Populist Seduction in Latin America. Carlos de la Torre

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      Chapter 2

       Velasquista Seduction

      By combining an analysis of the social creation of the populist leader José María Velasco Ibarra in La Revolución Gloriosa (the May Revolution) with a study of his discourse, this chapter explains why Velasco Ibarra became the central political figure in Ecuador in the mid-1940s. La Gloriosa, an insurrection in the name of the exiled former President José María Velasco Ibarra in May 1944, is a critical site for analyzing the complexities of the social creation of a populist leader.¹ La Gloriosa was a revolt against an elected civilian Liberal regime. It occurred in the name of de mocracy and an exiled politician who had acquired the aura of the Great Absentee, and indeed did not himself participate in the insurrection. The uprisings that together make up La Gloriosa took place in Guayaquil and other Ecuadorian cities on 28 and 29 May 1944. In these uprisings, common citizens fought together with conscripts and junior officers of the armed forces in the name of Velasco Ibarra against the Liberal regime and its elite police corps, the carabineros. Popular collective violence targeted the institutions and supporters of the Liberal regime, especially the carabineros, while respecting the property of wealthy non-Liberals. As a result of this insurrection, former president Velasco Ibarra came to power for his second administration, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1947.

      In July 1943, in preparation for the elections planned for June 1944, most political parties and associations of civil society had joined forces to form the Alianza Democrática Ecuatoriana (ADE; Ecuadorian Democratic Alliance). They promoted the candidacy of José María Velasco Ibarra for the upcoming presidential elections, which, however, did not take place because of the insur rection in support of Velasco on 28 and 29 May. How could Conservatives, Catholics, Socialists, and Communists unite in a common program of democratization and under the name of a politician, who came to represent the salvation of the nation? How was Velasco transformed in 1944 into the embodiment of the solution to all of Ecuador’s problems? What were Velasco’s actions and words that made him the country’s redeemer and the personification of the democratic ideal?

      By the time of the Gloriosa, José María Velasco Ibarra was far from an unknown public personality. A son of a mathematician of Colombian origin and a lady from “high society,” Velasco was born in 1893. He studied with the Jesuits and became a lawyer. In 1930, in recognition of his journalistic and academic work, he was appointed a member of the most important elite literary institution, the Real Academia Ecuatoriana de la Lengua [The Ecuadorian Royal Academy of Language]. He was elected to Congress in 1931 while he was living in Paris and with no affiliation with any political party. Velasco’s political career from this point on was meteoric. In 1932 and 1933 he became president of Congress and later in that year he was elected president of the republic itself. Of a total of 64,682 votes, Velasco obtained 51,848 or 80.2 percent (Quintero 1980, 282). On 1 September 1934, Velasco assumed the presidency of Ecuador. He was overthrown by a coup d’état a year later, on 20 August 1935. Velasco’s first presidency was short and full of strife. He had an autocratic style: he dismissed public employees, closed newspapers and Quito’s university, exiled or jailed some of his opponents, and relied on the support of thugs in his conflicts with a Congress that did not behave as a loyal oppositional force. After being overthrown, Velasco lived in exile in Colombia, Chile, and Argentina until he returned to the country for the 1940 elections. After losing the elections and staging a failed insurrection, he went again into exile until 1944 when he returned as the Great Absentee.

      The political movement named after José María Velasco Ibarra, Velasquismo, was the most important political phenomenon in Ecua dor from the 1930s to the early 1970s. With very few exceptions, most politicians who were Velasco’s contemporaries, regardless of their ideology or party affiliation, were Velasquistas at some point in their careers. Velasco’s populist movement attracted more than political elites. More important, this was the political movement that introduced mass politics in Ecuador, partially incorporating previously excluded people into the political community.

      Velasquismo did not only appeal to some of Velasco’s contemporaries, it has also captured the attention of social scientists, who have passionately debated its meanings and origins. Indeed, the analysis of Velasquismo has been one of the main avenues through which Ecua dorian political sociology has been constructed.² This chapter analyzes the dual process that produced Velasquismo. It examines how Velasco Ibarra was socially created and how he constructed himself into such a leader. Here I study a particular phase of Velasquismo: La Gloriosa. Given Velasquismo’s forty-year span, it would be an error to draw general conclusions about it from the study of the 1940s. That era was particularly important, however, because it marked the beginning of mass politics in Ecuador and because, as in other Latin American nations, it was a period of failed democratization (Bethell and Roxborough 1988; Rock 1994).

       Existing Approaches to the Study of Velasquismo

      Velasquismo has been researched by historians and social scientists since at least 1951, with the publication of George Blanksten’s Ecuador: Constitutions and Caudillos. Three approaches to its study, which reflect more general trends in the analysis of Latin American populism, can be differentiated: mass-society theories, Marxism, and discourse analysis. Osvaldo Hurtado (1988), following the insights of mass-society theory, used two key sociological categories—anomie and charisma—to analyze Velasquismo. The principal consequence of modernization is the destruction of previously existing communities and the formation of anonymous, isolated, and alienated “masses.” The individuals within these groups, whose normative framework has been shattered, and who have not yet been integrated into a new normative framework, become “available masses.” Hence, they are easy prey for “demagogic” leaders who can use them for their personalistic interests. The charismatic leader, like the great man in traditional historiography, becomes the key to analyze populist movements.

      The main flaws of the mass-society theory lie in the vision of history as the history of great personalities and the consequent conservative interpretation of followers as deceived “masses.” By over emphasizing the role of the political leader, authors who follow this theory cannot account for the actions of followers. As a reaction to the study of politics through great personalities, Marxists have de-emphasized the role of the leader, studying instead the social conditions that produce populist movements.³ They focus on the analysis of socioeconomic processes and class formation, in particular the history of the formation of the working class, the revolutionary subject.

      Ecuadorian orthodox Marxist analyses, which originated as a legitimate reaction against the vision of history as made by “great men” and as an attempt to study the autonomous actions of subaltern groups, have not, however, fulfilled their promise. Ironically, they share mass-society theorists’ view of common folk as “masses.” Due to their objectivist and dogmatic Marxism, the history of subaltern groups, particularly of the proletariat, is theoretically predetermined. Only when СКАЧАТЬ