Background
Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre was born in the northern Peruvian city of Trujillo.
Haya de la Torre & Albert Einstein
Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre was born in the northern Peruvian city of Trujillo.
In 1913, he enrolled in the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo to study literature, where he met and forged a solid friendship with the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. He then enrolled in the National University of San Marcos in Lima. As a student he organized night classes for workers and opposed the dictatorship of President Augusto Leguía,Leguia, who ruled from 1919 to 1930.
As a young man Haya also taught at the Colegio Anglo-Peruano (now Colegio San Andres), a school operated by the Free Church of Scotland in Lima. He was deeply influenced by the headmaster of the school, John A. Mackay, a Free Church missionary.
When he was expelled from the country in 1922, Haya went to Mexico to study the Mexican Revolution and social reforms. After spending two years there he traveled to the Soviet Union, Germany, France, and Great Britain for further study of socialistic movements. Haya decided that the Russian system was not adaptable to Latin America and proceeded to work out another that recognized the necessity of private property and encouraged the spiritual work of the churches, but which aimed at the elimination of capitalistic abuses and of both economic and political imperialism.
After President LeguíaLeguia was deposed in 1930, Haya returned to Peru and became the presidential candidate of the APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, or American Popular Revolutionary Alliance), a new political organization that he and his colleagues had formed not only in Peru but in several other Latin-American countries. His candidacy was officially disallowed on allegedly unfair grounds, the APRA was banned, and many of its leaders had to flee the country. The movement went underground between 1932 and 1940, but after Manuel Prado became president he promised Haya and his followers political freedom. They achieved a victory when they helped elect Dr. JoséJose Luis Bustamante to the presidency on June 10, 1945. Rather than taken an official part in the new government, Haya retained his liberty of action and exerted strong influence as leader of APRA in behalf of political and social reform in Peru.
The political alliance between Bustamante and Haya lasted only three years, however. On October 2, 1948, a revolt led by Haya and his followers, with indications of Communist collaboration, broke out, and Peru was in a state of disorder for nearly a month. On October 29 a military junta headed by General Manuel A. OdríaOdria deposed President Bustamante, assumed control of the government, and began a round-up of APRA leaders. Haya took refuge in the Colombian embassy at Lima, where he remained until April 1954, when he left Peru.
In July 1956 President Manuel Prado y Ugarteche lifted the ban on Haya and APRA. Returning to Peru in 1957, Haya resumed leadership of APRA. He was the party's candidate for president in 1962. The election results were inconclusive, and the election was thrown into congress, where APRA was strongly represented. Fearing a Haya victory, the army seized power and in 1963 held a new election in which Haya lost.
His party remained popular. In 1979 he became president of the constitutional assembly, which drafted a new constitution. On July 12, on his death bed, he signed the new constitution.
Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre advocated a system of Latin American solutions to Latin American problems. He called upon the region to reject both U.S. imperialism and Soviet communism.
He favored universal democracy, equal rights and respect for indigenous populations, and socialist economic policies such as agrarian reform, based on the concept of communal land ownership, and state control of industry.
Haya de la Torre advocated the overthrow of the land-owning oligarchies that had ruled Peru since colonial days, replacing them with an idealistic socialist elite.
Quotations: Neither with Washington, nor with Moscow!, only aprism will save Perú.
The lack of love interests in Haya de la Torre's life was sometimes remarked upon. However, rumours of homosexuality were scattered around the country during and after his life by his political enemies, generally in a crudely homophobic fashion. In the end, Haya has never been found to have had any sexual partners of either gender. His supporters have sometimes claimed he had female lovers.
There have been claims that Haya de la Torre secretly married his close friend and sympathizer Ana Billinghurst (daughter of former president Guillermo Billinghurst) in 1923, but they seem to have been shown to be unfounded.
In the 1950s the APRA leader was forced into asylum by General Odria at the Colombian Embassy in Lima. Ana Billinghurst died while he was under diplomatic protection and he was unable to attend her funeral.