Peru: Time to Reform

• Share

On a recent tour through the backlands of his mountainous country, Peru's Premier Pedro Beltran, 64, a descendant of the Spanish conquistadors, stopped off in the ancient Inca city of Cuzc0,11,200 ft. up in the Andes. A howling, Communist-led mob of Indian peasants, descendants of the defeated Incas, greeted him with a barrage of rocks and cries of "To the wall!" Few places in Latin America know a wider chasm between rich and poor, between the white aristocracy and the Indian masses, who, 400 years after the conquest, still live in misery. Though Beltran is an alert and enlightened statesman, his efforts to bring social and economic reform to his country are hampered by centuries of hatred and suspicion.

Scattered Llamas. Peru's Indians have much to remember, unforgivingly. The country, lying along the continent's western bulge, is harsh at the best of times. The chilled winds that blow in from the cold Humboldt Current pass over the dust-dry coastal plain (Lima's last rain was 13 years ago), unload their moisture on the stony Andes. Yet in ancient times Peru flourished. The highly civilized Incas built stone-surfaced roads and bridged rivers; aqueducts spanned valleys, and canals cut through solid rock to carry irrigating water to elaborately terraced mountainside gardens. The welfare of every Indian was assured by a clear chain of governmental responsibility that went from the Inca himself down to officials responsible for watching over units as small as ten families.

In 1532 Francisco Pizarro, an illiterate swineherd from western Spain, captured the Inca emperor by trickery, and had him strangled. Within a decade the bridges were tumbled, irrigation systems shattered, imperial warehouses emptied; the enormous llama herds that provided meat and clothing were scattered and slaughtered. The conquistadors cut the richer lands of the Andean foothills into immense haciendas worked by Indian peasants held virtually as slaves. Today, while Peru exports cotton, sugar, silver and copper, it must import food to maintain even a marginal existence for the bulk of its 10 million people. Half the population is illiterate; undernourished children die of such simple maladies as measles and diarrhea.

Converted Aristocrat. The division between masters and servants has grown so explosive that Peruvians from all factions are anxiously working to snip the fuse.* The most effective reformer so far has been Beltran, who holds power through a truce between the moderate right and anti-Communist left.

Trained in conservatism and orthodoxy at the pre-Laski (1915-18) London School of Economics. Beltran came home to put the modern miracles of science to work on the family hacienda and to criticize governments from the pages of his daily La Prensa. His criticism of ex-Dictator Manuel Odria landed him in jail; his criticism of Odria's successor, President Manuel Prado, gave Prado an idea—he asked Beltran to help run the country.