The Role and Impact of Mass Communication

in the Peruvian Agrarian Reform, 1968-75

Anna Cant
University of Cambridge

Abstract: The 1969 Agrarian Reform introduced by Juan Velasco Alvarado’s military
government redistributed land on a massive scale and dismantled the hacienda system
that had previously dominated the Peruvian countryside. Mass communication played a
crucial part in government efforts to neutralise landowner opposition and position the
Agrarian Reform as part of a ‘revolutionary process’. Using archival research and
interviews from two different regions of Peru, this article shows how the Velasco
government’s use of the mass media challenged established media hegemony and
sparked opposition from left- and right-wing dissenters. It argues that government efforts
to promote the ‘campesino voice’ generated new interest in rural issues and changed the
shape of popular politics in Peru. Attention to the public discourse that surrounded the
Reform indicates its importance to Peru’s contemporary political formation and contributes
to recent efforts to examine the political and cultural consequences of land reform across
Latin America.

When Juan Velasco Alvarado’s left-wing military government took power in 1968, land inequality in
Peru was amongst the most pronounced across the region.1 Large amounts of land were concentrated
in the hands of a small number of large estates, known as latifundios, while huge numbers of peasants
survived through subsistence farming of small plots, known as minifundios, or waged labour on large
estates.2 Previous land reform attempts had faltered due to entrenched elite interests and weak
political will. However, the Velasco government placed agrarian reform at the centre of its vision for

1 The 1961 census found that the richest 0.2% of landowners owned 72.9% of agricultural land, while the
poorest 34.1% owned just 0.7% (Cleaves and Scurrah 1980, 32). This is comparable to the situation in Ecuador,
where in 1954, 1% of agricultural units controlled 64% of agricultural land, while 82% of agricultural units had
fewer than 5 hectares and made up 11% of land (Forster 1989, 93). The dominance of large estates was
considerably lower in Argentina where, in 1970, 36.9% of land was occupied by latifundios and 3.4% by
minifundios, leaving 59.7% occupied by medium-sized farms (Todaro 1985, 295).

2 Such labour was not always remunerated. For example, yanaconaje, a labour practice that had its origins in
pre-hispanic Andean society, consisted of a highly exploitative arrangement between landowner and labourer
(yanacona). While the landowner supplied access to land, water, machinery and capital, the yanacona received
no wages and was required to cultivate the product determined by the landowner and sell the produce
exclusively to the landowner. According to José Matos Mar, a modernised version of yanaconaje persisted in the
Chancay Valley (department of Lima) well into the 1960s (Matos Mar 1976).

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‘the new Peru.’ The 1969 Agrarian Reform Law began an ambitious redistribution of land to peasant
cooperatives and set out to abolish latifundismo (land monopolies). In total almost 40% of the
country’s agricultural land was affected by the Reform, making it one of the most radical agrarian
reforms in Latin America (Alvarez and Caballero 1980, 20).

The 1969 Agrarian Reform was characterised by the government’s extensive and innovative use of
mass communication. This article shows how, during the course of the Reform, mass communication
became a site of intense political struggle. The Velasco government recruited communications
professionals and used the mass media in innovative ways to inform and persuade the population
about the Agrarian Reform. Opposition movements from both the Left and the Right recognised the
power of the government’s mass communication and in response themselves began mass media
campaigns. These sought to challenge the government’s narrative and, following the government’s
lead, find new audiences. I examine the local impact of the government’s mass media interventions in
two distinct regions of Peru: Cusco, in the southern highlands, and Piura, on the northern coast. This
regional perspective allows a deeper understanding of the ways in which the Agrarian Reform
reshaped public discourse in rural areas.

Peru had experienced two previous attempts to introduce land reform: first during the military
government of Lindley Godoy (1963), which affected the departments of Cusco and Apurímac only,
and later under the government of Fernando Belaúnde Terry (1963-8). Despite proclaiming the need
for a ‘true’ agrarian reform during his electoral campaign, Belaúnde faced intense opposition from the
conservative-majority Congress. In a pamphlet published in 1963 to defend the Belaúnde
government’s reform proposals, Vice-President Edgardo Seone Corrales wrote: ‘Once again, history
shows that the privileged classes of the economic order have never given in to the needs of the
general welfare, justice and reason. An expensive and tenacious propaganda tries to create a civic
environment that makes the development of government programmes impossible.’3 The agrarian
reform eventually passed by the Belaúnde government in 1964 suffered various limitations and left
unaffected the large latifundios, which continued to dominate both access to land and Peru’s wider
economic structure. The desire to deliver meaningful agrarian reform was a key motivation for the
1968 coup led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado.

The Velasco government came to power with a clear understanding of how difficult it would be to carry
out significant land reform. Agronomist Benjamín Semanez Concha, who was part of the commission
that drafted the new law (Decree Law 17716), described its guiding principles in the following terms:
‘We wanted to carry out a structural agrarian reform. Not a conventional reform like that created by

3‘Exposición de la Oficina Nacional de Reforma y Promoción Agraria’ (Lima, 1963), 1, Princeton University
Library, Microfilm 06147: Agrarian issues in Peru, 1955-87; pamphlets.

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Law 15037 [Belaúnde’s agrarian reform] and like those which existed in other countries. An advanced
law that proposed an agrarian reform that could be massive, rapid and drastic.’4 Crucially,
implementation of the Reform was carried out in officially designated ‘agrarian reform zones’ according
to government priorities, rather than the more lengthy process of individual petitions seen in Mexico’s
agrarian reform, for example (Carr 2006). This mode of application gave the Reform an intense
character, with many simultaneous interventions in different parts of the country. In this context, mass
communication provided an important means to neutralise the opposition and encourage popular
participation in the new system of agricultural cooperatives.

The article begins by examining the mass communication techniques used by the government to
promote the Agrarian Reform. As a group of military men, the Velasco government had little
experience in mass communication. President Velasco turned to journalists, artists and intellectuals to
publicise the government’s reforms. I highlight what was distinctive about the government’s approach
to mass communication, and show why its use of the media stimulated such a strong reaction among
left- and right-wing opponents. In the second section I analyse the ways in which different opposition
groups tried to counteract the government’s propaganda and reframe the debate on agrarian reform.
Velasco denounced the ‘anti-revolutionary’ criticism his government received from both the Left and
the Right,5 but was ultimately unable to control the ferment that his government’s communication
efforts created. The final section argues that in the long term, the government’s use of the mass media
set important precedents for peasant participation in the public sphere, which in turn enabled
campesinos to demand greater representation within national politics.

