Word: peru
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Beyond lies the desert, so parched that for miles on end not a living thing can be seen. A short distance inland, the Andean foothills rise to 13,000-ft. plateaus, inhabited by 53% of Peru's 11 million people, virtually all of them Indians. Some labor in the mines for $2 a day; others work the steeply terraced hillsides, chewing gummy wads of coca, a leafy narcotic, to ward off hunger and cold. In the village of Hualcan, 200 miles northwest of Lima, only eight of 900 people can even communicate in Spanish; the rest speak Quechua...
Natural Mystique. The son of a diplomat, grandson of a former Minister of Finance and great-grandson of a former President, Belaunde went to school in Paris, got a master's degree in architecture from the University of Texas in 1935, then returned to Peru, where he designed private homes, started a magazine called El Arquitecto Peruano, and signed on as a government public-housing consultant. "I was interested in politics," he says, "but purely from the professional point of view." In 1945 he ran for the Chamber of Deputies, won a seat from Lima and quickly made...
...hills, Belaúnde found himself attracting crowds in the thousands. "Following this winding road among the mountains," he cried, "I ask once more: Who made this road? And again, resounding in my ears like a triumphal march, I hear in these elegant words the history of all Peru's yesterdays, its present, the prophecy for its future: 'the people built...
Sabers & Scandals. Traveling by plane, car, canoe, muleback and on foot, he visited every single one of Peru's 144 provinces, something no other politician could say. He promised lower food prices, farm machines, low-interest loans "for the welfare of the common man." His enemies tried to shout him down. One morning in 1957, he fought a clanging saber duel atop a Lima airport building with a Congressman who had called him a "demagogue and conscious liar" (both were slightly nicked). A year later, his wife left him for another man. and the scandal rocked Lima. Bela...
...against APRA's Haya de la Torre and ex-Dictator Odria in the 1962 elections, Belaúnde promised land reform based on expropriation of the big estates, "worker-controlled industrial cooperatives, easy loans, housing and food." He sought support from anyone he thought would give it, cheered Peru's ultranationalists with an attack on U.S.-owned oil companies, then turned around and wooed businessmen with talk of foreign investment. Opposition goons in Cuzco turned one rally into a rock fight, bloodying Belaunde's head. When the ballots were counted, Belaúnde had lost again...