This essay situates the Peruvian Constituent Assembly of 1978–1979 as a key but unexplored battleground for a variety of constitutionalisms in the region, set against the global backdrop of the Cold War. By comparing the distinct pathways of constitution-making pursued in Latin American transitions of the 1970s, it argues that the Peruvian deliberation was pioneering in articulating constitutional projects in tension aimed at designing a democratic institutional order. The case invites renewed attention to the Latin American constitution-making processes when liberal democracy was a contested model.
Global 1970’s trends
The 1970s were adverse to liberal democracy. The collapse of authoritarian regimes did not necessarily entail a transition toward democracy. As Slater observes, each authoritarian wave during the postwar period, whether of the left or the right, followed its own rhythm (Slater 2025, 118). Each went through distinct phases of rise, consolidation, and eventual decline. Through this lens, Peru’s transition and the 1978–1979 Constituent Assembly belong to a global context where constitutional change often went beyond liberal templates. Within the region, the Iberian democratic transitions coincided with three countervailing trends: constitutional entrenchment by military regimes, a global resurgence of revolutionary movements, and an ambivalent embrace of electoral democracy by the Latin American left.
First, with the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the next two decades marked a period of expanding right-wing military coups across Latin America. The first took place in Argentina in 1962, followed by two more radical coups in 1966 under Onganía and in 1976 under Videla. Although the 1957 Constitution was not replaced, the military government of Lanusse amended it in 1972. The second major case was Brazil, where the 1964 coup established South America’s longest-lasting civil–military dictatorship, which endured until 1985. The regime enacted a new Constitution in 1967, which was later replaced by a comprehensive amendment in 1969. The third and most brutal juncture came with the Chilean military coup led by Augusto Pinochet in 1973. In this case, the constitutional project to consolidate the regime was present from the very beginning of the dictatorship and was finally enacted in 1980.
By 1975, all Latin American countries were under authoritarian rule, with two qualitatively distinct types of exceptions. On one hand, not all military regimes were right-wing oriented. Peru and Ecuador were the main exceptions. In Peru, the 1968 coup established the self-proclaimed Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces (Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas, GRFA), which remained in power for twelve years.[1] Ecuador also experienced an anti-communist but self-proclaimed revolutionary and nationalist military dictatorship between 1972 and 1975, similar to the Peruvian experience. The case of Bolivia was different, as its left-wing military government lasted only ten months (1970–1971) before being overthrown by Hugo Banzer’s right-wing coup (1971–1978). On the other hand, besides the authoritarian wave, democratic regimes also proved to be an exception, prevailing in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela.
The second development in tension was the extension of the influence of global revolutionary movements in Africa and Asia (Slater 2025, 118). The influence of the Portuguese transition is relativized when analyzed alongside the decolonization of its “overseas provinces” in Africa. The fall of Portugal’s fifty-year fascist dictatorship in 1974 began a democratic transition that included the election of a Constituent Assembly and the enactment of the 1976 Constitution. At the same time, decolonization in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau produced left-wing authoritarian regimes aligned with the Soviet bloc by 1975. In Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, independence came together with new constitutions that institutionalized socialist projects. A parallel dynamic unfolded in Southeast Asia by 1975 after the collapse of the pro-Western bloc in Indochina, and communist governments took power in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The revival of the revolutionary movement worldwide was also solidified through constitutions.
The third development competing during the collapse of an authoritarian regime was the struggle of the Latin American left-wing between democracy and revolution. On one hand, the experience of the right-wing military coup against the Popular Unity Party of Salvador Allende in Chile affected democratic prospectives for the left wing agenda in the region. The first socialist party that came into power through democratic elections was bombed by the military in 1973, while Washington’s pragmatic alliance with dictatorships —exemplified by Operation Condor—became the strategic expression of hemispheric anticommunism, even as the revolutionary path remained open with the Sandinista Revolution in 1979.
Additionally, older left-wing authoritarian regimes promoted a constitutional consolidation of their projects during the same period. For example, Cuba enacted the constitution of the revolution in 1976, and the Soviet Union followed with the promulgation of its fourth and final constitution in 1977.
In conclusion, constitutions were a tool not only to consolidate a democratic transition–– like in Portugal or Spain–– but to institutionalize left-wing and right-wing authoritarian projects. In this contested landscape, Peru’s constitution-making process stands out as a venue where competing projects sought legitimacy through elections and open deliberation. In the midst of an authoritarian crisis, the future remained open and undefined.
