LATIN AMERICAN

PERSPECTIVES SERIES. NO. 11

THE
LATIN AMERICAN
LEFT
rom the Fall of Allende
to Perestroika

edited by I
Barry Carr and Steve Ellner

Westview Press
The Latin American Left
The Latin American Left
From the Fall of Allende
to Perestroika

edited by
Barry Can and Steve Ellner

Westview Press
Boulder • San Francisco

Latin America Bureau

London
 —

This book is included in Westview's Latin American Perspectives Series

All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Westview Press.

Copyright © 1993 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published in 1993 in the United States of America by Westview Press, Inc., 5500 Central
Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877

Published in 1993 in Great Britain by Latin America Bureau, 1 Amwell Street, London
EC1R 1UL

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Latin American left: from the fall of Allende to Perestroika/
edited by Barry Carr & Steve Ellner.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8133-1200-0. —
ISBN 0-8133-1201-9 (pbk.)
1. Latin America —
Politics and government 1948- — 2. New Left

—
Latin America History. I. Carr, Barry. II. Ellner, Steve.

F1414.2.L3286 1993
320.98—dc20 92-28615
CIP

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-906156-73-4 (cloth); ISBN 0-906156-72-6 (paper)

Printed and bound in the United States of America

^^^ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements

(<0C^ of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

10 987654 3 21
 Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1 Introduction: The Changing Status of the

Latin American Left in the Recent Past,
Steve Ellner 1

2 The Political Left in Chile, 1973-1990,

Brian Loveman 23

3 Radicalization and the Left in Peru, 1976-1991,

Nigel Haworth 41

4 Popular Liberalism, Radical Democracy, and Marxism:

Leftist Politics in Contemporary Colombia, 1974-1991,
Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez 61

5 Mexico: The Perils of Unity and the Challenge

of Modernization,
Barry Can 83

6 Armed Struggle and Popular Resistance in

El Salvador:The Struggle for Peace,
Tommie Sue Montgomery 101

7 The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism,

James Dunkerley 121
vi Contents

8 The Venezuelan Left: From Years of Prosperity

to Economic Crisis, Steve Ellner 139

9 The Argentine Left Since Peron,

Donald C. Hodges 155

10 Left Political Ideology and Practice,

Ronald H Chilcote 171

11 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s,

Richard Gillespie 187

12 Trade Union Struggle and the Left in

Latin America, 1973-1990, Dick Parker 205

13 Something Old, Something New:

Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores,
Maria Helena Moreira Alves 225

About the Book 243

About the Editors and Contributors 245
Index 249
 Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank the Research Commission

staff of the
of the Universidad de Oriente (Anzoategui campus) and the History
Department of La Trobe University for the generous support they have
given this project over a period of two years. Special thanks are owed to
Carol Courtis (La Trobe) and Lucas Alvarez (Universidad de Oriente),
without whom this project could never have been completed.

Barry Carr
Steve Ellner

vn
 —

1
Introduction: The Changing
Status of the Latin American
Left in the Recent Past

Steve Ellner

The transformation American Left since the early 1970s

of the Latin
the result of revisions in policy and strategy and a radically altered polit-
ical landscape —
can be explained in terms of international trends and
national experiences in addition to profound socioeconomic and political
changes. Latin American leftist parties were not exempt from the influ-
ence of Eurocommunism, which reached its apex in the 1970s, and
perestroika in the following decade. Nevertheless, Latin American leftist
leaders have always fervently denied that they uncritically embrace models
from abroad and that their movements are replicas of others. Although
the veracity of this claim has varied historically from country to country, it
has undeniably been true in the recent past. Even orthodox communists
have argued against the mechanical application of policies derived from
perestroika, considering it an instance of the discredited practice of slav-
ishly defending lines set down by the socialist metropolis.
Perhaps the most important set of national experiences influencing the
Left was the military government of nearly all Latin American countries
in the 1970s and early 1980s. During this period, repression reached new
extremes as the state perfected the means of covering up the systematic
elimination of the militant opposition, including clerics and other elite
members who had previously been largely spared inhumane treatment;
the regime's apologists actually justified these campaigns of exter-

I am grateful for critical comments from Susan Berglund, Barry Carr, and Brian Loveman.

