Alan Garcia became President of Peru in July 1985. This book examines his administration and its effects on Peru. The author argues that initially Garcia was successful in tackling the countries problems but that when he left office in 1990 Peru's social, political and economic ills looked worse.

"... looks at the political history of Peru from the time it gained independence from Spain to the present. ... compares different political ideologies against economic and social aspects."--jacket front flap.

This book deals with nearly twenty years of Peruvian foreign policy towards a region which, to national policy makers, at first seemed inaccessible due to the predicament of its geographical distance. It highlights the impact of the political system and of the economic situation in Peru on the foreign policymaking process towards Pacific Asia in order to detect the obstacles and chances of Peru's relationship with the region.

Like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Peruvian Victor Raul Haya de la Torre (1895–1979) was one of Latin America's key revolutionary leaders, well known across national boundaries. Inigo Garcia-Bryce's biography of Haya chronicles his dramatic political odyssey as founder of the highly influential 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. Garcia-Bryce 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 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 elected president in 1962—but he was blocked from assuming office by the military, which played on his rumored homosexuality. Even so, Haya's insistence that political parties must cultivate Indigenous roots and oppose violence as a means of achieving political power has left a powerful legacy across Latin America.

This book generates a wealth of new empirical information about Latin American party systems and contributes richly to major theoretical debates about party systems and democracy.

Taking on existing interpretations of "Peruvian exceptionalism," this book presents a multi-sited ethnographic exploration of the local and transnational articulations of indigenous movements, multicultural development policies, and indigenous citizenship in Peru.