Ricardo Letts
Ricardo Letts Colmenares (Lima, August 9, 1937) is a left-wing Peruvian politician.
His parents were Roberto Letts Sánchez, an agricultural businessman and Josefina Colmenares Castro, a housewife devoted to her family. He was the fourth of nine children.
Ricardo Letts studied elementary education at Villa María and Inmaculado Corazón school, and high school at Colegio Santa María. He did his undergraduate studies at the Escuela Nacional de Agricultura de La Molina – ENA (National School of Agriculture). In 1959, he finished his studies of agronomy and started working as manager at the Compañía Agrícola La Mina (La Mina Agricultural Company), Sayán (1960–1962). In 1963, he obtained his professional degree as an Agricultural Engineer with his thesis “Economic and Political Justification of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform”.
Between the years of 1956 and 1959, Ricardo Letts was a student leader at the ENA. In 1959, he was elected President of the Student Union and participated as leader in the student and teachers movement of the ENA, which forced the ENA director renounce his position in 1958, initiating a reform in the institution in 1959.
In 1961, Letts joined the Acción Popular party and was head of the Chancay Provincial Committee of Acción Popular. He participated in the III National Congress of Acción Popular held in Iquitos. He met Fernando Belaúnde Terry during the trip travelling to Iquitos. Between 1962 and 1963, he worked in the Agrarian Reform and Colonization Institute as a researcher, working on the preliminary report about the Land Tenure Situation in Peru. He was elected National Secretary of Peasant Affairs of Acción Popular. Months later, Letts was elected National Chairman of the Youth Command of Acción Popular. In 1963, he started working the Cooperación Popular (Popular Cooperation) organization. In 1964, he was promoted to Secretary General of Cooperación Popular, but in February and April 1965, in the midst of a serious political conflict, he withdrew from both Acción Popular and Cooperación Popular. In April of the same year he married María Luisa Raygada.
On May 30, 1965, Ricardo Letts founded Vanguardia Revolucionaria together with Ricardo Napurí [1], Edmundo Murrugarra [2], Efraín Franco, Antonio Lobato and others. In August of the same year, Letts was arrested and accused of collaborating with the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria – MIR (Revolutionary Left Movement) and Ejército de Liberación Nacional del Perú- ELN (National Liberation Army) Ejército de Liberación Nacional guerrilla movement. He was set free and in February 1966 traveled to Paris as an exile. He then traveled to Cuba and went through a training program in the so-called Guerrilla School (1966–1967) of military guerrilla groups for the revolutionary struggle in Peru. Letts also undertook postgraduate studies in Marxism and Socialist Economy in the Practical School of Advanced Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris (1966–1968). He was elected Secretary General of Vanguardia Revolucionaria in the II Congress in 1968.
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