Populist Seduction in Latin America. Carlos de la Torre

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ in 1992. This chapter reviews some works about what some scholars nowadays call classical populism. It develops a multidimensional approach to the study of populist leadership that goes beyond the binary options between rational choice and crowd psychology. I argue that to understand the social creation of populist leaders, economic and social structural processes must be analyzed together with cultural and political variables. Economic and social structural changes allowed for the emergence of populist politics. The transformations of oligarchic systems by capitalist development, urbanization, and the expansion of the state apparatus created social classes and groups that demanded their political inclusion. However, social and economic transformations do not explain why populism became the rhetoric and style of political mobilization that included previously marginalized sectors. To analyze the specificity of the populist relationship between leaders and led, all these variables must be studied. The personalistic charismatic relationship between leaders and followers must be examined together with the material and symbolic exchanges of clientelist networks and patronage relationships. The social history of populism and the autonomous expectations of the crowds need to be analyzed in conjunction with the Manichaean discourses of leaders.

      Chapter 2 builds on my dissertation, and my book, La seducción velasquista (1993). In this chapter I study the emergence of mass politics in Ecuador in the late 1930s and 1940s and the transformation of Velasco Ibarra into the redeemer of the homeland. I analyze the patterns of collective violence in a populist civilian-military insurrection against the Liberal regime and in the name of a populist politician. The shared, if contested, frame of discourse that transformed the Liberals into the embodiment of sin and the lack of democracy and the simultaneous transformation of Velasco into the incarnation of the democratic ideal allow an understanding of the success of Velasco’s leadership and the patterns of collective violence in the Gloriosa (May 1944), which destroyed the symbols of Liberal rule while respecting the property of the non-Liberal elites. Velasco’s oratory and his ambiguous commitment to democracy are also explored.

      While writing my dissertation, I began to study Abdalá Bucaram’s political style. I attended several of Bucaram’s mass meetings and those of his rival politicians in the 1992 presidential campaign and gathered their televised propaganda, flyers, and journalistic accounts. I returned to Ecuador in 1996 with Carmen Martínez to carry out ethnographic participant observation of Bucaram’s presidential campaign. Chapter 3 is based on this data and builds on my book ¡ Un sólo toque! Populismo y cultura política en Ecuador (1996). This chapter analyzes the interrelationship between daily life, populism, and political culture in present-day Ecuador. This chapter examines how the figure of populist politician Abdalá Bucaram has allowed modernizing political and intellectual elites to constitute themselves as the incarnation of the democratic ideal, while representing the populist leader as the embodiment of the rabble and a threat not only to democracy but to civility. I explore two moments of collective effervescence to illustrate how everyday forms of domination and resistance have produced particular political cultures: the electoral rituals that transformed Bucaram into “the leader of the poor” and the demonstrations demanding his resignation that made him the “repugnant other” who had to leave the presidency and the country.

      Chapter 4 reviews the recent literature on neopopulism, showing how previously unresolved research questions have reappeared in the literature. It suggests new lines for future research, and the chapter concludes with a reflection on the specificity of Latin American democracies and the paradoxes of populist politics for strengthening those regimes.

      I have benefited from the support of many people and institutions. My research on Velasquismo was financed by an Alvin Johnson dissertation fellowship from the New School for Social Research (1990–91), and by a doctoral fellowship of FLACSO-Ecuador (1990–92). My thanks to Amparo Menéndez-Carrión, former director of FLACSO-Ecuador, for her support. I did archival research at the Biblioteca de Autores Ecuatorianos Aurelio Espinosa Pólit. My gratitude to its director, Father Julián Bravo, and his staff—Wilson Vega, Martha Llumiquinga, and Elizabeth Villareal. I also thank Ramiro Ávila, curator of the Archivo Histórico del Banco Central. My research on Bucaram’s populism was generously funded by the Centro Andino de Acción Popular and by a faculty research grant from Drew University. My gratitude to Francisco Rhon, director of the Centro Andino de Acción Popular, and to Paolo Cucchi, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Drew University for their continued support. I also acknowledge Santiago Nieto Montoya, director of Informe Confidencial, for the public opinion surveys on Bucaram’s image and popularity.

      My dissertation committee—William Roseberry, Andrew Arato, José Casanova, and Charles Tilly—has encouraged me and helped me for several years. Preliminary versions of my analysis of how Bucaram got to power were presented at FLACSO-Ecuador in September and November 1996. I delivered a paper on the relationship between Bucaram and the mass media at the conference Media and the Politics of Democracy at the New School for Social Research, 6 March 1998. A version of chapter 3 was presented at the Workshop of Contentious Politics, Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, Columbia University, 16 November 1998. I am grateful to the participants in these seminars and workshops, in particular Andrew Arato, Javier Auyero, Jeff Goldfarb, Margot Olavarría, and Charles Tilly. I also thank Robert Dash and Kristen Anderson for comments on earlier versions of chapter 3. Some of the arguments of chapter 4 were presented in papers at Ohio University in April 1998 and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, in June 1998. I thank Felipe Burbano, Carmen Martínez, César Montúfar, Ricardo Muratorio, and the anonymous reader of Ohio University Press for comments to earlier drafts of this book.

      Finally, I express my gratitude to several people whose support continues to inspire me: my mother, Noemí Espinosa; my sister María Soledad; and my brother Felipe; Alberto Acosta, Francisco Rhon, and Felipe Burbano, with whom I published my first book on populism; José Álvarez Junco and Tom Walker, who encouraged me to organize this book. This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of Carmen Martínez. She postponed her dissertation research in 1996 to come to Ecuador to do the research of Bucaram with me and has been the most enthusiastic and critical reader. This book is for her and in memory of my father, whose passion for politics and intellectual work has always inspired me.

      Abbreviations

ADE	Alianza Democrática Ecuatoriana (Ecuadorian Democratic Alliance)
AP	Alliance for a Proud and Sovereign Homeland
APRA	Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana
BAEP	Biblioteca Aurelio Espinosa Pólit, Cotocollao
CEDOC	Confederación Ecuatoriana de Obreros Católicos (Ecuadorian Confederation of Catholic Workers)
CFP	Concentración de Fuerzas Populares
CONAIE	(Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador)
COPEI	Christina Political Electoral Independent Organization
CTE	Confederación de Trabajadores del Ecuador
FEINE	Federation of Indigenous Evangelicals of Ecuador
FEV	Frente Electoral Velasquista
FLACSO	Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales
ISI	Import Substitution Industrialization
PRE	Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano (Ecuadorian Roldosista Party)
PRIAN	Partido Renovador Institucional Acción Nacional
SIN	Servicio Nacional de Inteligencia

      Chapter l

       The Ambiguity of Latin American “Classical” Populism

      The study of Latin American populism has a long history. From the pioneering analyses СКАЧАТЬ