Visuality, Myth, and Anti-Imperialism: the Iconic Construction of the Clandestine Apra (1924–1940) #1011832

This excerpt is part of the volume Visual Narratives, Aesthetics and Decoloniality: Imagery and the Construction of the ‘Other’. Vol. 1 – Decolonial Aesthetics, Ontologies and Epistemologies, edited by Tomás Cajueiro and Estevão Bosco, published by Ventura Edizioni.

The anti-imperialist stance of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) began to take shape toward the end of the first decade of the twentieth century and reached decisive expression with the symbolic founding of APRA in 1924 by persecuted Peruvian students and activists, who conceived the anti-imperialist struggle as both a political and spiritual project. In the early 1920s, from Moscow, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre openly declared his admiration for the Russian Revolution, which he regarded as a firm and enduring event (Balbi, 1980). Nevertheless, he denounced the absence of a systematic critique of U.S. imperialism in the Latin American press and called for the creation of a Frente Único de Trabajadores—manual laborers, intellectuals, and youth—to confront imperial power and the dominant classes. His proposal was directed toward continental unity and the control of the economy by the producing classes as a condition for the emancipation of Latin American peoples.