Populist Seduction in Latin America. Carlos de la Torre
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that different actors have of the past. Thus, the historical movement from heterogeneous precapitalist pasts to heterogeneous capitalist presents is often oversimplified through the use of this category.
Existing works on Velasco’s discourse, such as Cárdenas Reyes (1991) and Ojeda (1971), do not study the broader discursive field from which it emerged, hence they cannot show why it was successful over rival discourses. Moreover, these studies do not differentiate the analysis of discourse in general from political discourse, whose specificity is the struggle over and about state power.
Given the theoretical and methodological problems inherent in existing studies of Velasquismo and Latin American populism in general, a new account is needed to explain the success of political leaders. This chapter applies a multidisciplinary approach to study Velasco Ibarra’s leadership as a dual process. To understand how Velasco Ibarra was produced socially, I employ the tools of social historians to study the meanings of politics through an analysis of collective violence in the May Revolution. Discourse analysis is used to map how the shared (if contested) frame of discourse in Ecuador in the 1940s transformed Velasco Ibarra into the savior of the country. To see how Velasco Ibarra produced himself as the key leader in this conjuncture, I thoroughly analyze his speech in Guayaquil on 4 June after returning to the country as the Great Absentee. Finally, I study his oratory strategies to explain the success of his discourse over rival alternatives.
La Gloriosa: The Social Production of Velasco Ibarra
Contemporary newspaper reports and memoirs of participants in La Gloriosa propose the following causes for the May Revolution: a rejection of Liberal electoral fraud; Ecuador’s military defeat by Peru in 1941; the animosity between the government’s elite police force (the carabineros) and the regular army and broad sectors of the population; and the Liberal government’s economic policies, which resulted in an almost unbearable increase in the cost of living (Arízaga Vega 1990; Girón 1945; Muñoz Vicuña 1984; Naranjo 1945; Pérez Castro 1990).
Broad sectors of the population perceived that the Liberals had remained in power by electoral fraud. Eloy Alfaro, leader of the 1895 Liberal Revolution, was rumored to have said, “What we won with bullets we will not lose by ballots,” and this became an ongoing Liberal strategy. More recently, the 1940 presidential election, won by the Liberal Carlos Arroyo del Río against José María Velasco Ibarra and the Conservative Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, was seen as no exception. The perception that the 1940 election was dishonest—despite the fact that it was approved by Congress—had motivated defeated candidate Velasco Ibarra to lead a failed insurrection in Guayaquil in January 1940, which resulted in his political exile.
The significance of the 1940 election was to show the Liberal elites that their strategy of electoral fraud could not longer work because of the beginning of a new electoral style. Velasco Ibarra, unlike the other presidential candidates, campaigned by touring most of the country and delivered his message of honest election to voters and nonvoters. In Quito he proclaimed, “the streets and plazas are for citizens to express their aspirations and yearnings, and not for slaves to rattle their chains” (de la Torre 1993, 160). Velasco democratized public spaces by bringing politics from the salons of the elites to the streets. His followers, who were for the first time addressed in the public plazas, asserted their right to occupy public sites. They cheered Velasco Ibarra, booed his opponents, and, when they felt that the elections were dishonest, revolted in the name of their leader. The 1940 elections, thus, showed that the costs of electoral fraud were too high. That election also marked the beginning of a new electoral strategy—from then on, to win an election, a presidential candidate had to visit most of the country.
The political incorporation in the 1940s, however, was more symbolic than real. The franchise excluded most of the population because it was restricted to literate voters, excluding de facto most poor mestizos and Indians—literacy rates were 20 percent in 1939 and 22 percent in 1944 (Cremieux 1946, 77). Electoral laws further discouraged poor people and immigrants from voting because voters had to reregister and pay a fee for each election and return to the district where they had first registered to cast their ballots (Maiguashca and North 1991, 133). The small proportion of voters, which had none theless increased from 3.1 percent in 1933 to 8.8 percent in 1948 did not mean political apathy. Starting with the 1939–40 presidential campaign, Velasco Ibarra’s followers felt they were participants in the political struggle and asserted their rights by symbolically occupying public spaces and demonstrating for their leader. This occupation of public spaces was in itself an act of self-recognition and affirmation of the political rights of people excluded by the lack of honesty at the polls and a restricted franchise from the political decision-making apparatus.
