The New Politics of Protest: Indigenous Mobilization in Latin America's Neoliberal Era

CHAPTER SIX. Peru: Crisis and Contention

Peru is an anomalous case of indigenous and popular mobilization. It has the largest absolute number of indigenous peoples of any country in Latin America.1 The country was the seat of power of the vast Inca Empire. Yet it does not have a nationally visible indigenous movement. Ethnic identities have remained muted in the country. However, as Lucero and García (2007) remind us, ethnicity is expressed differently in different countries. Indigenous collective action in Peru has traditionally emphasized class, regional, or sectoral identities much more than ethnic ones. Notwithstanding , Peru is a country with a tremendous amount of popular collective activity. Similar to Ecuador and Bolivia, Peru suffers from a weakly institutionalized party system that is unable to absorb social antagonisms. As the evidence presented in chapter 1 (table 1.1) revealed, Peru has a higher average level of social protest than even Bolivia or Ecuador. But while popular resistance movements in the latter cases have captured state power and more or less derailed market reforms, neoliberalism has faced little in the way of a sustained challenge in Peru. Instead, antineoliberal protests in the country are localized, sporadic, and spontaneous in nature, though at times the intensity of the conflicts causes them to resonate at the national level. Why does social protest look so different in Peru? It is not enough to simply state that things are different in different countries. We need to understand what drives these differences. Explanations for the limited role that indigenous identity has played in the political life of the country include the repression suffered by indigenous groups during the country’s CHAPTER SIX Peru Crisis and Contention 87 decade-long war with the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) guerrilla movement (Brysk 2000; Yashar 1998); the cultural and geographical distance of the nation’s coastal capital from indigenous groups (Albó 2002); and the expropriation of indigenous cultural symbols and discourse by political elites (Baud 2009; De la Cadena 2000). While clearly inhibiting social mobilization in the countryside and the political outreach of indigenous groups, such factors are only part of the explanation of the difficulties of articulating ethnic identities in the country. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that the country’s historic mode of popular political incorporation produced a pattern of class-based collective action that has become a defining feature of Peruvian politics. The shift to neoliberalism, however, has undermined this pattern. Alternative collective identities have not yet emerged. In the absence of a common framework for organizing, a concerted and coordinated resistance effort on the part of civil society has proven elusive. The chapter follows a now familiar three-part format. The first section examines the impact of market reforms on patterns of collective action in Peru. It explores the first wave of austerity protests that enveloped the country in the late 1970s and 1980s. The lull in protest activity that occurred after the consolidation of neoliberal reforms under the administration of President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) is analyzed. The reemergence of civil society in the post-Fujimori period is then explored. The second section of the chapter examines the historic period of popular political incorporation in the country and the strong legacy of class-based integration that it produced. The final section examines the rise of new social and political actors in the wake of the decline in class-based collective action. It highlights some of the local and regional protest movements that have emerged, including indigenous activism in the Amazon, antimining groups in the highlands, and the emerging coca growers’ movement in the south. Market Reform and Protest Activity The economic-restructuring process in Peru has produced a shift in the pattern of social protest, from institutionalized to noninstitutionalized forms of societal mobilization (Rice 2003). Figure 6.1 charts the trends in social protest in the country over time. The adoption of an IMF austerity package following the economic crisis that began in the mid-1970s was met with strong resistance on the part of organized labor in the form of general strikes and mass demonstrations (Arce 2005; Walton and Shefner 1994). The temporary improvement in economic conditions at the end of the 1970s only set the stage for the next round of crisis and contention that began in 1980 with the onset of the debt crisis. The economy 88 chapter six contracted by more than 12 percent between 1982 and 1983, seriously weakening the...