Alan Gabriel Ludwig García Pérez (born
May 23,
1949 in
Lima) is the current President of
Peru, having won the
2006 elections on
June 4,
2006 in a run-off against
Union for Peru candidate
Ollanta Humala.
[1] He is the leader of the
Peruvian Aprista Party and the only APRA party member ever to have served as
President of Peru. He served a first term as President from
1985 to
1990. His first term was marked by a severe economic crisis, social unrest and violence. He ran unsuccessfully for the Presidency in
2001, losing in a run-off to
Alejandro Toledo.
García was born in Lima into a middle-class family with close ties to the already established APRA party. His father, Carlos García Ronceros, was the secretary of APRA during the government of Manuel A. Odría, which had declared the party illegal. Given his political militancy, his father was later arrested and imprisoned, leaving him alienated from his family and not meeting his son Alan until five years later.
García studied at the Colegio Nacional José María Eguren in Barranco, a district of Lima. He went on to university studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica and later earned his law degree at the National University of San Marcos in 1971. Afterwards, he moved to Europe, attending the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, where he studied and completed his thesis on constitutional law, earning him a doctorate in political science. In 1973, he went on to the University of Paris, where he obtained a degree in sociology. García lived several years in Paris but, in 1978, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the elder leader of the APRA party (who would die one year later), urged him to return to political life in Peru, after the Bermúdez administration presided over the return to civilian government and allowed the reorganization of other political parties.
García won the elections on April 14, 1985 with 45% of the votes. Since he did not receive the 50% of the votes required to win the presidency, García had to enter a run-off against Alfonso Barrantes Lingán (former leftist mayor of Lima) of the United Left party. Barrantes, however, retired and decided not to enter the run-off, saying he did not want to prolong the political uncertainty of the country. García was thus declared president on June 1 and officially took power on July 28, 1985. For the first time in its sixty-year history, the APRA party had come to power in Peru. Aged only 36, García was dubbed "Latin America's Kennedy," becoming the region's youngest president at the time.