Four years later, the country prepared to elect a new president in the elections of early June 1944. After a series of discussions, debates, and maneuvers, two candidates emerged: the Liberal Miguel Albornoz, supported by President Arroyo del Río, and José María Velasco Ibarra, whose candidacy was promoted by the broad-based Alianza Democrática Ecuatoriana (ADE). All the principal political parties except the Partido Liberal-Radical had joined forces to form ADE in July 1943 (Partido Conservador [Conservative Party], Partido Comunista [Communist Party], Partido Socialista [Socialist Party], Vanguardia Socialista Revolucionaria [Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard], Partido Liberal Independiente [Independent Liberal Party], and Frente Democrático [Democratic Front]), and sponsor Velasco Ibarra as their candidate for the upcoming elections. This coalition also included organizations of civil society, such as workers’ unions, student federations, electoral committees, artisan associations, and truck and bus drivers’ organizations. The Liberal government prevented Velasco from returning to the country to direct his own presidential campaign. This arbitrary executive order, the repression of Velasquistas, and the memories of previous electoral frauds led the opposition to conclude that the Liberals were preparing yet another fraud for June 1944.
The second cause for the revolt was Ecuador’s military defeat by Peru in 1941, which resulted in the loss of half of the national territory located in the Amazonian tropical rain forest. For many people, especially young army officers, the cause of the defeat was the ineptitude and corruption of the Liberal regime. The anonymous anti-Arroyo del Río flyer “Death to the Traitor,” circulated in 1941, concluded: “Ecuadorian soldiers, Why don’t you take up the weapons of the homeland, to punish the Traitor and trafficker who has sold the national soil! How much longer will you tolerate the infamy of obeying the orders of such a monster?” (Biblioteca Aurelio Espinosa Pólit, Cotocollao [hereafter BAEP], Hojas volantes [flyers] 1939–45, no. 100). Nationalistic feelings were reinforced in late May 1944, when the government agreed to the establishment of a new frontier with Peru, which validated the loss of half of the national territory.
The third cause for the revolt was the rivalry between the regular army and the carabineros. Established in 1938, this repressive elite police force was not only autonomous from the army, it was also a parallel repressive institution with superior attributes of authority. Logically, the relationship between the carabineros and the army was one of rivalry. For example, Major Luis A. Nuñez, director of the May Revolution in the central highland city of Riobamba, related the following incidents between carabineros and the army: “The mockeries and insults of the carabineros continually fed animosity to them … they used to come to the barracks of the battalion Córdova with rude and defiant attitudes to try to scare people and to look for trouble, saying things such as: ‘We don’t think of you as men, and when the fight comes we’ll punish you as lads’” (Girón 1945, 307). The carabineros were hated by young army officers, who suspected that their institution was going to be replaced by this elite police force. Velasquistas and other opponents of the regime also detested them, leading officials of the carabineros to say in a press interview that the shout “Viva Velasco Ibarra” had become an “insult to our institution and they should not be surprised that we defend the decency of our corps” (El telégrafo, 15 May 1944). In this context, Albert Franklin, an American who lived in Ecuador in the 1930s and 1940s, wrote, “The shout ‘Viva Velasco Ibarra!’ which for nine years had only been an insult to authority, started to be heard with more frequency and with a new meaning. Velasco’s absence, instead of diminishing had increased his legend. In Quito, to the V for Victory was added another V, and nobody doubted the meaning of the two Vs formed with both hands: ‘Viva Velasco!’