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The Middle American Exile of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Richard V. Salisbury
Richard V. Salisbury*
Affiliation:
Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky
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Extract

On August 23, 1931, the galleries of Lima's bull ring, the Plaza de Acho, rang with deafening applause. The object of this public tribute was Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, a young provincial politician who had just finished exhorting his fellow countrymen to join him in a movement for the regeneration of Peru. This day truly belonged to Haya, for it symbolized his return to the lists of Peruvian politics and the resumption of an active national political career that would be stilled only by death almost half a century later. This moment of triumph in the Plaza de Acho must have been especially sweet, for a little over eight years before, on May 23, 1923, Haya, as a young student leader, had organized a protest against the government of President Augusto B. Leguía. Military forces, however, dispersed the demonstrators killing several and wounding many in the process. Haya's reward for this manifestation of anti-establishment behavior was arrest, imprisonment, and ultimately, in October of 1923, deportation. Thus Haya's triumph of 1931 served, at least in part, as a vindication for the events of 1923 and the subsequent years of exile.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , July 1983 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1983

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References

1 Klaren, Peter F., Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo: Origins of the Peruvian Aprista Party, 1870–1932 (Austin, 1973), p. 11;Google Scholar Beals, Carleton, “Aprismo: The Rise of Haya de la Torre,” Foreign Affairs 13 (1935): 238–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Klaren, , Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo, p. 102.Google Scholar

3 According to Klaren, Haya, soon after going into exile, faded into the background insofar as Peruvian politics were concerned. It was José Carlos Mariátegui who would almost immediately fill the leadership vacuum in the Peruvian reform movement. For this information, see ibid., p. 106.

4 Haya himself wrote virtually nothing of an autobiographical nature; thus, one must turn to other sources for an account of his Middle American exile years. This exile receives only passing treatment in such standard sources as Klaren and in Kantor, Harry, The Ideology and Program of the Peruvian Aprista Movement (Berkeley, 1953).Google Scholar Sánchez, Luís Alberto, Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre o el político (Santiago, 1934)Google Scholar and Haya de la Torre y el Apra (Santiago, 1954), on the other hand, provides a much more extensive treatment of Haya's Mexican and Central American activities. As Klaren correctly indicates, however, the Sánchez accounts must be used with care given the author's close relationship with both Haya and the Aprista movement.

5 Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, p. 136.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 138.

7 De la Torre, Haya, Por la emancipación de América Latina, pp. 31–34.Google Scholar

8 Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, pp. 139, 144.Google Scholar

9 Vasconcelos, José, Obras completas (Mexico, 1957), p. 1325.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 1460.

11 Beals, , “Aprismo: The Rise of Haya de la Torre,” p. 237;Google Scholar Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, p. 146.Google Scholar

12 De la Torre, Haya, Por la emancipación de America Latina, pp. 57–58.Google Scholar

13 Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, p. 148.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 149.

15 De la Torre, Haya, El antiimperialismo y el apra (Santiago, 1936), pp. 15, 3;Google Scholar Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, pp. 150–151.Google Scholar The five basic points of APRA were: 1) action against Yankee imperialism, 2) political unity of Latin America, 3) nationalization of lands and industry, 4) internationalization of the Panama Canal, 5) solidarity of all oppressed peoples and classes of the world.

16 Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, p. 158.Google Scholar

17 For a comprehensive statement of Haya’s anti-imperialistic thought, see his El antiimperialismo y el apra.

18 For the text of Haya’s address, see Por la emancipación de America Latina, pp. 107–115.

19 Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, p. 180.Google Scholar

20 For information on Haya’s role at the Brussels Conference, see Del Pomar, Felipe Cossío, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (Mexico, 1961), pp. 291–293;Google Scholar Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, pp. 186–190;Google Scholar De la Torre, Haya, El antiimperialismo y el apra, pp. 17, 15–19;Google Scholar Ravines, Eudocio, The Yenan Way (New York, 1951), pp. 21–24;Google Scholar James C. Dunn, Brussels, to the Secretary of State, March 3, 1927, United States State Department Papers, National Archives, Record Group 59, Decimal File Number 800.00B Anti-Imperialist League/ 2 (hereafter State Department papers will be cited by decimal file number). Dunn, the American chargé in Brussels, sent the State Department a considerable amount of the official documentation of the conference. Perusal of this information reveals, however, that the conference concentrated almost exclusively on the problems of imperialism in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Latin America enjoyed a secondary role at best. Perhaps the only significant activity at the conference that related to the Western Hemisphere was the polemic between Haya and Julio Antonio Mella, the Cuban Communist, which involved the relationship of APRA to the International Communist movement.