Peru is key
Peru offers the region’s first instance of constitution-making led by a directly elected constituent assembly during the Third Wave of democratization. This section highlights the political pluralism of the Peruvian design process, the Assembly’s autonomy from military authorities, and the underexplored diversity of constitutional visions articulated by the principal actors. It also presents a brief overview of South American transitions in the 1970s to show how Peru’s constitution-making moved against prevailing regional currents. In this sense, Peru illustrates how democratic constitution-making advanced within a Cold War setting in which regime alternatives were openly contested.
By the end of December 1976, during the second phase Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces,[2] General Morales Bermúdez announced the government’s intention to transfer political power to civilians within three to four years (El Comercio 1977)[3], in the context of a political and economic crisis. From February 1977, with the publication of the draft Túpac Amaru Plan (1977–1980), the GRFA explicitly opted for: (i) a new constitution to institutionalize “the structural reforms fundamental to the Revolutionary Process”; (ii) the enactment of an Electoral Law, an Administrative Decentralization Law, and a Local Government Law; and (iii) the holding of general elections (El Comercio 1977).[4] Still unresolved were the mechanisms for drafting the new constitution and the timing of the general elections.
By July, following intense negotiations with political forces––chiefly the traditional parties PPC and APRA––the military government established the final roadmap for the transition. First, in October, it called elections for a Constituent Assembly of 100 members tasked with drafting a new constitution. For one year, the military-dominated executive would coexist with a directly elected constituent authority. Second, once the constitution was approved, general elections would be held in 1980, and the new constitution would be enacted along with the democratically elected government.
Political pluralism in the Constituent Assembly was ensured. No party was directly excluded by the executive (García Belaúnde 1986, 12), despite a regional environment hostile to radical left organizations. Participants ranged from groups aligned with Velasquismo to Marxist and Trotskyist forces (Bernales 1980, 37–39). Even so, the electoral process did not provide equal treatment: several candidates for the Assembly were deported and campaign activities were obstructed, among other instances of arbitrariness. Nevertheless, the military regime recognized parliamentary immunity for members once elected. The inclusion of these sectors made a substantive contribution to the constitutional text, as their representatives acknowledged, particularly in the Assembly’s final session (Diario de Debates, Tomo VIII, 663-68).
The Assembly’s autonomy was manifest from the outset, both in its drafting procedures and in its institutional stance. No technical expert commission created by the dictatorship took part in drafting the constitutional text. Nor did any party directly representing the government’s interests stand for election. The Constituent Assembly organized itself through a Governing Board and a Main Commission on the Constitution, which created a subcommission to address “the specific issues arising from the status of women.” In addition, it established fourteen special committees, eight standing committees, a commission of inquiry into the economic crisis, and a multiparty commission on human rights violations and illicit enrichment over the previous ten years (Asamblea Constituyente 1978).
From a political-institutional perspective, the Assembly explicitly rejected the GRFA’s mandate to institutionalize “the structural reforms fundamental to the Revolutionary Process.” In his inaugural address, the Assembly’s president, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, emphasized that the Assembly stood above any constituted power; accordingly, it “admits no conditions, limitations, or parameters,” and “no one may set its agenda or positions other than its own members” (Diario de Debates, Tomo I, 32-33). The Assembly also unanimously rejected the modifications that the GRFA submitted when it formally forwarded the draft constitution in July 1979, and reaffirmed its own authority to enact the Constitution on its own (Diario de Debates, Tomo VIII, 627-673).
The conditions for constitution-making were fragile. This fragility stemmed not only from tensions with the GRFA, which continued to govern through the executive, but also from the economic crisis and the polarization of political forces, a phenomenon visible locally and globally. Despite this, a diversity of constitutionalisms were expressed during the constitutional debate and were part of the negotiation of the new institutional arrangement because of the composition of the Assembly. Each of them expressed their own vision of constitutionalism.