THE MASS MEDIA AS A TOOL OF SOCIAL CHANGE

The Velasco government attached considerable importance to mass communication as a way of

generating support for its reforms. Before the announcement of the Agrarian Reform Law, journalist
Efraín Ruiz Caro was tasked with setting up the Dirección de Promoción y Difusión de la Reforma
Agraria (Office of Promotion and Diffusion of the Agrarian Reform, DPDRA). This was a small team of
publicists, artists and writers that produced posters, leaflets and flyers that were distributed across the
country to publicise acts of land expropriation and adjudication.6 Over time it became apparent that a

4 Maria del Pilar Tello, Interview with Benjamín Semanez Concha (Lima, c. 1981).

5See, for example, President Velasco’s message to the nation on the first anniversary of the coup. Oficina
Nacional de Difusión del SINAMOS, Velasco, la voz de la revolución: discursos del presidente de la república,
General de Division Juan Velasco Alvarado, 1968-1970 (Lima, 1972), 91-111.

6For details on the posters produced by the DPDRA see: Anna Cant, ‘“Land for those who work it”: a visual
analysis of agrarian reform posters in Velasco’s Peru’, Journal of Latin American Studies 44 (2012): 1-37.

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more sustained regional presence would be required and in June 1971 the government established
the Sistema Nacional de Apoyo a la Movilización Social (National System of Support for Social
Mobilisation, SINAMOS). Among the organisation’s key objectives was: ‘Communication and
particularly the dialogue between the government and the population.’7 A report produced by the
SINAMOS National Office gives some idea of the range and scale of the communication activities
carried out by the organisation between 1973 and 1976. These included:
• production of 1,628 radio programmes and 34 television programmes;
• publication of 15 issues of the magazine SINAMOS Informa (28,000 copies), seven issues of the
magazine Participación (73,000 copies), and 160 books on topics of ‘social mobilisation and
participation’;
• printing of 6,356,464 leaflets and documents for dissemination;
• production of 13 films and three audiovisual series;
• 31 campaigns of ‘diffusion’ and three courses of instruction on ‘integrated communication’ (Guerra
Garcia 1983, 206).
Not all of these activities were connected to the Agrarian Reform, but the SINAMOS leadership saw
the Agrarian Reform as the most significant of the reforms it was responsible for promoting.

Beyond the communication of a specific message, the Velasco government also saw the mass media
as a tool for social change. Ministers argued that the media should serve the development needs of
society as a whole, rather than the private interests of media owners. The government introduced a
series of laws to increase state control of the communications infrastructure and reduce the power of
private media owners. For example, the 1969 ‘Press Freedom Statute’ (Decree Law 18075) banned
newspaper ownership by non-Peruvian nationals and required media companies to publish bi-annually
a list of their shareholders and board of directors. This was followed in February 1970 by the ‘Law of
the Journalist’ (Decree Law 18139), which strengthened the rights of journalists vis-à-vis newspaper
owners (Gargurevich 1987, 206). The 1971 Telecommunications Law permitted state control of radio
and television stations in which the state held more than a 25% share, and limited private media
ownership by any single individual to one TV license and one radio license per department, up to a
total of seven licenses across the whole country. The law also required radio stations to fill 60% of
weekly programming with content produced in Peru and made provision for the creation of
‘telecommunications communities’ — groups of employees who were entitled to a share of the
company’s profits and participation in decision making (Gargurevich 1987, 211). Through these
measures, the Velasco government sought to challenge the established media hegemony that had
impeded previous land reform attempts.

7 Decreto Ley 18896, Article 2.

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The most emblematic of the Velasco government's media interventions was the 1974 expropriation of
the national newspapers. While state control of the press is often considered a typical act of
dictatorship, the reality in this case was more complex: the government and its intellectual supporters
imagined a different kind of mass media, not simply one in which opposition was silenced. Following
expropriation, each of the national dailies was to be placed in the hands of a sectoral organisation and
reflect workers’ interests. Thus El Comercio would be assigned to the peasant sector, La Prensa to the
reformed industrial sector, and so on (Rosas Paravicino 1978). The policy attracted international
interest. For example, British newspaper The Guardian described it as ‘one of the most interesting
experiments in the history of journalism’.8 The Inter-American Press Association condemned it as ‘an
arrogant abuse of power based mainly on the persuasive use of guns’ (cited in Knudson 2009, 131).
Yet as Helán Jaworski observed, the Velasco government’s discourse rejected the monopoly of
communication and proposed an alternative to the liberal model of press freedom, by placing media
power in the hands of representative organisations. This was ‘something radically different’ to the
usual pattern of media control under a dictatorship (Jaworski 1983, 771). While the transfer of the
newspapers to representative bodies never transpired in practice, the ideas that underpinned the
policy were reflected in other areas of government media use.

The Velasco government's conceptualisation of the mass media reflected a global trend known at the
time as the ‘New World Information Order’. This emerged from the discussions of the United Nations
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) at its Sixteenth General Conference in
1970 (UNESCO 1972, 3). The basic argument of the New World Information Order was that the
superior publishing power and media infrastructure of western or developed nations had resulted in
the cultural domination of developing or ‘third world’ countries. It was therefore necessary for
developing countries to strengthen their own communication and information infrastructure in ways
that were attuned to their development needs. These ideas crystallised in a study presented to
UNESCO’s International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems by Mustafa
Masmoudi, the Tunisian Secretary of State for Information. Masmoudi observed a ‘profound imbalance
between developed and developing countries’ in the international information system and argued that
‘the right to communicate should guarantee not only the right to be informed but also its corollary, the
right to inform, to complete mutilated information and to correct false information.’ (Masmoudi 1978). In
the Peruvian case, the Velasco government’s commitment to these principles facilitated important, if
short-lived, media innovations.

