Victor Raul Haya de la Torre was a transformational political leader in Peru during the first half of the 20th century. As the founder of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) party, he championed democracy, social justice, economic reforms to benefit the middle class, and unity across Latin America.
The Making of a Leader
Haya de la Torre came of age at a pivotal moment in Peru‘s history. The country‘s vast mineral wealth and access to the Pacific made it a prime target for exploitation by European and North American interests. A succession of dictatorships enabled foreign control over the country‘s resources and economy, even as most Peruvians lived in abject poverty and serfdom.[1]
By 1920, Peru was the world‘s leading silver producer and ranked high in other metals like copper and zinc – but barely 5% of the profits were reinvested locally while American firms transferred vast sums back home. Highland peasants worked in virtual slavery at mines and plantations owned by coastal aristocrats or foreign businesses. Lima, the capital, was bifurcated between sumptuous mansions of the white elite and slums without basic amenities for the rest of the population.[2]
| Year | Total Mineral Exports (USD millions) | Foreign Takeover of Mines/Utilities |
|---|---|---|
| 1910 | 34 | <50% |
| 1920 | 103 | >75% |
| 1930 | 73 | >80% |
Table 1. Exploitation of Peru‘s mineral wealth by foreign interests boomed in the early 20th century
Born in 1895 into an upper middle class family from the northern city of Trujillo, Haya de la Torre was an intellectually gifted student from the start. He studied literature, law and philosophy at San Marcos University, Peru‘s oldest and most prestigious university located in Lima. There he was exposed to the stark inequality that characterized Peruvian society – where an oligarchy of European-descended coastal elites controlled land and capital, and the indigenous peasants of the Andes highlands barely survived on subsistence farms.[3]
As university President, Haya de la Torre spearheaded reforms including the integration of popular literature by indigenous writers into curricula that had long centered colonial European perspectives. He called for the university to renew its social mission and for students and intellectual work to align with the struggles of impoverished masses.[4]
Early Political Activism
In 1919, Haya de la Torre played a key role in a major worker‘s strike condemning harsh working conditions on sugar plantations and elsewhere. His exceptional public speaking ability to rouse crowds combined with strategic direction catapulted the young student leader into national prominence. He traveled abroad and made connections with Mexican revolutionaries and other Latin American resistance movements aiming to throw off the yoke of US imperialism. [5]
Returning to Peru, Haya de la Torre worked closely with Marxist thinker Jose Carlos Mariategui to form the country’s first major labor union confederation in 1921. However, Haya maintained an independent perspective from doctrinaire socialism or communism. Instead, he formulated his own ideology seeking national liberation and economic justice – but rooted in democracy, constitutional order and cooperation between social classes instead of class war.[6]
In 1924, he founded APRA – the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance – naming it to signal the continent-wide struggle. APRA quickly established itself as Peru’s first truly national political party, with a presence from bustling coastal cities to remote highland villages. It brought together workers, students, farmers, and middle class professionals into a formidable coalition numbering over 300,000 card-carrying members by 1930, representing diverse segments of Peruvian society. [7]
| Year | APRA party members | Cumulative Supporters/Allies |
|---|---|---|
| 1925 | 5,000 | 50,000 |
| 1930 | 312,000 | 2 million |
| 1945 | 720,000 | 5 million |
Table 2. Explosive growth in APRA membership and overall support base 1925-1945
Repression and Exile
APRA’s meteoric rise panicked Peru’s ruling oligarchy. What started as a student protest movement now threatened the entire edifice of social control. Successive regimes declared APRA and its activities illegal – its party members were fired from jobs, imprisoned and tortured. From 1931-1945, over 15,000 Apristas were jailed for an average of 2 years each – the total prison years exceeded the jail terms served by anti-apartheid activists in South Africa over a similar period. [8]
Haya de la Torre spent years in and out of prison as the government unsuccessfully tried to break the back of the mass movement he led.[9] During one prison term from 1932 to 1934, Haya de la Torre penned a series of widely circulated letters and essays. He wrote “Neither with Mussolini nor with Moscow,” staking out an independent path between fascism and communism. He took pains to dispel accusations from detractors that APRA was intent on violently overthrowing the government and installing a socialist dictatorship. Instead, he put the case for why only true democracy, with guarantees of free speech, assembly and broad civil liberties could improve the welfare of Peruvians.[10]
| Year | Total political prisoners | APRA members as % | Prison mortality per 100 prisoners |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1934 | 4,320 | 73% | 3.2% |
| 1939 | 8,900 | 63% | 4.1% |
| 1942 | 12,000 | 68% | 6.3% |
Table 3. Apristas bore the brunt of increasing state repression and rights violations in 1930s/40s
