Institute for the Study of the Americas

In 1968 the government of Fernando Belaúnde Terry and his Acción Popular party was deposed by a leftist military coup following a currency crisis and a continuing guerrilla war in the countryside. For the next twelve years a revolutionary' military government ran the country, although this period can be divided into two distinct phases. From 1968 to 1975 the new president, Juan Velasco Alvarado, instituted a programme of land reform, industrialisation and nationalisation which sought to end United States dominance over Peru as well as reduce the country's reliance on exports. However, once Velasco was replaced by Francisco Morales Bermudez Cerruti thesecond phase' of the revolution took the form of a move back towards the free market and the increasing embrace of new neo-liberal economic ideas. Civilian rule returned to the country in 1980, but economic problems continued and the emergence of new armed movements such as Sendero Luminoso and Tupac Amuru led to the escalation of the so-called dirty war' and a consequent increase in accusations of human rights infractions. This collection holds materials published by the military government of the 1970s, many on land reform, as well of others from left-wing groups like the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and the Vanguardia Revolucionaria. Also represented are peasant organisations and trades union federations, as well as independent studies of the Peruvian economic situation in the 1970s. As thedirty war' worsened in the 1980s an increasing number of publications, from both local political parties, church groups (such as the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America) and NGOs like Amnesty, are concerned with human rights in the country, while other items concentrate on the increasing problem of inflation. The majority of materials currently held in the collection date from the period between the 1968 coup and the election of Fujimori in 1992.