Sanchez, Luis Alberto

▪ 1995

      Peruvian politician and author (b. Oct. 12, 1900, Lima, Peru—d. Feb. 6, 1994, Lima), was a prolific man of letters who wrote more than 70 volumes of history, biography, literary criticism, philosophy, fiction, poetry, and autobiography and was politically prominent as a longtime member of the centre-left American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), which was founded by Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre to combat imperialism in Latin America. Sánchez, an APRA loyalist, founded the party's newspaper, Tribuna, in 1931, the same year he was elected to Congress. The following year, however, he was imprisoned briefly by the military government of Luis Sánchez Cerro, and for the next 25 years he endured persecution and exile at the hands of successive military governments as a result of his APRA affiliation. Sánchez was elected to the Senate in 1963, 1980, and 1985, and he served as the chairman of the 1978-79 Constituent Assembly that drafted a new Peruvian constitution. When Alan García became the country's first APRA president in 1985, Sánchez was given the post of vice president, and he served briefly as prime minister in 1989, the year before García's term in office expired. Sánchez also served (1946-61) as rector of the National University of San Marcos, his alma mater.

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