One such area of innovation was film: the government established tax incentives for ‘Peruvian
productions’ and mandatory distribution and exhibition for approved productions. In addition,

8 Richard Cott, ‘Giving the press to the people’, The Guardian, 4 December 1974, p. 14.

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SINAMOS sponsored the production of short documentaries related to the Agrarian Reform. Runan
Caycu (‘We are people’ in Quechua), directed by Nora de Izcue in 1973, tells the story of Saturnino
Huillca, a peasant leader from the department of Cusco. The 38-minute long documentary describes
his progression from a poor peasant background towards growing political activity and union
leadership. The film as a whole privileges the role of peasant action in achieving social change, a key
aspect of the Velasco government’s rhetoric. However, the film was initially censored due to its
unfavourable representation of the military’s role in repressing the 1963-64 peasant uprisings. The
short documentary Niños (Grupo de Cine Liberación Sin Rodeos/SINAMOS, 1974) took a more
explicitly pro-government line. The film focuses on the daily lives of a group of school children in
Ollantaytambo (Cusco). In a classic cinematic trope, the children are presented as the ‘new hope’ and
are the protagonists of the film. During a classroom scene the students are urged by their teacher to
‘learn history outside the school’ and be vigilant against the former landowners, who seek to recover
their lands. The Cusco landscape plays an important role in both films, reflecting what Jeffrey
Middents has identified as a shift in cinematic representations of the Andes between the early 1960s
and the 1970s. Whereas the entries to a Peruvian short-film contest in 1965 ‘generally regarded areas
outside Lima with something akin to a “tourist’s eye”’, those produced ten years later ‘tended to be
more ethnographic than archaeological in orientation, delving into everyday situations of Andean
culture.’ (Midents 2009, 150). The Velasco government’s interest in supporting this kind of filmmaking
provided an important boost for avant-garde productions and encouraged efforts to capture rural life
on screen.

The government also sponsored a number of initiatives in the print media and radio. In 1975 (after the
expropriation of the newspapers), national daily La Crónica began producing a separate weekly
newspaper printed entirely in Quechua, entitled Cronicawan (‘With the Chronicle’). Engineered by
prominent journalist Guillermo Thorndike, Cronicawan was varied and visually interesting. Sold to the
public at the subsidised price of four soles, the real cost of producing each edition was 52 soles
(Rosas Paravicino 1978, 81). This was the first time in Peru’s history that a national newspaper had
been produced in Quechua. Following shortly after Quechua had been declared an official language in
Peru, the newspaper reflected a new optimism about Quechua’s role in contemporary society. As Alan
Durston has shown, in the first half of the twentieth century Peruvian politicians made selective use of
Quechua for propaganda purposes. In particular, President Leguía (1919-30) published speeches in
Quechua and promoted Quechua as a language of instruction (Durston 2013). The style of
communication used in Cronicawan was quite different, adopting an equal (rather than paternalist)
relationship with the reader. One of its editorials states: ‘As a communal labour, Cronicawan begins
this work after 450 years of oppression and hegemony, recovering Runa Simi once more and placing it

6
within the reach of the people.’9 As well as peasant issues and the progress of the Agrarian Reform,
articles also covered general current affairs, including developments in Cuba and Mozambique.
Cronicawan was discontinued shortly after General Morales Bermúdez took power in 1975, probably
due to financial constraints and changed political priorities. Although short-lived, the newspaper stands
apart for its radical use of Quechua and the scale of its ambition; to my knowledge there has been no
subsequent attempt to produce a national print newspaper in Quechua.

There were also important innovations in the development of ‘participative’ media. In 1972 internal
magazine SINAMOS informa described the introduction of a new magazine by the Piura and Tumbes
SINAMOS Regional Office: ‘Significantly, the first issue, which fulfils a triple task, is without a name. In
it the project is presented, explaining its aims and inviting the tumbesinos and piuranos to participate.
On the front cover there appears a group of campesinos carrying a banner that says “this is our
word.”’10 Similarly in SINAMOS Region X (Lima) plans were announced for a monthly newspaper to be
produced by inhabitants of the pueblos jóvenes (shanty towns).11 Inevitably these projects were
portrayed in a glowing light in the organisation’s own publication and it is difficult to judge whether
levels of participation were as high as these excited reports claim. What does come across, however,
is the intensity of state efforts to promote popular involvement in new communication media.

Radio formed an important part of the Velasco government’s communication strategy. Whereas a
small minority of Peruvian homes owned a television during this period (approximately 292,000
households in 1969), the radio was a well-established medium and radio ownership was widespread
(Gargurevich 1987, 197). With the advent of the transistor radio, even remote rural populations had
radio access to some extent. The Ministry of Agriculture pioneered the use of the ‘radio forum’, a
method of group discussion that involved audiences listening to a radio programme in a group setting.
The participants’ discussion of the programme was recorded and this information was then fed back to
the radio production team and incorporated into subsequent programmes. This was a national project
with various teams based in different regions. In the Cusco region the programmes centred on a
character called ‘Quri Maki’ (‘Golden Hand’). Radio DJ Francisco León Farfán, who worked on the
programme, recalls:

He was an almost mythical character, somewhat inspired in what Pachacútec had done …
a kind of leader that would draw you to him. So we dealt with specific problems. The case

9 Cronicawan, 9, p. 7. I am grateful to Odi Gonzales of New York University for providing Spanish translations of
the Quechua texts. In Quechua, the language is known as ‘Runa Simi’, meaning literally ‘language of the
people’.

10 Sinamos informa 1, 4 (Lima, 1972), p. 19.

11 Sinamos informa 2, 12 (Lima, 1973), p. 34.

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 of alcoholism, for example, that was — that is — so rooted in the communities, no? So,
through radio theatre, the character intervened and spoke in Quechua and he made them
see, let’s say the havoc that alcoholism causes. 12

State-led radio production was later formalised with the creation of the Empresa Nacional de
Radiodifusión (National Radio Broadcasting Company), known as ENRAD Perú. In Cusco, the military
forcibly took control of two radio stations and handed them over to ENRAD control. The local ENRAD
team produced two main programmes: one in Spanish called ‘Avancemos’ (‘Let’s make progress’) for
the city of Cusco and another in Quechua called ‘Kallpa’ (‘Strength’). Francisco León, who continues
to work in Cusco radio, was part of this team. He recalls that the production team were given
substantial freedom to pursue what they saw as a more socially committed kind of broadcasting: ‘to us
at that time it seemed excellent, the campesino can have a communication media in his favour …
Because the campesino had never been listened to … In our programme we did listen to them.13 As
this comment indicates, ENRAD programming formed part of a wider state effort to expand the reach
and possibilities of the mass media.

