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Peru's Postponed Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

David Chaplin
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

Observers of Peru since Carleton Beals (1934) have been pre-dicting “fire on the Andes.” When Bolivia began its basic social transformation in 1952, a Peruvian conflagration seemed all the more inevitable. Then, in 1962, what appeared to be Peru's version of the Sierra Maestra phase of “the revolution” began in the densely populated mountainous areas of the south.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

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References

1 , Beals, Fire on the Andes (Philadelphia 1934)Google Scholar.

2 Bourricaud, François, “Structure and Function of Peruvian Oligarchy,” Studies in Comparative International Development, 11, No. 2 (1966), 29Google Scholar.

3 Ratinoff, Luis, “Las clases medias en América Latina,” Revista paraguaya de sociología, 11 (September-December 1965), 531Google Scholar; Leeds, Anthony, “Brazilian Careers and Social Structure: An Evolutionary Model and Case History,” American Anthropologist, LXVI (December 1964), 1321–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, “Seven Erroneous Theses About Latin America,” New University Thought, iv (Winter 19661967), 32Google Scholar.

4 Gabriel Escobar, “El mestizaje en la región andina: El caso del Perú,” Revista de Indias (Madrid), Nos. 95–96 (January-June 1964), 197–220; Aníbal Quijano, “La emergencía del grupo ‘cholo’ y sus consecuencias en la sociedad peruana,” in Asociación Colombiana de Sociología, Sociología y sociedad en Latino-américa (Bogotá 1965), 403–47Google Scholar; and Varallanos, José, El cholo y el Perú (Buenos Aires 1962)Google Scholar.

5 Carey found that in Latin America Peru was second only to Brazil in the amount of U.S. military assistance (not including covert military and CIA assistance) received from 1945 to 1960 ($94,000,000). See Carey, James C., Peru and the United States (Notre Dame 1964), 144Google Scholar.

6 Payne, James L., Labor and Politics in Peru (New Haven 1965), 109Google Scholar.

7 Kantor, Harry, The Ideology and Program of the Peruvian Aprista Movement (Berkeley 1956)Google Scholar; and Alexander, Robert J., Communism in Latin America (New Brunswick 1957)Google Scholar.

8 The following interesting assessment would seem most appropriate to the APRA during these 1956–1962 convivencia days, but it was written in 1934: “Unfortunately, die APRA movement has already compromised its program. It has been trying to conciliate the Church; instead of propagandizing against the militarists, it has advocated justice and efficiency for the Army; and it has soft-pedalled its whole anti-imperialistic position, especially widi reference to British capital. This opportunism is largely due to Haya de la Torre, now entirely too enmeshed in the intrigues of Lima politics. It is doubtful if this attempt to win die sympadiy of the poorer clergy and die Army has brought enough effective support to compensate for the loss of mass faith in die Aprista movement itself” (Beals, 428).

9 United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America, Analyses and Projections of Economic Development: VI. The Industrial Development of Peru (Mexico City 1959), 11Google Scholar.

10 Guzman, German, Borda, Orlando Fals, and Luna, Eduardo Umana, La violencia en Colombia, 2nd ed., Vols. I, II (Bogota 1963)Google Scholar.

11 Bourricaud, 24–25, 30.

12 Gabriel Escobar, an authority on the social history of the Peruvian Sierra, observes that “if the Indians, as Indians, had ever acquired political power it would have taken the form of a ‘nativistic’ reconstruction of die Inca empire, as revealed by the Puno rebellions of the 1920's” (personal communication, January 27, 1967).

13 , Escobar, La estructura politica rural del departamento de Puno, publ. Ph.D. diss., Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cuzco (Cuzco 1961)Google Scholar.

14 Ford, Thomas, Man and Land in Peru (Gainesville 1962), 80Google Scholar. The Beneficencias Publicas (Public Welfare Societies) were established in the late 1820's to serve as an alternative to the religious orders for receiving land bequests and directing charities.

15 “The Modernized Church in Peru: Two Aspects,” Review of Politics, xxvi (July 1964), 308Google Scholar, 309, 311, 307.

16 Kenneth Grubenhoff, “The Christian Trade Union Movement of Peru,” a graduate-student field-research project, University of Wisconsin, 1965, carried out under my supervision.

