00:00:00.040 - 00:01:11.260

you can start thinking concentration camps and something, something, something, something something something something. Something from Gainesville, Florida Yeah, hello, I'm Mike Gannon and this is conversation. Yesterday, May 18 1980 The people of the South American Nation of Peru voted in their first election at any level since 1966.

00:01:12.140 - 00:01:34.960

15 political parties ranging from the extreme left to the far right contended for the presidency of that country. Buy airtime tonight. The ballot counting gave the lead to Fernando Bella Monday, a middle of the road er, who had been president from 1963 until his overthrow by Peru's military in 1968.

00:01:35.840 - 00:02:08.240

If Bella and goes on to win, he will establish Peru's first civilian rule in 12 years. My guest tonight has just returned from Peru with an on the scene report. I'll return in a moment. Conversation from the University of Florida, a discussion of social, political, scientific and religious issues of the day.

00:02:08.270 - 00:02:29.990

Your host is Dr Michael Vegan in Ring professor of Ethics, an assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida. My guest on this conversation is Doctor Paul Dowdy, Professor of anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences of the University of Florida.

00:02:30.100 - 00:02:58.860

Paul, Welcome to conversation, indeed. Welcome back to the United States. What was it like in Peru on the eve of the election? I understand you left the country just as people were preparing for this balloting. Well, a preparation for this balloting. Mike has been going on for some time now, as the military regime which is held power there since 1968 has slowly but and with some difficulty ground down.

00:02:59.240 - 00:03:17.690

And for the last two years, the country has been going through sort of a political dance, wondering how they're going to bring about the end of the military regime at the same time. Reinstall for the first time in a long time a civilian regime. And as you can imagine, the thirst for political action after 12 years was very great.

00:03:17.700 - 00:03:44.950

And, uh, I have been working approved for over 20 years, and I've never seen anything quite like what was going on there. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the streets nightly, um, literally tons upon tons of printed political propaganda being hurled from passing car windows and thrown from windows and forced on you at every turn as you as you go down the street and the noise you can't possibly imagine.

00:03:44.960 - 00:04:05.530

Sound ordinances and measures of decibels. And so out the window loudspeakers going on to one and two in the morning and so on. What was the percentage of voters expected to go to the polls in Peru? You expect 100% to go to the pools and read polls, and the reason for that is voting is compulsory.

00:04:05.540 - 00:04:31.970

Everybody improved carries a national identification card, which is your electoral certificate, and you carry it in your pocket with your mother papers. Uh, and in order to cash checks or collect your paycheck, in fact, be employed in any public employment of any sort. You must have a validated electoral card so that this is done at the time you vote so everyone is desperately returning to the place they first registered.

00:04:31.980 - 00:04:49.530

It's almost a biblical migration going back to the place you're going back to Bethlehem in order to exactly in fact, it's very difficult to get on. It was very difficult to get on public transportation going from Lima, which is the national capital with a population of now probably in excess of five million people, that's incredible.

00:04:49.530 - 00:05:12.140

I've never heard of a system like that before. Well, one of the problems was that with all of the furor over reorganizing civilian rule, the electoral machinery, which has not been used for 12 years, has not been modernized and really brought up to date. And so there has been vast urban migration in this in the room, the city of Lima is practically doubled in the last 15 years and size.

00:05:12.480 - 00:05:35.890

And all of this is our migrants from the Highland provinces. Uh, this, uh, means that an awful lot of those people are registered back in their home communities, which can be seven or 800 miles away over very difficult roads. And so people are scrambling to get back to get to vote or at the very least, to get their electoral cards validated so they can go on cashing checks and living normal lives.

00:05:35.900 - 00:06:04.610

I'm assuming that the election was under democratic processes where anybody who wanted to run could do so. What were the requirements in order to be a contender for the presidency of Peru? Well, the requirements for being a contender for the presidency were to be supported by a political party which could stand behind you to meet all of the various and rather complicated legal requirements to 2% candidates, but which we don't really have time to discuss here.

00:06:04.700 - 00:06:30.350

But each party, um, that presented a full list of candidates at every level of national government, and this means a candidate for president and the two vice presidencies. That's one list a second last for senators representing each of Pru's departments, which are equivalent to our states, and then a third list of deputies who were equivalent to our members of the House of Representatives.

00:06:30.630 - 00:06:46.850

And these would represent each individual department. Now each department has a varying number of these people in accord with the population size in the House of Deputies, for example, in the Senate that they have a standard numbers. Do the senators and the deputies ride in on the coattails of the presidential candidate?