The Assembly’s composition was as follows: American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), 37 seats (center); Popular Christian Party (PPC), 25 (right); Frente Obrero Campesino Estudiantil y Popular (FOCEP), 12 (Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyist currents); Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR), 6 (Velasquista sectors); Peruvian Communist Party (PCP), 6 (long-standing left, allied with the GRFA’s first phase, distant from the second); Popular Democratic Unity (UDP), 4 (to the left of the Communist Party); Frente Nacional de Trabajadores y Campesinos (FNTC), 4 (southern regionalist); Christian Democratic Party (PDC), 2 (radicalized remnants of 1960s reformist parties); Unión Nacional Odriísta (UNO), 2 (conservative); and Movimiento Democrático Pradista (MDP), 2 (conservative).[5]
APRA is Peru’s oldest mass party and one of the most influential in twentieth-century Latin America. Its founder and lifelong leader, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (1895–1979), crowned a career that began in the early 1920s by presiding, at age eighty-four, over the Peruvian Constituent Assembly of 1978–79. It was his first and only formal public office. Persecuted for much of his life, Haya spent long periods in exile, yet he continued to shape Peruvian politics from abroad. From the movement’s inception, he advocated the creation of “Indo-America,” a politically and economically integrated Latin America. This internationalist vision set APRA apart from contemporaneous national parties and gave it a regional reach that endured throughout the century. The APRA's political orientation shifted from a revolutionary impetus to a moderate one, establishing political alliances with oligarchic parties. This party not only presided over the Assembly, but also the Main Commission on the Constitution with Luis Alberto Sánchez.
The PPC was Peru’s principal Christian democratic party, founded in 1966 by Luis Bedoya Reyes. Drawing on Catholic social doctrine and the European Christian democratic tradition, it positioned itself as a modernizing center-right alternative to both Velasquismo and the traditional oligarchy. Bedoya, a two-term mayor of Lima, gave the party a national profile anchored in representative democracy and a social market economy. As the second-largest bloc in the Assembly, they presided over the Special Commission of Economy and Finances.
Together, APRA and the PPC held a majority of Assembly seats. They therefore did not need to submit a comprehensive, article-by-article draft to advance their constitutional agenda. To ensure the process, the new constitution had to be collectively constructed. However, the committee debates reflected in majority and minority reports, as well as the comprehensive constitutional drafts submitted by the Communist Party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and Popular Democratic Unity, remain underexplored.
In comparative perspectives, Uruguay and Chile exemplify constitution- making from above. In Uruguay, an attempt to consolidate a right-wing project through a new constitution was rejected by voters despite a tightly managed plebiscite in 1980 (Scoseria Katz 2023). In Chile, the regime succeeded in entrenching its political and economic model through a highly controlled and non-plural process, formally legitimized by their own 1980 plebiscite (Barros 2002). In Argentina, the effort to base a democratic transition on constitutional restructuring failed to secure political consent (Potash 1996, 417). The democratic opening was interrupted by a coup in 1976, and no consequential constitutional project marked the period beyond the modest reform of 1972. Ecuador experimented with a plebiscitary choice between constitutional alternatives within a bounded process. The military’s selection of eleven drafters for each of the three commissions reflected political plurality (Verdesoto Salgado 1982), yet the absence of a directly elected constituent body weakened democratic legitimacy.
Conclusion
The 1970s did not yield a linear passage from authoritarianism to liberal democracy as constitutions served competing projects—authoritarian consolidation as much as democratic refounding beyond liberalism. The brief overview of the Uruguayan, Chilean, Argentinian, and Ecuadorian constitution-making during the decay, however, does not reflect the varieties competing during the Cold War.
Peru’s path differed: a broadly representative Assembly with guaranteed pluralism; an internal architecture oriented to deliberation (standing, special, and inquiry commissions); and a political stance that asserted constituent autonomy, explicitly rejecting the GRFA’s attempts to predetermine outcomes. This combination of pluralism, institutionalized deliberation, and asserted autonomy transformed the Assembly into a venue for cross-ideological bargaining about the basic structure of the democratic regime. It stands out as a distinctive site where diverse “constitutionalisms” were negotiated under military oversight yet outside military control.
This experience invites renewed attention to Latin America’s constitutional tradition as a producer of democratic design under polarized conditions. Future research should deepen the analysis of committee outputs and the comprehensive drafts tabled by non-majority parties, and trace how these inputs translated into enacted provisions and post-1980 practice. In doing so, the Peruvian Assembly can be read not only as a historical episode but as a comparative constitutional law template for democratic constitution-making under adverse geopolitical and domestic conditions.