Manuel Ulloa Elias was a Peruvian lawyer and politician. He was President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Economy (1980 – 1982) in the second government of Fernando Belaunde Terry.

Manuel Ulloa in one of his interventions in the Peruvian congress

Manuel Ulloa was also a senator in the Peruvian congress (1980 – 1990). Like all politicians, he had multiple verbal confrontations with his colleagues in the Senate. He was a fearsome polemicist, always with the easy and witty answer.

On a certain occasion, in the congress, Senator Rolando Breña Pantoja (leader of the left, with a Marxist, Maoist tendency) was speaking and to point out that Senator Manuel Ulloa was at the service of “Yankee imperialism”, he mockingly referred to him, with the following words: “Senator Manuel Ulloa, representative of the Republic of the United States,… sorry, from Peru.” The supporters of Rolando Breña were about to start celebrating this “mistake” when Manuel Ulloa, as if moved by a spring, got up from his seat and said: “I ask the senator representing the Republic of China to speak… sorry , from Peru”. It was the supporters of Manuel Ulloa who loudly celebrated the quick occurrence of their leader.

Peruvian Congress

REFERENCE: It was my older brother who told me this anecdote. He saw it on TV the day before and there’s no reason to think it wasn’t true. I searched for it on the internet but couldn’t find it. It was one of the many debates that took place in the Peruvian congress in the 1980s.