Homespun Coup

While delegates to the conference of nonaligned countries were winding up their meeting in Lima last week, host Peru did a little realigning of its own. In a swift, bloodless coup, Strongman Juan Velasco Alvarado was ousted, and left the palace freely for his home in the suburb of Chaclacayo. His No. 2 man, Francisco Morales Bermudez, took his place. The change, the new government said rather vaguely, would not only end "personality cults" but would also ensure a "free fatherland."

The visiting delegates may have been surprised--a resplendently uniformed Velasco had addressed them only a few days before at the conference's opening. But the coup will probably have little effect on the leftist policies that Peru has pursued since Velasco staged his own coup in 1968. The former President, 65, had been ailing for some time (severe circulatory problems caused the amputation of his right leg in 1973), and his power within Peru's military had been declining. Morales, 53, had been thought of as his successor anyway and already held the titles of Premier, Army Chief of Staff and Defense Minister.

Moreover, as Finance Minister from 1969 to 1973, Morales had helped engineer the nationalization of industry and land reforms that ended the power of Peru's 40 richest families, an informal oligarchy that had, in effect, ruled the country for years. Velasco claimed that his government was "neither anticapitalist nor anti-Communist ... but authentically homespun Peruvian." The new man in charge is likely to try to preserve that chauvinistic, homespun image.

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