00:06:46.970 - 00:07:06.380

Most probably they will, but you don't have to. When you when you have a ballot, the ballot you do not on the ballot, you do not vote for individuals. You vote for parties for the party whose candidates you like for the presidency, the party whose candidates you like for the Senate and the party whose candidates you like for the house.

00:07:06.380 - 00:07:18.590

Now you could vote for three different parties in those slots or the same one, obviously, at the natural tendency will revoke the same all the way across. And that's what they urge you to do. Obviously, in the parties, each of the parties urges you to do that, but you don't have to.

00:07:18.590 - 00:07:35.870

You can be selective. That's right, but not in terms of individuals only in terms of lists. And then the selection for the parliament is on a proportional representation system, not on a direct vote, so to speak to the people. Understand all of this. Do you think?

00:07:36.150 - 00:07:56.560

I hope so? It's been a long time since Peru's had an election. It's been 14 years, right, and there are many, many people who have never voted before. Of course, you are voting, Uh, and in addition, this proportional representation system, which is called the sofa repack Diadora, which is a lovely term in Spanish, a little hard to translate properly.

00:07:56.560 - 00:08:12.150

But uh, means that if you got 50% of the vote for senators on a national basis. Then 50% of your senatorial candidates would be in the Senate. And then the party that got the next largest percent would get that percent of its candidates in and so on.

00:08:12.150 - 00:08:27.460

And the same occurs well. It's very difficult to figure out. The result of that is that we're not going to know for several days what the Constitution of the Parliament will be. And in fact, that's going to be hotly disputed. Is almost certain to be protests over the nature of the vote.

00:08:27.460 - 00:09:03.530

And this is already being promised beforehand. It will be a self fulfilling prophecy. Oh, yes, several of the parties have already been claimed. Even before the election were claiming fraud. Uh, and it was kind of humorous in some instances, but on the other hand, a very serious matter because a couple of the groups claiming anticipatory fraud, one could say we're very powerful parties and with some tendencies toward violence, so that at least one or two parties were promising a civil war if things didn't turn out right so that we're very, very serious business.

00:09:03.530 - 00:09:19.040

Well, my assumption that the electoral environment was a very democratic one was based on the fact that there were 15 different parties in contention. Did the parties have to qualify in any way? Did they have to obtain a certain number of signatures before they could be placed on the ballot?

00:09:19.050 - 00:09:41.610

Well, Mike, they had to go through a long process of being approved and indeed getting federal or national, I should say recognition of their political status as parties and of course, many more parties in the woodwork, so to speak, who are there but who did not put up full list of candidates.

00:09:42.220 - 00:10:25.970

And there's more dispute about that. The 15 parties are enough. Most of them, however, represents parties that have been long in existence. For example, the three leading parties are Popular Action Party Tampopo Lab, which is headed by former president Belaunde. Then you have the Priestess, which is the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party, which is proves oldest political party and most famous party, formally headed by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, who was one of the premier political leaders of Latin America during a century I adulatory, died last year and his successor is running for office.

00:10:26.080 - 00:10:41.950

That is a very powerful group. The third major party and crew at the present time is one called the Popular Christian Party and the PPC, or the pep assistance they call themselves. And they all had T shirts and the girls running around with T shirts and and so on.

00:10:42.560 - 00:11:02.380

They are headed by the former mayor of Lima man named Luis Bedoya Reyes, who is has a rather prominent nose. And so they call him the two con and very clever propaganda propaganda con being a bird with a lowered the parrot. Yeah, the large compared to the great long parrot like beak.

00:11:02.380 - 00:11:24.310

And anyway, that he is very proud of. These are the three main contenders. The electoral polls are new to Peru this time, and they're having a lot of fun with them. There are many polling agencies, and they're all turning out violently. Conflicting results As many as 15 and 20 points difference.

00:11:24.830 - 00:11:50.350

Everybody, of course, it's accusing everybody else of doctoring. The polls are biased samples. It's a marvelous social scientific purgatory, to say the least. But the last poll, which was taken on the eve of the election on Friday, where it was announced on Friday, and an event was one which showed Bellandi getting about 38% of the national vote.

00:11:50.840 - 00:12:33.550

If that poll is correct, then Melanie will be elected president because the winner must get 36% of the national vote. If no party gets 36% of the national vote for president, then the whole thing goes into a great holding pattern for a couple of months until the parliament is seated and the parliament has a week in which it can decide and they go into session and they must vote and vote out of president should they fail to do so after a week, then a another stage is entered in which in which the president of the Senate becomes the interim president for 30 days while new elections are held.