1
2 Steve Ellner

mination along ideological lines. At the time, the Left might have been
1

expected to draw the conclusion that military coups vindicated the thesis
of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the nondemocratic road to power. In
fact, most leftists arrived at the opposite judgment: the weariness and
hardship of years of torture, jail, and exile convinced them that the " for-
77
mal democracy that they had previously disparaged was a veritable con-
quest worth defending at all costs and building on.
The diversity of new forms of struggle, strategies, and challenges
makes any scholarly examination of the Latin American Left a much more
formidable undertaking than were books written in the past about alleg-
edly monolithic Marxist parties, the main contribution of which was their
description of universal trends and periodization. 2 Not only have com-
munist parties now definitively lost their claim to near-monopoly status
on the Left but they are subject to greater internal differences than at any
time in the history of international communism. Other novel develop-
ments and challenges abound, further complicating the effort to depict
the Left as a whole and to synthesize tendencies: the growth of new social
movements that enter into a dialectical relationship with the Left while
preserving their autonomy; uncertainty as to whether the decline of the
industrial working class in the 1980s merits a reconsideration of strategy
or is temporary phenomenon induced by neoliberal policies; and the
a
danger that leftists will be seen as accomplices in the international drug
trade because of their effort to come to the defense of peasant cultivators
and oppose foreign military intervention under the auspices of the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Latin American leftists are of course not alone in facing a diversity of
unanticipated challenges. In one of the most provocative recent works
on leftist strategy, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argue for recogni-
tion of the growing complexity of social relations and political conflict in
developed capitalist, underdeveloped, and socialist societies. They rele-
gate simple worker-management conflict to a secondary plane and point
to the penetration of capitalist relations into new spheres that sets off un-
tested forms of struggle. They conclude that the novelty and complexity
of recent developments require the Left to rely more than ever on creativ-
ity and imagination. 3
Examining the Latin American Left as a distinct topic rather than as an
element in the context of individual national studies is plainly justified by
the dramatic leftist inroads in organized labor, national elections, and
armed struggle since the 1970s. As a result of these gains, the Left has
broken out of its traditional ghetto and become a major protagonist in
politics. Up until the 1980s, nonruling leftist parties (with the exception of
had never enjoyed widespread acceptance among voters and
Chile's)
emerged as important actors only in moments of intense political crisis.
 Introduction 3

A few examples illustrate the Left's change in status. For decades

which was virtually synonymous with the Communist
the Peruvian Left,
party, was uninfluential at the national level and had but a modest
following in organized labor. In the 1970s the leftist-controlled Confed-
eration General de Trabajadores del Peru (General Confederation of
—
Workers of Peru CGTP) eclipsed the labor confederation run by the
Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (American Popular Revolu-
—
tionary Alliance APRA), and in the following decade the united Left
elected the mayor of Lima, who subsequently came in second in the 1985
presidential elections. In Brazil the nonpopulist Left never had more than
a modest following up until the 1980s, with the rise of the Partido dos
—
Trabalhadores (Workers' Party PT). Contrary to the predictions of pun-
dits that the populist Leonel Brizola would draw most of the leftist votes
in the 1989 presidential elections, the PT's Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva came
within just four percentage points of winning. Fraud allegedly robbed the
proleftistsCuauhtemoc Cardenas and Juan Bosch of the presidencies in
dubious electoral contests in Mexico in 1988 and the Dominican Republic
in 1990. Cardenas's 31.1 percent of the vote was particularly significant
because it was the first time that the opposition had mounted a serious
challenge to the ruling party since its founding sixty years before. While
Cardenas's makeshift Frente Democratico Nacional (National Democratic
—
Front FDN) has since attempted to transform itself into a party (a task to
which Marxist leaders are committed), Bosch's Partido para la Liberation
—
Dominicana (Dominican Liberation Party PLD), founded in 1973, has
emerged as the best-organized and most disciplined party in the Domini-
can Republic. Impressive electoral breakthroughs occurred in Colombia,
with the election of ex-guerrilla Antonio Navarro Wolff of the Movimiento
—
19 de Abril (19th of April Movement M-19) to the Constituent Assembly
with 27 percent of the national vote in 1990, and in Uruguay, where a
Marxist representing the leftist coalition Frente Amplio (Broad Front)
was elected mayor of Montevideo in 1989. Up until then, as Dick Parker
points out in this volume, the Uruguayan Left had been unable to parlay
its dominant position in the nation's labor movement into support at

the polls.
These electoral successes hardly mean, however, that Latin America is
on the verge of sweeping revolutionary change. In the first place, it is
open to question whether some of the above-mentioned parties are fully
committed to a program of radical socioeconomic transformation. In the
second, several of them have lost considerable ground after their initial
electoral gains. As Barry Carr shows in his chapter on the Mexican Left,
both qualifications are applicable to the movement led by Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas, particularly in light of the fact that the role of the former mem-
bers of the defunct Mexican Communist party is unclear.
 —

