Peru and the United States, 1960–1975: How Their Ambassadors Managed Foreign Relations in a Turbulent Era (review)

Based on extensive review of Peruvian and U.S. diplomatic correspondence, contemporary press coverage, personal interviews with former ambassadors and policymakers, and secondary sources, this volume is a treasure chest of information for diplomatic historians and students of U.S. bilateral relations with Peru. Although a principal focus is on the role played by Peruvian ambassadors in Washington, D.C. and American ambassadors in Lima, the book goes well beyond what is suggested by the subtitle. Walter offers new insights on domestic politics in both countries, the complexity of foreign policy-making in the United States, and the workings of Peru's civilian and military governments from 1960 until the ouster of General Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1975. The story he tells is nuanced and novel. Included in the narrative are U.S. and Peruvian presidents, cabinet members, legislators, foreign policy bureaucrats, and military officers. Walter's story also reveals the major issues in the bilateral agenda and, on balance, the failure of U.S. ambassadors in Lima to overcome Washington's inability to distinguish between nationalism and the "threat of communism" in the post-Cuban Revolution era.

In those years, U.S. policy toward Peru was dominated by efforts to defend private investment threatened with expropriation or inadequate compensation: the International Petroleum Company (IPC), W. R. Grace, International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), and the Cerro de Pasco mining interests, among others. Other major issues were Peru's efforts (along with those of Ecuador and Chile) to impose a 200-mile territorial maritime limit (before adoption of the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea), seizure and fines of American tuna boats fishing without a license, concern for the influence of Cuba and the Soviet Union in the hemisphere, the alleged activities of the CIA in Peru, and Peru's championing of the lifting of sanctions against Cuba within the Organization of American States.

Both the Johnson and Nixon administrations applied a variety of "non-overt economic measures" (p. 225) in efforts to persuade the Peruvians to adopt policies preferred by U.S. business interests. Such quiet coercion included reducing the Peruvian sugar quota, slowing or withholding economic assistance, blocking loans from the World Bank and other sources of credit, and threatening to apply the Hickenlooper or Pelly amendments to pressure Peru for adequate compensation for properties expropriated or for seizing and fining fishermen without licenses. It is interesting to note that these measures were soft versions of the invisible blockade imposed against the Allende government in Chile from 1970 to 1973. Some of the policies undermined the government of Fernando Belaúnde Terry (1963–1968): "[Ambassador John Wesley] Jones had been unable to convince Washington to lift restrictions on its assistance to that reformist and democratic regime or to foresee accurately or forestall the military coup that overthrew him." Walter concludes that "Jones seemed another victim of a U.S. policy that frequently seemed to put the interests of the IPC [International Petroleum Company] above those of an overall good relationship with Peru" (p. 192). In the years after Belaúnde's ouster, continuation of some of these policies both angered and frustrated the leaders of the first military government (1968–1975). Meanwhile, Peruvian and U.S. ambassadors in Washington and Lima sought to mediate the recurrent conflicts and misunderstandings while keeping their governments informed regarding domestic politics in Washington and Lima.

Walter's treatment of the ambassadors and bilateral diplomatic relations relies on extracts from diplomatic correspondence, framed by selective accounts from the Peruvian and American press, for each period covered. Gaps in the correspondence or other recently declassified documents are clearly noted, and Walter sometimes speculates on what might have happened had the information been known. Thus, on Peruvian ambassador Berckemeyer's communications with foreign minister General Edgardo Mercado Jarrín in 1970...