An internal debate began within the Christian Democratic Party with regard to what its policy should be in the ’56 election. The wing consisting of supporters of Bustamante, the most conservative one, proposed supporting Lavalle, whereas many others, above all among the young members, favored Belaunde Terry. When the subject was discussed in the departmental committee, I let it be known that I was working with Dr. Lavalle, but that if the party agreed to support Belaunde I would respect its decision and resign. At first, the idea of supporting Lavalle prevailed.
As the period for the registration of candidates for the presidential election was about to close, the rumor circulated all through Lima that the national board of elections would refuse to register Belaunde, on the pretext that he did not have the number of signatures required. Belaunde immediately called for a street demonstration, on June 1, 1956, which — a tactic that, in a manner of speaking, was to transform his small and enthusiastic candidacy into a great movement destined to give birth eventually to Popular Action — he wanted to lead to the very gates of the Presidential Palace. On the Jirón de la Unión he and the few thousand people who followed him (among them was Javier Silva, who never failed to show up at every demonstration) were stopped by the police with high-pressure water hoses and tear gas. Belaunde faced the police charge waving the Peruvian flag on high, a gesture that would make him famous.
That same night, with elegant circumspection, Dr. Hernando de Lavalle sent word to General Odría that if the national board of elections did not register Belaunde, he would give up his own candidacy and denounce the electoral process. “This idiot doesn’t deserve to be president of Peru,” it is said that Odría sighed when he received the message. The dictator and his advisers thought that Lavalle, with his idea of a grand coalition, in which there was room even for Odría’s party — the name of which at the time was the Partido Restaurador (the Restoration Party) — was the one who would be their best rear guard if the future Congress was bent on investigating the crimes committed during the dictatorship. That gesture showed them that the timid conservative aristocrat was not the right person for that task. The fate of Hernando de Lavalle was sealed.
Odría ordered the national board of elections to allow the registration of Belaunde, who, in a large rally in the Plaza San Martín, thanked the “people of Lima” for entering his name on the list of candidates. After the famous incident of the flag and the police attack with water hoses, it began to appear that he could run for office on an equal footing with Prado and Lavalle, who, because of the costly publicity and the infrastructure on which they were counting, appeared to be the candidates with the greatest chances of winning.
Manuel Prado, meanwhile, negotiated behind the scenes to rally support for the APRA, to which he offered immediate legalization without going through the procedure of changing the status of political parties that Lavalle was proposing. Whether this was the decisive factor, or whether there were additional promises or gifts on Prado’s part, as was rumored, was never proved one way or the other. The fact is that agreement was arrived at, a few days before the elections. The orders given by the Aprista party to its militants that, instead of voting for Lavalle, they were to vote for the ex-president who had outlawed them, jailed and persecuted them, were obeyed, in another demonstration of the APRA’s iron discipline, and the votes of the Apristas won Manuel Prado the election.
In the end, Lavalle had been defeated by his public acceptance of the support of the Restoration Party, and by his statement, in the ceremony whereby the latter, through David Aguilar Cornejo, gave him its backing, that “he would continue the patriotic labors of General Odría.” The Christian Democratic Party immediately withdrew its support from him and allowed its members to vote as they pleased. And many independents who would have voted for him, won over by his image as a capable and decent man, felt put off by a declaration implying that he sanctioned the dictatorship. Like the majority of Christian Democrats, I voted for Belaunde, who, although he ended up in third place, won an important percentage of the vote, and the necessary support to found Popular Action some months later.
When I lost my job with Dr. Lavalle, my income was reduced, but not for very long, since, almost immediately, I found two other jobs, one real and the other theoretical. The real job was the one on the magazine Extra, whose owner, Don Jorge Checa, the ex-prefect of Piura, had known me since I was a little boy. He took me on when the magazine was already on the verge of bankruptcy. At the end of each month, those of us on the editorial staff lived through moments of anxiety, because only the ones who arrived first at the head office received their pay; the others received vouchers for payment sometime in the future. Every week while I was there I wrote film reviews and articles on cultural subjects. Sometimes I too was left without a paycheck. But I didn’t carry off Extra’s typewriters and even its office furniture, the way several of my colleagues did, because of my liking for Jorge Checa. I don’t know how much money the prodigal Don Jorge lost in this publishing venture; but he lost it with the nonchalance of a great lord and a Maecenas, without complaining and without getting rid of the horde of journalists he kept on the payroll, a number of whom stole him blind in the most cynical way. He apparently realized what was going on but it didn’t matter to him as long as he was having fun. And it was true that he was having a great time. He used to take the journalists from Extra to the house of his mistress, a good-looking woman whom he had set up in a house along Magdalena Vieja, where he organized lunches that ended up as orgies. The first jealous scene Julia ever made with me, after we’d been married a year and a half, must have been after one of those lunches, in what by now were the final weeks of existence of Extra, when I came back home in a rather unseemly state and with red stains on my handkerchief. The fight we had was a tooth-and-nail one and didn’t leave me with much enthusiasm for going back to Don Jorge’s hectic lunches. There wasn’t much chance of that, moreover, because a few weeks later the editor-in-chief of the magazine, the intelligent and refined Pedro Álvarez del Villar, skipped the country with Don Jorge’s mistress, and the staff of the weekly who hadn’t been paid their salaries carried off the last remaining pieces of furniture and typewriters, so that Extra died of consumption. (I will always remember Don Jorge Checa, when he was prefect of Piura and I a senior at San Miguel, ordering me, one night at the Grau club: “Marito, you who are halfway toward being an intellectual, go up onstage and introduce The Andalusian gypsies from Spain to the audience.” Don Jorge’s idea of an intellectual was based, doubtless, on the intellectuals whom he had happened to meet and hire.)
Porras Barrenechea was elected senator representing Lima on the list presented by friends of the APRA, and in the first election held by Congress was chosen first vice president of the Senate. In that capacity he had a right to have two hired assistants, posts to which he appointed Carlos Araníbar and me. The job was a theoretical one, because, as Porras’s aides, we went on working with him at his home, doing historical research, and dropped by Congress only at the end of each month to collect our modest salaries. After six months had gone by, Porras informed Carlos Araníbar and me that our posts had been done away with. That half year was my first and last experience as a civil servant.