4 Steve Ellner

Ironically, the major exception to this continental trend of leftist ad-

vances is Chile, the one nation in which the Marxist Left had maintained
an important institutional and electoral presence since the 1920s. The
overthrow of Salvador Allende was a watershed not only for the Chilean
America as a whole (and, to a certain extent, that
Left but for that of Latin
of Europe). Chile was which the wave of military
the only country in
takeovers in the 1960s and 1970s was directed against a prosocialist gov-
ernment. That the democratic tradition in Chile was the most firmly
established in the continent only heightened the impact of the coup. Sub-
sequent analyses pointed out that Allende's plurality in 1970 had not gone
significantly beyond the one-third of the electorate that had supported
him in the previous two presidential elections. Most (although not all)
leftists who reflected on this experience reached the conclusion that a
mandate for revolutionary change required nothing less than a large
majority of the vote. Given the fragility of the Chilean Left's position in
1970, the Allende government should have adopted a more cautious ap-
proach that affirmed its commitment to established rules, made a greater
effort to win over the middle sectors, eschewed indiscriminate national-
ization, and rejected the statist model based on extreme centralism. 4 In
contrast, the Partido Communista de Chile (Chilean Communist party
—
PCCh) after first having accepted most of this self-criticism by the —
1980s had begun to point to the excessive legalism of the Allende govern-
ment and its failure to attempt to win over the armed forces to its program
of radical change. 5 At the same time, for a variety of reasons discussed by
Brian Loveman in his chapter, it opted for armed struggle and, by the
latter half of the decade, spurned the highly selective democratic open-
ings of the Pinochet regime. As a consequence, it found itself isolated from
other democratic sectors that were more receptive to Pinochet's political
concessions and used them to their advantage. In the 1989 elections
the PCCh, which participated in a congressional slate with orthodox
socialists, failed to elect any of its candidates.

The Impact of Perestroika and Neoliberalism

In spite of leftist gains during the past decade, the Left in the early
1990s more disoriented and lacking in credible options than ever before.
is

One aspect of this paradox is amply demonstrated in Parker 's chapter. On

the one hand, leftist trade unionists have succeeded in gaining a dominant
position in the labor movement in Peru, Uruguay, and Ecuador and made
important inroads in Brazil, Colombia, and elsewhere. On the other hand,
the industrial base of organized labor has been weakened by the economic
contraction of the 1980s, modifications in multinational investment pat-
terns, and the growth of the informal economy. As a result, the key role
 Introduction 5

that the orthodox Left assigns to industrial workers has been placed
in doubt.
Events in Eastern Europe, the resultant shift in the worldwide balance
of power, and neoliberalism have been even greater blows to the ideolog-
ical and doctrinal positions of the Latin American Left. For all of pere-
stroika's attractiveness, the upheavals in the nations of the Communist
bloc have called socialism's viability into question. The undisputed polit-
ical and military hegemony of the United States also weakens the position
of prosocialist movements. It is particularly distressing for the Left in
Latin America because of the continent's historical status as a U.S. "sphere
of influence." Two developments that greatly strengthen the hand of the
United States and discourage leftist movements are the international
isolation of Cuba and the upset defeat of the Sandinistas in the February
1990 presidential elections. In addition, President George Bush's initiative
in favor of drastic hemispheric reductions in tariffs has struck a respon-
sive chord because of the general consensus on the need to promote non-
traditional exports and thus seemingly disproves the Left's standard
depiction of imperialist behavior. In still another area of reversal for the
Left, the widespread acceptance of neoliberal economics has undermined
support for the statist model traditionally embraced by leftists. This
has been especially crushing for the Left in Latin America, where statist
strategies have a strong appeal due to the danger of multinational control
of basic industry and the inability or unwillingness of local capitalists to
invest in those sectors.
Leftist parties, even highly heterodox ones such as Venezuela's Movi-
miento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism MAS), which had—
always been a harsh critic of Soviet socialism and orthodox models based
on centralism, have been negatively affected by these occurrences. Dis-
cussing MAS's response to perestroika and neoliberalism, the party's
main "We MASistas will eventually
theoretician Teodoro Petkoff told me,
have to sit down to analyze previously held assumptions and reformulate
our version of Utopia." In short, instability in the socialist bloc, U.S. ascen-
dancy, and neoliberalism have been adverse not just to the growth of a
certain brand of socialism but to socialism per se, in spite of the concerted
efforts of a renovation current on the Left to disassociate itself from the
system's negative features. 6
The response of the Latin American Left to neoliberalism and pere-
stroika has been far from uniform. With regard to the former, almost all
leftistspokesmen have opposed the elimination of social welfare pro-
grams and, as did Lula in Brazil, Cardenas in Mexico, and Bosch in the
Dominican Republic, favored lengthy moratoria on payment of the for-
eign debt. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on privatization and the
redefinition of the role of the state in promoting economic development.
 —