17 North, Lisa, Civil-Military Relations in Argentina, Chile and Peru, Politics of Modernization Series, No. 2, Institute of International Studies, University of California (Berkeley 1966), 63Google Scholar.

18 , Gen. Juan Mendoza R., “El ejército peruano en el siglo XX,” in Paz-Soldan, José Pareja, Visión del Perú en el siglo XX, Vol. I (Lima 1962), 300Google Scholar.

19 Garbin, Raul, Diccionario biográfico del Perú (Lima 19431944)Google Scholar.

20 Mendoza, 316.

21 A 1962 statement of military policy was published shortly before the 1962–1963 junta took over. Although the author states that the army would not intervene in politics because of its “political maturity” (Mendoza, 344–45), and that it should take care not to convert itself into a police instrument of the oligarchy (p. 341), the door is left open for military intervention to prevent electoral fraud (the public justification for the 1962 coup). General Mendoza adds that the military should not “bury itself' in pure technical and professional efficiency, but should be deeply concerned with overall national progress.

Although die 1962 junta members were apparently not foreign-trained, they were all members of the “Nasserist” CAEM and as such had exposed themselves to a leftist intellectual critique of the APRA as well as of the oligarchy. See Patch, Richard, The Peruvian Elections of 1962 and Their Annulment, American Universities Field Staff Report, West Coast South America Series, Vol. IX, No. 6 (Peru) (New York, June 1962), 16Google Scholar.

22 The major sources utilized for this description and analysis, aside from personal observation, are Wesley W. Craig, Jr., “The Peasant Movement of La Convención, Peru: Dynamics of Rural Organization,” a paper read at the meeting of the Rural Sociological Association, Miami, August 27, 1966; Neira, Hugo, Cuzco: Tierra y tnuerte, problemas de hoy (Lima 1964)Google Scholar; Maitan, Livio, “The Revolt of the Peruvian Campesinos,” International Socialist Review, xxvi (Spring 1965), 3841Google Scholar, the “Hugo Blanco Correspondence,” ibid., 41–46; de Guerra, Ministerio, Las guerrillas en el Perú y su represión (Lima 1966)Google Scholar; Uceda, Luis de la Puente, “The Peruvian Revolution: Concepts and Perspectives,” Monthly Review, xvii (November 1965), 23Google Scholar; Quijano, Aníbal, “El movimiento campesino del Perú y sus líderes,” America Latina, viii (October-December 1965), 4365Google Scholar; Bondy, Sebastian Salazar, “Andes and the Sierra Maestra,” in Fuentes, Carlos and others, Whither Latin America? (New York 1963)Google Scholar, esp. 117; Gerrit Huizer, “On Peasant Unrest in Latin America,” report to the International Labor Organization and the Comité Interamericana de Desarrollo Agrícola, Pan American Union (Washington, June 1967), 161–75; Colmenares, Ricardo Letts, “Breve historia contemporánea de la lucha por la reforma agraria en el Perú,” Economía y agricultura, 1 (December 1963-February 1964), 121–30Google Scholar.

23 Craig, 8.

24 Ibid., 11.

25 ibid., 15–16.

26 A personal communication, January 27, 1967.

27 In the southern mountainous region around Cuzco (in 1959), “workers' organizations are, … considering their [small] size, remarkably vocal. Their outlook is nearly always Marxist, if not Communistic and their affiliations with the professional group … especially the scholastic one … are traditionally close” (Southern Peru Regional Development Project, Vol. V, Human Resources in the Department of Puno [Lima 1959]Google Scholar, 17, mimeographed).

28 Pp. 110–12.

29 See the “Hugo Blanco correspondence” written from jail in the spring of 1964. In this reappraisal Blanco attempts to defend his strategic failure. He confesses to having had “heavy putschist vapors … floating in [his] brain” (p. 46).

30 Las guerrillas en el Perú y su represión (pp. 20–21). The text notes that “it is practically impossible to traverse the road without being seen by lookouts, and therefore the possibility of capturing any refugee from justice is very remote in those areas since he can be alerted and flee hours ahead [of one's arrival].”

