Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century Peru: The Rise of the Partido Civil (review)

Taking exception to much of the recent historiography of Peruvian political culture in the nineteenth century, Ulrich Muecke, professor of modern European and Latin American history at the Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany, sets aside discussion of any framework which suggests that the subject of politics may be a national political project. Instead, he declares his preference for the study of day-to-day political activities as a means for understanding the politics of national culture. As the instrument of his research design, Muecke examines in great detail the organization, workings and activities of the Partido Civil, Peru's first recognizable civilian political party that might carry the label as we have come to understand it.

Muecke unfurls his subject in three sections. In the first part, Muecke surveys the financial history of the state, creating a context for the introduction of the central figure of his work, Manuel Pardo, the first civilian elected president of Peru (1872-1876). Here, Muecke analyzes the close ties between the leading members of the party and the most powerful families in Lima. Yet the party was open to other social sectors and Muecke argues the party only became a "political force to be reckoned with" (pp. 77-78) when the educated middle class was welcomed into its ranks. Muecke contends that social and economic structures, rather than the rise of class consciousness or the influence of a hero (ie., Manuel Pardo), were responsible for the party's successful establishment as a political organization. He illustrates this by calling attention to two key elements: the party's heavy weight in the national parliament and its reliance for power on elections.

Muecke elaborates on these arguments in the second section, presenting considerable detail on political activities in Peru in advance of the election of Pardo. The election campaign of 1871-72, the results of the election, and the formation of power groups in the national parliament in the wake of the Partido's electoral success receive detailed attention. Pardo maintained contact with his partisans around the country through continual correspondence, providing news, moral support and personal touches, especially with party loyalists in Puno and Cuzco, from which his vice-presidential candidates emerged. The masses in all areas were rallied with money, gifts and public demonstrations in order to ensure that the Pardo group at every possible location could win the election-day street battles that would mean control of the voting places and the ballot boxes, the final step toward victory. Once Pardo took office, the party organized parliamentary voting blocks, and Muecke comments on their voting patterns and the national issues around which they marshaled their resources and led the congressional debates and votes until the Civilistas split in 1876 and the party found itself in crisis virtually on the eve of Pardo's assassination and the War of the Pacific. Interestingly, the party did not fade away after the assassination, nor did its leaders develop a serious base among the masses of people, whose interests went unspoken in parliamentary debates, leaving a large swath of political space for more democratic movements.

In the final section, Muecke examines the party's voter constituency. Here he provides a searching analysis of the artisans whose widespread efforts to become involved in the politics of the state foundered on a key Civilista discomfort: artisan anticlerical liberalism. Muecke also surveys the president's turbulent relationship with the prefects, and concludes that Pardo's efforts to link the party to centralizing public works projects failed. Ultimately, so did his plans to make the party a true machine-like organization with a loyal nationwide base whose power would rest on the rewards of development projects. Yet Muecke also points out that the Civilista Party of the postwar period was the heir of the earlier party that, interestingly, was able to make its presence felt largely because a civilian peace had been put in...