6 Steve Ellner

On the one hand, Loveman shows that left-leaning think-tank organiza-

tions in Chile in the 1980s questioned the statist model and that socialists
in the government of Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin accepted the
continuity and orthodoxy that marked his economic policy. Similarly,
Juan Bosch in his presidential campaign advocated privatization of
inefficient public enterprises as a means to counter corruption. Orthodox
Communists and other leftists in Venezuela accepted privatization of non-
strategic sectors under certain circumstances. At the other extreme,
as Donald Hodges shows in his chapter, opposition to privatization and
other International Monetary Fund (IMF)-imposed policies moved the
main leadership of the peronista (Peronist) Confederation General de
—
Trabajo (General Confederation of Labor CGT) to the left.
Argentina is typical of a number of nations in which yesterday's radical
populists were transformed into champions of neoliberalism in the 1980s
and, in the process, turned their backs on the virtually sacred symbols of
their movement's legacy. Most of the public companies that the govern-
ment of peronista Carlos Menem slated for privatization, such as railroad
and telephone firms, had been nationalized by Juan Peron in the 1940s.
Those CGT leaders and other peronistas who opposed Menem's econom-
ic policies were apparently truer to their idol's memory. Similarly, privat-

ization in Mexico and the pressure to open the oil industry to foreign
capital (as part of the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement
—
NAFTA taking in the United States and Canada) were viewed by many
as a violation of the spirit of the Mexican Revolution. The proposal
was particularly criticized by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the son of Lazaro
Cardenas, who had nationalized the petroleum industry in 1938. Simi-
larly, in Venezuela, President Carlos Andres Perez reversed the radical

thrust of his first administration of 1974-1979 by accepting IMF policies

upon assuming the presidency for the second time, in 1989. Finally, the
neoliberalism pushed by President Victor Paz Estenssoro (1985-1989) in
Bolivia went against the grain of the 1952 revolution that he had led.
These developments opened up possibilities for tactical alliances be-
tween the Left and those traditional politicians and labor leaders who
resisted neoliberalism, as Hodges shows in the case of Argentina. Perhaps
the most dramatic convergence of erstwhile adversaries is the apparent
decision of Venezuelan leftists in the early 1990s to support the 1993 pres-
idential candidacy of former president Rafael Caldera, who earlier in his
career had been an ultraconservative and has now emerged as an outspo-
ken defender of popular sectors. Some leftist
legislation favoring the
theoreticians pointed out that alliances between socialists and nonsocial-
ists were grounded in the discontent felt by sectors of the bourgeoisie that
were weighed down by neoliberal policies such as the drastic reduction of
tariffs and the onerous terms of the payment of the foreign debt. 7
 Introduction 7

