Internal conflict in Peru 2000. There were low-level resurgences of violence in 2002 and 2014 when conflict erupted between the Peruvian Army and guerrilla remnants in the VRAEM region. The conflict has lasted for over 38 years, making it the second longest internal conflict in the history of Latin America, after the Colombian armed conflict. Prior to the conflict, Peru had undergone a series of coups with frequent switches between different parties and ideologies. On October 2, 1968, General Juan Velasco Alvarado staged a military coup and became Peru's 56th president under the administration of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, a left-leaning
Juan Bautista Alvarado was born in Monterey, Alta California, to Jose Francisco Alvarado and María Josefa Vallejo. His grandfather Juan Bautista Alvarado accompanied Gaspar de Portolà as an enlisted man in the Spanish Army in 1769. His father died a few months after his birth and his mother remarried three years later, leaving Juan Bautista in the care of his grandparents on the Vallejo side, where he and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo grew up together. They were both taught by William Edward Petty Hartnell, an English merchant living in Monterey. In 1827 the eighteen-year-old Alvarado was hired as secretary to the territorial legislature. In