The Military Take Over

A colonel of Peru's army stood before an electric loudspeaker and pointed it at the palace where his President lives. "We demand immediate surrender," he yelled. "Avoid unnecessary bloodshed. We have enough armament here to blow down the entire palace." No reply came from the grey granite building. One of 30 tanks out front gunned its engine, rammed through the black wrought-iron gates. A few minutes later, a tired, slightly bowed man was escorted from the palace, plunked into a station wagon, and packed off to an island prison aboard a troopship.

Thus, at 3:20 in the morning, Manuel Prado y Ugarteche, 73, constitutional President of Peru, third largest nation in South America, was thrown out of office, just ten days short of completing his six-year term. The country's new rulers are a brassbound junta of "four Presidents," headed by a cavalry general, Manuel Perez Godoy, 59, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and including General Nicolas Lindley Lopez, 53, commander of Peru's army; Vice Admiral Juan Francisco Torres Matos, 56, boss of the navy; and General Pedro Vargas Prada, 49, chief of the air force. They struck only four months after a similar putsch in Argentina, with the military in both cases ending democracy because they did not like the outcome of free elections.

Toiling for Transition. In Peru the military target was not Prado, a conservative banker and aristocrat at the end of his term. The rebellion was against the government that would succeed him. For months the military had vowed that they would not permit the coming to power of Haya de la Torre, chief of the leftist-turned-moderate APRA party, which has been engaged in a bitter, sometimes bloody dispute with the army for more than 35 years. When Haya led the balloting by some 14,000 votes in the June 10 elections but fell short of winning the constitutionally required 33.33% of the total vote, a fury of haggling began.

Perhaps realizing that his own past ill suited him to unite Peru, Haya offered to negotiate for a coalition government with the man who finished second, Fernando Belaunde. Instead, Belaunde cried that Haya had been elected by fraud--an accusation investigated and rejected by Prado's respected Electoral Tribunal. So Haya agreed to give his support to the third candidate, Manuel Odria, an ex-general who had ruled Peru as a dictator from 1948 to 1956.

"I Beg of You." It was at this belated moment--when the electoral results were officially certified, and the politicians had achieved a compromise in which the feared Haya would have only a minority voice in the government--that the military moved. In a last-minute appeal, Roman Catholic Primate Cardinal Juan Landazuri Ricketts pleaded with General Perez Godoy: "In the name of our Holy Mother, the Church, I beg of you not to break the legal order." Answered Perez Godoy: "It is too late. The prestige of the army is at stake." Twenty minutes later the tanks were at the palace.

A grim, drawn President Prado sat surrounded by his ministers and friends. A door banged open, and in clumped eight tommy-gun-toting men of Peru's elite, U.S.-trained Ranger battalion. "Senor Presidente," announced the colonel at their head, "I have been sent to take you prisoner." Replied Prado: "So be it. I leave under force from a sector of the armed forces." Standing near by, Pedro Beltran, until recently Prado's Prime Minister and a man who had done much to foster democracy and development in Peru, could not hide his emotion. "Well said! Well said!" he cried.

Kneeling before a crucifix in the palace, the four-man junta swore itself into office. The soldiers then suspended all constitutional guarantees, dissolved Congress, arrested Electoral Tribunal officials "for trial," and promised "clean and pure elections" on June 9, 1963. Haya and other leaders of his party fled underground. The APRA-controlled Workers Confederation declared a general strike for this week. Crowds that gathered before the palace to shout "Viva la libertad!" and "Down with the junta!" were beaten with truncheons by police or routed with tear gas.

The reaction abroad was compounded of disgust and dismay, something the military junta had obviously not reckoned on. Nine Latin American countries suspended or broke off relations. The blow that hurt most came from the U.S. Having persistently warned Peru's military of the consequences of a coup, the U.S. suspended relations, stopped $81 million in Alliance aid, cut off military aid now running at $5,000,000 a year, and threatened as well to take away Peru's premium-priced U.S. sugar quota, amounting to $19 million a year. "A serious setback" to democracy, said President Kennedy, in an unusually vigorous White House statement. The generals were reported planning to send a mission to Washington to explain everything. Said Perez Godoy: "I know that President Kennedy can understand. What he wants in the Alliance is what we want."

What Kennedy and the Hemisphere Alliance partners want for Peru is a return to democracy.

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