The Promise of APRA and Why it Failed: Learning from the Experience of a Town in Peru's Central Andes, 1931-1948

The Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) had allowed provincial radicals in the 1930s to weave older political projects into a new doctrine based modernity, co-operativism and political struggle. Yet when the party entered government as part of a leftish coalition in 1945-1948, the period would be remembered in Tarma as bringing economic chaos, bullying from the centre and suppression, yet again, of political rights and dreams of municipal autonomy. To what extent was party ideology to blame, or was it a legacy of the party’s previous illegality and clandestinity? The paper builds on the viewpoints of local apristas to explore their hopes and disappointments, their actions and subsequent reactions to the APRA challenge.