The Young Haya de la Torre and the Transnational Origins of Aprismo, 1918–28

As a young student leader, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre underwent a formidable political education in a transnational setting.   From his native country Peru where he was active as a student leader, he travelled to Argentina where he met leaders of the University Reform Movement, to Mexico in 1924 where he worked for José Vasconcelos at a time of reforms following the Mexican Revolution.   That same year he visited post-revolutionary Russia.  He then lived in England during the decade when the Labor Party first came to power.   These experiences, in addition to his readings on the Chinese Kuomintang, helped to shape his invention of a new political ideology, aprismo: a nationalist anti-imperialist Latin American response to the challenges of modernity.   This paper analyzes the transnational influences and context that explain Aprismo as a response to the overtures of  Communist International in Latin America.   It explains Aprismo as a political ideology that attempted to establish the foundations for a pan-Latin American political movement that hoped to export the Mexican Revolution to other parts of Latin America and thus present a home-grown leftist alternative to Soviet communism.