Alan García, who has taken his own life aged 69, was a dominant, if divisive, figure in Peruvian politics for more than 30 years, during which he was twice democratically elected as president. His first stint in office, during which parts of the economy threatened to run out of control, was from 1985 to 1989. He then spent a decade out of power, for the most part in foreign exile, before re-election in 2006. During his second presidency García oversaw a more economically stable era until departing in 2011, but later was dogged by allegations that he had taken bribes while in office.

Born in the Peruvian capital, Lima, to Carlos García Ronceros, an accountant, and Nytha Pérez Rojas, a teacher, García was politically active from an early age, when he and his father were involved in the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), a leftwing nationalist grouping founded in the 1920s. After studying law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, the National University of San Marcos and for a period in Spain, he rose to become the party’s general secretary from 1983 until 1985.