This is another in the series about the Latin American republics published by the Oxford University Press under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Resembling the others in the series in both format and style, this volume tries to synthesize into 191 pages the geography, sociology, history, economics, political science, international trade, and foreign relations of Peru. Since this is impossible, the book will be useful only as an introduction to the reader who knows nothing about the country.
Like other books in the series this volume excels in statistical information of the period when it was written, mostly derived from official reports. It is weaker in its interpretation and analysis of the political forces involved in the struggle to establish a stable political system. In discussing political parties, for example (pp. 63-68), two writers are cited: F. García Calderón, whose book Le Pérou contemporain was published in Paris in 1907, and Víctor Andrés Belaúnde, whose La realidad nacional was published in a second edition in 1945. What García Calderón and Belaúnde are describing is ancient history, and the Peru of 1965 no more resembles their description than the United States of 1965 resembles the United States of the depression years before World War II. In addition, too many erroneous statements have crept in.
Another conspicuous weakness is the lack of anything substantial about the armed forces and their role in modern Peru. The index does not contain any of these words: armed forces, army, military, or militarism—this in a book about a country which has been dominated by its military throughout its colonial and republican period and where the armed forces are a sort of state within a state with their own schools, hospitals, clubs, and stores.
Peru in 1965 is living under the most democratic political system which it has enjoyed since it became a republic. It is on the verge of institutionalizing constitutional government, although in all of its history as an independent republic no freely elected president has ever completed his term and handed over his sash of office to another freely elected president. Yet why this is so cannot be discovered in the book under review.