00:12:34.140 - 00:13:00.850

All of Peru is very, very apprehensive about this the state of affairs because the fear is that if the politicians cannot, if there is no electoral mandate, uh, and secondly, if the parliament itself does not come up with a candidate, as they might could likely not do because the problem was very fractured because of the parliament because of the proportional representation system.

00:13:01.640 - 00:13:20.470

Uh, if that happens, everybody is very much afraid that there will be a far be acute data brought about by the far right wing of the army, which would be a very repressive and much feared regime. Well, let's talk about the coup d'etat that occurred in 1968 and the reasons leading to it.

00:13:20.470 - 00:13:39.560

Here. Bella, you know who is the leader in the polling results so far. Was the president elected in 1963 a kind of Kennedy of his own country Jack Kennedy of his own country. Um And then in 1968 he finds himself rudely removed from office. Is that correct?

00:13:39.570 - 00:14:12.900

Yes. Bellandi, uh, took office in 1963 after a bitterly fought electoral campaign against the same a priest group opera which is fighting him now, tooth and nail. And the first election in 1962. Nobody won the the vote, and there was a bit of a recess. And in this recess, the army took power for a year and the army held power and then, quite to everybody's surprise, staged another election in 1963.

00:14:13.150 - 00:14:40.200

This again was very bitterly contested. and that time Bellandi came out with a sufficient votes to be elected president, the country entered a period of euphoria even though the vote had been very close. Bellandi It was a very positive individual. A brilliant public speaker, Peru has a Peru has a great tradition of oratory which is very much at the center of the political activity.

00:14:40.640 - 00:15:06.760

And Bellandi swept the country along for the first year or so and a wave of public pronouncements. For example, Uh, we see here in some of these magazines, which I've been saving for all these years, a series of things. One of the first things he promised you see, was the peasants in the small rural communities which are so far behind technologically that there would be real help coming out.

00:15:06.770 - 00:15:25.270

Uh, the government was going to support local developments and regional development. And so the peasants and everybody was going to get out and work and do voluntary labor. And you can see this year too. All right, we're going to pick this up sooner or later. I've been, uh, posturing with this magazine cover from camera to camera and here.

00:15:25.280 - 00:15:42.070

All right now. All right. Now, and you can see this peasant here holding a shovel and the title says the much feared popular cooperation movement. And there's an army about that. And this is building on this. And this is 1964 the year after his other right, well popular.

00:15:42.070 - 00:15:59.560

This. This movement really began in 63 it carried on throughout his regime with mixed success. Some places did excellently in other places. It didn't do so well during the early year of his regime, however, and continuing right on through the end was a dispute over the oil.

00:15:59.660 - 00:16:29.610

Bellandi had a terrible time with the oil. In fact, he used the colloquial expression. He soon found himself between a rock and a hard place. Uh, he had promised, as all the political candidates had in 1963 to do something about Peru's oil resources, which were largely dominated, apparently by the International Petroleum Company, which is a subsidiary of Of of Exxon and Exxon held rights to the exploitation of this oil had since the beginning of the century.

00:16:29.610 - 00:17:02.200

And this has always been keenly disputed in Peru that everybody feeling that international petroleum had gained this concession through rather dubious, um, situations and and practices and prove one of this control back. Every political party ran on a platform from the right wing to the left wing on reclaiming and in fact, expropriating this oil Well, Bellandi promised to do that, but when it came time to do it, it was very difficult for many, many reasons.

00:17:02.200 - 00:17:22.730

One being International Petroleum Company. It was not an easy negotiator and did not back off and did not compromise. The U. S. Government at the same time began withdrawing a foreign aid support to Bella Lundy to keep the pressure on him. And slowly but surely, the Bellandi regime began to fall into political trouble and very extensive financial trouble.

00:17:22.790 - 00:17:40.700

And here we see the emergence in this magazine cover of one of his political enemies. In fact, a man who is now running against him for the presidency. And this is a man called the Yukon. There's that parrot like this great great beak of the toucan bird and the There's a wonderful card.

00:17:40.700 - 00:17:57.030

And the back side of the flip side of the thing has a picture of Bellandi standing in the middle. Dressed is snow white and the seven dwarves are all his political enemies who are dancing circles around him. And he's just having a terrible time about this and that and the other things.

00:17:57.030 - 00:18:23.920

And of course, the title is Snow White and Seven Dwarfs on the Bottom. But Melanie quickly got into very deep political trouble in the mid sixties. Uh, and then came the accusations of corruption, not Bellandi himself. Felony himself was never accused of corruption. But people said, uh um um said that Oh, my, uh, his corruption.

