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Caudillismo and Institutional Change: Manuel Odría and the Peruvian Armed Forces, 1948-1956*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Daniel M. Masterson
Daniel M. Masterson*
Affiliation:
United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland
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Extract

Abraham Lowenthal in characterizing the Peruvian military government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado cautioned that the regime was not a “typical caudillo” venture but rather an essentially “institutional” effort. His caveat is certainly justified when one considers that Peru was dominated until recent decades by such modern era military chieftains as Luis M. Sánchez Cerro, Oscar R. Benavides, and Manuel A. Odría. Yet when General Odría seized control of Peru on October 27, 1948, the Peruvian army was striving desperately for increased professionalism. In order to retain the army's support, the caudillo was thus compelled to enact institutional reforms that made the officer class more conscious of its modernizing mission and, ironically, far less tolerant of Odría's personalism. This study will analyze the military policies of the Odría regime in order to explain the changing outlook of the Peruvian armed forces during the caudillo's eight year rule.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , April 1984 , pp. 479 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1984

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was completed with the aid of a Naval Academy Research Council grant, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Fellowship.

References

1 Lowenthal, Abraham F., ed.,The Peruvian Experiment: Continuity and Change Under Military Rule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 3.Google Scholar

2 Echazú, Major Carlos, “La disciplina militar,” Boletín del Ministerio de Guerra y Marina (December 1914), pp. 1451–1455 Google Scholar; cited in Nunn, Frederick M., “Professional Militarism in Twentieth-Century Peru: Historical and Theoretical Background to the Golpe de Estado of 1968,” Hispanic American Historical Review 59:3 (August 1979), 408 (hereafter cited as HAHR).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Concha, Morla, “Función social del ejército en la organización de la nacionalidad,” Revista Militar del Perú (October 1933), pp. 843–872 Google Scholar passim (hereafter cited as RMP). For a detailed account of the civil-military rivalries of this period see my unpublished Ph.D. dissertation “The Peruvian Armed Forces in Transition, 1939–1963: The Impact of National-Politics and Changing Professional Perspectives” (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1976). Valencia, Victor Villanueva, Ejército peruano: del caudillaje anárquico al militarismo reformista (Lima: Juan Mejia Baca, 1973) is also very useful.Google Scholar

4 General Federico Hurtado, “El ministro de guerra se dirige a la ciudadanía,” RMP (March 1938), pp. i–xxii; cited in Nunn, , “Professional Militarism in Twentieth Century Peru,” HAHR 59:3 (August 1979), 404.Google Scholar

5 United States Ambassador John Campbell White to the Secretary of State, February 2, 1945, National Archives, Record Group 59, 823.00/2-245 (hereafter cited as NA, RG).

6 Comité Revolucionaria de Oficiales del Ejército, “Carta abierta al General Eloy G. Ureta,” Colección de Volantes (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional del Perú), 1945 folder (hereafter cited as CV-BNP).

7 Useful accounts of the Trujillo revolt are Mercado, Rogger, La Revolución de Trujillo (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Popular, 1976)Google Scholar; Thorndike, Guillermo, El año de la barbarie, Perú 1932 (Lima: Nueva Americana, 1969), pp. 186–187 Google Scholar; and Villanueva, Víctor, El Aprá en busca del poder (Lima: Editorial Horizonte, 1975), pp. 95–113.Google Scholar

8 See my “Soldiers, Sailors and Apristas: Conspiracy and Power Politics in Peru, 1932–1948,” in The Underside of Latin American History, Bratzel, John F. and Masterson, Daniel M., eds., (East Lansing: Center for Latin American Studies, Michigan State University, 1976).Google Scholar

9 G-2 Report no. 536711, February 10, 1949. U. S. Military Attaché to Department of the Army; and La Prensa October 30, 1948.

10 Villanueva, Victor, La sublevación apriste del 48: tragedía de un pueblo y un partido (4th ed., Lima: Editorial Milla Batres, 1973), passim.Google Scholar

11 Cardenas, Victor, Checa, Laureano, Hector, Guevara and Toldeo, Orestes Romero, El Apra y la revolución, Tesis para un replanteamiento revolucionario (Buenos Aires, 1952), pp. 5–9.Google Scholar

12 La Prensa, October 31, 1948, p. 1.

13 Unsigned, “El General de Brigada D. Manuel A. Odría, Presidente de la Junta Militar del Gobierno,” RMP (October 1948), pp. v–viii.

