Everything about Juan Velasco Alvarado totally explained
Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (
June 16 1910 –
December 24 1977) was a
left-leaning
Peruvian General who ruled Peru from
1968 to
1975 under the title of "President of the Revolutionary Government."
Early life
Velasco was born on
June 16,
1910 in
Piura, a city on Peru's north coast. He was the son of Manuel José Velasco and Clara Luz Alvarado. One of 11 children of a minor civil servant, he described his youth as one of "dignified poverty." He was married to Consuelo Gonzáles Arriola.
In 1929, he joined the
Peruvian Army as a foot soldier. Due to his excellent discipline, he was selected to attend the military academy of
Chorrillos, located near
Lima. In 1934 he graduated at the top of his class. He kept close relationships over the years with some of his military colleagues from this era, most of them later on the
Centro de Altos Estudios Militares (CAEM).
Military revolution and presidency (1968-1975)
During the Belaúnde administration, political disputes became a norm as he held no majority in Congress. Serious arguments between President Belaúnde and Congress, dominated by the
APRA-UNO coalition, and even between the President and his own
Acción Popular (Popular Action) party were common.
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. This gave the
Armed Forces an excuse to seize absolute power and close down Congress. General Velasco seized power on
October 3,
1968 in a 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, and by
October 8 the oil fields in dispute were taken over by the Army.
The coup leaders named their administration the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, with Velasco at its helm as President. Velasco's rule, known as Velascato, was characterized by left-leaning policies, as 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 (
PescaPeru,
MineroPeru,
PetroPeru,
ElectroPeru,
EntelPeru, etc.), and increased government control over economic activity by enforcing those entities as monopolies and preventing any private activity in those sectors. The media were opened for a first time to leftist intelectuals and politicos. A deep education reform was in march looking to include all Peruvians to a new national thinking and feeling; the poor and the most excluded were vindicated and the
Día del Indio name was changed to
Día del Campesino every June 24th, a traditional holiday of the land, the day of winter equinoccio.
It was also characterised by the increasing use of authoritarian powers, as the administration grew away from tolerating any level of dissent, periodically jailing, deporting and harassing suspected political opponents and repeatedly closing and censoring broadcast and print news media, finally expropriating all of the
newspapers in 1974 and sending the publishers into exile.
A cornerstone of his political and economic strategy was the implementation by dictat of an
agrarian reform program to expropriate farms and diversify land ownership, much of which had been concentrated in
Latifundios owned by a small percentage of the population; opponents of his program claimed that the expropriation was more akin to confiscation, as they were paid in non-tradable
bonds that would eventually become worthless by the government's inflationary policies. Need is to say that only less than 2 % of the Peruvian territory is farmable land; 98 % of the territory is wether arid desert with little rain; harsch mountains with very steped terrain; or wild amazon forest.
Ironically, the deposed Belaúnde administration had attempted to implement a milder agrarian reform program, but it had been defeated in Congress by the APRA-UNO coalition with support of the major
landowners. Within this framework, the Velasco administration engaged in an aggressive program of
import substitution industrialization, imposing tight foreign exchange and trade controls.
In foreign policy, in contrast with his
1970s Latin American contemporaries, which were mostly right-wing military dictatorships, he pursued a partnership with the
Soviet bloc, tightening relations with
Cuba and
Fidel Castro and undertaking major purchases of Soviet military hardware.
Relations between the United States and Peru were tense during Velasco's time in government beginning with the expropriation of the International Petroleum Company (IPC), a subsidiary of
Standard Oil, one week after Velasco seized power in 1968. Although the claims over the IPC were ultimately resolved in negotations between the two governments, disagreements continued over such issues as Peru's claim to 200 mile fishing limit that resulted in the seizure of several US commercial fishing boats and the expropriation of the American copper mining company Cerro de Pasco Corporation. In 1973, Velasco announced during a press conference when questioned about Soviet military advisors in Peru, that the United States
Peace Corps was being expelled from Peru.
Economically, the Velasco administration's policies were ultimately unsuccessful. The government ran deeper into debt and was forced to devalue the currency and ran inflationary policies.
Fisheries and agriculture were particularly visible failures;
PescaPeru aggressively overfished the anchoveta, a fish used primarily as material for fishmeal production and a key element in the Peruvian sea ecosystem, which resulted in record production for a couple of years but combined with an
El Niño event in 1972 led to an absolute collapse that would take over a decade to partially recover, while the badly mismanaged agrarian reform resulted in the creation of thousands of capital-poor and mostly uneducated small farmers whose production and distribution capacity fell substantially short of the pre-reform production. This, coupled with the trade restrictions, led to periodic shortages, rationing, and increased social unrest.
Overthrow
Economic difficulties such as inflation, unemployment, food shortages (arising from the unsuccessful economic policies), and increased political opposition after the 1974 crackdown on the press ultimately increased pressures on the Velasco Administration and led to its downfall. On
August 29, 1975, a number of prominent military commanders initiated a coup in the southern city of
Tacna, nicknamed
El Tacnazo.
The military commanders of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th military regions declared that Velasco hadn't achieved most of what the "Peruvian Revolution" had stood for and was unable to continue in his functions. Prime Minister
Francisco Morales Bermúdez was then appointed president, by unanimous decision of the new military junta.
Prior to being deposed, Velasco had been seriously ill for at least a year; he'd lost a leg to an embolism, and his cognitive abilities and personality were rumoured to have been affected by related circulatory problems. At the time of the coup, he was convalescing in
Chaclacayo, a small city near Lima. He immediately decided to meet with his council of ministers, where he discovered that there was little or nothing to do. He made a last speech to the nation, announcing his decision not to resist the coup.
Velasco kept a low profile in Peruvian politics until his death in 1977.
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