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Ricardo Perez Godoy
Ricardo Pio Perez Godoy was a general of the Peruvian army who launched a coup d'etat in July 1962 and headed a military junta until March 1963.
Perez Godoy, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed the military junta formed by high-ranked members of the Peruvian Military Force: General Nicolas Lindley, commander of Peru's army; Vice Admiral Juan Francisco Torres Matos, Admiral of the Navy; and General Pedro Vargas Prada, chief of the air force. Once in the Palace, the four-man junta administered its own swearing-into office. The soldiers then suspended all constitutional guarantees, dissolved Parliament, arrested Electoral Tribunal officials "for trial" and promised "clean and pure elections" scheduled for June 9, 1963. Lindley was subsequently named Prime Minister.
Promising a "New Peru", Perez Godoy pushed through a 24% increase in the budget and decreed new taxes to pay for it, including a one dollar-a-ton levy on anchovies that provoked a strike and threatened to close down the thriving fishmeal industry. And when he refused to approve the construction of a new hospital for Vargas Prada's Air Force and six new ships for Torres Matos' national steamship line, the other junta members turned on him.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Ricardo Perez Godoy
