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Encyclopedia > Juan Velasco Alvarado
Juan Velasco Alvarado
Juan Velasco Alvarado
In office
October 3, 1968 – August 30, 1975
Preceded by Fernando Belaúnde Terry
Succeeded by Francisco Morales Bermúdez
Born June 16, 1910
Piura, Peru
Died December 24, 1977
Peru
Nationality Peruvian
Profession Army General

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." Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... List of presidents of Peru : The Independence War 1821-1822: José de San Martín 1822-1823: José de La Mar 1823: Manuel Salazar y Baquíjano 1823: José de la Riva Agüero 1823-1824: José Bernardo de Tagle 1824-1826: Simón Bolívar 1826-1827: Andrés... is the 276th day of the year (277th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the 1968 Gregorian calendar. ... is the 242nd day of the year (243rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Fernando Belaúnde Terry (October 7, 1912 – June 4, 2002) was President of Peru for two terms (1963–1968 and 1980–1985). ... Francisco Morales Bermúdez Cerruti (born 1921) was a centrist Peruvian general who came to power in Peru in 1975 after deposing his predecessor, General Juan Velasco Alvarado. ... is the 167th day of the year (168th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1910 (MCMX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Piura: Plaza de Armas Piura is a city in northwestern Peru. ... is the 358th day of the year (359th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also: 1977 (album) by Ash. ... General of the Army, or less formally five-star general, is historically the second most senior rank in the United States Army. ... is the 167th day of the year (168th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1910 (MCMX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... is the 358th day of the year (359th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also: 1977 (album) by Ash. ... “Leftism” redirects here. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the 1968 Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Contents

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. is the 167th day of the year (168th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1910 (MCMX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Piura: Plaza de Armas Piura is a city in northwestern Peru. ...


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). The Peruvian Army (Spanish: Ejército del Perú, abbreviated EP) is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with safeguarding the independence, sovereignty and integrity of national territory on land. ... Chorrillos, which gets its name from the constant trickle of water, is a district of Lima, Peru. ... Nickname: Motto: Hoc signum vere regum est Lima Province and Lima within Peru Coordinates: , Country  Peru Region Lima Region Province Lima Province Settled January 18, 1535 Government  - Mayor Luis Castañeda Lossio Area  - City 804. ...


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. The American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) also known as the Partido Aprista Peruano (Peruvian Aprista Party) is a Peruvian left-wing social democratic political party. ... The Popular Action (Acción Popular) is a conservative liberal party in Peru. ...


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 Terry, 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 Peruvian Armed Forces are composed of an Army, a Navy and an Air Force. ... is the 276th day of the year (277th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the 1968 Gregorian calendar. ... A coup détat, or simply a coup, is the sudden overthrow of a government, usually done by a small group that just replaces the top power figures. ... Fernando Belaúnde Terry (October 7, 1912 – June 4, 2002) was President of Peru for two terms (1963–1968 and 1980–1985). ... is the 281st day of the year (282nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...


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. Petróleos del Perú, S.A. (PETROPERU) is a Peruvian state-owned petroleum company. ...


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. Agrarian reform can refer either, narrowly, to government-initiated or government-backed redistribution of agricultural land (see land reform) or can refer more broadly to an overall redirection of the agrarian system of the country, which often includes land reform measures. ... Look up bond in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...


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. Landowner or Landholder is a holder of the estate in land with considerable rights of ownership or, simply put, an owner of land. ... Headline text Import Substitution Industrialisation/Import Substituting Industrialisation Import Substitution Industrialisation was a theory of industrialisation based on the dependency theory of undeveloped nations. ...


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. The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. ... During the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc (or Soviet Bloc) comprised the following Central and Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Albania (until the early 1960s, see below), the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. ... Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born on August 13, 1926) is the current President of Cuba but on indefinite medical hiatus. ...


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. Standard Oil (Esso) was a predominant integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. ... It has been suggested that Crisis corps be merged into this article or section. ...


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. Chart of ocean surface temperature anomaly [°C] during the last strong El Niño in December 1997 El Niño and La Niña (also written in English as El Nino and La Nina) are major temperature fluctuations in surface waters of the tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean. ...


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. is the 241st day of the year (242nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Tacna is a city in southern Peru, located only 35 km (21 mi) north from the border with Chile. ... El Tacnazo was a military coup launched by then Peruvian Prime Minister Francisco Morales Bermúdez against the administration of President Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1975. ...


The military commanders of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th military regions declared that Velasco had not 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. Francisco Morales Bermúdez Cerruti (born 1921) was a centrist Peruvian general who came to power in Peru in 1975 after deposing his predecessor, General Juan Velasco Alvarado. ...


Prior to being deposed, Velasco had been seriously ill for at least a year; he had 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. Chaclacayo is a district of the Lima Province in Peru. ...


Velasco kept a low profile in Peruvian politics until his death in 1977.


References

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This article has been tagged since December 2006.
Preceded by
Gral. Julio Doig Sánchez		 Commander-in-Chief of the Army
September 1967 – October 1968		 Succeeded by
Gral. Ernesto Montagne Sánchez
Preceded by
Fernando Belaúnde Terry		 President of the Revolutionary Government
October 1968 – August 1975		 Succeeded by
Francisco Morales Bermúdez
v • d • e
Presidents of Peru

  Results from FactBites:
 
Juan Velasco Alvarado - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (671 words)
Velasco was born on June 16, 1910 in Piura, a city on Peru's north coast.
Velasco seized power on October 3, 1968 in a military coup, deposing the democratically-elected administration of Fernando Belaúnde Terry, in which he served.
Economically, the Velasco administration's policies were ultimately unsuccessful; as the government-ran industrial operations grew corrupt and inefficient and drained resources, the government ran deeper into debt and was forced to devalue the currency and ran inflationary policies.
Search Results for "Alvarado" (307 words)
Alvarado, Pedro de, (pa´thro da alvara´tho) (KEY), 1486-1541, Spanish conquistador.
Alvarado, Juan Bautista, (hwan boutes´ta alvara´tho) (KEY), 1809-82, governor of Alta California (1836-42), b.
After the death of her husband, Pedro de Alvarado, she maneuvered her own election and became the only woman to govern...
  More results at FactBites »


 

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