Peru: Countdown for APRA

The hawk-nosed little man raised his arms, as if in benediction, and 1,000 Peruvian Indians at the airport in the remote jungle town of Iquitos responded with a thunderclap cheer: "Haya presidente! APRA never dies!" The visitor beamed, waved, headed a parade over a red dirt road into town, and there delivered a fiery, fist-shaking speech in a plaza ringed by royal palms and mango trees. "Five centuries ago millions of Incas lived well in Peru," he cried. "There is no reason we cannot do better today!" "APRA, APRA!" screamed the crowd.

The man was Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, founder of Peru's peasant-and-worker APRA Party—and he was on the last lap of a long journey. After three decades of jail, exile and bitter fighting, Haya was at last a candidate, running openly and legally, for President of Peru. As the June 10 election date drew near, he was the favorite, but a narrow one and a man whose many enemies were closing in around him. Pressing hard are Fernando Belaúnde, 49, who narrowly lost the 1956 election, and a voice from the more distant past, ex-Dictator Manuel Odria, 64, who ruled from 1948 to 1956 and now seeks a popular mandate. On the election outcome hangs not only the future of Haya and his APRA, but the course that Peru will take—a country of 11 million stretching for 1,400 miles down South America's Pacific coast, and plagued by all the ills that keep Latin America in explosive ferment.

Massacre in Chan Chan. Haya's enemies have good reason to fear him and his party. His allies are still nervously unsure in their trust. Son of a struggling newspaper publisher, Haya founded APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) 38 years ago while exiled in Mexico for inciting student riots against Peru's ruling oligarchy. His object was to unite all Latin America into a single federation under a government built around elements of both Marxism and Fascism. Imperialists and exploiters would be thrown out; the peasants would rule through the divine leadership of APRA. The party's flag was red, its organization split into Communist-type cells, its salute a Nazi straight-arm. Returning home to campaign for President in 1951, Haya so fired the Indian peasantry that Peru's alarmed aristocracy canceled returns wholesale and turned the presidency over to an army colonel.