REACTIONS TO STATE MEDIA

The scale of the government’s use of mass communication meant that Agrarian Reform propaganda
and publications reached even areas that were not targeted by the Reform, and fed into other forms of
political activism. In Cusco, the proliferation of posters and flyers reached such an extent that it
provoked irritated comment in the local press. A round-up of news from the Cusco province of Calca in
newspaper El Sol complained: ‘It is fine for SINAMOS and other workers’ organisations, trade unions
and cooperatives to make wall propaganda, but what is really bad is for them to be put up everywhere,
even on the front door of the Municipal Palace, spoiling the decoration. In any case those that order
them to be put up should learn to respect the institutions and not damage the walls.’14

Aside from prompting civic outrage, what impact did all this propaganda have on rural populations?
Emma Rubín de Celis T. was one of very few researchers to tackle this question at the time. She
conducted a survey of permanent and temporary agricultural workers in Piura between July and
December 1975. The study focused on cooperatives in the Piura and Chira Valleys, and included both
socios (cooperative members) and eventuales (temporary labourers) (Rubín de Celis, 34). Participants
were asked a number of questions that were designed to assess their responses to the government’s

12 Interview with Francisco León Farfán, Cusco, 22 May 2013.

13 Ibid.

14 El Sol, 9 May 1973, p. 6.

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ideological messaging. The study reveals the particular impact of radio in shaping peasants’ opinions
of the Agrarian Reform. For example, CAP (Agricultural Production Cooperative) members were asked
to state where they had heard three key government messages about the Agrarian Reform: ‘the land
is for those who work it’; ‘the cooperatives are doing badly because the leaders are not capable’; and
‘the CAPs are doing badly because of the interference of the political parties or people with counter-
revolutionary ideas’. In all three cases the overwhelming majority of respondents said they had heard
the message on the radio, with a high number of people specifying Ondas Campesinas — a
programme produced by SINAMOS — as the specific source (Rubín de Celis, 95-6). However, the
survey found that respondents often did not accept the government’s version of events. For example,
responding to the question, ‘Now who does the land belong to?’, only 17.04% of the socios
interviewed said that the land belonged to the cooperative members. Some 48.9% said that the land
belonged to the state, 10.37% said it belonged to ‘the capitalists (local bosses or imperialists)’, 4%
said it belonged to God (or similar) and 20.74% chose not to answer (Rubín de Celis, 90). These data
suggest that while the government's propaganda was certainly having an impact, campesinos
responded to it in light of their own experiences of the Agrarian Reform.

The politicised nature of the government’s communications policies sparked a variety of responses
across different social sectors. The formal creation of SINAMOS in 1971 (the organisation became
fully operational in 1972) inspired many intellectuals to launch their own activities in support of the
revolution. The ‘Javier Heraud Cultural Action Group’ was formed in Cusco in 1972 and was named
after the poet and ELN (National Liberation Army) member who was killed by police in a counter-
insurgency operation in 1963. Guido Guevara, a former member of this group, described it as ‘a space
of external support for the revolution on the cultural plane.’15 His specific role within the group was to
produce a radio programme that included biographies, customs, traditions and legends. In addition,
the group included puppeteers and a mobile team equipped with a projector for showing slides and
films, as well as a weekly newspaper called El Chasqui, which had a circulation of between 1,000 and
1,500 copies within the city of Cusco. However, the Javier Heraud Cultural Action Group was short-
lived. It soon encountered difficulties in dealing with the state bureaucracy, which ‘didn’t go at the
same rate, at the speed with which the cultural action group wanted to progress.’16 While declaring
themselves supporters of the revolution, the members of the Javier Heraud Cultural Action Group
maintained a degree of distance between their own activities and the actions of government. For
example, the editors of El Chasqui chose not to describe it as a mouthpiece of the revolution or
SINAMOS, instead giving it the strap-line ‘voice of the pueblos jóvenes’ (shanty towns). Following the
collapse of the group, many of its members were integrated into SINAMOS, where they continued to

15 Interview with Guido Guevara Ugarte, Cusco, 22 September 2012.

16 Ibid.

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work on cultural activities, although they sometimes found their artistic expression constrained by the
need to toe the official line.17

More radical leftists rejected altogether the government’s ‘reformism’ and the political interventions of
SINAMOS. Short newspapers and flyers produced by agricultural federations and unions, often with
the backing of left-wing parties such as Vanguardia Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Vanguard, VR) or
the Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionaria-Cuarta Etapa (Revolutionary Left Movement-Fourth Stage),
made frequent references to SINAMOS and the Ministry of Agriculture bureaucrats, whom they
accused of trying to manipulate and mislead campesinos. Leftists accused SINAMOS of using
propaganda to coerce peasants into accepting the agrarian debt — the payment that cooperatives
owed the government in return for adjudicated land. While cooperatives would initially receive this land
for free, within five years they were required to begin repaying the state, which had compensated
landowners with a combination of cash and government bonds. For radical leftists, providing
compensation to landowners was an injustice that merely reinforced the economic hardship suffered
by Peru’s peasants. The 1974 manifesto of the Confederación Campesina del Perú (Peruvian Peasant
Confederation, CCP) declared its intention to fight against the agrarian debt:

[We denounce that] the payment of the agrarian debt is a source of finance for the benefit
of the ex-landowners, given that in that way they become industrialists and continue
exploiting our people. The peasantry struggles for the definitive annihilation of the
landowners in order to achieve the liberation of the country. We the campesinos refuse to
finance our worst enemies.18

The CCP also became increasingly critical of the agricultural cooperative model and the manner in
which it was being introduced. A report presented at the CCP’s Second National Extraordinary
Congress in 1975 criticised the government’s attempts to launch what it called a ‘cooperative
ideology’: ‘That is to say, the bourgeoisie, through its newspapers and talks, tries to make us believe
that with the cooperative we are no longer exploited and for that reason we no longer need syndicates
nor lists of demands; that we must make sacrifices in order for the company to make greater profits.’19

An important consequence of the political mobilisation surrounding the Agrarian Reform was that both
the government and left-wing activists now viewed the peasantry as a critical support base. VR, which
had started as an essentially urban political party of students and intellectuals, shifted its focus

17 Ibid.

18 ‘Manifiesto de la Confederación Campesina del Perú’ (Setiembre, 1974). CCP central archive (Uncatalogued).

19‘Informe presentado al II Congreso Nacional Extraordinaria de la Confederación del Perú (CCP), Querecotillo,
Piura, Julio 1975 por la Federación del Valle de Huaral, Chancay y Aucallama’, Amsterdam, International
Institute of Social History, Koos Koster archive, File 82.

10
towards building a campesino base. This involved targeted operations to neutralise the government’s
media campaigns. For example, an internal circular dated 18 June 1975 included detailed plans for
combatting the government’s propaganda surrounding 24 June, the anniversary of the Agrarian
Reform Law. Rather than being used to celebrate the achievements of the Reform, the circular stated
that this day should instead be ‘exploited by the revolutionary proletariat and the classist peasantry to
… continue the fight against semi-feudalism, imperialism, and the conciliatory policy of reformism with
those enemies and particularly the landlords.’20 Party members were told to use information received
at the party bases to produce flyers promoting the struggles of the rural poor. In addition, the circular
instructed ‘the comrades of each front’ to

‘make contact with leaders of the communities, villages, committees, [agrarian] leagues
that are brought to the events of 24 June, either before or after those events. They should
give them informative materials and seek a contact conversation to expand on the
information. At the same time they should distribute the flyers about the current struggles,
including the land occupations that are planned in Cajamarca for that same day’.21

These comments offer some insight into the political strategies used by organisations like VR. More
importantly, they reveal how the success of the government’s media campaigns prompted such
organisations to respond in kind, seeking new ways to generate peasant support.

