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5 The Paths to Populism in Peru Steve Stein Populism arose in Peru in the 1930s to fill a need for a more modern, inclusive politics for the masses. The old regime could no longer respond to the powerful social and economic changes brought on by urbanization after World War i. This was especially true in and around the capital of Lima. The old political elite was morally and politically bankrupt.1 The early 1930s witnessed the rise of two strong populist movements, the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) party led by víctor Raúl haya de laTorre and the electoral machine of Luis M. sánchez Cerro. These two competing campaigns ushered in a new era, yet the populists were shut down by mid-decade by the army and the forces of reaction. five decades later, Peru experienced a populist resurgence with the Aprista government of Alan García (1985–90) followed by the two-term presidency of neopopulist Alberto fujimori (1990–2000). García had replaced two other regimes with populist tendencies, the Revolutionary Government of the Armed forces, which had discredited itself by the late 1970s, and the second presidency of fernando belaúnde Terry (1980–85), who ended up presiding over a failed center-right technocracy. This chapter begins by examining the dynamics of the country’s early populist movements in the 1920s and 1930s. next, it moves to the populist features of the odría government (1948–55), the first belaúnde Terry administration (1963–68), and the velasco Alvarado period of military rule (1968–75). it concludes with a discussion of populism in the 1980s and 1990s, which stresses the economic, social, and political changes that led to the reemergence of populism under Alan García and its resurrection as neopopulism by Alberto fujimori (1990–2000). The Paths to Populism in Peru / 111 The birth of Populism, 1919–33 The 1920s were a tumultuous time marked by the explosive growth of Lima and by the first effects of the Great Depression. The eleven-year rule of President Augusto b. Leguía came to an abrupt end with a military coup in 1930. The leader of the coup, forty-one-year-old army major Luis M. sánchez Cerro, created one of the country’s first populist movements. An important sign that a new era had begun was a marked and visible increase in political activity by the popular sectors of Lima. from the very day of Leguía’s downfall, workingclass mobs staged demonstrations and riots that destroyed his residence and those of some prominent supporters. During subsequent months the popular sectors dominated the urban political scene. The terms pueblo, masas, and elementos populares, which had in previous years been largely absent from the political vocabulary, became prominent in the public statements and writings of nearly all public figures in the early 1930s. Many upper-class Peruvians lamented the disturbing rise of mass politics, coupled with the economic turmoil of the Depression. “Although it is painful for us to confirm it,” wrote army general and future president oscar benavides, “unfortunately it appears as if a streak of ignorance, of madness, has invaded us, wresting from us our most innermost feelings of nationality.” The climate of fear and despair was so intense that many actually predicted Peru’s extinction as a nation-state. Conservative pundit and politician víctor Andrés belaúnde lamented that “the very bases of civilized life threaten to disappear.”2 The political crisis feared by both benavides and belaúnde was a major factor in the rise of populist movements in Peru. it was the result, in great measure, of the disintegration of the so-called República Aristocrática, the elite-controlled political system in power from 1895 through the 1920s. That system epitomized those “dignified traditions” that the elites remembered with such reverence after 1930. its collapse left a major political vacuum. Most of those who had been prominent in past years literally abandoned the political field. in addition, in the decades prior to 1930 Lima’s politics had been undergoing a process of massification. This resulted from the profound social and economic changes accompanying the growth of urban population in Peru. beginning roughly around 1900 and picking up pace during World War i, the surge in Lima’s inhabitants, the product of Peru’s first major wave of rural-urban migration , became particularly visible during the Leguía government. in those eleven years, the capital’s...

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