Lindley López, Nicolás (1908–1995)

Nicolás Lindley López, born on November 16, 1908, was one of the important Peruvian army leaders of the institutional military coup of July 18, 1962. The coup was officially justified by the allegation that the contested elections of that year had been fraudulent. None of the three main contenders in the elections, Víctor Raúl Haya De La Torre, Fernando Belaúnde, and Manuel Odría, had been able to obtain the number of votes necessary to become president. The formation of a coalition between the Aprista Party and Odría's party and the congressional designation of Haya as president prompted the anti-Aprista forces in the military to stage the coup.

Together with generals Ricardo Pérez Godoy (army) and Pedro Vargas Prada (air force) and Vice Admiral Juan Francisco Torres Matos, Lindley López formed the executive of an interim government that held new elections in 1963, which were won by Belaúnde. After the forced retirement of Pérez Godoy, Lindley López became the de facto president. The military government restored constitutional guarantees, attempted a localized agrarian reform, and confronted strikes and armed insurrections led by Hugo Blanco and Javier Heraud. The new technocratic attitude among the military was the basis for the far more consequential coup of 1968. Lindley López later served as the ambassador to Spain and resided there until his death on February 3, 1995.

See alsoPeru, Political Parties: Overview .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold Payne, The Peruvian Coup d'état of 1962: The Overthrow of Manuel Prado (1968).

Daniel Masterson, Militarism and Politics in Latin America: Peru from Sánchez Cerro to "Sendero Luminoso" (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Kuczynski, Pedro-Pablo. Peruvian Democracy under Economic Stress: An Account of the Belaúnde Administration, 1963–1968. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Philip, George D. E. The Rise and Fall of the Peruvian Military Radicals, 1968–1976. London: Athlone Press, 1978.

                                  Alfonso W. Quiroz