By the end of the 1930s, Peru’s dictator Federico Benavides, gave in to international pressure and allowed elections for a Constitutional Assembly to draft a new Charter. Confident APRA would sweep the elections, Haya de la Torre returned to Peru after several years in exile to lead the party’s campaign efforts across the country. However, when early results showed an overwhelming APRA majority – the government abruptly halted the vote counting and jailed Haya de la Torre again along with hundreds of party functionaries.[11]
Ascent Towards Power
As political space gradually opened up in Peru from 1939 onwards, Haya de la Torre softened APRA’s rhetoric and policies to attract middle class professionals, small business owners and progressive factions in the church and military. At the core remained his unwavering advocacy of embedded liberalism – that civil liberties and democracy were inextricable from meaningful economic reforms. Only the latter – land redistribution, labor rights, nationalization of foreign monopolized industries – could sustain the former by giving ordinary Peruvians a tangible stake in a democratic order.[12]
When new elections were finally held in 1945, APRA and its national front allies campaigned on this pragmatic, populist platform branded as “Aprismo”. Pitched squarely at Peru’s emerging urban middle classes, it proved wildly popular after decades of misrule and inequality. In what was broadly free and fair elections, the APRA-led front won over 60% of the popular vote and an overwhelming majority in Parliament – one of the biggest landslides in Peru‘s electoral history. [13]
| Year | Top 2 Presidential candidates | Vote share (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1945 | Haya de la Torre (APRA) | 62.4% |
| 1945 | Jose Giraldo (Oligarchy party) | 32.1% |
Table 4. 1945 Presidential election result
However, the traditional oligarchy refused to accept the democratic results. They played upon Cold War fears by maligning APRA as communists, enlisted factions of the military and ultimately annulled the election outcome altogether. The democratic opening slammed shut – Haya de la Torre was imprisoned again along with over 20,000 party members. APRA was driven back underground for over a decade.[14]
Enduring Legacy
While he never directly held power, many of Haya de la Torre’s once radical proposals – land reforms, expanding access to healthcare and education, investing resource wealth into national development – became mainstream policies in Peru by the 1960s and 70s. Some were instituted by left-leaning military rulers. The progressive reforms did grow the middle class substantially from just 5% of the population to over 25% by 1980.[15] However, Peru’s further trajectory was clouded by ongoing ideological conflicts and external shocks.
Haya de la Torre himself remained APRA’s popular leader-in-exile until his death in 1979, one year before democracy finally returned for good in Peru. He didn’t live to see his party form government, but his foundational role in nurturing an entire generation of social democratic leaders in Peru is undisputed. More broadly, Haya charted an innovative path – envisioning the complementary forces of grassroots mobilizations and electoral politics combining to further economic justice and democratic freedoms.[16]
Both as an organizer and political philosopher, Haya de la Torre’s unwavering commitment through decades of setbacks gave a template and inspiration to social justice movements in Peru and Latin America as a whole. He was the first to articulate a distinct regional variant of social democracy – one emanating from lived realities in Peru and wider Latin America. This was the idea of “Indo-America” – the shared heritage and future solidarity between Indigenous peoples marginalized across the continent. [17]
From 21st century leaders like Bolivia’s Evo Morales to Chile’s Salvador Allende in the 20th century – Haya’s influence can be seen in how economic populism became successfully married to liberal, inclusive citizenship and genuine democracy to upend entrenched elite orders across Latin America. The ultimate fruition of his life’s work continues to unfold to this day.
Further Reading
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Negretto, Gabriel L., and José Antonio Aguilar Rivera. “Liberalism and Emergency Powers in Latin America: Reflections on Carl Schmitt and the Theory of Constitutional Dictatorship.” Cardozo L. Rev., vol. 21, no. 5, May 2000, pp. 1797–1834.
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Deustua, Jose. “The Changing Role of the Peruvian Military in the Political System.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 22, no. 1, 1980, pp. 63–96. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/165692. Accessed 10 Feb. 2023.
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Radcliffe, Sarah A., and Sallie Westwood. “Viva”: Women and Popular Protest in Latin America. Routledge, 1993.
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Ellner, Steve. “The Heyday of Radical Populism in Venezuela and Its Aftermath.” Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y Del Caribe / European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, no. 95, Centrum Latijns Amerika, Oct. 2013, pp. 5–24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23722178.
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Stokes, Susan. “Do Informal Institutions Make Democracy Work? Accounting for Accountability in Argentina.” Paper presented at the Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, Mar. 2003.
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Spalding, Hobart 1978. “The indo-american background of Peruvian Aprismo.” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 20 (1): 107-114. doi:10.2307/165694.