31 Letts, 128.

32 “The Peruvian Revolution,” 23.

33 Such as the inappropriate diversion of perhaps a third of the Peruvian army to the Ecuadorian border in the spring of 1965 and the considerable assistance rendered the Communists by the two twentieth-century military dictators, Benavides (1936–1939) and Odría (1949–1956).

34 Marx, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (London 1943), 135–37Google Scholar.

Marx also observed that the benefits to the peasantry of the division of land had to be transitory—lasting only long enough to buy support and time for one regime—and that subsequently equally great poverty would result. Latin American land reformers should not expect this conservatizing effect to last indefinitely. An increase in fertility from the earlier marriages that such ready land makes possible can alone undermine the benefits of such a reform.

35 On this latter point, Caretas, Peru's leading popular illustrated magazine, spoke effectively to the military in an issue published during the summer of 1965. It reminded them of this now classic tactic in an article entitled “No es una simple operacion mili-tar” (August 19–30, 1965), 13. The guerrillas could hope to prosper only if supported by the local peasantry. The crucial program to win such support away from the guerrillas would be agrarian reform, to which the military had already committed itself. In addition, the Peruvian army was already committed, if only half-heartedly, to a program of civic action in the Sierra, consisting largely of road-building.

36 P. 24. Horowitz feels that “the movement of the peasantry from the rural to urban centers in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Peru has clearly served to reduce the revolutionary discontent of these nations.” See Irving Louis Horowitz, “La política urbana en Latinoamérica,” Revista mexicana de sociología, xxviii. No. 1 (n.d.), 74.

37 (November 1965), 11.

38 Kerr, Clark and Siegel, Abraham, “The Interindustry Propensity to Strike—An International Comparison,” in Kornhauser, Arthur and others, Industrial Conflict (New York 1954)Google Scholar, chap. 14.

39 In fact, between 1940 and 1961 the percentage of workers in manufacturing fell from 15.4 to 13.1, in spite of considerable economic development. See Chaplin, David, The Peruvian Industrial Labor Force (Princeton 1967), 168–73Google Scholar.

40 Martínez de la Torre, Ricardo, Apuntes para una interpretación marxista de la historia social del Perú, Vol. I (Lima 1947), 35Google Scholar.

41 P. 45.

42 Craig, 33.

43 In view of De la Puente's guerrilla leadership it is interesting to note his program for agrarian reform published a year after he was killed: La reforma del agro peruano (Lima 1966)Google Scholar. It was his thesis at the University of Trujillo, presented in 1957 while he was still an Aprista. In it, he took a moderate evolutionary position advocating that, with proper payment and no violence, the feudal latifundas should be transformed into efficient capitalist enterprises, while Indian communities, with their [supposedly] still active cooperative spirit, should be encouraged to develop as peasant cooperatives (pp. 192–93). He warned against “leftist infantilism” or “Marxist intoxication,” which would lead to the violent confiscation of all large landholders. He showed himself anxious to avoid “exhausting national energy on sporadic and ephemeral conquests” (p. 191).

44 “The Peruvian Revolution,” 21.

45 ibid., 22.

46 ibid., 23.

47 ibid., 25–26.

48 Morse, Richard, “Latin American Cities,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, iv (July 1962), 473–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Edme, Henri, “Damping the Fires of Revolution,” Les Temps Modernes (May 1966)Google Scholar, reprinted in translation in Adas (September 1966), 10–15.

50 ibid., 14, 13.

51 ibid., 14.

52 ibid., 15, 13.

53 Chaplin, David, “Industrialization and the Distribution of Wealth in Peru,” Studies in Comparative International Development, iii, No. 3 (1968), 5566Google Scholar.

54 David Chaplin, “Peruvian Social Mobility: Revolutionary and Developmental Potential,” in Celia Heller, ed., Structured Social Inequality: A Reader in Comparative Social Stratification (forthcoming).

55 Glade feels there may well be a parallel between Peru's recent development and the orthodox economic policies of the Porfirian era in Mexico which preceded the revolution. See William P. Glade, “Comments on Peruvian Economic Prospects,” a paper presented at a conference on “The Next Decade of Latin American Economic Development,” Cornell University, April 1966.