Peru: Bela

Five years ago, Peru’s military leaders helped Fernando Belaúnde Terry become President, impressed by his promise of reform and a “new politics” for South America’s fourth largest nation. Last week they brusquely reversed that judgment on the man who was once praised as Peru’s Kennedyesque “architect of hope.” Awakened, as he slept, by a burst of machine-gun fire, Belaúnde looked out of his window to find tanks outside the Presidential Palace in Lima. Some 50 Peruvian Rangers stormed into the palace and took Belaúnde into custody. Onlookers gathered as he was escorted out of the palace. “How do you like this?” Belaúnde shouted to them. “These are the traitors of the country!” The soldiers bundled him off to the airport and a flight to Argentina and exile.

Belaúnde’s fall once again raised the question of whether democracy can flourish in Latin America. Its prospects had seldom seemed more promising than when Belaúnde took over the presidency in 1963. He plunged into his tasks vowing to do “twelve years’ work in six.” Eager to aid Peru’s impoverished peasants, he launched a whirlwind campaign to build houses, schools, rural airports and roads. The symbol of his dreams for Peru was a new highway cutting into the trans-Andean forests, each mile of roadway completed opening up 3,500 acres of land.

Progress Cost Money. Belaúnde poured money into education until, by this year, fully 25% of Peru’s budget was being spent on schooling—probably the highest proportion for any country on the continent. He attempted agrarian reform and drew some 2,000,000 Peruvians, largely Indians, into Cooperación Popular projects for village improvement. Through it all, he traveled the country tirelessly.

From the outset, though, Belaúnde was at odds with the Peruvian Congress. His Actión Popular party was not strong enough to outvote his opponents, the coalition of ex-Dictator Manuel Odría’s upper-middle-class followers and the left-of-center American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), headed by Old Liberal Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, His budgets rose from $400 million to more than $1 billion annually, and the country’s cumulative deficit grew to $555 million. Tax dodging by the privileged was flagrant, but Belaúnde’s programs were in any case beyond Peru’s fiscal capacity. So he went abroad to borrow money to keep his plans afloat, until the foreign debt mounted to $900 million.

Too Large a Role. The shadow of scandal and corruption began to fall across his government. Some officials, dubbed the “golden bureaucrats” by Belaúnde’s critics, were revealed to be getting salaries as high as $3,000 a month —stunningly generous by Peruvian standards. It was shown that a navy troopship had made no less than four trips smuggling in contraband. Then came the affair that caused the coup against him by the disgruntled armed forces. Belaúnde had rashly promised to expropriate the U.S.-owned International Petroleum Co. “the very day I am inaugurated.” He did not, primarily because he did not want to antagonize Standard Oil (New Jersey), of which IPC is a subsidiary, the U.S. Government and potential foreign investors. But finally, this year, hopeful of improving his shaky political position, he did take over IPC’s La Brea y Pariñas oilfield. The deal negotiated with the company was hardly the usual sort of expropriation, and Belaúnde’s opponents later charged that it did not offer sizable advantage to the country. Among other things, the company—long seen by Peruvians as an ogreish exploiter—was given new mandates to expand its activities and a $144 million tax write-off.

Now Three-Fourths. When the details of the deal were exposed, all Belaúnde’s familiar opponents exploded in an outburst of nationalist indignation. So did the left wing of his own party and the army. The military leaders were furious that their counsel had not been sought in concluding a contract dealing with oil, a resource vital to the country’s security. Two weeks ago, Belaúnde responded to the outcry by firing his Cabinet, making it the scapegoat for the affair. But he replaced it with one that the army considered even less competent, and the coup last week was the military’s reply.

On arrival in Argentina (which, along with Bolivia, promptly offered him asylum), Belaúnde asserted that he had been ousted by a mere cuartelezo—a barracks revolt. The bulk of the armed forces, he believed, was not involved. But the first communiqué issued by the junta was signed by the chiefs of all three Peruvian military services. Within hours after Belaúnde’s departure, General Juan Velasco Alvarado, the 58-year-old army commander and president of Peru’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, took the oath as his successor before a candlelit crucifix in the presidential palace.

The Congress was closed, and Velasco appointed a new Cabinet consisting entirely of military men. One of its first acts was to cancel the agreement that the Belaúnde government had reached with IPC. Asked when there would be new elections, General Velasco said nothing. Once more, a Latin American army had taken over a civilian regime. The bloodless coup in Peru brought to three-fourths the proportion of people on the continent living under military rule.