Progressive Social Movement (in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

: Movimiento Social Progresista) was a political party

Political party

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

 in Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 founded in 1956. Its leaders included Santiago Agurto Calvo (general secretary), Alberto Ruiz Eldredge and the Salazar Bondy brothers.

Development

Peru went through political upheaval in 1956 when long-serving dictator Manuel A. Odría

Manuel A. Odría

Manuel Arturo Odría Amoretti was the President of Peru from 1948 to 1956.Manuel Odría was born in 1897 in Tarma, a city in the central Andes just east of Lima. He graduated first in his class from the Chorillos Military Academy in 1915. He joined the army and as a lieutenant-colonel was a war...

 announced plans for democratic elections, resulting in a raft of political parties, some transient in nature, springing up. Those behind the formation of the MSP had initially been part of one of these groups Popular Action, but split almost immediately to form their own party. They sought support amongst urban professionals by professing an agenda that supported scientific advancement and technocracy as the cures for Peru's ills.

The MSP contested the 1962 elections, presenting Alberto Ruiz Eldredge as their Presidential candidate, but struggled for support due to the similarity of their programme to that of Popular Action and their lack of a charismatic leader in the mould of Fernando Belaúnde Terry

Fernando Belaúnde Terry

Fernando Belaúnde Terry was President of Peru for two non-consecutive terms . Deposed by a military coup in 1968, he was re-elected in 1980 after eleven years of military rule...

. Many of their pro-science and technology positions had been co-opted by Belaúnde as the founding ideology

Ideology

An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...

 of Popular Action.

Torn between two wings, one sympathetic to the Cuban revolution

Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...

 and the other prepared to work with the new Belaúnde government, the MSP disappeared from the political scene soon after the 1962 elections as its leading members drifted to other groups including both Popular Action and opposition groups to the left. The 1968 coup that brought leftist

Left-wing politics

In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 General Juan Velasco Alvarado

Juan Velasco Alvarado

Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado was a left-leaning Peruvian General who ruled Peru from 1968 to 1975 under the title of "President of the Revolutionary Government."- Early life :...

to power saw a number of MSP leaders return to influence even though the party had long disappeared by then.