Like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Peruvian Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (1895–1979) was one of Latin America’s key revolutionary leaders, well known across national boundaries. This political biography of Haya chronicles his dramatic odyssey as founder of the highly influential anti-imperialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), as a political theorist whose philosophy shifted gradually from Marxism to democracy, and as a seasoned opposition figure repeatedly jailed and exiled by his own government. A genius of political propaganda, he created a transnational party. Haya rejected ... More

Like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Peruvian Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (1895–1979) was one of Latin America’s key revolutionary leaders, well known across national boundaries. This political biography of Haya chronicles his dramatic odyssey as founder of the highly influential anti-imperialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), as a political theorist whose philosophy shifted gradually from Marxism to democracy, and as a seasoned opposition figure repeatedly jailed and exiled by his own government. A genius of political propaganda, he created a transnational party. Haya rejected foreign ideologies and identified the Mexican Revolution as a grassroots movement to be replicated throughout Latin America. While living in hiding, he organized what became Peru’s longest lasting political party. The book spotlights Haya’s devotion to forging populism as a political style applicable on both the left and the right, and to his vision of a pan-Latin American political movement. A great orator who addressed gatherings of thousands of Peruvians, Haya fired up the Aprismo movement, seeking to develop "Indo-America” by promoting the rights of the middle class, Indigenous peoples as well as laborers and women. Steering his party toward the center of the political spectrum through most of the Cold War, Haya was narrowly elected president in 1962—but he was blocked from assuming office by the military, which played on his rumored homosexuality. Even so, Haya’s forging of a uniquely Latin American political ideology makes him an enduring figure with a legacy across Latin America.