Perestroika also produced varied reactions on the Left, but in general

it dampened militant leftism and influenced Communists to abandon
efforts to achieve socialism in the short-term future. Richard Gillespie
points out that the conciliatory thrust of perestroika led some Commu-
nists (in nations such as Chile and Argentina) to reconsider the positions
in favor of armed struggle that they had formulated in the wake of
the Sandinista triumph in 1979. In the same vein, Hodges comments that
Soviet policymakers under Mikhail Gorbachev prevailed upon Argentine
Communists to tone down their rhetoric, even at the cost of socialist con-
vergence. In contrast, some leftists were wary of perestroika and drew
closer to the increasingly isolated regime of Fidel Castro. They feared that
the Gorbachev administration's decision to cut off military aid to the San-
dinista government in order to encourage a negotiated solution in Central
America signaled the forsaking of Soviet commitments to the Third
World. 8 Both Gillespie and Hodges note that these shifts contributed to a
"polarization of the socialist Left" between those who identified with the
Cuban leadership and called for a purer approach to socialism and those
who attempted to forge broad-based alliances.
The Left's search for allies in the moderate camp in response to neolib-
eralism and perestroika appeared to be a throwback to the policy of
popular-frontism that guided the Latin American Left from the 1930s to
the 1960s. Nevertheless, in contrast to popular-frontism these recent alli-
ances and agreements lacked a strategic justification and were usually
viewed as conjunctural or, in some cases, merely expedient. Popular-
frontism in Latin America had been underpinned by the thesis that auton-
omous industrial development would result from a "national democratic
revolution" in which the "progressive bourgeoisie" would play a leading
role and, in alliance with popular sectors, would confront imperialism
and the traditional economic elite. This theory was rooted in the emer-
gence of radical populist regimes (such as Peron's first government in
Argentina and that of Getulio Vargas in Brazil) that practiced import sub-
stitution policies to foster industrialization and often clashed with the
United States and its allies.
By the 1970s, however, it was generally recognized that the stage
of import substitution that promoted incipient industrial growth had
reached its limits and that radical populist movements, which called for
redistributive policies in favor of the underprivileged sectors, were absent
from the political landscape in most of Latin America. In many countries,
a new polarization pitted the Left, united in its commitment to socialism,
9
against the status quo. Although few important leftist parties raised the
banner "Socialism Now," most of them discarded the "strategy of stages"
in which socialism was relegated to a distant second stage. Most of them
saw the revolutionary process as a continuum leading inexorably to
8 Steve Ellner

socialism, with the working class playing a central role from the outset.
While small and medium-sized business interests were seen as potential
allies, the term "progressive bourgeoisie" was largely dropped from the
10
Left's lexicon.
Broad-based alliances and support for reformist governments in
the 1970s and 1980s were designed to achieve more limited objectives:
guaranteeing the transition to or consolidation of democracy and facing
powerful right-wing adversaries. The advantages derived from these
arrangements for the Left were extremely modest and the liabilities and
potential pitfalls considerable. The only case in which the Left came out
on top was during the government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado
(1968-1975) in Peru. The Velasco regime accepted popular mobilization
and organizing efforts but, because of the conflicting objectives and
strategies upheld by the military officers in power, failed to convert this
activity into institutional gains. The main beneficiaries of the massive
unionization of these years were the CGTP, controlled by the Partido
Comunista Peruana (Peruvian Communist party PCP), and indepen-—
dent unions led by small parties to its left. The military, which for histori-
cal reasons viewed the APRA as its main foe, was anxious to undermine
the strength of the confederation it controlled but failed to ensure the
hegemony of the official Confederacion de Trabajadores de
la Revolution

Peruana (Confederation of Workers of the Peruvian Revolution CTRP), —

whose influence was mainly limited to small establishments. Neverthe-
less, even during this period the PCP paid a price for its support of
Velasco and (although in more qualified form) of his conservative suc-
cessor, General Francisco Morales Bermudez. The PCP's condemnation of
strikes of teachers and miners as the work of apristas and Maoists intent
on creating problems for the government led to the party's nearly com-
plete loss of influence among the workers in both sectors, to the advan-
tage of its ultraleftist rivals. The party was also reluctant to support the
general strike of July 1977 against Morales Bernuidez's austerity mea-
sures and did so only in the face of rank-and-file pressure and disobedi-
ence within its own ranks. Party leaders later publicly recognized that
they had erred in uncritically backing Velasco and in attempting to put the
brakes on several of these worker conflicts. 11
The Left's most important experience of participation in a nonsocialist
government was in Bolivia under Hernan Siles (1982-1985) and had
disastrous consequences. On the one hand, their role of broker between
popular sectors and the cabinet of which they formed part during a
period of runaway inflation discredited the Partido Comunista de Bolivia
—
(Bolivian Communist Party PCB) and the Movimiento de la Izquierda
Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolutionary Left MIR, which sub-—
sequently moved to the center). On the other hand, the intransigence of
 Introduction 9

