Populist Seduction in Latin America

Carlos de la Torre

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780896804746
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Is Latin America experiencing a resurgence of leftwing governments, or are we seeing a rebirth of national-radical populism? Are the governments of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa becoming institutionalized as these leaders claim novel models of participatory and direct democracy? Or are they reenacting older traditions that have favored plebiscitary acclamation and clientelist distribution of resources to loyal followers? Are we seeing authentic forms of expression of the popular will by leaders who have empowered those previously disenfranchised? Or are these governments as charismatic, authoritarian, and messianic as their populist predecessors?

This new and expanded edition of Populist Seduction in Latin America explores the ambiguous relationships between democracy and populism and brings de la Torre's earlier work up to date, comparing classical nationalist, populist regimes of the 1940s, such as those of Juan Perón and José María Velasco Ibarra, with their contemporary neoliberal and radical successors. De la Torre explores their similarities and differences, focusing on their discourses and uses of political symbols and myths.

Chapter l

The Ambiguity of Latin American “Classical” Populism

The study of Latin American populism has a long history. From the pioneering analyses of Gino Germani in the 1950s to the present, different paradigms have been proposed to explain these phenomena that simultaneously attract and repel social scientists. Certainly the main challenge in the study of populism lies in explaining the appeal of leaders for their followers, without reducing the latter’s behavior to either manipulation or irrational and anomic action or to a utilitarian rationalism, which supposedly explains everything.

Using a discussion of case studies, this chapter presents a multidimensional approach to the study of what is currently called “classical” Latin American populism. It stresses the analysis of those mechanisms that explain, on the one hand, the appeal of populist leaders and, on the other, the expectations and actions of followers. The selection of case studies is not intended to present an overview of all populist experiences in Latin America nor to analyze all the existing literature. My interest, rather, is to review innovative works on Latin American populism for their conceptual and methodological advances, while examining particular characteristics of populism. In the course of the analysis, I make suggestions for further research.

Before presenting a new approach to the study of Latin American populism, let us examine the different uses of this concept in the existing literature. The term populism has been used to refer to all the following phenomena:

—forms of sociopolitical mobilization in which “backward masses” are manipulated by “demagogic” and “charismatic” leaders (Germani 1971, 1978);

—multiclass social movements with middle- or upper-class leadership and popular (working-class or peasant) bases (di Tella 1973; Ianni 1973);

—a historical phase in the region’s dependent capitalist development or a stage in the transition to modernity (Germani 1978; Ianni 1975; Malloy 1977; O’Donnell 1973; Vilas 1992–93);

—redistributive, nationalist, and inclusionary state policies. These populist state policies are contrasted with exclusionary policies that benefit foreign capital, concentrate economic resources, and repress popular demands (Malloy 1987). In contrast, from a neoliberal perspective, populism is interpreted as “ill-conceived development strategies” that emphasize growth and income distribution via a strong intervention of the state, but that de-emphasize the risks of inflation, deficit finance, and external constraints (Dornbusch and Edwards 1991);

—a type of political party with middle- or upper-class leadership, strong popular base, nationalistic rhetoric, charismatic leadership, and lacking a precise ideology (Angell 1968);

—a political discourse that divides society into antagonistic fields – the people (el pueblo) versus the oligarchy (la oligarquía) (Laclau 1977);

—attempts of Latin American nations to control foreign-led modernization processes through the state’s taking a central role as defender of national identity and promoter of national integration through economic development (Touraine 1989);

–a political style that implies a close bond between political leaders and led, usually associated with periods of rapid mobilization and crisis, but that emerges in periods of exceptionality as well as at other times (Knight 1998).

