[vc_row css_animation=”” row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”grid” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” z_index=””][vc_column][vc_column_text]Hector Bejar is a Peruvian social scientist, a lawyer and a journalist. He has a PhD in Sociology and a Masters in Social policy and is currently Professor of Sociology at the National University of San Marcos (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru). He is author of ‘The Guerrillas of 1965 in Peru’, on one of the guerrilla movements of the sixties in Peru, which won the ‘Casa de las Americas’ Latin American award in 1969. He is also author of numerous essays and articles as well as books such as ‘The Revolution Trapped’, concerning the revolutionary political process in Peru 1968-1975; ‘The campesino organization’ (1980), about indigenous communities and rural development; ‘Social Justice, Social policy’ (2002, 2004, 2006, 2011) and ‘Millennium Goals and Millennium Myths’ (2010). From 1989 to 2010, he was also Director of ‘Socialism and Participation’, one of the first social science journals in Peru.
Political life: In his youth Héctor Béjar was Press Secretary and member of the Political Commission of the Peruvian Communist Party, and founder of the party newspaper Unidad (Unity) in 1956. Breaking from the party in 1959, he has remained a left-wing socialist ever since. In subsequent years, he was a founder-member of the National Liberation Army (1962-66) which was active in the 1965 guerrilla movement, leading to his serving five years in prison before his pardon by the government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1970. Between 1971 and 1975 he was a founder-member and one of the directors of the National System for Support of Social Mobilization (SINAMOS) working on the organization of the youth, rural, cooperative and popular movements through agrarian reform. Since 1975 he has worked on development, taught in universities and study social issues in Peru. He is one of the founders of the Research Centre for Development and Participation, Lima (CEDEP)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