the Central Obrera Boliviana (Bolivian Workers' Union —COB) in refusing

to join the government and calling several two-to-three-day general
// ,,
strikes in favor of its ultimatumist program played into the hands
of conservatives, as James Dunkerley discusses in this volume. Siles's
replacement by Paz Estenssoro led to sharp cutbacks in tin production at
the behest of the IMF, which greatly weakened the tin miners' movement,
the COB's backbone. Later, the PCB was able to recover its labor support
and actually occupied the presidency of the COB for a short period,
thanks to the rectification of its policies in the form of frontal opposition to
12
the Paz government.
The Communists also paid a price for their tacit support of military
governments in Brazil and Argentina. The Partido Comunista de Argentina
—
(Argentinian Communist party PCA) was favorably disposed to the re-
pressive regime of Jorge Videla (1976-1981) because of its promotion of
commercial relations with the Soviet Union. This attitude was later repu-
diated at the PCA's "Left" congress in 1986, which purged much of the
party's top leadership. 13During the same period, Brazilian Communists
approved of the military government's timid steps in the direction of
democracy, a process that they feared would be endangered by the mili-
tant worker protests, originating in the automobile industry, out of which
the PT emerged. The Communists developed cordial relations with social
democratic and even conservative parties as part of a "pragmatic conver-
gence" based on a nonmobilization strategy to reestablish democracy.
Nevertheless, they were severely criticized by leaders of the fledgling PT
for compromising the autonomy of the workers' movement, a practice
that they claimed was the Communist party's major historical blunder,
dating back as far as the 1940s. 14

The Emergence of New Social Movements

The role of the Leftand popular struggles in the reestablishment of
democracy in the 1970swas the source of considerable debate. The fear
expressed by Communist leaders in Peru and Brazil that labor strife
would jeopardize the transition to democracy in their nations was shared
by politicians and political analysts to their right. Indeed, several out-
standing nonleftist political scientists who wrote on redemocratization in
Latin America at this time cautioned against optimistic forecasts and
maintained that the best that could be hoped for was a "restricted democ-
racy" that precluded mass participation, popular protests, and significant
socioeconomic change. At the other extreme, some proleftist scholars con-
sidered this focus a cover for "normative preference for the maintenance
of the status quo" and criticized its omission of the influence of "radical
democrats" who strove to go beyond the restoration of mere formal
10 Steve Ellner

democracy in an effort to achieve a more authentic, participatory democ-

racy. These leftist writers highlighted the role of popular mobilization, the
armed struggle, and social movements in forcing the military to accept a
15
return to civilian rule with no strings attached. In doing so, they took
issue not only with the nonleftist "redemocratization" political scientists
but with several ones as well. One writer, for instance, objected to
leftist

the failure of fellow James Cockcrof t to recognize that the guerrilla

leftist

movement indirectly contributed to the military's withdrawal from

power by forcing it to concentrate its energy on the armed opposition,
thus opening space for militant antigovernment labor movements. 16 In the
same vein, another leftist, James Petras, was criticized for underestimat-
ing the effectiveness of pressure from below and instead explaining the
military's abandonment of power as a stratagem designed to convert
politicians into "fall guys" for the pressing economic problems of the
1980s that they had inherited. 17 By the early 1990s, the issue of military
strategy and motives in returning to the barracks was far from resolved;
nevertheless, the consolidation of democratic regimes was well under
way in all major Latin American nations, and only in Chile and, to a lesser
extent, Uruguay did the model of "restricted democracy" still prevail.
One facet of the debate regarding redemocratization had to do with
conflicting depictions of new social movements in Latin America and
their relationship to leftist parties and objectives. Many of these organiza-
tions were founded under military
in response to the severe repression
rule, when were outlawed and the activity of organized
political parties
labor was circumscribed. The family members of victims of state terror-
ism, for instance, turned to the church and human rights groups, which
were able to act with greater liberty than traditional political organiza-
tions. In addition, neighborhood associations and Christian base commu-
nities channeled popular discontent over the austerity measures promot-
ed by military regimes and the economic contraction that began in the
1980s. Some of the new social movements included many former leftist
party militants. In Chile, for instance, members of the Christian leftist
parties returned after 1973 to the church, where they acted in a political
capacity. Furthermore, themovement of the urban poor in Santiago was
strongest where the community leadership had been closely linked to
individual leftist parties prior to Pinochet's seizure of power.

