Word: bela
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...presence of 8,000 riot-gear-equipped police in Lima made it clear that the government of President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was taking the 24-hour general strike very seriously. Early Thursday morning, police pointed their shotguns at drivers of trucks with space available who tried to ignore workers seeking rides. Youths who were spotted trying to collect rocks or debris were chased, beaten with nightsticks and sometimes shoved into police vans. Jorge del Prado, 73, a senator and leader of the Peruvian Communist Party, was struck in the chest by a tear-gas canister fired at close...
Trying to avert the strike, Belaunde, 72, called for a national three-day suspension of liberties, prohibiting demonstrations and meetings, and gave police broader powers of arrest. This kept disturbances to a minimum. But perhaps the most important deterrent to a larger strike came three days earlier, when Belaúnde announced the removal of Finance Minister Carlos Rodriguez Pastor. Rodriguez Pastor had engineered an austerity program under which the country was beginning to strain. His replacement, José Benavides Muñoz, was expected to look for economic alternatives, but the strikers remained unimpressed...
Peru's economy began to slide in 1980 under the pressure of a world recession and low prices for the country's copper and lead exports. Belaúnde further undermined the economy by borrowing excessively from other countries and failing to curb money-losing state enterprises. The gross domestic product declined 12% last year, the worst performance in Latin America. Inflation hit 125%, unemployment 8.3% and underemployment 51%. The Peruvian sol declined 130% against the dollar during 1983. The country's foreign debt is $13 billion, about two-thirds of its gross domestic production. Bela...
...million. The city has grown so fast that suburban slum districts housing 500,000 people are not even included on current maps. Almost 40% of the country's 18 million people are now crowded into the capital. Says Senator Manuel Ulloa Ellas, a close adviser to Belaúnde: "For many of these people, there are no jobs, no services, no education. Everything is falling to pieces...
Sendero's biggest opportunity for mayhem and disruption will come when Belaúnde's successor is selected in a two-stage election next spring. The continuing violence, combined with the economic crisis, threaten to weaken further Belaúnde's center-right Popular Action Party, which was badly defeated by leftists in last November's municipal elections. Yet even with the economy collapsing around him and bombs going off regularly, Belaúnde's remains ever optimistic. "I have great faith in the future of Peru," he says. Still, for the architect of Peruvian...