Populist Seduction in Latin America. Carlos de la Torre
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and based on highly limited participation to one of populism, which sought an enlarged power base in the lower sectors of society” (1980, 49). What Stein leaves aside is an analysis of the worldview, culture, and discourse characteristic of the República Aristocrática, which would necessarily be the frame of reference for explaining the populist eruptions of APRA and Sanchezcerrismo. This is precisely one of the contributions of Herbert Braun’s work on Jorge Eliecer Gaitán (1985), which examines the beliefs, culture, and actions of Colombian public figures from the 1930s to the 1950s, as well as the rationality of the crowds’ actions in the Bogotazo.
Braun studies the political culture and ideology of the political leaders of the Colombian Convivencia, a period initiated by the administration of Olaya Herrera in 1930 and brought to a close with the assassination of Gaitán in 1948. The political ideals of the Convivencia were based on a precapitalist ethos more moral than economic: “from a Catholic culture emerged an organic, hierarchical view of society that defined individuals by their rank and duties” (Braun 1985, 22). Those who were seen as members of the public sphere were clearly differentiated from those excluded. “Through oratory in Congress and in the public plaza, the politicians attempted to forge a sense of community by instilling moral virtues and noble thoughts in their listeners” (1985, 25). The process of governing “was perceived as the molding of the anarchic lives of followers, the encouragement of civilized comportment, and the raising of the masses above the necessities of daily life so as to ease their integration into society” (1985, 22). Political leaders referred to all those outside public life as el pueblo. This undifferentiated category was seen “more as plebs than as populace, more as laborers than as the soul of the nation” (1985, 28).
Socioeconomic processes such as dependent capitalist development, urbanization, and the growth of the state apparatus resulted in changes in the social structure, with the emergence of new groups seeking incorporation into the political community and questioning the Convivialistas’ vision of politics. Braun’s analysis of the cultural parameters through which elites perceived politics permits him to capture the crisis of the oligarchic social order in all its complexity: socio economic, political, cultural, and discursive. But the problem with his work is that he analyzes the political leaders of the time without taking into account the pressures, limitations, and opportunities posed to them by the actions of subaltern groups. Only in the final chapters of his work does Braun examine the rationality of the crowds’ collective action in the Bogotazo. Prior to this, el pueblo appears in the same undifferentiated way as contemporary elites saw them.
The analysis of past populist experiences should not lead us to commit the all too common error of assuming that populism itself is a necessary phenomenon of the past linked to the transition from an oligarchical to a modern society. Chapter 4 will review the debates on populism and neopopulism sparked by the electoral successes of Alberto Fujimori, Carlos Menem, Fernando Collor de Mello, and Abdalá Bucaram. Populism is more than a phase in the history of Latin America or of nationalist and redistributive state policies, or a form of political discourse. I explore the relationship between leaders and followers and the specific forms of political incorporation in contemporary Latin America. This perspective analyzes the contradictory and ambiguous experiences of popular participation in politics.
To illustrate my approach to populism, I focus on the Ecuadorian case. I analyze the transition from the politics of notables to mass politics, studying how the different mediations between state and society were constructed. As will be illustrated in chapter 2, populist politics in Ecuador originated in the 1940s under the leadership of José María Velasco Ibarra. Ecuador was not at this time experiencing a process of import substitution industrialization. Even so, the oligarchical order was in crisis, as in other Latin American cases. Social actors such as the middle class—which had grown as a consequence of urbanization and state expansion—artisans, and a small proletariat were demanding political inclusion.
Velasco Ibarra took politics out of the salons and cafes of the elites and into the public plazas. He toured most of the country delivering his message of political incorporation through honest elections. Velasco Ibarra’s followers responded to his appeals by occupying plazas, demonstrating for their leader, intimidating opponents, and—when they felt that their will at the polls had been mocked—staging insurrections and rebellions. Velasco Ibarra did not always respect democratic institutions. He assumed temporary dictatorial powers on several occasions, abolishing the constitutions of 1935, 1946, and 1970 with the assertion that they limited the general will of the people that he claimed to embody.
Velasquismo expanded the Ecuadorian electorate from 3.1 percent of the total population in 1933 to 16.83 percent in 1968, but most citizens remained excluded through the use of literacy requirements. Despite such a restricted franchise, Velasquismo cannot be reduced to a mere electoral phenomenon. It was a broader social and political movement, which included both voters and nonvoters (Maiguashca and North 1991). The novelty of Velasquismo was to inaugurate a political style wherein mass meetings, crowd actions, and self-recognition in a moralistic, Manichaean political rhetoric became more important than narrowly restricted representative political institutions.
These two distinct forms of political participation—mass mobilization of el pueblo and limited citizen participation in democratic institutions—illustrate how different mediations between the state and society have historically been constructed. Citizenship, in Charles Tilly’s definition, comprises the “rights and mutual obligations binding state agents to a category of persons defined exclusively by their legal attachment to the same state” (1995, 369). The struggle for and the establishment of citizenship rights goes hand in hand with the rule of law and hence with the building and strengthening of liberal democratic institutions. As in other Latin American countries, citizenship in Ecuador has tended to be restricted and to place priority on political and social rights over civil rights; hence populism has become the principal link between state and civil society.
The continuing inability of liberal democratic institutions to provide a sense of participation and belonging to the political community have contrasted with political participation through populist, non-parliamentary politics. The main legacy of populism then has been to create a style of political mobilization and a rhetoric that link the state and civil society through mechanisms that do not correspond to the rule of law or respect for liberal democratic procedures.
Populist Seduction
Analytically, it is important to differentiate populism as regimes in power (where the analysis of state policies is central) from populism as wider social and political movements seeking power.1 To understand the appeal of populist leaders and the expectations of their followers, the following variables must be studied: personalistic charismatic leadership, Manichaean discourse, political clientelism and patronage, and the social history of populism.
POPULIST LEADERSHIP
This section discusses those elements of the concept of charismatic leadership that describe populist experiences. Following Weber (1968), charisma is understood as a double-sided interactive social process that allows us to understand how populist leaders are created by their followers and how they have constructed themselves into leaders. The populist leader is identified with the people—el pueblo—understood as the plebs in its struggle against the oligarchy (Taguieff 1995, 38–39). The leader, due to his or her “honesty and strength of will guarantees the fulfillment of popular aspirations and wishes” (Torres Ballesteros 1987, 171). Such leaders represent “the symbolic projection of an ideal.… Through social rites of veneration, qualities they do not possess are often attributed to them” (Martín Arranz 1987, 84). In the process, the leader and followers are mystically linked.
Performing what is perceived as an extraordinary deed is one of the elements of charismatic leadership (Willner 1984). Examples of such deeds are Haya de la Torre’s championing of Peruvian workers in the struggle for an eight-hour workday in 1919, his efforts for the creation of the Popular University, and his leadership in the fight against the dictatorship of Leguía in 1923 (Stein 1980). Obstacles to success, a leader’s personal sacrifice and disinterest, risk taking, and the importance of the leader’s actions for