3 - The Velasco Revolution in Peru, 1968–1975

Summary

This chapter examines the coup d’état carried out by General Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1968, a coup that radically differed from the series of military takeovers in the Southern Cone of South America during the height of the Cold War. It seeks to analyze the causes that led to the coup, its principal objectives, and how the United States, in particular the Nixon administration, responded to Peru’s challenge to relations with the US. It further addresses a series of questions such as who the coup makers were, what their social backgrounds were, and what kind of resistance the new regime faced in what became, over the next several years, a radical effort to transform one of the most tradition-bound countries in Latin America in order to modernize it and bring it into the twentieth century.