21 Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, pp. 198–199.Google Scholar

22 De la Torre, Haya, ¿A donde va Indoamérica? (2nd Edition, Santiago, 1935), p. 7;Google Scholar El antiimperialismo y el apra, p. xvii.

23 Klaren, , Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo, pp. 117–118;Google Scholar Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, pp. 205–206, 233–236.Google Scholar

24 Sánchez, , Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre o el político, p. 152.Google Scholar Neill Macaulay, citing Marine Corps documentation, has Haya “agitating among the proletariat” of León, Nicaragua, in early 1928. All other sources, however, place Haya in northern Mexico at this time. See Macaulay, , The Sandino Affair (Chicago, 1967), p. 105.Google Scholar

25 Stanley Hawks, Guatemala City, to the Secretary of State, August 25,1928,314.2324 Haya de la Torre/1.

26 For press accounts of Haya’s activities in Guatemala City, see El Diario de Guatemala. July 20 and 28, 1928.

27 Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, p. 220.Google Scholar

28 Hawks to the Secretary of State, August 25, 1928, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/1.

29 de la Torre, Haya, ¿A donde va Indoamérica?, (3rd Edition, Santiago, 1936) p. 280;Google Scholar El Repertorio Americano, October 6, 1928.

30 See, for example, file 314.2324 Haya da le Torre/1–11.

31 Carlos Puig Causaurac, Guatemala City, to the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, August 31, 1928, Diplomatic Correspondence, Mexican Foreign Ministry Archive, Decimal File Number B/510 (728.1–0) “928”/1.

32 Hawks to the Secretary of State, September 25, 1928, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/ 2; Sánchez, Haya y el apra, p. 221.

33 Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, p. 219.Google Scholar

34 Ibid, pp. 222–223.

35 Samuel Dickson, San Salvador, to the Secretary of State, September 5, 1928, 816.00/731.

36 For information on the purported plot against Haya and his subsequent asylum in the Mexican legation, see de la Torre, Haya, ¿A donde va Indoamérica?, pp. 78–80;Google Scholar Sánchez, , Haya y el apra, pp. 222–223;Google Scholar El Repertorio Americano, October 6, 1928; Dickson to the Secretary of State, September 5, 816.00/731; September 10, 816.00/732; and September 12, 1928, 816.00/734.

37 Any pians that Haya might have had for visiting Nicaragua were, of course, compromised as a result of his experiences in El Salvador. In any event, the Nicaraguan authorities refused to allow Haya to disembark from his Costa Rica bound ship when it made a call at the Nicaraguan port of Corinto. For this information, see Sánchez, , Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre o el político, p. 156.Google Scholar

38 Other notable emigres who have, over the years, enjoyed Costa Rican hospitality include Rómulo Betancourt, Juan Bosch, and Huber Matos.

39 R. M. de Lambert, San José, to the Secretary of State, October 11, 1928, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/5.

40 Roy T. Davis, San José, to the Secretary of State, November 1, 1928, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/ 5. In this despatch Davis emphasized that he had made no representations whatsoever to the Costa Rican government regarding the activities of Haya.

