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The Soldier as Radical: the Peruvian Military Government, 1968–1975 *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

George Philip
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Extract

Most recent literature on military government is extremely skeptical of the possibility of effective military reformism. This scepticism, encouraged by various behavioural hypotheses, has been further strengthened by a number of cross-sectional analyses, which seem to show that most military governments are unstable, conservative, and indifferent at economic management.1 The military government in Peru, therefore, appears to be something of an exception. Its first President, General Velasco, stayed in office for nearly seven years, and his successor, General Morales Bermúdez, has promised that the nature of the regime will not be drastically changed. Even more important, the Government claims to have carried out a comprehensive set of agrarian, industrial and social reforms that were aimed at bringing Peru out of its former underdevelopment. Moreover, the Government has claimed to have achieved all this during a seven-year period in which the conventional criteria of economic success – a substantial growth in real income per capita, a moderate rate of inflation and a reasonably stable exchange rate – also appear to have been met.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 1976 , pp. 29 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 These statistical findings were summarized in Finer, S. E., The mind of the military', New Society, 7 08 1975.Google Scholar

2 Fitzgerald, E. V. K., The State and Economic Development in Peru since 1968 (Cambridge, C.U.P., 1976) provides an interesting evaluation of the regime's economic policies.Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Nordlinger, E., ‘Soldiers in Mufti’, in the American Political Science Review, 12 1970.Google Scholar

4 Huntington, S. P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1968), p. 221.Google Scholar

5 Nun, J., ‘The Middle-Class Military Coup’ in Véliz, C., The Politics of Conformity in Latin America (Oxford, O.U.P., 1967), p. 112.Google Scholar

6 Stepan, A., The Military in Politics; changing patterns in Brazil (Princeton Univ. Press, 1971).Google Scholar

7 Whitehead, L. A., ‘Why Allende Fell’, The World Today, 11 1973, p. 473.Google Scholar

8 Gallo, E., ‘Argentina; background to the present crisis’, The World Today, 11 1968, p. 500.Google Scholar

9 Einaudi, L., in Einaudi, L. and Stepan, A., ‘Latin American Institutional Development; Changing Military Perceptions in Peru and Brazil’ (Rand Corporation, 1971).Google Scholar

10 Jane, Jacquette, ‘ Revolution by Fiat’, Western Political Quarterly, 11 1972, p. 658.Google Scholar

11 Business Latin America, 8 02 1973.Google Scholar

12 This was the central theme in Astiz's, C. book, Pressure Groups and Power Elites in Peruvian Politics (Ithaca; Cornell Univ. Press, 1969).Google Scholar

13 Lowenthal, A., ‘Peru's Ambiguous Revolution’, Foreign Affairs, 07 1974, p. 803.Google Scholar

14 Fitzgerald, , op. cit., p. 42.Google Scholar

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16 Einaudi, , op. cit., p. 42.Google Scholar

17 The best discussion of CAEM ideology occurs in Villanueva, V., El CAEM y la Revolution de la Fuerza Armada (Lima, I.E.P., 1972).Google Scholar

18 One CAEM document asserted that, ‘The sad and desperate truth is that in Peru, the real powers are not the Executive, the Legislative, the Judicial or the Electoral, but the latifundistas, the exporters, the bankers and the American investors’. (Quoted in Einaudi, , op. cit., p. 18). Clearly, by arguing that the Peruvian electoral system was not ‘real’ democracy, this line of argument could be used to justify its overthrow.Google Scholar

19 Vilanueva pointed out that ‘Caem thus rationalized the traditional rejection of civilian life by the soldier’ (emphasis mine). Villanueva, , op. cit.Google Scholar

20 See Cotler, J., ‘Political Crisis and Military Populism’, Studies in Comparative International Development, VI, 5 (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1970–1971), p. 107.Google Scholar

21 This period is well covered in Villanueva, V., Ejercito Peruano; del caudillaje anárquico al militarismo reformista (Lima; Méjica Baja 1973), esp. chs. 7–9.Google Scholar

22 See Marichetti, J. and Marks, A., The CIA and the Cult of Intelligenee (New York, Knopf, 1974), pp. 124–5.Google Scholar

23 This is alleged in Villanueva, V., ‘EL CAEM…, p. 73–80.Google Scholar

24 Miguens, J., ‘The New Latin American Military Coup’, Studies in Corn paratiuc International Development, VI, 5 (Univ. Press), p. 6.Google Scholar

25 On this issue, see Astiz, and Garcia, , op. cit.Google Scholar

26 This certainly appears to underlie the appioach both of Huntington and of Nun, although both make general statements intended to be of much wider applicability, including the ones quoted above.

27 This was certainly the view expressed by both A. Quijano and J. Cotler in the first two editions of Sociedad y Poiltica (which is the voice of the Government's most prominent left-wing critics).

28 See Huntington, , op. cit., ch. 4.Google Scholar

29 For a sober treatment of this issue, see Lowenthal, , op. cit. Several other North American writers followed the Sociedad y Politica line that SINAMOS was an instrument of control that was part of the establishment of a corporate state in Peru.Google Scholar

30 Clinton, R., ‘Modernising Military; the Case of Peru’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, 26, 4 (Spring 1971), p. 53, fn. 2, quotes a rumour current at the time, that Velasco agreed to demands from a number of conservative officers in March 1970 that the ‘Committees’ be controlled.Google Scholar

31 Latin America, 21 03 1975.Google Scholar