Word: apra
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More than 35 years ago, a stocky Peruvian student named Victor Raul Haya de la Torre started one of Latin America's first mass-based political movements. He called it the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), and from the moment of its founding Haya was so harassed by Peru's wealthy oligarchy and archconservative military that he spent at least 30 of the 36 years in prison, in asylum or out of the country. Last week -protected by APRA's current alliance with the enlightened conservatism of Peru's President Manuel Prado-Haya de la Torre...
After the fireworks, the chants and the jubilant procession past APRA's head quarters, Haya explained to 80,000 party faithful how he saw APRA in the world of 1961. The party, he said, still stands for its historic goals-land reform, free education, cooperatives and the gradual nationalization of natural resources. Haya had no apologies to make for his alliance with President Prado. Such cooperation between left and right is necessary, he said, "to defend the new democracy against its many enemies...
...APRA is one of the great oddities of Latin American politics. Though it has the oldest name of the mass-based parties, the oligarchy and the military have never allowed it to have even a taste of governing...
Smoking Pistols. APRA was founded in Mexico in 1924 by an angry, 29-year-old student exiled from Peru for instigating workers' riots: Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, who still remains as its leader. In the erratic early days, Haya borrowed as easily from right as from left, denounced "Yankee imperialism" while adopting a fascist-style, raised-arm salute. As both Haya and APRA matured, the party turned moderate, has since plugged for land reform and economic growth...
Living Underground. The next 13 years Haya spent in prison or underground. In 1945, then (and now) President Manuel Prado, a banker, legalized APRA, but under a new name. Out of hiding, Haya spoke before 175,000: "We aspire to create an authentic social justice, not one that comes from Moscow." Yet once again, when an APRA-hatmg newspaper editor was murdered, the aristocracy threw out the coalition regime that APRA had helped elect (but in which it did not have a commanding voice) and forced the party back underground. Haya spent five years as a refugee in the Colombian...