Juan Velasco Alvarado

Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (Castilla, Piura, Peru, June 16, 1910 - Lima, Peru, December 24, 1977) was a Peruvian military and politician who, being head of the Command Group of the Armed Forces, directed and carried out the coup d'état of October 3, 1968, with which he overthrew Fernando Belaúnde Terry and managed to exercise absolute power until 1975 during the so-called Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces.

Childhood and youth

He was the son of Manuel José Velasco Gallo and Clara Luz Alvarado Zevallos. He was born in Castilla on June 16, 1910, a district in the province of Piura, in the bosom of a working family. His mother sold chicha to cover household expenses, since there were eleven siblings in total. He attended primary school studies at the School Center No. 21 (1918-1922) and secondary school at the San Miguel School (1923-1927), both in his hometown. After finishing his school studies, he decided to pursue a military career, but since he did not have the resources to move to Lima, it took him months to leave, until he stowed away on the Chilean ship Imperio that was anchored in the port of Paita.

Military career

In 1929, at the age of 18, he arrived in Lima when the admission contest to the Cadet School of the Chorrillos Military School had already taken place. He then decided to join the army as a recruit on April 5, 1929, becoming an instructor at the School of Classes. He was later able to attend the Military School, from which he graduated on February 1, 1934, with the rank of infantry second lieutenant, obtaining first place in his class (called Huáscar), but the sword of honor It was won by his partner Enrique López Velasco, from the engineering arm.

In 1937, he was promoted to lieutenant. In 1939, he became an instructor at the Cadet School. In 1940, he was promoted to captain, was assigned to the Jungle Division, but returned to Lima in 1941 to serve as an instructor at the Officers' School.

He went on to study at the Escuela Superior de Guerra (1944), where he later taught Infantry, Tactics and General Staff (1946). In 1945, he was promoted to major and in 1946 he was certified as a staff officer. In 1949, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and in 1952, he went on to direct the Military School where he made reforms and adapted its regulations according to the advances in the art of warfare.

In 1953, he commanded an infantry battalion of the Jungle Division, until 1954. The following year he was promoted to colonel. He later became Director of the Infantry School and Chief of Staff of the IV Division of the Military Instruction Center of Peru (1955-1958).

In 1959, under the second government of Manuel Prado Ugarteche, he was promoted to Brigadier General and appointed General Director of Shooting and General Commander of the II Light Division (1960-1961).

In 1962, he became a military attaché at the Peruvian Embassy in Paris, France and, upon his return, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the I Military Region (1964). In 1965, he was promoted to Major General. In January 1968, under the first government of Fernando Belaúnde Terry, he assumed the General Command of the Army and the presidency of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces of Peru.

In Chincha, he met his future wife, Consuelo Gonzáles Posada (sister of Luis González Posada), who was an Aprista activist at the time. From this union were born: Teresa Consuelo, María Elena, Francisco Javier and Juan Mario.

Alleged plot against the government of Belaúnde

From the moment he reached the General Command of the Army and the presidency of the Joint Command, General Juan Velasco began to plot against the democratic government of Belaunde, along with other Army officers. Among these, four colonels stood out: Rafael Hoyos Rubio, Jorge Fernández-Maldonado, Leonidas Rodríguez Figueroa and Enrique Gallegos Venero. These officers, trained at the CAEM, previously dedicated themselves to studying the political, social and economic situation of Peru and devised a plan that, in their opinion, would overcome the terrible crisis that was overwhelming the nation.

The scandal of the Act of Talara and Page 11

After the swearing again Belaúnde's Cabinet, presided over by Miguel Mujica Gallo, Velasco fired and narrowed Belaúnde's hand, hours before giving his coup.

The pretext used to perpetrate the coup was the settlement that the Belaúnde government gave to the longstanding problem of La Brea and Pariñas. This was the name of some oil fields located in the north and exploited at the time by an American company, the International Petroleum Company (IPC). For decades this company and its British predecessor had refused to pay the State the real amount of exploitation taxes, using to their advantage an initial error on the part of the State in the measurement of the belongings they exploited. This old litigation came to an end on August 13, 1968 with the signing of the Talara Act, by which all the oil fields exploited by the IPC returned to the Peruvian State, while said company only kept the old Talara refinery. Soon there was talk of hidden manipulations in the operation, which supposedly benefited the IPC, and the Belaunde government was accused of “surrendering”. The scandal broke out when it was denounced that a page was missing in the crude oil price contract between the state-owned Empresa Petrolera Fiscal (EPF) and the IPC (September 10, 1968). That was the famous "Page Eleven," which served as an excuse for the coup that Velasco led in less than a month.

