Aftermath

Through the mountain valleys of Peru and along the dry coastal plain, soldiers and police tracked down the men blamed for the brief, bloody uprising in Callao (TIME, Oct. 11). By week's end more than 1,000 Apristas had been jailed. Each day the searchers hoped to bring in Aprista No. 1, famed Haya de la Torre.

Long before the government had buried its dead, it had moved against the leftist (but anti-Marxist) Aprista party. First it outlawed APRA, which the government flatly said "prepared and directed the movement." The government's evidence of guilt: most of the Aprista prisoners were armed when arrested, APRA was strong among the naval men who mutinied, one Aprista leader had told a friend that "revolt was imminent."

The Evidence. If this evidence seemed a little thin, the government could also argue that the Apristas must have known that only a successful revolt could save them politically. In recent months, their power and prestige had slipped badly. For the impending elections to the Constituent Assembly, all other political groups had combined against them. Moreover, they were almost certain to be convicted of direct connection with the murder of La Prensa's right-wing Publisher Francisco Grana, shot down in front of his office. The Grana murder had been a political cause celebre.

To the suggestion that Haya and his lieutenants were too smart to have mixed in the inept Callao revolt, anti-Apristas had an answer. The army had been expected to join the revolt; instead had remained loyal to President Bustamante. Others accused Aprista leaders of cowardice. Said one: "I have always believed Haya to be just a tough guy with no guts."

Even Peru's rightists, who for a quarter century had hated Haya de la Torre with a bitterness peculiar to Peru, had seldom accused him of lacking courage. Over the years in which he fired Peru's depressed people with a hope for a better life, he had been in & out of prison, had known exile, lived underground. His party had often been guilty of violence.

The Blame. When democratic government was restored to Peru in 1945, the Apristas emerged as the country's most powerful political party. Rightists refused to work with them or to trust them, and the Apristas, by turning again to violence, gave reason for this distrust. It was inevitable that the Callao revolt should be pinned on them and on Haya de la Torre, APRA's founding father.

Back in 1924, when Haya went into his first exile, he told his followers: "Don't despair. I shall come back." This time the Bustamante government and Haya's rightist enemies were determined that he should not.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.