Haya de la Torre, Víctor Raúl (1895–1979)

Peruvian politician, political thinker, and founder of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA; Aprista Party) in 1924. The voice of radical nationalistic dissent in Peru, APRA advocates that indigenous peoples should have an equal voice in the political and educational affairs of their countries. In 1963 he made an unsuccessful bid for the Peruvian presidency. He is the author of Adónde va Indoamérico/The Future of Indoamerica (1935).

Haya de la Torre was educated in Lima, Peru, and at Oxford University in England. He was imprisoned in 1931 after standing against Colonel Luis Sánchez Cerro, the Aprista Party being outlawed 1931–34 and 1935–45, but was released on Cerro's assassination in 1933 and went into hiding 1934–45. In 1945 the Aprista Party supported the successful candidate, José Luis Bustamante; control of the government, however, lay in Haya's hands. On Bustamante's overthrow in 1948, Haya sought refuge in the Colombian embassy in Lima and later left for Mexico in 1954. He returned to Peru when constitutional government was restored in 1957 and fought a bitter election campaign in 1962, which, after army intervention, he lost to Fernando Belaúnde Terry. Haya was instrumental in drafting the consitution of 1979, restoring parliamentary democracy, but died before the Aprista Party finally gained power in 1985 under Perez Alan García.