Populist Seduction in Latin America. Carlos de la Torre

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СКАЧАТЬ of course are known by the theorist, do they act as a class; otherwise they are misled or irrational “masses.” Although Ecuadorian Marxists tend to minimize the role of political leaders, at some point they have to face the inevitable and account for the importance of Velasco’s authority. To do so, they use the category of Bonapartism, which refers to exceptional moments in which the executive, under the rule of an individual, achieves dictatorial powers over all parts of the state and civil society. These moments occur at conjunctures when the ruling classes are divided and the proletariat is strong enough to challenge bourgeois domination but too weak to replace it. The problem with the Bonapartist hypothesis is that most of Ecuadorian history could be characterized by these extraordinary moments, turning what is supposed to be the exception into the rule.

      Marxists have fervently debated the origins and meanings of Velasquismo, especially whether it was populism. For Agustín Cueva (1988), Velasquismo represented a new mechanism of political domination or manipulation that he interchangeably describes as caudillismo or populism. Cueva understands the socioeconomic crisis of the 1930s as the end of three previous forms of political domination: liberalism, representing the interests of the agro-exporting bourgeoisie of the coast; conservatism, representing the interests of the highland hacendados; and the military, petit bourgeois reformism of the Revolución Juliana (9 July 1925). This crisis also marks the entrance of new political actors: the subproletariat. Cueva interprets this group, whose political behavior could have been a challenge to elite rule, as, in fact, deceived and manipulated by the rhetoric of the caudillo, converting them into the electoral and social base of Velasco’s populism. For this reason, Velasquismo is explained as a sociopolitical movement serving the interests of the ruling classes, and Velasco as a mediator of the interests of the coastal agro-exporting bourgeoisie and the highland landowners. But, for Cueva, Velas quismo was also a new sociopolitical phenomenon that articulated subproletarian demands for incorporation into the political community.

      Revealing the empirical inconsistencies and lack of theoretical rigor in Cueva’s work, Rafael Quintero (1980) challenges his interpretation and accuses him of introducing a series of myths about Ecuadorian populism. From an orthodox Marxist perspective and through an analysis of the 1931 and 1933 presidential elections, Quintero shows that due to the small size of Ecuadorian cities (Guayaquil had 126, 717 inhabitants in 1933; Quito had 107, 192) and of the electorate (3.1 percent of the population), it is absurd to emphasize the role of the subproletariat in explaining the origins of Velasquismo. For Quintero, the so-called Velasquismo was not a new political phenomenon. On the contrary, the first election of Velasco marked the triumph of the Partido Conservador, and the consolidation of the Junker path of authoritarian capitalist development from above. Moreover, Quintero denies any explanatory value to the concept of populism, proposing instead the analysis of class relations and alliances in each of Velasco’s elections and administrations.

      Cueva is right in analyzing Velasquismo as a new sociopolitical phenomenon. Quintero arbitrarily projects the results of Velasco’s first electoral victory over the entire forty-year period of Velasquismo. Given that he does not analyze voting patterns at the local level, he cannot argue convincingly that any particular group (such as the subproletariat) did or did not vote for Velasco (Menéndez-Carrión 1986). Moreover, Quintero does not differentiate Velasquismo as an electoral movement from Velasquismo as a broader sociopolitical phenomenon.

      Going beyond Cueva and Quintero and applying E. P. Thompson’s concept of the moral economy of the crowd, Juan Maiguashca and Liisa North (1991), in contrast, interpret Velasco’s populism as a political and ideological phenomenon that challenges the country’s capitalist modernization from a moral perspective. Unfortunately, their suggestive argument is incomplete because they do not carry through with the Thompsonian analysis they promise. Nevertheless, it is important to point out the limitations of this popular category in anthropological and historical writings. The category of moral economy refers to the way in which subaltern groups interpret and challenge the dislocations of capitalist modernization via their perceptions of the past. But, as William Roseberry (1989) points out, many authors who use this category tend to present the precapitalist past as homogeneous and undifferentiated. They fail to consider power relations within “traditional” communities, such that they cannot capture the multiple and contradictory images and values that different actors have of the past. Thus, the historical movement from heterogeneous precapitalist pasts to heterogeneous capitalist presents is often oversimplified through the use of this category.

      Existing works on Velasco’s discourse, such as Cárdenas Reyes (1991) and Ojeda (1971), do not study the broader discursive field from which it emerged, hence they cannot show why it was successful over rival discourses. Moreover, these studies do not differentiate the analysis of discourse in general from political discourse, whose specificity is the struggle over and about state power.

      Given the theoretical and methodological problems inherent in existing studies of Velasquismo and Latin American populism in general, a new account is needed to explain the success of political leaders. This chapter applies a multidisciplinary approach to study Velasco Ibarra’s leadership as a dual process. To understand how Velasco Ibarra was produced socially, I employ the tools of social historians to study the meanings of politics through an analysis of collective violence in the May Revolution. Discourse analysis is used to map how the shared (if contested) frame of discourse in Ecuador in the 1940s transformed Velasco Ibarra into the savior of the country. To see how Velasco Ibarra produced himself as the key leader in this conjuncture, I thoroughly analyze his speech in Guayaquil on 4 June after returning to the country as the Great Absentee. Finally, I study his oratory strategies to explain the success of his discourse over rival alternatives.

       La Gloriosa: The Social Production of Velasco Ibarra

      Contemporary newspaper reports and memoirs of participants in La Gloriosa propose the following causes for the May Revolution: a rejection of Liberal electoral fraud; Ecuador’s military defeat by Peru in 1941; the animosity between the government’s elite police force (the carabineros) and the regular army and broad sectors of the population; and the Liberal government’s economic policies, which resulted in an almost unbearable increase in the cost of living (Arízaga Vega 1990; Girón 1945; Muñoz Vicuña 1984; Naranjo 1945; Pérez Castro 1990).

      Broad sectors of the population perceived that the Liberals had remained in power by electoral fraud. Eloy Alfaro, leader of the 1895 Liberal Revolution, was rumored to have said, “What we won with bullets we will not lose by ballots,” and this became an ongoing Liberal strategy. More recently, the 1940 presidential election, won by the Liberal Carlos Arroyo del Río against José María Velasco Ibarra and the Conservative Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, was seen as no exception. The perception that the 1940 election was dishonest—despite the fact that it was approved by Congress—had motivated defeated candidate Velasco Ibarra to lead a failed insurrection in Guayaquil in January 1940, which resulted in his political exile.

      The significance of the 1940 election was to show the Liberal elites that their strategy of electoral fraud could not longer work because of the beginning of a new electoral style. Velasco Ibarra, unlike the other presidential candidates, campaigned by touring most of the country and delivered his message of honest election to voters and nonvoters. In Quito he proclaimed, “the streets and plazas are for citizens to express their aspirations and yearnings, and not for slaves to rattle their chains” (de la Torre 1993, 160). Velasco democratized public spaces by bringing politics from the salons of the elites to the streets. His followers, who were for the first time addressed in the public plazas, asserted their right to occupy public sites. They cheered Velasco Ibarra, booed his opponents, and, when they felt that the elections were dishonest, revolted in the name of their leader. The 1940 elections, thus, showed that the costs of electoral fraud were too high. That election also marked the beginning of a new electoral strategy—from then on, to win an election, a presidential candidate had to visit most of the country.

      The political incorporation in the 1940s, however, was more symbolic than real. The franchise excluded most of the population because it was restricted to СКАЧАТЬ