Juan Velasco Alvarado of the land, the day of winter solstice. The education reform of 1972 provided for bilingual education for the indigenous people of the Andes and the Amazon, which consisted nearly half of the population. In 1975, the Velasco government enacted a law making Quechua an official language of Peru equal to Spanish. Thus, Peru was the first Latin American country to officialize an indigenous language. However, this law was never enforced and ceased to be valid when the 1979 constitution became effective, according to which Quechua and Aymara are official only where they predominate, as mandated by law – a
Juan Velasco Alvarado another uprising or a takeover from the APRA party, seized absolute power and close down Congress, almost all of whose members were briefly incarcerated. General Velasco seized power on October 3, 1968, in a bloodless military coup, deposing the democratically elected administration of Fernando Belaúnde, under which he served as Commander of the Armed Forces. President Belaúnde was sent into exile. Initial reaction against the coup evaporated after five days when on October 8, 1968, the oil fields in dispute were taken over by the Army. The coup leaders named their administration the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, with