The real reasons for the 1968 coup d'état have been discussed. While some maintain that the military coup leaders were inspired by a sincere desire to implement social justice in Peru, others (such as Belaúnde himself) have noted that the military went ahead to prevent the holding of the 1969 general elections, in which the victory of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre was heralded. the rise to power of Haya and the Apristas, animosity that dates back to the Trujillo revolution of 1932, where Army officers were massacred at the hands of exalted Apristas because in 1932 thousands of Aprista militants and innocent people, including young They were victims of a hecatomb organized by the government of Sanchez Cerro, thus ordering the citadel of Chan Chan to be bombed, thus leaving only the ruins of this city along with thousands of corpses of Aprista militants who were victims of this bloody dictatorship.

The 1968 Coup

Soldier of Peruvian Army, enclosing the bars of the Government Palace during the coup.

On October 2, 1968, General Velasco went to the Government Palace in the morning and presented his greetings to President Belaúnde, during the swearing in of the cabinet chaired by Miguel Mujica Gallo. In the early hours of October 3, tanks from the armored division surrounded the Government Palace, as well as the Congress Palace. President Belaúnde was apprehended and sent by plane to Buenos Aires. Congress was closed. Thus, the coup d'état was consummated, which according to the coup leaders had an "institutional" character, that is, it had the support of the Armed Forces in its three arms (Army, Navy and Aviation). However, today it is known that this was not true. As has been pointed out, the coup was planned by a group of Army officers headed by Velasco and the other members of the Armed Forces joined later.

Government

General Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1970.

In the manifesto that the military issued that same October 3, 1968, they tried to justify the coup by arguing against the deposed government the "pseudo sell-out solution given to the problem of La Brea and Pariñas". Immediately afterwards, the Statute that would govern the self-proclaimed Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces was issued. The general commanders of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force formed a Revolutionary Junta and appointed General Juan Velasco Alvarado as President of the Republic. Unlike the Military Junta of 1962, the Revolutionary Junta installed in 1968 did not set a limit to the time that he would remain in power. There was talk of a "process" required to carry out the major reforms that the country needed. In principle, the revolutionary government declared to be subject to the current Constitution (the one of 1933) and to the other laws, but always as long as these "are compatible with the objectives of the revolutionary government". In other words, the Constitution and the laws were subordinated to the objectives of the government.

Velasco formed a cabinet made up of military and civilian ministers. His Prime Minister and Minister of War was General Ernesto Montagne Sánchez. In general terms, his policy focused on nationalizing the key sectors of the economy through protectionist and interventionist measures. He surrounded himself with many civilians with notorious leftist affiliations and both he and the rest of the military that made up the Junta and the Council of Ministers called themselves "progressives."

Address by members of the revolutionary government, in photography you can see the image of Túpac Amaru II.

The government nationalized key sectors of the economy, such as banks, the oil industry, and export-related sectors. Fishing, mining, telecommunications, energy, oil, are grouped into state conglomerates (PescaPerú, MineroPerú, Petroperú, ElectroPerú, EntelPerú, etc.); the exchange rate and foreign trade come to depend on the State. On October 9, 1968, he ordered the seizure of the IPC facilities in Talara, the same one carried out by the forces of the First Military Region based in Piura, under the command of General Fermín Málaga. This fact had a great impact on the country and helped the government to consolidate its power. The date of October 9 was celebrated throughout the military government as the Day of National Dignity. Later, this event was removed from the country's civic calendar when the democratic government was restored. The IPC was definitively expelled from the country, and although Velasco repeatedly announced that he would not pay any penny to said company (which was a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey), it was later learned that the government secretly negotiated with the IPC, and that, through the De la Flor-Greene Agreement, Peru paid compensation of 76 million dollars. Regarding the debts that the IPC had with the Peruvian State, these were never paid.

The cornerstone of the government's economic policy was the agrarian reform ("peasant, the boss will no longer eat taking advantage of your poverty", proclaimed Velasco Alvarado) aimed at eliminating the large haciendas and which dedicated the redistribution of eleven million hectares to the peasants. The former owners mourned the confiscation, because the expropriated assets were paid for with non-negotiable bonds that risked losing all their value with inflation.

The Velasco regime made massive investments in education, elevated the Quechua language -spoken by almost half the population but despised until then by the authorities- to a status equivalent to that of Spanish, and established equal rights for children natural. In 1974, a law granted the so-called "native" of the Amazon lowlands collective jurisdiction over the territory and its resources.