Those on the right of the political spectrum also tried to shift the terms of the debate established by the
Velasco government’s mass communication. Whereas the Velasco government cast the Agrarian
Reform as part of a whole-society change in which all Peruvians should be engaged, conservative
newspapers preferred to frame the Reform as a fundamentally technical process, in which youthful
idealism was at best an irritating irrelevance. The Sociedad Nacional Agraria (National Agrarian
Society, SNA), the body representing large landowners, used its influence with the national
newspapers to criticise the Agrarian Reform publicly. In the days following the announcement of the
Agrarian Reform, SNA President Alberto Sacio told a press conference that the new law contained
‘disadvantageous mechanisms’ that would go ‘against the increase in production and productivity of
agriculture, if not corrected.’22 He criticised the fact that no funds had been specified for the provision
of technical assistance, and commented that expropriation of land should take place on ‘poorly
exploited’ land rather than ‘productive’ lands. These were the same arguments that the SNA had used
against the Belaúnde government’s agrarian reform in 1964. By concentrating on the Agrarian
Reform’s technical aspects, the large landowners sought to divert attention away from the political

20Vanguardia Revolucionaria, ‘Circular No. 2 - 18.6.75. Propagandizar la alianza obrero-campesina el 24 de

Junio’, PUCP, Archivo de Partidos Políticos, Item APP3/VR 98.

21 Ibid.

22 ‘Algunos dispositivos desalentarán la producción - dice presidente de SNA’, La Crónica, 27 June 1969, p. 5.

11
implications of land redistribution and focus the debate on a much narrower set of issues, such as the
availability of credit and the impact on agricultural productivity.

In a slightly different strategy, landowners also used paid-for advertising and public statements to
portray themselves as participants in, rather than targets of, the Agrarian Reform. Shortly before the
announcement of the Reform, a group of landowners’ associations published a notice in La Prensa
which called on the government to listen to their opinions: ‘The private agricultural sector, constituted
by those of us who exert ourselves directly in agriculture and livestock production as a way of life,
confront daily the problems of the peasant situation. To this activity we dedicate our capital, lands and
permanent work. These actions give value to our opinions; we have the obligation to give our opinions
and we have the right to be heard.’23 Echoing the government’s own rhetoric of ‘land for those who
work it’, the landowners tried to include themselves within the moral category of those who worked the
land and therefore deserved to be listened to. The subtext of this discourse was to dissociate the
landowners from the poverty suffered by the peasantry, and attribute such poverty to the problem of
inefficient production rather than inequitable wealth distribution. The statement that the landowners
‘exerted’ themselves daily suggests an equivalence between their role as managers of production and
the physical labour of the campesinos.

Unlike Chile, where landowners formed their own vigilante organisations to resist land reform, in Peru
the landowners tended to seek private solutions to their own specific case. The elitist character of
Peru’s landowners’ associations meant that they were unable to generate a united front between
medium and large landowners. The SNA was dominated by the owners of the large coastal latifundios
and dedicated itself to the interests of this small elite.24 Moreover, the Agrarian Reform’s strategy of
beginning with the large estates and moving to progressively smaller haciendas meant that medium
landowners did not come out in support of the large landowners (believing that their own interests
would not be affected). By the time the Reform reached the smaller haciendas the large landowners
had no incentive to support them. When the SNA was dissolved by Legal Decree 19400 in 1972,
Peru’s landowners were too internally divided to mount an effective political response. They
nevertheless continued to express disquiet about the Reform in the national press and, in some cases,
used their local influence within the bureaucracy to limit its application.

Among the national newspapers, a particularly critical position was taken by La Prensa, which was
owned by Pedro Beltrán, a major landowner and member of the SNA. Beltrán himself published an
editorial in the paper during the week following the announcement of the Reform, in which he attacked

23 ‘Invocación al gobierno’, La Prensa, 22 June 1969, p. 15.

24 Carlos Malpica, Los dueños del Perú 3 ed. (Lima, 1968), p. 68.

12
the policy of expropriating the ‘efficient’ sugar estates as unjust and contrary to the government’s
stated aim of promoting industrialisation.25 La Prensa also expressed scepticism about the ways that
the Agrarian Reform was being promoted. An editorial published in February 1970 argued that the
‘propagandists’ of the Agrarian Reform should cease their activities in the capital and focus their efforts
in the countryside. The author claimed that while campesinos in Cusco appeared to be unsure about
how the agricultural cooperatives should work, ‘in semi-residential neighbourhoods [of Lima] like Lince
and Pueblo Libre enthusiastic efforts are displayed for the dissemination of the achievements, aims
and application of the process of transformation that is being carried out in Peruvian agriculture.’26 A
generous reading of the article might conclude that the author was genuinely concerned to correct the
inefficiencies of government promotion efforts, but the overriding tone of the piece strikes a cynical dig
at the promoters’ idealism. It also reflects the view that the Agrarian Reform was essentially a problem
for the countryside and not one that should trouble the urban population: ‘Not here in Lima, but there,
in the countryside, where there are so many questions to be answered, they must demonstrate their
devotion and agrarian expertise, the self-sacrificing apostles of renewal.’27

Yet Peruvian newspapers were far from homogenous in their response to the Agrarian Reform. El
Comercio, La Crónica and Correo initially supported the Reform on the basis that it would modernise
the agrarian structure and contribute to industrialisation. For example, an editorial published in La
Crónica shortly after the announcement of the Agrarian Reform Law praised it for expanding access to
landownership and creating a wider market, adding: ‘If we want to move forward we should accelerate
our process of industrialisation and transform structures [that are] now expired and outdated.’28
Similarly, El Comercio applauded the announcement of the Agrarian Reform as an expression of ‘the
new spirit of the Armed Forces’ and commented that ‘the integration of vast sectors of the population,
previously marginalised from national economic life, will mean they constitute a market sufficiently
wide as to allow the industrial development that will benefit all.’29

Given El Comercio’s reputation as Peru’s leading conservative newspaper, it is somewhat surprising to

see the degree of support it gave Velasco during his initial years in power. For example, during the
presidential tour of the northern departments of Lambayeque, La Libertad and Piura in 1970, the
newspaper proclaimed jubilantly: ‘Trujillo witnessed the largest meeting in its history. President

25 ‘Dos aspectos de la reforma agraria’, La Prensa, 29 June 1969, p. 17.

