Changing Faces of Populism in Latin America: Masks, Makeovers, and Enduring Features

Populism in Latin America. Edited by Michael L. Conniff. (Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1999. Pp. 243. $44.95 cloth, $22.50 paper.)

Populist Seduction in Latin America: The Ecuadorian Experience. By Carlos de la Torre. (Athens: Center for International Studies, Ohio University Press, 2000. Pp. 185. $22.00 paper.)

Miraculous Metamorphoses: The Neoliberalization of Latin American Populism. Edited by Jolle Demmers, Alex E. Fernández Jilberto, and Barbara Hogenboom. (London and New York: Zed Books, Palgrave, 2001. Pp. 208. $65.00 cloth, $27.50 paper.)

Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era: Class, Polarization, and Conflict. Edited by Steve Ellner and Daniel Hellinger. (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003. Pp. 257. $49.95 cloth.)

As I am writing this essay, a molded plastic facial mask of gray-bearded Brazilian President Luiz Inácio da Silva looks out over my desk. Does Lula, by winning more than 61 percent of the 2002 Brazilian presidential vote (52 million votes) and having street-vended masks made of his likeness, qualify to be the newest face of neopopulism in Latin America? How would one decide? Although none of the books reviewed below is recent enough to discuss Lula's presidency, and my responses to these queries are already fairly certain, these rhetorical questions nonetheless help to focus my thinking as I review some recent scholarship on populism and "neopopulism" in Latin America.

The four books reviewed make strong and different contributions to the scholarship on the history of populism and neopopulism in Latin America. Michael Conniff's edited volume, Populism in Latin America, a worthy successor to his 1982 edited volume, remains primarily focused on the classical populism exemplified by leaders such as Juan Perón, although it also includes a discussion of prominent 1990s neopopulists—Alberto Fujimori, Carlos Menem, and Fernando Collor de Mello. In Miraculous Metamorphoses: The Neoliberalization of Latin American Populism, edited by Jolle Demmers, Alex E. Fernández Jilberto, and Barbara Hogenboom, the authors offer historically well-grounded analyses of the political economy evolution of various Latin American nations. Regarding the 1990s, this book includes—along with the three aforementioned neopopulists—Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and the post-Pinochet Chilean Socialist Party as "representatives of the new regional political disposition." The editors call this new model "neoliberal populism" (xii, 11-12).

In Populist Seduction in Latin America: The Ecuadorian Experience, Carlos de la Torre situates Ecuadorian classical populist José María Velasco Ibarra in comparative perspective and then adds short-term president Abdalá Bucaram to the list of 1990s neopopulists. Finally, there is Hugo Chávez, the main subject of Steve Ellner and Daniel Hellinger's edited volume, Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era: Class, Polarization, and Conflict. Where does the current Venezuelan president belong? Rejecting "ready-made categories" that would link Chávez to Fujimori or to Perón or Fidel Castro, the editors view the Chavista government as "a rather unique and complex phenomenom" (226). Nevertheless, they and chapter author Kenneth Roberts devote some attention to Chávez's relationship to various regional political currents, including classical populism and the contemporary "pattern of personalistic political leadership in Latin America's neoliberal era" (67).

This essay begins with a comparative overview of the contents of the four books. This section compares the range of countries covered and the disciplines represented in these books and summarizes and assesses each book. The second major section of this essay discusses how these books address four questions. First, how do they define populism and neopopulism? Second, do the characterizations and case.> studies of populism tend to have positive or negative normative connota- tions? Third, what are neopopulism's effects on democracy? Fourth, what explains the (re)emergence of neopopulism in the 1990s? The final section of this essay suggests areas for further research and concept-building and adds my voice to...