The previous enumeration of the uses of the concept of populism seem to confirm Peter Wiles’s observation that “to each his own definition of populism, according to the academic ax he grinds” (1969, 166). Given its many different uses and the variety of historical experiences to which it seemingly refers, authors such as Ian Roxborough (1984) and Rafael Quintero (1980) have proposed eliminating the concept from the vocabulary of the social sciences. They base their arguments on case studies that show that populism is not a stage in Latin American development linked to import substitution industrialization (Collier 1979; Roxborough 1984). They also argue that views privileging the importance of charismatic leaders and anomic and available masses have been replaced by interpretations emphasizing the rational utilitarian political behavior of popular sectors (Menéndez-Carrión 1986), or by class analysis of specific populist coalitions (Quintero 1980; Roxborough 1984). Finally, they question the theoretical validity of a concept that refers equally to civilian and military regimes in the region over a span of sixty years, which may, but do not necessarily, espouse anti-imperialist ideologies and in some cases apply distributive economic policies and in others policies that concentrate economic power. If we add to these objections the generally negative attributes of the term, such as manipulation, or a deviation from “normal politics,” one might conclude (as did Menéndez-Carrión) that the term populism has been “conceptually exhausted” (1992, 200).

Contrary to the premature efforts to ban populism from the vocabulary of the social sciences, this book argues that, despite the misuses and abuses of the term, it is worth preserving and redefining. The phenomena that have been designated as populist have in common certain characteristics that can be identified and compared by using this notion. Otherwise, “important empirical content can be lost when concepts are discarded prematurely as a result of ambiguity or an incomplete ‘fit’ across cases” (Roberts 1995, 88). As Laclau points out (1977), populism is not just a sociological concept, but rather an actual experience of people who have defined and do define their collective identities through populist participation as Peronists, Cefepistas, or Gaitanistas. Finally, authors who abandon the notion of populism in favor of objectivist categories for analyzing social reality cannot take into account realms of populist experience such as the formation of identity, ritual, myths, and the ambiguous meanings of populism for the actors involved.

I see populism as a style of political mobilization based on strong rhetorical appeals to the people and crowd action on behalf of a leader. Populist rhetoric radicalizes the emotional element common to all political discourses (Álvarez Junco 1987). It is a rhetoric that constructs politics as the moral and ethical struggle between el pueblo and the oligarchy. Populist discourse transmutes politics into a struggle for moral values without accepting compromise or dialogue with the opponent. Populist politics is based on crowd action. Crowds directly occupy public spaces to demand political participation and incorporation. At the same time, these crowds are used by their leaders to intimidate adversaries. Mass meetings become political dramas wherein people feel themselves to be true participants in the political scene. Populist politics includes all these characteristics. It is an interclass alliance based on charismatic political leadership; a Manichaean and moralistic discourse that divides society into el pueblo and oligarchy; clientelist networks that guarantee access to state resources; and forms of political participation in which public and massive demonstrations, the acclamation of leaders, and the occupation of public spaces in the name of a leader are perceived as more important than citizenship rights and the respect for liberal democratic procedures.

The Structural Preconditions of Populism

The first round of studies on Latin American populism, those of modernization and dependency theorists, tried to come to grips with the experiences of the major republics. In the 1930s and 1940s Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico endured processes of urbanization and import substitution industrialization associated with the emergence of the populist politics of Peronism, Varguism, and Cardenism. Hence Gino Germani (1971), for example, presented the hypothesis that populism is a phase in the transition to modernity. Developing an alternative explanation, authors working within the dependency perspective criticized the teleological assumptions of modernization theory and offered a structuralist argument that linked populism with import substitution industrialization (O’Donnell 1973; Malloy 1977).

Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the fit between populism and import substitution, even in the major republics, is not that neat (Perruci and Sanderson 1989, 34–35). For example, Ian Rox – borough (1984) shows that, whereas import substitution industrialization started in Brazil before the 1930s, populist politics was inaugurated in the late 1940s and during Vargas’s second term in office (1950–54). Moreover, in countries such as Peru and Ecuador, there is no fit between populism and import substitution. Populist movements emerged long before import substitution industrialization. Nevertheless and in general terms, populism is associated with dependent capitalist development 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 rule of law and hence with the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 The Ambiguity of Latin American “Classical” Populism
• Chapter 2 Velasquista Seduction
• Chapter 3 Leader of the Poor or Repugnant Other?
• Chapter 4 The Continuing Populist Temptation
• Chapter 5 The Resurgence of Radical Populism in Latin America
• Chapter 6 Rafael Correa
• Conclusion Between Authoritarianism and Democracy
• Notes
• References
• Index