14 United States Ambassador Prentice Cooper to Sec. State, October 30, 1947, NA, RG 59,823.00/10-3047.

15 Most air force senior officers and the Inspector General of the Army, General Federico Hurtado, opposed Odría’s golpe but they were “outvoted” by army senior officers including the commander of Lima’s Second Infantry Division General Zenón Noriega. G-2 Report No. 507002, November 4, 1948, U. S. Military Attaché to the Department of the Army, NA, RG 319.

16 Villanueva, Victor, El CAEM y la revolución de la fuerza armada (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1973), pp. 28–33 Google Scholar; G-2 Report no. 667591, May 17, 1950, U. S. Military Attachéto Depart¬ment of the Army, NA, RG 319.

17 See Perú, Ministerio de Guerra, , Ordenes Generales del Ejército, March 11, 1949, p. 71,Google Scholar and Legislación Militar del Perú, July 2, 1956, p. 11, in the Centro de Estudios Histórico-Militares (here¬after cited as CEHM).

18 Quoted in Astiz, Carlos A. and Garcia, José Z., “The Peruvian Military: Achievement Orienta¬tion, Training and Political Tendencies,“Western Political Quarterly 25:4 (December 1972), 672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 See Nunn, “Professional Militarism, in Twentieth-Century Peru,” and General Juan Mendoza R., “El ejército peruano en el siglo XX,” in Paz-Soldan, José Paraja, ed., Visión del Perú en el siglo XX (Lima: Ediciones Liberia Stadium, 1962), pp. 293–349.Google Scholar

20 Generals Marín and Romero Pardo served as the first two directors of CAEM, Mendoza Rodríguez and Lindley López held the positions of Minister of Education and Director of the Center of Military Instruction respectively.

21 For a discussion of Odría’s efforts to use the CAEM as a “junkyard” for his political opponents see Villanueva, El CAEM, pp. 40–41,Google Scholar and G-2 Report no. 642900, March 3, 1950, U.S. Military Attaché to the Department of the Army, NA, RG 319.

22 Authorization for the Center’s creation was included in the Ley Organicio del Ejército in Legislación militar del Peru, C EHM, July 14, 1950.

23 Villanueva, , El CAEM, pp. 41–42.Google Scholar

24 GeneralOdría, Manuel A., Principios y postulados del movemiento restaurador de Arequipa: Extractos de discursos y mensajes del General Don Manuel A. Odría (Lima, 1956), pp. 202–204.Google Scholar

25 Admiral Tirado made this statement to U.S. Ambassador James I. Loeb in 1962. Personal interview with Loeb, Cabin John, Maryland, December 17, 1973 (hereafter cited as Loeb interview).

26 See Lieutenant Pando Esgusquiza, Colonel Cesar A., “El ejército, Es enproductivo?,” RMP (August 1946), pp. 371–387.Google Scholar

27 Mercado Jarrín, Colonel Edgardo, “El ejército de hoy y un proyección de nuestra sociedad en período de transición, 1940–1965,” RMP (November-December 1964), p. 1.Google Scholar

28 “A los señores y oficiales de los Institutos Armados.” This manifesto was signed by officers from the army garrisons at Cuzco, Arequipa, Piura, Lambayeque, Puno, Iquitos, and Huancayo, CV-BNP, 1948.

29 “Manifesto a los institutos armados y el pueblo del Perú, CV-BNP July 1949.

30 G-2 Report no. 642900, March 3, 1950, U. S. Military Attaché to the Department of the Army, NA, RG 319.

31 The Peruvian Times, February 17, 1956, p. 2.

32 These two statements were attributed to General Julio Doig Sanchez and General Juan Bossio Collas respectively. General Doig made his statement to United States military personnel in Washington while serving as Peru’s military attaché in 1962. General Bossio reportedly linked the armed forces to the oligarchy while serving as Minister of Government in the same year. Loeb interview.

33 Velasco characterized the military government’s program in these words while announcing the “Plan Inca” during a national television address in July 1974.

34 See my “Peru’s New Leader”. The Christian Century, XCII: 40(December, 1975), 1112–1114.