00:18:23.920 - 00:18:39.670

Enough of this corruption buster. Yeah, they're corrupt. Exactly. And people said Bologna himself was honest with the people around him. Where have we heard that before the people around him were ripping him off? We're tearing the country to pieces and were responsible for this boy. Great immorality, which occurred?

00:18:40.040 - 00:18:59.860

Ah, the next step was a great recognition on the part of the public of the national agony. And here is a title that there's no Peru. Uh oh, how it hurts in Peru. Oh, how Peru is killing us with this is 1967. This is getting down toward the end of his former regime.

00:18:59.860 - 00:19:22.710

This is getting into the end of 63 Imperial Murali. Dad. Right? And this is in front of the reign of immorality and the rise of of all these public problems of one sort of another. Peru is hurting, this title says, And then finally we have, uh, on the eve of the coup d'etat in September of 68.

00:19:22.840 - 00:19:48.130

We have this headline and the same news weekly. This is not a country that territory is demoralized. It is only a land of demoralized people. My word. And that's just prior to just prior. This is who who is who is the publisher of these are a whole series of this is simply representative of the of the of the sample of public press at this time.

00:19:48.140 - 00:20:16.280

Is it a political party that is No, this is not a political party. This is a general commentary magazine, one which had formerly supported him Bellandi so that this represented a disaffected political commentary. And there's nothing worse, of course, and nothing more severe in way of criticism than disaffected former supporter, you see, And then the month laughter, that headline became this one and we had a coup d'etat, and that's what it says here Gold Bay, which is cool.

00:20:16.670 - 00:20:38.160

Yes, I have, Uh a headline is a Peruvian tragedy. The Peruvian tragedy has the ones to blame. And then it goes on inside, of course magazine to tell who's to blame. What year is this? This is 1968 in October 1968 and the man who did this, who overthrew Bellandi, is this General Juan Velasco.

00:20:38.160 - 00:21:00.340

Alvarado and Velasco represented a very different coin of Peruvian general. He was a man of rather humble background from the northern part of the country who rose up through the through the Army as a career became a a populist in many ways, but a very severe and authoritarian one.

00:21:00.360 - 00:21:45.420

Uh, he was at the head of the of the junta that took over the government, and he began making offers that people couldn't refuse in many ways. And one of the first things he did was expropriate the oil fields directly. He nationalized a lot of Peruvian industry and one of the following year, in 1969 he took the step that Peru had been on the verge of taking for more than a decade, and that was a real agrarian reform And here we see very dramatically portrayed in this magazine on the cover, Peruvian peasants holding their hose and there's pitchforks And the title is the agrarian before peasant, and now you will be sustained.

00:21:45.430 - 00:22:08.400

Now you will be supported. Um, the country was rocked by this. It was a universal agrarian reform. It affected property all over the country in a very heavy way. These original steps by the military government seemed to mark the way to a positive developments of many reforms that the country desperately needed.

00:22:08.400 - 00:22:29.970

And the military government presented itself as a hero to the country. They presented themselves as the boys with the can do mentality. They said. We've trained where the technicians were the engineers. We know how to do it. We can govern, Uh, and everybody believe them. At first they thought that the military was acting patriotic.

00:22:29.970 - 00:22:55.270

Lee. In fact, there is a clause in the Peruvian constitution that says it is the obligation of the military to in fact, step in when the country is in need. And this is what they did. They justified their taking over by constitute unconstitutional grounds. Well, after the first couple of years, things did not go that rose that Rosalie, if I can use that term for the military government, Um, first of all, they began spending too much money.

00:22:55.840 - 00:23:23.070

They were not fiscal conservatives. They were anything but. Secondly, they tried to carry out a vast number of extremely complex reforms such as the land reform and urban property reform, reform of basic industries, the decentralization and on and on and on. They had neither the money nor the expertise, nor the personnel to carry out all of those things at once.

00:23:23.180 - 00:23:42.620

In 1970 just as they were announcing these big reforms and starting to put them in motion came the 1970 earthquake. And this was the biggest natural disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere, even greater than Mount ST Helens going on in our northwest. This killed somewhere around 75.

00:23:42.730 - 00:24:02.330

People made about 500,000 homeless, vast area almost the size of New New England. And it really took the the starch out of the military regime, so to speak, created problems. It didn't take the start out there, but gave them a set of problems that were a gift that nobody wanted.