In foreign policy, unlike the mostly right-wing Latin American military dictatorships of the time, it established diplomatic relations with Cuba and China, and acquired Soviet and French military equipment to modernize the Peruvian army. This earned him the hostility of the United States, which responded with commercial, economic, and diplomatic pressure. In 1973, Peru seemed to overcome the financial blockade imposed by Washington by negotiating a loan from the International Development Bank to finance its agricultural and mining development policy. Relations with Chile deteriorated sharply after the 1973 coup, even more so, it is possible that Velasco Alvarado himself had plans to invade the southern country.

Main works

• He nationalized the National Bank since the beginning of his government, when Decree Law 17330 was given on December 31, 1968, that 75% of the shareholder should be in the hands of Peruvians.
• He nationalized some of the country's mining resources: he explored the oil fields of Talara (of the CPI), as well as the farms and installations of Cerro de Pasco Corporation and Marcona Mining. Several state companies emerged: PETROPERÚ (Petroleos del Perú), CENTROMIN PERÚ (in charge of the metallurgical mining activity of the central area of Peru), HIERRO PERÚ (for Marcona) and SIDER PERÚ (for the Chimbote steel industry).
• By decree law 17716 given on 29 June 1969, an agrarian reform was arranged throughout the country with the aim of ending the landlord oligarchy. It affected the latifundios of the mountain range, but also the agro-industrial complexes of the coast, in which Agrarian Production Cooperatives (CAPS) were created, without being properly trained to manage them. This led to the collapse of the sugar industry, until then one of the pillars of the Peruvian economy.^{[chuckles]required]}
• It statized the fishing industry and created the Ministry of Fisheries. The fishery was directed towards human consumption. This improved the food of the population, since, for example, sea fish that had never arrived fresh to the Peruvian Andes, it now arrived in cooled cars of the state fishing company. But on the other hand, the collapse of the fishing industry (meal and fish oil) began until then the first of the planet.^{[chuckles]required]}
• To distribute the food produced by the agrarian cooperatives created by the revolution, the Ministry of Food was created, which managed agreements to import food for the country.
• The reform of the industrial sector was done through the General Law on Industries, which created the Industrial Community. This involved all workers of a company, who in theory had to participate in the profits, in the management and administration of it.
• It imposed direct State control over telecommunications. The Peruvian Telephone Company was expropriated and the State assumed a majority participation in Radio and Television, initially in 51% of the shareholder; then it covered 100%.
• He created the Social Property Companies, a new business model, based on the self-management of the Yugoslav Josip Broz Tito, where the base of the capital was the work. Its financial tip was the FONAPS National Social Property Fund.
• It equaled the rights of legitimate and natural children before the law.
• It imposed strong restrictions on press freedom, confiscating all newspapers in the capital, at midnight on 27 July 1974. Diaries were also confiscated in provinces.
• The Armed Forces were equipped with modern weaponry acquired from the Soviet Union, becoming one of the best in Latin America. The National Intelligence Service (INS) maintained cooperation, collaboration and exchange of information with KGB.
• In order to mobilize the population organizedly and control social mobilizations, it created in 1972 the National Social Mobilization Support System (SINAMOS), which soon acted as a political entity in the service of the revolutionary, hated and feared government. Some progressive intellectuals and left cadres became part of the SINAMOS, the case of the former ELN guerrilla, Héctor Béjar, who was appointed director of the SINAMOS youth area. Other SINAMOS managers were Carlos Delgado (exaprista), Carlos Franco, Hugo Neira, Jaime Llosa, etc.
• At the international level, the Armed Forces government promoted a policy of non-alignment, under the slogan "not with capitalism or communism." In fact, the break-up with the United States involved alliances with the so-called socialist bloc.
• It established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, the People ' s Republic of China, with Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland and North Korea. There was a ban on travelling to those with criminal charges. The first ambassador was Javier Pérez de Cuéllar in the USSR, who then came to the Secretary General of the United Nations between January 1982 and December 1991.
• In 1972, it decreed an educational reform that provided for, among others, bilingual education for Peruvians, especially users of native languages, which comprised almost half of the population.