26 La Prensa, 22 February 1970, p. 13.

27 Ibid.

28 ‘La nueva ley de reforma agraria’, La Crónica, 27 June 1969, p. 4.

29 ‘Reforma agraria: nueva etapa para el Perú’, Dominical (Sunday supplement of El Comercio), p. 4.

13
Velasco was constantly applauded.’30 It is important to note that one reason for this positive report by
El Comercio stemmed from its longstanding opposition to the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria
Americana (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, APRA), Peru’s first and most significant mass
party, which had traditionally held immense political control among the trade unions of the northern
sugar plantations. El Comercio’s celebration of Velasco’s popularity is largely a statement of
satisfaction at APRA’s declining political fortunes. Yet it is also clear that the scale of the mass
meetings in Trujillo, Chiclayo and Piura at the start of the Agrarian Reform prompted interest and
enthusiasm even from a conservative newspaper like El Comercio. This position changed substantially
during the course of the Velasco government, particularly as rumours spread in 1973 of plans for the
expropriation of the newspapers.

Local and regional newspapers remained exempt from the 1974 expropriation of the national press,
and in some cases they fiercely defended their independence. However, on the issue of Agrarian
Reform, regional newspapers were forced to respond to the government’s propaganda campaigns,
either by acquiescing or by strengthening ties with local landowners. In the case of Cusco newspaper
El Sol, the editorial line remained broadly supportive of the government’s policies. Although the
newspaper’s directors were right-wing figures, for commercial reasons they saw the need to align
themselves with the government of the day, a position that was probably reinforced by the
newspaper's Lima-based holding company.31 In the northern department of Piura, by contrast, local
newspaper El Tiempo responded to the government’s propaganda by strengthening its alliance with
the large landowners. The newspaper belonged (and still belongs) to the wealthy Helguero Seminario
family. Shortly after the announcement that Piura was going to be made an Agrarian Reform Zone
(contrary to assurances given to landowners in the preceding weeks), El Tiempo published an editorial
that tacitly criticised the decision. Although it claimed to agree with ‘the promotion of social justice in
the countryside’, it cautioned that the Reform would not be a success in Piura without adequate
irrigation and other resources. Echoing the argument made in national newspaper La Prensa, the
editorial urged the government to ‘contemplate impartially and justly the situation of the current
owners, those men who throughout many years of struggle and hardship, putting up with the fury of
nature, worked the land, leaving their energies there and supporting the state, through tributes and
taxes, contributing to the wellbeing of Peru and all Peruvians.’32

30‘Trujillo presenció el mitin más grande de su historia. El Presidente Velasco fue constantemente aclamado’,
Dominical, 12 October 1969, p. 1.

31 Enrique Rosas Paravicino, personal correspondence, 1 December 2014.

32 El Tiempo, 18 October 1969, p. 6.

14
Local radio stations also opposed the government, in some cases by sabotaging the broadcasting of
government programming. In June 1969, Cusco’s El Sol reported a case of sabotage by ‘Radio
Tahuantinsuyo’, which had the largest transmission range of any station in Cusco. During an official
ceremony, radio coverage fell silent as the mayor of Cusco gave a speech and handed over the
Municipality’s financial contribution to the week’s cultural events. Both the mayor and the president of
the organising commission attributed the failure of radio transmission to sabotage by ‘Radio
Tahuantinsuyo’. Originally founded with the name ‘Radio Rural del Perú’, ‘Radio Tahuantinsuyo’ had
been established in 1948 by Raúl Montesinos Espejo, the son of Cusco landowners (Mujica Escalante
1998, 9-13). Whether or not the accusation of sabotage was correct, it is indicative of the tense
relationship between government authorities and private radio stations at the time.

In 1973 the government radio authority ENRAD Perú announced the closure of ‘Radio Tahuantinsuyo’
and took control of ‘Radio La Hora’, which was owned by the same family. While ENRAD Perú
retained control of ‘Radio La Hora’ until the end of the military regime, ‘Radio Tahuantinsuyo’ remained
closed for three months only and was allowed to reopen after successful lobbying by its owner. His
side of the story is provided in a history of the radio station entitled ‘A Life and a Direction. 50 Years of
Cusqueñismo. Radio Tahuantinsuyo and Raúl Montesinos Espejo’. In this account, Raúl Montesinos is
portrayed as an heroic figure who battled tirelessly to keep his radio station on air. It is suggested that
‘Radio Tahuantinsuyo’ became a target for SINAMOS attacks because of its popularity, particularly
among the campesino population:

In those hard testing moments, don Raúl displayed great dignity and strength of
personality, he had the firm conviction that everything that signified abuse and outrage
would not last, that the manipulation of the peasantry and the popular sectors could for the
moment permit the filling of squares and secure apparently multitudinous adhesion to the
Velasquista Revolution, but he knew deep down that this had to end; that those who
supported the regime did so for personal interest, out of political expectation and pro-
marxist ideological reasons; but the rest, the great masses, had neither real conviction in
nor commitment to the process (Mujica Escalante, 35-6).

This comment indicates the power struggle that occurred between SINAMOS and local radio owners.
What was at stake was not just the radio infrastructure and financial assets of private radio
companies, but the position of cultural and political authority that came with owning a radio station.
'Radio Tahuantinsuyo’ in particular defended its right to exert this cultural authority, seeing itself as 'the
most cusqueñista’ of Cusco's radio stations.

An important consequence of the Velasco government’s intensive use of the mass media was that it
prompted peasant organisations to produce their own press notices, flyers and circulars. As state-
supported organisations, agricultural cooperatives benefitted from both the resources needed to
produce press notices, and the increased possibility of having such notices picked up by the regional

15
or national press: in the context of the Agrarian Reform, what the cooperatives said could make
headlines. Flyers produced by cooperative members in the Santa Valley (Ancash) reveal how the
cooperatives used the rhetoric that was being deployed by the Velasco government to further their
own demands. For example, following the Agricultural Development Bank’s suspension of credit for
the Cooperativa Agraria de Producción Tambo Real on the grounds that its salary increases were
unauthorised, the cooperative’s union responded in a press notice:

What do these officials think? Are we not human beings? Or is it that the laws have been
made in order to WORK MORE AND EAT LESS. If we contract tuberculosis, would this be
the type of man that the Revolutionary process needs to build the New Peru? Or do we
really need strong, well-fed men to build, with their work, THE ECONOMIC BASE OF OUR
REVOLUTION THAT IS UNDERWAY?’33

The press notice concluded with a direct quote from a speech given by General Velasco, in which he
described the Agrarian Reform as the transfer of economic and political power ‘from the oligarchy to
the working classes.’34 This and other press notices produced by the Tambo Real cooperative were
not petitions to the Establishment of the kind received by local and regional prefects and government
ministers in the decades prior to the Agrarian Reform. Rather, they were open appeals addressed to
‘public opinion and the people in general’ that sought to highlight the discrepancy between government
rhetoric and the reality on the ground. In responding to the Velasco government’s propaganda,
peasants began to assert a stronger voice in the public sphere.

