CENTURIES OF XX AND XXI

The early part of the twentieth century was marked by a drawn-out civilian dictatorship headed by President Augusto B. Leguia. The project to modernize the country, creating works for a New Fatherland left the State heavily in debt and unable to deal with the 1929 crash.

After the fall of Leguia, military regimes once again rose to the forefront, despite apparently having run their course with the presidencies of Prado in 1939 and Bustamante y Rivero in 1945; but in 1948, Manuel A. Odria formed a new military government. Over the next eight years, major public works were built amidst severe political repression.

In 1968, the armed forces staged a coup d'etat and overthrew then-President Fernando Belaunde. The first few years of the military regime stood out from other dictatorships in Latin America in that Peru's military had socialist sympathies. Belaunde was re-elected in 1980, but the deep-lying poverty spurred the birth of two insurgencies, which unleashed a wave of violence for over a decade. After the government of Alan Garcia (1985-1990), Alberto Fujimori was elected president in 1990, but shut down Congress in 1992 and decreed an emergency government. He was re-elected in 1995 and 2000, but public discontent forced him to call fresh elections for 2001. Valentin Paniagua was then chosen to head a caretaker government. In July 2001, Dr. Alejandro Toledo Manrique took office as the Constitutional President of the Republic of Peru. The current constitutional president of Peru is Alan Garcia Pérez (2006-2011).