Two-time Peru president Fernando Belaunde dies at 89

June 5, 2002

LIMA, Peru - He was known for his oratory and regarded as a patriarch of Latin American democracy. Bustled out of office by pistol-packing generals in 1968, he was returned to power in Peru by a massive majority in elections 12 years later.

Fernando Belaunde, the former two-time Peruvian president and a veteran of over half a century in politics, has died. He was 89.

Belaunde died Tuesday from complications from a stroke at 5:25 p.m. at a hospital in Lima, Victor Andres Garcia, Belaunde's nephew, told Radioprogramas radio. He said Belaunde had fallen into a coma a few hours earlier.

A visibly moved President Alejandro Toledo declared three days of national mourning and called Belaunde the "paradigm of democracy" in Peru. He was "an exemplary man and an enormous moral authority, a man who inspires confidence in public service," Toledo said.

Belaunde was regarded as one of the region's great orators. He had a reputation for personal honesty that made him an exception to the rule among Peruvian political leaders.

Belaunde's second wife, Violeta Correa, one of his closest collaborators, died on June 1, 2001, from lung cancer, and those close to Belaunde said her death had made him despondent.

"He has been in that mood of wanting to go quickly to accompany her," Garcia said May 24 just hours after Belaunde was rushed to a hospital emergency room after suffering a stroke.

He said that only a few days before taking ill Belaunde had visited his wife's grave and had left a bouquet of flowers with a card that said: "Wait for me."

A day before being hospitalized, Belaunde urged Peruvians not to be pessimistic about the future of their country despite its multiple problems.

"My life is approaching its end, but I see an end with happiness, with hope," he said.

First elected president in 1963, Belaunde was overthrown and exiled in 1968 by Gen. Juan Velasco, who ushered in 12 years of military rule.

During his 10 years in exile, Belaunde earned his living as a university professor, teaching at Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and George Washington universities. The experience left him with great admiration for America's democracy.

He returned to Peru to win the 1980 presidential election by a landslide, marking the restoration of democratic rule. His first act was to return Peru's newspapers, which had been seized by the leftist military government, to their owners. He had pledged not to sleep one night in the Government Palace without doing so.

On May 17, 1980, the day before Belaunde was elected, a little-known rebel group calling itself the Shining Path burned ballot boxes in a village in Ayacucho province. The attack launched a 20-year insurgency that has taken 30,000 lives.

Born Oct. 7, 1912, Belaunde spent his early years in Paris and the United States when his father was sent into political exile in 1924. He went on to study architecture at the University of Miami and the University of Texas, from which he graduated in 1935.

He helped to found the National Democratic Front in 1943 and in 1956 started the centrist Popular Action party, which he led until his death.

Belaunde was a fierce defender of his beliefs, to the point of fighting a saber duel in 1957 with a political rival who had insulted him. The two nicked each other slightly, drawing blood, before referees called the duel over.

He served in the Chamber of Deputies for one term from 1945 to 1948 and ran unsuccessfully for president twice. President Manuel Prado, his political foe, confined him in 1959 to an island prison, from which he tried to escape by swimming.

Belaunde was succeeded as president by Alan Garcia in 1985, the first time in over 40 years that one democratically elected president handed power to another.

More than any other Peruvian leader before him, Belaunde traveled the length and breadth of Peru's desert coastline, Andean highlands and Amazon jungles.

His travels, Belaunde said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press, "taught me much about the country. Naturally I traveled by modern means but also by ancient means. We crossed the Andes by horseback nine times and once the jungle by foot."

Belaunde was a professor of architecture at Lima's National University of Engineering. During his two administrations, he built important highways and major hydroelectric dams and brought electricity to thousands of towns. He also constructed numerous housing projects in Lima and other cities.

Belaunde wrote several books, among them "The Conquest of Peru by Peruvians," which laid out his vision of the country and how it should be developed.

He condemned then-President Alberto Fujimori 1992 "self-coup," in which he suspended the constitution and dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court with military backing. He remained one of Fujimori's harshest critics in following years.

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