LEGACIES OF THE VELASCO GOVERNMENT’S USE OF MASS MEDIA

The Velasco government’s use of the mass media to reach rural populations set an important
precedent for the development of ‘alternative communication’ approaches. Whereas the early rural
radio stations (beginning in the 1950s) principally played folk music and relayed messages between
listeners, in the late 1970s non-governmental organisations began to establish radio stations that were
dedicated to issues of development, political participation and education. For example, the Centro
Peruano De Estudios Sociales (Peruvian Centre of Social Studies), founded in Lima in 1976,
established a daily radio programme called ‘Tierra Fecunda’ (Fertile Land) and provided support and
training for community radio stations across the country. Similarly in Piura, the non-governmental
organisation CIPCA (Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado) launched in 1983 the
radio station ‘Radio Cutivalú’. Its first broadcast aired in October 1986. Now one of the region’s most
popular stations, Radio Cutivalú was set up to provide participative radio that addressed rural issues.

‘Sindicato de Trabajadores y Campesinos de la CAP Tambo Real Ltda. 154, Comunicado de Prensa, 12
33

March 1973’, in Padrón and Pease 1974, 440. Capitalisation in original.

34 Ibid., 441.

16
In a 2007 interview the then director of Radio Cutivalú, Rodolfo Aquino, commented on how the station
had developed programmes in which citizens express themselves and question the authorities on a
given subject. It had become not only a source of information but a generator of public opinion, with
the regional newspapers picking up on items that appeared in Radio Cutivalú’s programmes.35

Of course, a number of social changes since the 1970s have contributed to the growth of participative
media, not least the greater accessibility of communications technology. The founders of Radio
Cutivalú also cite the El Niño phenomena of 1983 as a motivating factor for the creation of the radio
station: the extreme isolation imposed by widespread flooding throughout Piura gave radio
communication an immediate importance. Nevertheless, Radio Cutivalú’s emphasis on participative
communication owes a clear debt to the communications projects of the 1970s and it is no
coincidence that it was founded by CIPCA, an organisation that worked closely (if not always
harmoniously) with the Velasco government.

A similar legacy can be seen in the work of Calandria, Asociación de Comunicadores Sociales
(Association of Social Communicators), a non-governmental organisation founded in Lima in 1983.
The organisation is dedicated to promoting the use of communications media to support an active
democracy and facilitate political participation. In addition to funding research and publications in this
field, the organisation carries out practical projects in community-led communications media and
produces its own videos and radio programmes. Calandria’s founder, Rosa María Alfaro, cites her
work at the Ministry of Education during the Velasco government as a formative influence on her future
interest in communication:

I travelled through the whole country, and I could see the whole country working in popular
communication workshops. That was the first contact that caused me to realise that
popular communication was not only a problem of techniques of communication, nor even
concepts of production, but of knowing the communication logics of the sectors that had to
be attended to. It was not a problem of making a message simple, it was the problem of
seeking the culture, the ways of learning and meeting, the truths or information that the
people needed and not the other way round, when you go to impart something.36

The impact of the Velasco government’s use of the mass media is also evident in the increased public
presence of peasant leaders. Edita Herrera, a former SINAMOS employee who presented the regional
state radio programmes ‘Ondas Campesinas’ and ‘Movilización Social’ in Piura, described the
changes she noticed at the time in those campesinos who participated in radio programmes:

AMARC Perú, La experiencia de Radio Cutivalú, interview with Rodolfo Aquino, director of Radio Cutivalú,
35

October 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn8knmo1qUs

36Interview with Rosa María Alfaro by Jair Vega and Rafael Obregón, September 2002. Published online by The
Communication Initiative at: http://www.comminit.com/democracy-governance/node/67296

17
 I remember that I looked at them and their rough hands … with little mobility, from the use
of the palana (hoe). And when they started to write on the typewriters of that time, which
were manual, with their fingers: ta ta ta. And later when the time passed I saw them writing
the editorials. It was exciting for me, to be able to say … that it is possible to change …
You saw that not only physically with the use of the hands but also their intellectual
character began to develop, no? Therefore many people of that era, those campesinos,
you could talk with them and it was as if they had been to university. I remember that
Calixto Cruz, once there was a journalist here, Baella, and he interviewed him. And he
spoke to him about the international problem of cotton, about the costs, the exploitation,
everything! And he was a real authority. And [Baella] asks him: ‘And what education do you
have?’ ‘Second year of primary’.37

Beyond the government-controlled media, peasant leaders had begun producing their own
publications to disseminate the ideas shared at national meetings of the CCP and the CNA (National
Agrarian Confederation).38 César Zapata, a former member and director of the Cooperativa Abraham
Negri Ulloa in Catacaos, Piura, described his experience of attending the Fifth Congress of the CCP in
1978, where he met peasants from across the country and heard from inspiring leaders such as Hugo
Blanco and Juan Hipólito Pévez (a founding member of the CCP). On returning to Piura, Zapata
decided it was vital to share what he had learned with the local population: ‘I remember that I spent
some fifteen bad nights writing, [about] the experience and the programme, adapting it to the language
of our campesinos.’39 This effort to communicate the CCP’s discussions in written form, rather than
through public meetings or informal conversation alone, is a reflection of the great importance that was
attached to mass communication by both the Velasco government and the CCP.

The Velasco government’s emphasis on popular mobilisation prompted a reaction among autonomous
organisations that ultimately eclipsed the military’s own schemes of ‘social democracy’ (Poole and
Rénique 1992, 120). While the government’s rhetoric celebrated the idea that the mass media should
provide a democratic space for the expression of multiple opinions and interests, in practice it feared
that this project could be easily hijacked by what it called the ‘leftist extremists’. The proposed transfer
of the newspapers (from a series of interim committees to civil associations representing different
social sectors) was postponed and ultimately abandoned after President Morales Bermúdez assumed
power in 1975. In an interview with journalist César Hildebrandt in 1977, Velasco was asked why he
had not handed the newspapers over to civil associations while he had the opportunity. His response
is a telling comment on the government’s tense relations with the Left:

37Interview with Edita Herrera, Lima, 11 May 2013. Calixto Cruz was a peasant leader who provided news
reports for Herrera’s radio programmes.

