Alan Garcia (23 May 1949 – 17 April 2019) was President of Peru from 28 July 1985 to 28 July 1990 (succeeding Fernando Belaunde Terry and preceding Alberto Fujimori) and from 28 July 2006 to 28 July 2011 (succeeding Alejandro Toledo and preceding Ollanta Humala). A member of the left-wing APRA party, his terms saw increased social conflict, environmental decline, and violence. On 17 April 2019, he shot himself before he could be arrested for his role in the Odebrecht scandal in Brazil.
Biography[]
Garcia in 1985
Alan Garcia was born in Lima, Peru on 23 May 1949, and he studied in France as an APRA member. In 1978, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and he was known for his oratory and skillful rhetoric. From 1982 to 1985, he served as General Secretary of the APRA, and, having been seen as a young leader with a bright future for the country, he was elected President in 1985 with 45% of the vote. He was compared to John F. Kennedy, becoming the region's youngest leader at the time. His term in office was marked by bouts of hyperinflation, the replacement of the sol currency with the inti in 1985 and the nuevo sol in 1991, the increase of the poverty rate from 41.6% to 55%, Peru was isolated from the international financial markets, the Shining Path insurgency escalated as Garcia sought a military solution to increased terrorism, 1,600 forced disapperances occurred under Garcia, and Garcia's macroeconomic populism led to economic collapse. In 1992, he went into exile in Colombia and then in France after Alberto Fujimori's self-coup, returning to Peru after the fall of Fujimori's government in 2001.
Garcia returned to politics with the statement that he had learned from his mistakes as President and that he was the most experienced candidate for President, and he narrowly defeated Ollanta Humala in the 2006 presidential election. Hugo Chavez compared Garcia to Carlos Andres Perez, the corrupt former president of his own country of Venezuela, and called him a "robber" and a "bandit". Garcia won 53% of the nationwide vote, campaigning on Peruvians' fears that Humala would turn the country into Fidel Castro's Cuba. Garcia failed to reintroduce the death penalty for captured Shining Path rebels, murdered over 100 native protesters who were demonstrating against oil drilling, placed the supporters of human rights violators on the Supreme Court, and strengthened relations with Brazil and Chile.
Garcia left office again in 2011 with a 42% approval rating, and he became one of Humala's fiercest critics, leading the opposition alongside Keiko Fujimori. In 2015, he officially launched another presidential bid in alliance with the Christian People's Party, but he dropped out of the race before the runoffs, having only 6% support. In 2016 and 2017, several of his ministers were implicated in the Odebrecht scandal, and Garcia was barred from leaving the country in 2018. On the morning of 17 April 2019, he shot himself in the temple before he could be arrested on corruption charges, excusing himself to speak with his lawyer before firing; he died in the hospital after hours of being in critical condition.