity among all Peruvians and move them towards to a new national way of thinking and feeling; the poor and the most excluded were prioritized in this system. The Día del Indio or Peruvian Indian's day became Día del Campesino or Peruvian Peasant's day. This holiday fell on June 24, a traditional holiday of the land, since it was the day of winter solstice.
The education reform of 1972 provided for bilingual education for the indigenous people of the Andes and the Amazon, which consisted nearly half of the population. In 1975, the Velasco government enacted a law making Quechua an official language of Peru equal to Spanish. However, this law was never enforced and ceased to be valid when the 1979 constitution became effective, according to which Quechua and Aymara are official only where they predominate, as mandated by law – a law that was never enacted. Major reforms were also carried out in the areas of social services,Postrevolutionary Peru The Politics Of Transformation By Stephen M. Gorman, Publisher: Taylor & Francis, 2019The Catholic Church and Democracy in Chile and Peru By Michael Fleet, Brian H. Smith, Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015 labor rights,La Nueva Izquierda y la competencia por la revolución en el Perú durante el gobierno de Velasco. 1968 – 1975 by Mario Meza-BazánTo Be a Worker Identity and Politics in Peru By Jorge Parodi, Jorge Parodi Solari, Publisher: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, P.159 and social securitySocial Security in Latin America Pressure Groups, Stratification, and Inequality By Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978, P.121-124MONTLY LABOR REVIEW, OCTOBER 1971, Publisher: U.S. Government Printing Office P.64-65 during Velasco's time in office.
A cornerstone of Velasco's political and economic strategy was the implementation by dictate of an agrarian reform program to expropriate farms and diversify land ownership. In its first ten years in power, the Revolutionary Government expropriated 15,000 properties (totaling nine million hectares) and benefited some 300,000 families.Enrique Mayer, Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Peru's agrarian reform under Velasco was the second-largest Land reform in Latin American history, after Cuba. The former landlords who opposed this program believed that they did not receive adequate compensation for their confiscated assets and lamented that the state officials and peasant beneficiaries mismanaged their properties after the expropriation.Enrique Mayer, Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform. Durham:Duke University Press, 2009. The owners who opposed his program also claimed that the expropriation was more akin to confiscation, as they were paid in agrarian reform bonds, a sovereign debt obligation of which the government defaulted payment due to the hyperinflationary period that affected Peru's economy in the late 1980s, leaving the current value of the bonds up for debate and resulting in a decade-long lawsuit against the Peruvian government.
The deposed Belaúnde administration had attempted to implement a milder agrarian reform program, but it was defeated in Congress by the APRA-UNO coalition with support of the major landowners. Within this framework, the Velasco administration engaged in a program of import substitution industrialization, imposing tight foreign exchange and trade controls.
In his rhetoric, Velasco said to be working against the oligarchy in Peru.
The success of the Velasco administration's economic policies is still debated today.Anna Cant, Representations of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform, 1968–1975. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2015. See Tony Wood, "Peruvian Agrarian Reform, 1968–1975," Dissertation Reviews, April 18, 2016. As the Peruvian military government ran deeper into debt, it was forced to devalue the currency and run inflationary policies. This however, was in part due to the 1970s energy crisis, which also affected Peru and made it impossible for the Velasco administration to fund some of its most ambitious reforms. Economic growth under the administration was steady if unremarkable - real per capita GDP (constant 2000 US$) increased 3.2% per year from 1968 to 1975.
In 1971, Velasco described the economic policy as one aimed at overcoming capitalism in Peru, stating that
In a 1975 speech Velasco described his revolution as one that rejected both capitalism and communism, stating that
Velasco’s views on capitalism were echoed by his economy minister Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who argued that “it is impossible to achieve the general welfare of the population under a capitalist system.”Socialism and Social Change in the Seventies A Reader, Editor: Winston B. Cox, Publisher: University Press of America, 1978, P.130
Foreign and military policies