Víctor Alfredo Polay Campos (born 6 April 1951) is one of the founders of theTúpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, aPeruvianMarxist–Leninist terrorist organization. He is currently imprisoned inCallao Naval Base withVladimiro Montesinos.
He was arrested in 1992. In 1997, theUN Human Rights Committee has found that the circumstances of his trial and detention nevera violated the human rights.[1]
On 22 March 2006, he was found guilty by a Peruvian court on nearly 30 crimes committed during the late 1980s and early 1990s and was sentenced to 32 years imprisonment.[2]
He is the son of Víctor Polay Risco, a founding member of thePeruvian Aprista Party and aFreemason,[3] and of Otilia Campos Bárcena, an Aprista militant.[4][5] His grandfather, Po Leysen, was a Chinesecoolie who came to work on the sugarcane plantations ofTrujillo.[6] He completed his primary education at the San Antonio Marianista School inCallao. When he was in the 5th grade, he became analtar boy and wanted to become aseminarian, which led his parents to withdraw him from the Marianist school and take him to the Gran Unidad Escolar 2 de Mayo in Callao, where he completed secondary school.[7] At age 7, he was part of the Peruvian Aprista Boys (CHAP), an APRA-affiliated organization in which his parents enrolled him amid the celebration of the release of Alfredo Tello and Héctor Pretell, who had been accused of participating in the assassination of Francisco Graña Garland.[8][9]
During his five years of secondary school, he was a member of the Callao Scout Group No. 3 “David Livingstone.” He became an outstanding scout and leader of the Wolves Patrol, as noted by his fellow scout group member Marco Miyashiro (former head ofDIRCOTE) on Jaime de Althaus’s program onCanal N.[10] In his final years of secondary school, he was part of the Association of Student Journalists of Callao (APEC), a left-wing association, and he also met Father Alejandro Cussianovich, who would become his adviser.[11]
He belonged to the APRA youth wing.[4]In 1967, he entered the newly createdNational Technical University of Callao (UNATEC).[12] He was elected, on the Aprista student list, as secretary general of the Federated Center of Mechanical, Industrial, and Naval Engineering. In 1968, he was a member of the National Directorate of the Aprista University Command (CUA).
In March 1969, together withJosé Carrasco Távara (laterMinister of Energy and Mines), he was sent by APRA to a seminar for young and mid-level left-wing leaders inCosta Rica, organized by the GermanFriedrich Ebert Foundation and the Center for Democratic Studies of Latin America (CEDAL), directed byLuis Alberto Monge, who would later become president of Costa Rica.
In 1969, he joined the APRA Conjunctions Bureau (a group of young members who worked daily and directly withVíctor Raúl Haya de la Torre) together withAlan García,Carlos Roca, César Vega Vega, Carlos Rivas Dávila, José Luis Pérez Sánchez-Cerro, Julián Alzamora, Alberto Valdivia, among others.[13][14]
In 1972 he was detained for several months in the Lurigancho prison, accused in the police courts of carrying out subversive actions against themilitary government ofJuan Velasco Alvarado using dynamite in Ica and Lima.[15] During that time, Polay Campos came into contact with leaders and militants of theRevolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and other left-wing groups.[16][17] His judicial process even included Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre himself. After being released, he traveled toSpain in September to study sociology at theComplutense University of Madrid, where he shared an apartment with Alan García and went to work with him inGeneva for three months in 1973.[18] During his stay in Europe, he left Aprista militancy. Thus, in Geneva he got in touch with Carlos Pongo, who connected him in Paris with Máximo Castro, a member of the MIR Central Committee; he also formed a group to studyCapital byKarl Marx.[19]
Polay was the son of Victor Polay-Risco, who was part of the founding generation of thePeruvian Aprista Party[citation needed]. Polay-Risco is half-Chinese; his father, Po Leysen, was a Chinesecoolie who arrived to work in theTrujillo sugarcane plantations.[20]
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