• In 1973, the Regulation of Bilingual Education was issued and, on 27 May 1975, by Decree Law 21156", which recognized Quechua, as well as Spanish, as an official language of the Republic. The general basic Alphabet of Quechua was approved by R.M. No. 4023 of 16 October 1975. In 1976, six grammars and their respective dictionaries for the various Quechua dialects were published during the Morales Bermúdez government.
• He carried out a set of works for the benefit of his homeland: the restitution to the department of Piura of land that was included without apparent reason in Lambayeque; the Chira-Piura project; the construction of a fertilizer plant in Talara; the fishery complex of Paita; the modernization of the oil refinery of Talara; the creation of the executive committee of the Bayóvar complex; and the construction of a solvent plant
• The military and their close-ups held leadership positions and levels of public administration.

Government Collapse

Official visit to Peru in 1970 by Chilean President Salvador Allende.

The great reforms undertaken with the purpose of changing the face of the country were relatively ineffective, despite some improvement in the standard of living of the working classes and industrial development. Fishing and agriculture are especially glaring failures. PescaPerú overexploited the anchovy, which is used mainly for the production of fishmeal and is a key element in the Peruvian marine ecosystem. Production reached record levels in the early years, but this, together with the effects of the El Niño phenomenon of 1972, caused a sharp drop in catches, to the point that it took more than a decade to recover a level of activity. appropriate. The state debt and the inflationary policy forced to devalue the currency. In addition, the ambitious but poorly carried out agrarian reform led to the creation of thousands of farms without capital, which disrupted agricultural production. In addition, distribution channels were subject to sabotage, speculation, and smuggling, which periodically led to shortages and rationing.

In 1973, when the economic crisis was already evident, Velasco suffered a severe collapse of health. On February 22 of that year he was urgently hospitalized. The presence of an aneurysm caused the rupture of the abdominal aorta. He underwent two surgeries. On March 10, his right leg was amputated. The revolutionary junta announced at that moment that the obligations of the President of the Republic were assumed by the President of the Council of Ministers, Edgardo Mercado Jarrín. But at the end of that same month, Velasco resumed his functions, although he was very physically handicapped. Extremist sectors close to Velasco called for a radicalization that would guide the country definitively towards socialism and Marxism. Influenced by these sectors, the government decided to confiscate the media. At midnight from July 26 to 27, 1974, the headquarters of the last Lima newspapers that still maintained their autonomy were occupied: La Prensa (owned by Pedro Beltrán), Última Hora (evening paper that was printed in the same workshops as La Prensa), El Comercio (owned by the Miró Quesada family), Correo and Ojo (owned by the fishing businessman Luis Banchero Rossi). Nominally, these newspapers were placed in the hands of the "organized sectors" of the population, but in reality they were handed over to servile government employees. Television and radio stations had already been affected long ago by various forms of control.

This violation of press freedom led to the emergence of popular demonstrations against the dictatorship in the streets of Lima for the first time. From July 28 to 30, the youth of the Miraflores district took over the streets and squares, raising their voices in protest. More than 400 protesters were detained. The government's propaganda apparatus limited itself to ridiculing the protest, describing it as “pituca” or “oligarchic”.

Thus, in that atmosphere of discontent, we reached 1975. On February 1 of that year, a police strike began in Lima, who complained of mistreatment and demanded an increase in their salaries. The policemen peacefully quartered themselves at Radio Patrol, on Avenida 28 de Julio in the center of Lima. At midnight on February 4-5, they were attacked by army troops and armored units. Many police officers fled; others gave up. There were also an unknown number of deaths and injuries.

On the morning of February 5, a popular protest broke out, fueled, according to Velasco, by APRA, the CIA and the extreme left. Groups of rioters, in which criminals mixed, toured the city and set fire to the Military Casino from Plaza San Martín, the premises of the newspaper Correo and the offices of SINAMOS. The army took to the streets, and in the course of the afternoon and night of that same day, it restored order with blood and fire, and made an indeterminate number of victims. The government suspended constitutional guarantees and imposed a curfew. The official balance was 86 dead, 155 wounded, 1,012 arrested, and 53 police officers on trial.Velasco accused the CIA and the Aprista Party of encouraging the riots and protests, but his authority was already mortally wounded.

On the other hand, there was talk of government implications in corruption cases. Leniency was reportedly detected to judge alleged smuggling, in which members of the government would have been involved. They would also have been favored by study scholarships to Eastern European countries relatives of the high officials of the Velasquista regime as well as those of the immediate successor.

Coup of 1975

On August 29, 1975, General Francisco Morales Bermúdez, then President of the Council of Ministers, and who was appointed to succeed Velasco in government, led a coup from the city of Tacna and overthrew Velasco in an action that became known as the Tacnazo. To carry out this action, Morales Bermúdez alleged the poor economic situation that the country was going through and the deteriorated health of Velasco, who had to have his right leg amputated on March 10, 1973 due to gangrene resulting from an abdominal aortic aneurysm. that put him on the verge of death on February 23.

