Populist Seduction in Latin America. Carlos de la Torre

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СКАЧАТЬ and of the resulting emergence of popular sectors demanding an expansion of closed political systems (Collier 1979; Drake 1982). In this context, I will examine the social conditions that allowed the emergence of Sanchezcerrismo and Aprismo in Peru in the 1920s and 1930s, Gaitanismo in Colombia in the mid-1940s, and Velasquismo in Ecuador in the 1940s in this chapter.

      The oligarchical social order typical of Latin America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been characterized by a combination of “liberal-inspired constitutions (division of the three powers, elections, and so on) with patrimonial practices and values polarized around a cacique, patrón, gamonal, coronel, or caudillo” (Ianni 1975, 79). These estate-based societies excluded the majority of the population from political decision making and had relations of domination and subordination characterized by unequal reciprocity. Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis (1961) of how socioeconomic differentiation between rich and poor in traditional societies appeared as naturalized relations of inequality between masters and servants is relevant here. Tocqueville points out that a fixed hierarchical social order is constituted in which generations pass without any change in position. “There are two societies superimposed, always distinct but governed by analogous principles.… Certain permanent notions of justice and injustice are generated between them.… Fixed rules are recognized and, in the absence of a law, there are common prejudices that direct them; between them reign certain determined habits, a morality” (Tocqueville 1961, 152).

      In his study of the 1931 Peruvian elections in which APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana) was defeated by Luis Sánchez Cerro’s populist movement, Steve Stein (1980) analyzes the changes in socioeconomic and political structures during the 1920s and 1930s that brought to an end the so-called República Aristocrática. They included a greater integration into the world market through an increase in mineral and agricultural exports—primarily sugar—and an increasing presence of foreign capital from the United States, which modified the class structure. The state was modernized. The number of public employees increased from 975 in 1920 to 6, 285 in 1931, an increase of 545 percent (Stein 1980, 39). Rural-urban migration and processes of urbanization transformed Lima’s socioeconomic structure, with a great increase in middle and working classes. Stein also analyzes pressures for political incorporation from those social sectors that were seeking “a shift in politics from a family-style government run by political aristocrats and based on highly limited participation to one of populism, which sought an enlarged power base in the lower sectors of society” (1980, 49). What Stein leaves aside is an analysis of the worldview, culture, and discourse characteristic of the República Aristocrática, which would necessarily be the frame of reference for explaining the populist eruptions of APRA and Sanchezcerrismo. This is precisely one of the contributions of Herbert Braun’s work on Jorge Eliecer Gaitán (1985), which examines the beliefs, culture, and actions of Colombian public figures from the 1930s to the 1950s, as well as the rationality of the crowds’ actions in the Bogotazo.

      Braun studies the political culture and ideology of the political leaders of the Colombian Convivencia, a period initiated by the administration of Olaya Herrera in 1930 and brought to a close with the assassination of Gaitán in 1948. The political ideals of the Convivencia were based on a precapitalist ethos more moral than economic: “from a Catholic culture emerged an organic, hierarchical view of society that defined individuals by their rank and duties” (Braun 1985, 22). Those who were seen as members of the public sphere were clearly differentiated from those excluded. “Through oratory in Congress and in the public plaza, the politicians attempted to forge a sense of community by instilling moral virtues and noble thoughts in their listeners” (1985, 25). The process of governing “was perceived as the molding of the anarchic lives of followers, the encouragement of civilized comportment, and the raising of the masses above the necessities of daily life so as to ease their integration into society” (1985, 22). Political leaders referred to all those outside public life as el pueblo. This undifferentiated category was seen “more as plebs than as populace, more as laborers than as the soul of the nation” (1985, 28).

      Socioeconomic processes such as dependent capitalist development, urbanization, and the growth of the state apparatus resulted in changes in the social structure, with the emergence of new groups seeking incorporation into the political community and questioning the Convivialistas’ vision of politics. Braun’s analysis of the cultural parameters through which elites perceived politics permits him to capture the crisis of the oligarchic social order in all its complexity: socio economic, political, cultural, and discursive. But the problem with his work is that he analyzes the political leaders of the time without taking into account the pressures, limitations, and opportunities posed to them by the actions of subaltern groups. Only in the final chapters of his work does Braun examine the rationality of the crowds’ collective action in the Bogotazo. Prior to this, el pueblo appears in the same undifferentiated way as contemporary elites saw them.

      The analysis of past populist experiences should not lead us to commit the all too common error of assuming that populism itself is a necessary phenomenon of the past linked to the transition from an oligarchical to a modern society. Chapter 4 will review the debates on populism and neopopulism sparked by the electoral successes of Alberto Fujimori, Carlos Menem, Fernando Collor de Mello, and Abdalá Bucaram. Populism is more than a phase in the history of Latin America or of nationalist and redistributive state policies, or a form of political discourse. I explore the relationship between leaders and followers and the specific forms of political incorporation in contemporary Latin America. This perspective analyzes the contradictory and ambiguous experiences of popular participation in politics.

      To illustrate my approach to populism, I focus on the Ecuadorian case. I analyze the transition from the politics of notables to mass politics, studying how the different mediations between state and society were constructed. As will be illustrated in chapter 2, populist politics in Ecuador originated in the 1940s under the leadership of José María Velasco Ibarra. Ecuador was not at this time experiencing a process of import substitution industrialization. Even so, the oligarchical order was in crisis, as in other Latin American cases. Social actors such as the middle class—which had grown as a consequence of urbanization and state expansion—artisans, and a small proletariat were demanding political inclusion.

      Velasco Ibarra took politics out of the salons and cafes of the elites and into the public plazas. He toured most of the country delivering his message of political incorporation through honest elections. Velasco Ibarra’s followers responded to his appeals by occupying plazas, demonstrating for their leader, intimidating opponents, and—when they felt that their will at the polls had been mocked—staging insurrections and rebellions. Velasco Ibarra did not always respect democratic institutions. He assumed temporary dictatorial powers on several occasions, abolishing the constitutions of 1935, 1946, and 1970 with the assertion that they limited the general will of the people that he claimed to embody.

      Velasquismo expanded the Ecuadorian electorate from 3.1 percent of the total population in 1933 to 16.83 percent in 1968, but most citizens remained excluded through the use of literacy requirements. Despite such a restricted franchise, Velasquismo cannot be reduced to a mere electoral phenomenon. It was a broader social and political movement, which included both voters and nonvoters (Maiguashca and North 1991). The novelty of Velasquismo was to inaugurate a political style wherein mass meetings, crowd actions, and self-recognition in a moralistic, Manichaean political rhetoric became more important than narrowly restricted representative political institutions.

      These two distinct forms of political participation—mass mobilization of el pueblo and limited citizen participation in democratic institutions—illustrate how different mediations between the state and society have historically been constructed. Citizenship, in Charles Tilly’s definition, comprises the “rights and mutual obligations binding state agents to a category of persons defined exclusively by their legal attachment to the same state” (1995, 369). The struggle for and the establishment of citizenship rights goes hand in hand with the СКАЧАТЬ