Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (February 22, 1895 – August 2, 1979) was a Peruvian politician, philosopher, and author who founded the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) political movement, the oldest currently existing political party in Peru by the name of the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP).
Born to an aristocratic family in Trujillo, a city on the north Peruvian coast, he enrolled in the National University of Trujillo and then the School of Law of the National University of San Marcos. He soon stood out as a student leader supporting the working class. He participated in protests against the regime of Augusto B. Leguía, standing out as a vigorous and eloquent speaker, with great power of persuasion due to the depth of his ideas. Banished by Leguía in 1922, he emigrated to Mexico, where in 1924 he founded the APRA, a political movement with continental projection and a social democratic orientation, initially with a clear anti-imperialist position.
Returning to Peru in 1930 after a European and Latin American tour, he established the APRA party in Peru, the Peruvian Aprista Party, on whose political scene he would remain active from then until his death. He suffered imprisonment, exiles and political asylum. He ran for the presidency in the 1931 elections, losing to Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro. Imprisoned in 1932 by the Sánchez Cerro administration, he was released in 1933, only to be persecuted again, already under the government of Óscar R. Benavides. He remained in hiding until 1945, when his party returned to legality; he supported the National Democratic Front, which elevated José Luis Bustamante y Rivero to the presidency. In 1948, his party was again banned and after the coup d'état by general Manuel A. Odría he was forced to take refuge in the Colombian embassy (1948–1954). In 1956, he contributed to the electoral victory of Manuel Prado Ugarteche, initiating the so-called "coexistence". Once again as presidential nominee, he placed first in the 1962 election, but the Armed Forces issued a veto against him, prompting a military coup that overthrew Prado and prevented his bidding to seal his victory in Congress in favor of Odría.
During the Armed Forces Revolutionary Government, he assembled and instructed a new generation of party leaders, which included his successor and future president of Peru, Alan García. He was overwhelmingly elected to the Constituent Assembly, being elected as the body's president, and leading the drafting of a new Peruvian constitution, which he would sign in his deathbed in July 1979. He died on August 2, 1979, and his remains rest in his hometown of Trujillo. He remains one of the most influential political thinkers in Peruvian history. His legacy is considered fundamental in Peruvian historiography, with his ideology coined as revolutionary by historians.
Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre was born in the northern Peruvian city of Trujillo on February 22, 1895. He was the son of Raúl Edmundo Haya y de Cárdenas, also from Trujillo, and Zoila Victoria de la Torre y de Cárdenas, who were also cousins. His birth is commemorated as Fraternity Day every February 22 by the Peruvian Aprista Party.
Haya studied his primary and secondary education at the Seminary of San Carlos School and San Marcelo School of Trujillo. In 1913, he enrolled in the National University of Trujillo to study literature, where he met and forged a solid friendship with the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. Both, along with other students and under the leadership of Antenor Orrego and José Eulogio Garrido, integrated the so-called "Trujillo bohemia", where he was known as "The Prince of Misfortune" among his classmates. This intellectual group was later baptized as the North Group.
Subsequently, he continued his undergraduate education at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, where he pursued a law degree. In 1917, he was introduced to politician and writer Manuel González Prada, whom is cited as his main influence in the capital, developing political concerns derived from the radicalism of said intellectual. In 1918, he was one of those who carried his coffin. Historians have debated over the fact that González Prada is the precursor of Aprismo.
In January 1919, he joined the college commission that supported the workers' struggle for the establishment of the eight-hour labor reform. Contrary to popular belief, Haya de la Torre did not assume a leading role in the development of the strike, but rather played a small role as a student leader. This episode marked the beginning of Haya's active participation in Peruvian politics. In October of that same year, he was elected president of the Peruvian Student Federation. He was linked with all sectors of society. He led movements in favor of university reform in Peru and labor organizations. He participated in the first National Student Congress, held in Cusco (March 1920), where the project to create the "popular universities" was approved, which in 1922 took shape under the name of "González Prada", night schools for workers, which according to some historians formed the foundation for his party. He was instrumental in bringing the ideas of the Argentine University Reform movement (La Reforma) to San Marcos, and administrative reforms were instituted in 1919. Part of the reform movement was university extension programs, through which the university students hoped to reach the working classes.
He launched numerous protests against the government of Augusto B. Leguía when, around 1923, began to plot his perpetuation in power (this regime would later be known as the Eleven-Year Rule). One of the most significant of these protests was the opposition campaign to the projected official consecration of the country to the Sacred Heart order, promoted by the Archbishop of Lima, Emilio Lisson, to legitimize the dictatorial regime. During the street protest, a student and a worker died (May 23, 1923), which became a symbol of student-worker unity. The consecration ceremony was finally suspended by the archbishop. Later, Haya led the radical student-worker magazine Claridad, in collaboration with José Carlos Mariátegui, as "organ of the free youth of Peru" and of the popular universities.
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. In October 1923, he was arrested and detained in the El Frontón prison, where he went on a hunger strike; six days after the strike, he was shipped in the small steam train Negada and deported to Panama.
In Panama, Haya stayed for two weeks, before heading to Cuba. From there he went to Mexico, invited by José Vasconcelos, then Secretary of Public Education, to collaborate as his secretary. He arrived in Mexico City on November 16, 1923. He then made contact with the Mexican Revolution, appreciating the socio-economic changes that took place in that country.
He contacted Mexican students to encourage them to develop a continental student and labor fraternity. It was precisely in Mexico City that, on May 7, 1924, he founded the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance. As it can be deduced from its name, Haya de la Torre's initial political option sought to consolidate itself into a project for Latin America, as a pan-Latin American movement.
In a simple ceremony, he presented the students of Mexico with the flag of Indoamerica, on which occasion he said: «This flag that I give you will first fly over the dreamy crowds of the youth that are opening the way, and later they will be the people who shake it in the shuddering tumult of their struggles ». Its doctrinal foundations were presented two years later, in the manifesto entitled What is the APRA?. Initially published in English in the Labour Monthly magazine in London, in December 1926, and later translated into Spanish and reproduced in various Latin American publications. In this document, it exposes the five basic points of the Aprista doctrine: