Exporting Perunismo

Peru's year-old military regime affects a staunchly nationalist leftist stance in a part of the world where juntas have usually been right -- at least ideologically.

"Perunismo," as the phenomenon has come to be known, is evidently ex portable. The soldiers who seized power in neighboring Bolivia last week quickly promised land reform, recognition of "socialist countries" and a left-wing policy. Said General Alfredo Ovando Candia, 51, the junta strongman and new President: "It is our wish to establish a sort of confederation with the Peruvian military regime."

The bloodless takeover itself was un remarkable in a country which, during its 144-year history, has had 185 changes of government, mostly by coups. The ousted civilian President, Lawyer Luis Adolfo Siles Salinas, was serving' as Vice President last April when President Rene Barrientos, the flamboyant ex-air chief, was killed in a helicopter crash. Ovando, the army chief and Barrientos' partner in the 1964 coup against Victor Paz Estenssoro, was in the U.S. at the time. Except for that fact, he almost certainly would have seized power then.

Really Revolutionary. Instead, Ovando bided his time, counting on winning the presidency legitimately in next year's elections. But things soon began to sour. The mayor of La Paz, another general, entered the presidential race. Radicals in the legislature opened fire on Ovando, charging that he had accepted $600,000 from the U.S.-owned Bolivian Gulf

Oil Co. for his campaign kitty. Finally, the self-effacing general feared that if he did not stage a preventive coup, a cabal of young officers would beat him to it.

Ovando's first acts were the sort designed to pacify his juniors. He named a "really revolutionary" civilian-military Cabinet whose oldest member is 44. He scrapped the code under which Gulf operates in Bolivia as "prejudicial," emulating Peru's recent takeover of the International Petroleum Co., a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey. Gulf, which now pays Bolivia 30% of its profits and 11 % of the oil it pumps, may be pressured to hand over part ownership of the subsidiary.

What about those elections scheduled for next May? "This is a revolutionary government," Ovando shrugged at a press conference, "and we cannot yet speak about elections." Whatever its politics, Bolivia has become the ninth Latin American country to come under military rule, thus joining a growing club whose members now control more than half of Latin America's 260 million people.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.