41 Ibid.

42 R. M. de Lambert to the Secretary of State, October 2, 1928, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/3.

43 Davis to the Secretary of State, November 1, 1928, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/5.

44 For an assessment of the Mexican-Central American relationship during this period, see Salisbury, Richard V., “The Other Colossus: An Isthmian View of Mexico,” Proceedings from S. U.L.A. (Slate University Latin Americanists) Latin American Studies Conference, April5–7,1973 (Buffalo, New York, 1973), pp. 279–292.Google Scholar

45 Davis to the Secretary of State, November 1, 1928,314.2324 Haya de la Torre/5. The author, in a recent research trip to Mexico, was unable to find documentation in the Mexican Foreign Ministry Archives which might have shed some light on Haya’s “Mexican related” activities in El Salvador and Costa Rica. The author reviewed the folders holding correspondence exchanged between the Mexican ministers in El Salvador and Costa Rica and the Mexican Foreign Ministry. These folders, however, did not contain any correspondence for the months (September-December 1928) that Haya spent in those two countries. A search by archival personnel failed to turn up the missing documents. One might reasonably conclude therefore that such correspondence is classified. Archival staff, however, insisted that this was not the case, and, in any event, assured me that if documents were indeed classified they would so inform me. These archivists suggested that the documents might still be in the “unsorted” category. Whatever the case may be, the one fact that is obvious is that diplomatic correspondence which might link Haya with the Mexican government is not available for scholarly perusal at the present time.

46 The author would accordingly take issue with Peter Klaren’s statement that United States government officials had Haya “under diplomatic surveillance since 1923 as a suspected Communist and avowed anti-American.” For this statement, see Klaren, , Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo, p. 117.Google Scholar If sustained surveillance of Haya had indeed been in effect since 1923, there is no indication of such in the records of the Department of State that the author reviewed. The reaction of the Department to the Davis despatch of November 1, 1928, suggests rather strongly that such surveillance began in late 1928 and not before. The first document in the 314.2324 Haya de la Torre file is dated August 25, 1928; the first document in the 810.43 APRA file is dated September 5,1928.

47 Memorandum from Walter Thurston to Stokley Morgan, November 14, 1928, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/8.

48 Sánchez, , Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre o el político, p. 159.Google Scholar Sánchez speculates that someone in Peru betrayed the “Plan de México” to the Leguía regime and that the Peruvian government then asked the United States government to prevent Haya from carrying out his revolutionary plans. The author, however, has seen no evidence that would indicate that either the United States or any Latin American government was aware of the existence of the “Plan de México” at this particular time.

49 For information from a North American perspective on Haya’s difficulties in Panama, see H. F. Arthur Schoenfeld, Mexico City, to the Secretary of State, December 19, 1928, 810.43 APRA/5; J. G. South, Panama, to the Secretary of State, December 20, 1928, 810.43 APRA/6; Davis to the Secretary of State, December 13, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/10 and December 28, 1928, 314.2324 Haya de la Torre/11. Haya’s version of the Panamanian incident can be found in an “open letter” that he directed to the president of Panama. The letter was written on January 29, 1929, in Berlin and appeared in many Latin American newspapers.

50 Haya did not possess a visa for entry into Germany; therefore, it was entirely possible that he could have been placed back aboard the Phonecia and sent back to the Canal Zone with the same scenario being repeated ad infinitum. Such, however, was not the case, for the German government finally granted Haya a visa and allowed him to remain in Germany.

51 Francis White to Diplomatic and Consular Officers in Latin America and Mexico, December 17, 1928, 810.43 APRA/3.

52 According to Klaren, “It is a measure of Haya’s publicity genius that the movement got as much attention a it did during his years in exile.” For this statement, see Klaren, , Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo, p. 110.Google Scholar

53 de la Torre, Haya, Por la emancipación de América Latina, p. 24.Google Scholar

54 de la Torre, Haya, ¿A donde va Indoamérica?, p. 74.Google Scholar

55 For a sampling of the Latin American newspapers which printed news, letters, and editorials relating to Haya, see El Diario de Costa Rica, La Tribuna (Costa Rica), El Universal of Mexico City, El Tiempo of Bogotá, La Nación of Santiago, Chile, El Diario del Plata of Montevideo, El Diario de Cuba, La Prensa and La Nación of Buenos Aires. Representative journals which featured information relating to Haya include El Repertorio Americano of San José, Costa Rica, Amuata of Lima, and Renovación of Buenos Aires.