In the afternoon of that same day, Velasco left the Government Palace and went peacefully to his residence in Chaclacayo. Officially, he was considered "relieved" of the high command. There was no demonstration in favor of him in the country.

Balance of his government

The Velasquista regime's priority was to change the structures of Peruvian society, which at that time was unequal and underdeveloped; to the extent possible, he succeeded, although he made mistakes, especially at the economic level. In any case, the country began to enter a transition process with a view to its improvement. In the political aspect, he controlled the executive and legislative branches and marginalized the political parties, which did not have the capacity to confront him. Socially, it forever broke the backbone of the power of the Peruvian oligarchy, which it considerably reduced. Many of the members of this oligarchy left the country forever. The powerful “barons” of sugar and cotton never again recovered their old estates, which, mismanaged, ended up in bankruptcy and lost a large part of their productive capacity. In the economic field, the velascato increased the participation of the State on scales never seen before. In 1975 it controlled 31% of the companies, 75% of exports, 66% of bank credit, 50% of fixed investment and 33% of employment in the business sector. The statist model destroyed part of Peruvian industry and left behind giant national companies with massive numbers of public employees, notable inefficiencies, and exorbitant debt levels. This model would be maintained throughout the 1980s and would only be reversed in the 1990s. On the sociocultural level, the Velasquista discourse made many Peruvians stop feeling inferior for being called cholos or serranos in a discriminatory way by people from the oligarchy.

Death

The tomb of Velasco Alvarado; in the cemetery El Angel de Lima.

In his last years, Velasco lived a kind of voluntary seclusion, leaving no political heirs.

In April 1976, Velasco traveled to the United States for treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. On July 26 of the same year, Velasco suffered a stroke after a sharp rise in blood pressure that left his body partially paralyzed, and was admitted to the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington D.C.

In October 1977, he underwent another operation in the United States to prevent another aneurysm in the thoracic aorta.

In November 1977, a pancreatic cyst was removed; however, the general suffered from intense haemorrhages that forced an emergency operation.

He died at the Military Hospital in the city of Lima on Saturday, December 24, 1977 after the doctors declared uncontrollable septicemia.

On December 25, the Government announced that Velasco would be buried with honors as President of the Republic of Peru and that the 26th would be a day of national mourning, which would be considered a holiday.

The funeral Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Juan Landázuri Ricketts and then the body was moved through downtown Lima to the cemetery, with a large number of people accompanying the high military commands. The President of the Council of Ministers, General Guillermo Arbulú Galliani was in charge of giving a speech in the cemetery on behalf of the government.

During the displacement, more than twenty union organizations, headed by the National Agrarian Confederation, summoned workers, students and unions to accompany the burial.

His remains rest in the El Ángel de Lima Cemetery. In 1980, his tomb was the object of an attack perpetrated by Sendero Luminoso (June 15), in what would be one of his first actions in the framework of Terrorism in Peru.

Legacy

Estatua de Juan Velasco Alvarado en la Urbanización La Palma, en Ica.

Velasco's image would remain an important reference point for Peruvian military reformism in the 1970s. Some of his top lieutenants founded the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR), clearly inspired by the Velasquista project. Two months after its formation, its leaders were deported to Panama and Mexico, allowing their return for the Constituent Assembly elections, obtaining close to 6.6% of the votes. The PSR was part of the United Left, an alliance that integrated the various Peruvian socialist organizations, politically located to the left.

Tributes

On December 18, 2014, President Ollanta Humala closed the year of the Juan Velasco Alvarado Promotion at the Chorrillos Military School (CIMP).

Distinctions and decorations

Peruvian Awards

• Grand Master of the Order The Sun of Peru (Peru Peru.
• Grand Cross of the Military Order of Ayacucho (Peru Peru.
• Order to Merit for Distinguished Services (Peru Peru.

Foreign Awards

• Necklace of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (SpainSpain, 1970).
• Necklace of the Order of San Martín (Argentina, 1971).
• Order of the Merit of Chile (ChileChile, 1972).
• Necklace of the Order of the Andes Condor (BoliviaBolivia, 1974).
• Great Necklace of the Order of Liberator with the sword of Simon Bolivar (Venezuela Venezuela, 1974).
• Necklace of the Order of the Star of Romania (Romania Romania, 1974).