ABSTRACT
The history of man is the history of the continuous replacement of elites. The military coup of 1968, the country was run by and for a small minority—the landed aristocracy, business leaders, and the highest figures of the army and the church—and the Indian half of the population was steeped in ignorance and misery. The army, in effect, is and always has been a party–in–arms and thus the "majority" party. "In all, military regimes since 1933 have a far better record than so-called democratic governments in instituting social-welfare legislation." The American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) violence and tendencies to violence were so marked that even gradualists and moderate reformers were eventually frightened into supporting the status quo in preference to the bloody specter of APRA rule. The army that controls, initiates, and executes, and it appears that "a great majority" of Peruvians "feel left out of the revolution."
