Miss Peru send her representative, Mary Núñez, to the Miss Universe Pageant, because she was prevented from participating by the president of the republic, Juan Velasco Alvarado. He considered the contest was the product of American capitalism, and a country with which he did not have good relations. This was the only occasion in which a Miss Peru did not participate in the Miss Universe except for the 1955 and 1974, when no contest was held. Given the refusal of Alvarado, Mary Núñez was sent to Miss World 1973 in London, England. In 1982, Peru became the first South American country to
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,