Juan Velasco Alvarado of the Velasco administration's economic policies is still debated today. As the Peruvian military government ran deeper into debt, it was forced to devalue the currency and run inflationary policies. This however, was in part due to the 1970s Energy Crisis, which also affected Peru and made it impossible for the Velasco administration to fund some of its most ambitious reforms. In foreign policy, in contrast with his 1970s Latin American contemporaries, which were mostly right-wing military dictatorships, he pursued a partnership with the Soviet bloc, tightening relations with Cuba and Fidel Castro and undertaking major purchases of Soviet military
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,