00:24:03.340 - 00:24:26.060

Well, hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign assistance came into the country, the government was not able to handle it. And it gave rise to again, this time to the military of corruption, mismanagement of funds and, uh, threw into doubt the credibility of the government to accomplish things, which was the very reason they were supposed to have taken office.

00:24:26.060 - 00:24:54.040

Well, Velasco got sick, and from there on, things went downhill. Velasco got sick, had his leg amputated and he finally died. A new regime staged a coup d etat right at the end there and took over another within the military. Uh, and this regime has been in the process of trying to divest itself of power as graciously as it could without putting giving a military completely black.

00:24:54.040 - 00:25:09.960

Is that where your new article series? Because, uh, at that point they began opening up the political dialogue again because during this whole period, there has been no political dialogue. The newspapers have had been nationalized and taken over by the government. There was no free information.

00:25:10.340 - 00:25:42.480

And so, in the late seventies, 1977 on word political discussion opened up again, and new magazines begin to pop out. This is why this is a one which features all kinds of hot political dialogue. And this is one reporting on a T V debate in in Peru between two of the left wing theoreticians and one in which one was defending Democratic socialism and the other totalitarian.

00:25:42.490 - 00:26:02.930

Up at the top, Paul, I noticed a picture of a helicopter and the fiasco Yankee on Iran. The yes, there's a Yankee fiasco and right there's a There's a political commentary on our adventures in Iran. All right, let's take a look. In a few minutes we have remaining, Um, the on the eve of the election.

00:26:02.930 - 00:26:27.220

This is the major news weekly in Peru and the hour of the hour of the ballot box, the orderliness of the ballot box And that is Bella Bellandi, who is now had been declared at this point, the leading candidate. And if our early election returns are true, in fact, it may be that he would win 36% of the vote to me.

00:26:27.220 - 00:26:47.550

Is that an outline of the provinces or electoral? Yes, this is This is a graph of Peru, but made as a graph for him to represent the electoral votes and Peru, being on the Pacific shore of South America, cruise on the middle of the South American Pacific Coast.

00:26:47.940 - 00:27:04.490

I have a few things here. The political campaign literature which is so abundant. And Prue, I thought you might want to show this. This is the front part of the shows, the logos of each of the 15 political parties in Peru. See if we can pick that up.

00:27:04.490 - 00:27:19.700

Getting close there. Here you can see the logos of the party, different parties. The spade right in the middle is below. My right hand is covering that. I'm going to move it up. But the spade point that that is directly it is right here. Yes, there we are.

00:27:19.710 - 00:27:38.180

This line here, President, senators and deputies all the way across. Now that's the other principal party is the star which is the A priest of party. And the voter would put an X through each of these logos that he wanted to vote for it. And right out here, where my finger is pushing is the clenched fist.

00:27:38.190 - 00:27:58.950

Yes, that's one of the revolutionary right. That's one of their about five radical left wing parties and they're all the left is highly divided in this election and pretty much at each other's throats rather than attacking Bellandi. The other side of that is this is a picture of bell undies, campaign literature.

00:27:58.950 - 00:28:13.200

Here we see the Accion popular assembling, so this is not an actual It's a handout by right. This is a party workers hand. He's out and he said, This is how to vote. Mark an X over the spade and then you've got They call him the President and then they say, a president for everyone, Right?

00:28:13.200 - 00:28:37.370

Because Melanie has been the president and the thrust of the election literature is that Melody is still president. His regime has simply been interrupted. Well, we've got just a couple minute. Here's a piece of political propaganda from the provinces, and this is showing the president with a local candidate for deputy Mr Viegas, Doctor Viegas and somebody that you know very well.

00:28:37.370 - 00:28:50.930

Yes, he's a very good friend of mine. He's running for senator. Deputy deputies are represented person, and there's a lot of other things going on here. I'm afraid we don't have too much time, but this is some of the street propaganda, which we don't know what the source of it is.

00:28:51.070 - 00:29:08.240

But this is a piece of propaganda that accuses Bellandi of having ripped off money during the oil scandal of the late sixties. And here's a check from the treasury of the United States to the tune of 23 million dollars, which somehow they got out All right, Paul, thank you very much.

00:29:08.250 - 00:29:21.700

Because now all of us understand a great deal more of what is happening in Peru will be able to appreciate the significance of the elections Will be in your debt for bringing us up to date on what is happening in that story. Land to the south of us.

00:29:21.710 - 00:29:46.050

Thank you, Paul. Thank you much. Mm hmm. Mhm.