7 - Peru, 1930–60

Summary

During the period from 1890 to 1930 Peru had been characterized by an export-led economy, a strong oligarchy-dominated state known as the Aristocratic Republic, and a hierarchical social order with strong roots in agrarian institutions – the hacienda in the Sierra and the plantation on the Coast. After 1960 the country entered into a crisis of political hegemony (with the military playing an increasingly important role), a belated quest for industrialization and economic autonomy, and a struggle to come to terms with the breakdown of the old mechanisms of social control, manifest in the collapse of the hacienda and the emergence of a political Left. The thirty years from 1930 to 1960 were a period of transition, with a ramshackle ancien regime surviving almost by default as the country drifted with the tides of history. Economic development was dominated by spurts of activity within the old framework of laissez-faire export-led growth. In contrast to several other Latin American countries, Peru undertook no new departures such as a deliberate shift to protected industrialization or an attempt to construct state capitalism. The social and economic predominance of the country's established ruling class (commonly described as the ‘oligarchy’ or ‘grand bourgeoisie’) was not challenged or even much diluted by any rising new national bourgeoisie. Equally, no organized challenge to oligarchic hegemony was mounted by the working class (still weak and divided, and with most of its leadership co-opted into the status quo), or by the peasantry (whose concerns remained focussed at the local level, in a successful struggle with the hacienda and a debilitating process of intra-class division), or by the middle class (although the professional stratum occasionally stumbled onto the political stage, more by accident than by design).