Architect of Progress

The Incas called their empire ta-huantinsuyu -- the land of the four quar ters -- with at least one good reason.

From the Pacific, Peru stretches across an arid coastal desert, rises into the icy Andean highlands, then plunges into the trackless Amazon jungle. Until recently, the country's torn and fractured political life reflected the old Indian name. Now, under the hand of a shrewd and popular new president, Fernando Belaunde Terry, 52, Peruvians have an opportunity to join the quarters into a united nation.

The prospect was hardly encouraging 18 months ago when Belaunde took over after a bitterly fought election. With Peru's economy just starting to gather momentum, agitators within the unions were threatening crippling strikes, landless highland Indians were waging angry battles against their landowners, and businessmen were sending their money abroad for safekeeping.

"Without Bloodshed." A handsome architect turned politician, Belaunde seems to have had the right blueprint. He sent troops into the highlands to restore law and order, then enacted a sensible land-reform bill that will provide land for the landless without destroying the big, productive estates on which the country's agriculture depends (TIME, July 3). Throughout Peru, police rounded up extremist troublemakers to make it plain that despite some Communist support in the elections, Belaunde would tolerate no Red-made unrest. Though his Action Popular party and its political allies held only a minority in Congress, Belaunde cajoled his opponents into grudging cooperation, won passage of a record 460 bills that successfully launched Peru on what he calls "a peaceful revolution without bloodshed or pain."

The effect of Belaunde's leadership was to make 1964 the best year ever for Peru's economy. Exports--chiefly fish meal, cotton, copper, sugar and iron ore--jumped 25% to a record $665 million, the G.N.P. rose an impressive 12%, and the sol (3.7-c-) remained one of South America's most stable currencies. On Lima's outskirts, General Motors is completing Peru's first auto-assembly plant, a $5,000,000 operation that will enable Peruvians to buy autos without paying duties that go to 110% on most U.S. models. Fourteen other automakers are planning to set up shop in Peru.

Oil & Houses. This year's economic growth may be better still--if Belanude can settle a squabble with International Petroleum Co., a Standard Oil of New Jersey affiliate that has been working the rich fields on the north coast since 1914. During the campaign, Belaunde called loudly for the company's expropriation, and Congress later unanimously revoked I.P.C.'s oil rights. But Belaunde is smart enough to know that Peru will get neither the aid nor the continuing private investment it needs unless he makes a fair settlement soon. In private negotiations, he has proposed a deal that would give Peru the oil lands but allow the company to stay with a profitable operating contract--a compromise under which he would risk damage to his image as a champion of Peruvian nationalism.

So far as his national budget will allow, Belaunde has made some progress. His government has already built thousands of classrooms, and 20,000 low-cost housing units are under construction. The oil controversy has held down the U.S. Government loans that he needs to implement his social schemes. Nearly two-thirds of the country's 11 million people live in the bleak Andean highlands; more than half are illiterate, and one-third of the 3,000,000 school-age children still have no schools.

Question of Priority. In his war against poverty, Belaunde has set up cooperacion popular, a self-help plan for rural Indian communities in which the government provides tools and technical advice and the Indians build roads and airstrips. But he has been able to make only a token start on his favorite project: a vast superhighway system across the Andes to open the fertile Amazon Valley to settlers.

Belaunde's chief political rival, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, 69, the fiery APRA patriarch who was edged out in the 1962 elections, dismisses cooperacion popular as "an old Communist way of making people work--romantic but not practical." Many others --including U.S. Ambassador J. Wesley Jones--are impressed by Belaunde's vision. "Everything the President has suggested makes sense," says Jones. "The question is only where to put what on the scale of priority."

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