Alain Touraine and other sociologists who have written about the new
social movements in a worldwide context have attempted to show that
they are incompatible with traditional leftist politics. They point out that
such movements as those that defend women's and gay rights, world
peace, and ecological concerns and oppose nuclear energy are horizon-
tally structured and suspicious of all national authorities at the same time
that they are wary of leftist infringement on their autonomy. Furthermore,
 1

Introduction 1

they do not share the Left's faith in material progress and in socialism as a
panacea for the types of problems they are confronting. They question the
statist model that orthodox Marxism embraces and view the technocratic
state and not capitalism as the main enemy. In addition, in contrast to
traditional leftist movements, they have largely nonmaterial goals based
on principles that are not easily negotiable. 18
It is open to question to what extent the concepts and paradigms for-

mulated by Touraine and others in their writings on the new social move-
ments are applicable to Latin America. Touraine implies that there is little
affinity when he postulates that the new social movements are to post-
industrial society what organized labor is to industrial society in that they
embody the defense of popular and progressive interests. 19 Not only is
Latin America far from achieving postindustrial status, but the influence
of the groups that Touraine is concerned with, such as those pursuing
women's liberation and environmental protection, pales in comparison
with that of their counterparts in Europe and the United States. Finally,
the conservationist creed and antimaterialism that form the basis of "deep
ecology" have little resonance in Latin America, where the struggle
against poverty and underdevelopment overshadows philosophical and
abstract issues.
new social movements
In spite of these differences, the thesis that the
prefigure a —
new type of democracy whose salient features are the auton-
omy of civil society and rank-and-file participation in decision making at
all levels— is as important for the Latin American Left as it is for that of

Europe. 20 Contrary to predictions, these movements did not fade into the
background once democracy was reestablished in the 1980s, nor have
they been subjugated by political parties. Maria Helena Moreira Alves
shows that in Brazil the PT, which emerged out of a wave of worker and
community protests, contains important contingents of labor and neigh-
borhood activists and has maintained a special relationship with social
movements. In fact, the PT's emphasis on the autonomy of unions and
other popular organizations represents a departure from traditional leftist
discourse in Brazil. Although other leftist parties in Latin America
have raised these same issues, 21 the PT has done so more persistently,
perhaps because corporatist relations in Brazil were historically so deeply
entrenched.
That the Latin American Left has begun to appreciate the importance of
the autonomy of civil society, however, does not mean that viable strate-
gies and definitive models have been forthcoming. The narrow range of
concerns of many of the new social movements, which often do not tran-
scend local issues, discourages the Left from linking up with them in con-
structive ways. 22 Nigel Haworth, in his chapter on Peru, maintains that
the allegiance of members of youth, women's, and community organiza-
 —

12 Steve Ellner

tions to any particular leftist party or perspective is extremely tenuous

a characterization that contrasts with that of the political behavior of orga-
nized workers. Similarly, Marc Chernick and Michael Jimenez, in the con-
cluding section of their chapter on the Colombian Left, predict that the
efforts to transform local struggles around local issues into a national
movement will meet with little success. The argument that the new social
movements do not fortify leftist parties but do contribute to political cul-
ture by teaching people how to act collectively and enhancing their sense
of efficacy 23 is of little consolation to most Latin American leftists, who,
after all, are striving to attain nothing less than state power. Furthermore,
the banner of autonomy is not, in itself, necessarily progressive, as
Pinochet and other reactionaries have identified with it in their effort to
impose an apolitical model on organized labor in the face of staunch
24
worker resistance.
Social in the developed nations concerned with human
movements
rights, ecology, the spread of nuclear weapons, and immigration have
attempted to establish international networks in order to compensate for
the limited resources and coordination of their Third World counterparts.
Ecology groups argue that this expanded scope of action is a necessary
response to the internationalization of capital and the weakening of the
25
nation-state. Their own success in forcing their governments to enforce
environmental standards has paradoxically damaged the developing
it induces multinationals to export toxic waste and relocate
nations in that
high-pollution industries abroad.
The dependence of ecology and human rights groups in the Third
World on foreign governments and organizations has been cynically
exploited by powerful interests in the developing countries under the
cover of nationalism and opposition to outside interference in their inter-
nal affairs. On this basis, for instance, the Brazilian government of Jose
Sarney emphatically rejected aid or debt relief with strings attached
designed to limit development in the Amazonian region. Naturally, the
most effective environmental movements are those, such as that of the
Amazonian rubber tappers, that have developed a working-class or com-
munity base and are thus not overly dependent on foreign support. As I
show in my essay on Venezuela, the Left is sometimes placed in the awk-
ward position of having to risk being branded antinationalist in order to
come to the defense of environmental causes. At the same time, however,
the Left must be wary of conservationist groups that oppose all forms of
—
infrastructure development especially in sparsely populated regions
—
near national borders and that sometimes actually serve the interests of
multinationals themselves seeking concessions to exploit the same areas.
The Latin American Left faces a similar, perhaps even knottier predica-
ment with regard to the international drug trade. In his chapter in this
 Introduction 13

