This article challenges the notion that the APRA party's poor electoral showings in Peru's southern sierra during the 1930s reflected regional lack of interest in the party and that APRA held little appeal for indigenous peasants. Focusing on two rural districts in the department of Ayacucho, the article reveals that APRA was indeed a formidable presence in rural Ayacucho during the 1930s. With its calls for regional inclusion and decentralisation, APRA appealed to progressive hacendados, schoolteachers and even wealthy peasants, who linked APRA's national discourses to their local struggles for political power and land.