Juan Velasco Alvarado and had four children. In 1929, he stowed away on a ship to Lima, Peru, falsified his age, and tried to enlist as an officer in the Peruvian Army. However, he arrived late to the exam, so he joined as a private on April 5, 1929. A year later, he took a competitive exam for entrance into the "Escuela Militar de Chorrillos" ("Chorrillos Military School"), and got the highest score of all applicants. In 1934, he graduated with high honors and at the head of his class. During the Belaúnde administration (1963–1968), political disputes became a norm as he held
Salomón Lerner Ghitis (UNI) in Lima. Later he attended post-gradual courses at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico, in 1968, and at the Technion Institute in Haifa, Israel, in 1989. As a student, he joined politics and became the chairman of the students' wing of the social-democratic APRA party. Under the left-wing military administration of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75), he was general manager of the Public Fish-Meal and Oil Marketing Enterprise (EPCHAP). In the government of Velasco's successor, Francisco Morales Bermúdez, Lerner was vice minister of foreign trade. In 1997, he managed CPN Radio channel, and from October 1997 to March 1998,