38The CNA (Confederación Nacional Agraria’ was an organisation established by the Velasco government in
1974 to represent peasant interests. It became a fierce rival of the independent CCP.

39 Interview with César Zapata, Catacaos (Piura), 19 April 2013.

18
 We didn't do it simply because there had already been an enormous infiltration of reds in
the newspapers, viejo. There were communists and [those] of the extreme Left. To the
extent that to give, let's suppose, Expreso to the students was too much, it was pointless,
because it was going to fall into the hands of the communists ... The proposal was to hand
over the newspapers to the organisations, to the great masses, to the teachers, to the
students (Hildebrandt 1981, 83).

Velasco here draws a distinction between the ‘reds’ and ‘the great masses’. While the president saw
his media reforms as part of a wider process of democratisation, his government was ill prepared for
the political upheavals that such a process engendered. Following expropriation in July 1974, the
newspapers became increasingly subject to government control via the Oficina Central de Información
(Central Office of Information, OCI). In the absence of private capital the newspapers were
underfunded and dependent on advertising revenue, ironically meaning that private, capitalist interests
continued to dominate newspaper content. The same could be said for the state's interventions in TV
and radio; the innovative programmes referred to in this article represented a minority of content
throughout this period.40

CONCLUSIONS

In 1975 General Morales Bermúdez led a successful coup and announced the beginning of ‘phase
two’ of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces. His conservative regime (1975-80)
reversed many of the Velasco government’s reforms and began to withdraw state support for the
Agrarian Reform.41 However, due to pressure from the opposition movements the Morales Bermúdez
government was forced to announce plans for a return to democracy, plans that were accelerated
further following a 24-hour strike on 19 July 1977, the first national strike since 1919 (Poole and
Rénique 1992, 122). In June 1978 elections were held to decide the membership of the Constituent
Assembly, which was to write a new constitution and prepare for general elections in 1980.

The results of the 1978 Constituent Assembly elections show how the political landscape had been
transformed since the Velasco government first took power. In the 1963 general election no leftist
candidates had been elected to the Senate and the only leftist party in the House of Representatives
was the United Left, with two seats. By contrast, leftist parties gained a total of 28 seats in the
Constituent Assembly, compared with APRA’s 37 and the Popular Christian Party’s 25 — the
conservative parties Movimiento Democrático Peruano (Peruvian Democratic Movement) and Union

40 Rosas Paravicino, ‘Tentativa de socialización de los diarios de circulación nacional en el Perú’.

41The sharp shift in policy direction between the Velasco and Morales Bermúdez regimes is highlighted in María
del Pilar Tello’s in-depth interviews with former members of both governments (Del Pilar Tello 1983).

19
Nacional Odriísta (National Odriísta Union) gained just two seats each. Reading through the written
record of the Constituent Assembly’s deliberations, it is clear that there could be no easy return to the
status quo ante. For example, on the issue of extending the vote to illiterates (who had still been
excluded from the Constituent Assembly elections), APRA representative Enrique Chirinos Soto
initially attempted to indefinitely postpone the issue.42 As the Assembly debates progressed, however,
it was apparent that the issue of suffrage for illiterates could no longer be sidelined in the way it had
been in previous parliamentary debates. Representatives of the Frente Obrero Campesino Estudiantil
Popular (Popular Front of Workers, Peasants and Students, FOCEP) highlighted the demands being
made by illiterate campesinos themselves for their democratic rights. During proceedings a letter from
a peasant assembly in Chuquibambilla, Grau province (Apurímac) was read out. It stated:

We bring to your attention that today, in the main square of Chuquibambilla, capital of Grau
province, department of Apurímac, a great campesino meeting of all the communities of
our province, with a total of 30,000 campesinos, unanimously approved the following
request: “That the Constituent Assembly grant the vote to the illiterates for the present
General and Municipal Elections, as a natural right and because no Peruvian should be
marginalised from the political life of the country.” Those who oppose this clamour of the
campesino people, will be declared traitors of the Peruvian people.43

FOCEP representative Saturnino Paredes called for an immediate resolution in favour of declaring
suffrage for all adults over 18 years. This was necessary, he said, not only because peasants and
illiterates participated in production but because ‘they also carry out a series of acts that we could
consider political acts’. He referred to the numerous peasant meetings that had been organised and
the declarations they emitted, demonstrating their ‘elevated political consciousness.’44 It seems that
such arguments held the day. The relevant article of the 1979 Constitution states simply: ‘Peruvians
over 18 years of age are citizens. To exercise citizenship it is required to be inscribed in the Electoral
Register. All those citizens who are in possession of their civil capacity have the right to vote.’45 With
this apparently innocuous statement the Constitution overturned the longstanding denial of suffrage for
the largely rural illiterate population.

This article has shown how the Velasco government’s promotion of the ‘campesino voice’ created new
opportunities for peasant participation in the broadcast media and drew national attention to

‘Diario de los debates de la Asamblea Constituyente 1978, Tomo II’, p. 90. Accessed at http://
42

www4.congreso.gob.pe/dgp/constitucion/constitucion1979.htm

43‘Diario de los debates de la Asamblea Constituyente 1978, Tomo III’, p. 247, http://www4.congreso.gob.pe/
dgp/constitucion/Const79DD/AsamConst/TomoCompletoAsamblea/TomoIII.pdf

44 Ibid., p. 252.

451979 Peruvian Constitution, Title I, Chapter 7, Article 65, http://www4.congreso.gob.pe/dgp/constitucion/

Const79texto/Constitucion1979-Completo.pdf

20
campesino issues. The government’s actions also stimulated a good deal of opposition, as peasants
and left-wing groups organised to resist attempts to co-opt them and conservative newspapers
rejected the government’s political narrative. While policies such as the socialisation of the press and
state control of TV and radio did not transpire in the way the Velasco government had envisaged, they
nevertheless created a window for alternative forms of media and cultural production. The legacies of
this moment can be seen in the subsequent development of community radio stations and the
increasing (though still limited) presence of indigenous culture in the mass media. The discussions of
the Constituent Assembly cited above indicate the impact of all this ferment on national politics; it was
not contained in a distant ‘rural sphere’ but rather spilled onto the pages of the national press and the
deliberations of the Constituent Assembly, fundamentally challenging the political order that had
prevailed in the years before the Agrarian Reform.

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22