volume, James Dunkerley indicates that the support of the Bolivian Left
for peasant coca cultivators in the face of U.S.-backed military campaigns
fortified its position in several respects: it was able to assert its credentials
as a defender of national sovereignty; it allied itself with peasant organi-
zations, which were historically anti-Left, as well as with the nation's only
labor confederation; and its defense of the allegedly innocuous indige-
nous tradition of coca consumption served to "introduce into its own pol-
itics a recognition of ethnic culture." At the same time, Dunkerley notes

that the Left found itself in the uncomfortable situation of being on the
same side as rightist sectors that were inextricably tied to drug interests.
This same convergence was evident in Colombia, where the Left
opposed extradition of cocaine smugglers on the ground that the problem
involved multinationals and not just individual kingpins. Leftists such as
—
the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path SL) and the Colombian novelist
Gabriel Garcia Marquez advocated the industry's legalization, the major
argument being that the state would be able to capture some of its profits.
Gillespie points out that in Colombia and Peru leftist guerrillas have
entered into agreements with traffickers by providing them with protec-
tion in return for handsome remuneration; although the allegation is
denied by the SL and other leftists, it has been well documented by
Americas Watch. 26 Nevertheless, in Colombia this pact broke down as
members of the cocaine cartels bought land and began to exploit areas
that had previously been leftist preserves, unleashing a campaign of
terrorism against the nonclandestine Left that cost hundreds of lives. One
scholarly work on Peru maintains that the guerrillas protect small coca
producers from both government officials and powerful drug interests
that are themselves bound together in an uneasy alliance. 27

The Armed Struggle

The guerrilla movements that were operating in Peru, Colombia,
El Salvador, and Guatemala in the early 1990s were different in funda-
mental ways from those that abounded throughout the continent in the
1960s. In all four nations, the guerrillas were able to establish a solid foot-
hold in certain areas over an extended period of time. The decision to
avoid national projection initially in order to work secretly and patiently
to win over the peasants in those regions accounted for their relative
success. Their broad social base contrasted with that of the guerrillas of
the 1960s and early 1970s, whose predominantly middle-class origin facil-
itated their detection in slum dwellings where they attempted to carry out
political work. 28 Other factors that explain the greater staying power of
the guerrillas in these four countries are their abandonment of the foco
(focus) strategy, in which political objectives are subordinated to military
14 Steve Ellner

ones, as well as (particularly in the case of Guatemala) their greater sensi-

tivity to the preservation of Indian identities and traditions.
The movements of the 1960s, influenced by the expe-
original guerrilla
rience of the Cuban Revolution, had presumed that the struggle for power
was a short-term proposition, an illusion that was not easily overcome.
By the early 1990s, it was evident that the guerrilla movements and
government forces in Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala had reached
a stalemate and that the insurgents could not hope to achieve power in
the short- or medium- term future. The guerrillas discarded plans for an
immediate mass insurrection, which had been successfully applied in
1979 in the months prior to Anastasio Somoza's overthrow and unsuc-
cessfully in El Salvador two years later. Instead they adopted the "pro-
longed popular war" approach. Thus, for instance, Colombia's M-19,
whose dramatic actions were intended to trigger immediate change in the
power structure, had its fighting power reduced to a bare minimum,
while the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary
—
Armed Forces of Colombia FARC), by far the largest guerrilla organiza-
tion, followed a more cautious, long-term strategy. The protracted nature
of these struggles was recognized by U.S. strategists linked to the State
Department, who abandoned the idea of completely subduing the guer-
rillas in favor of "low-intensity warfare" designed to wear down the

enemy over a period of time. 29

Recognition of the impasse led both official sectors and guerrillas to
revise their demands for a negotiated solution. Previously, the guerrillas
had viewed peace settlements as either a ploy to achieve a respite or
an ultimate recourse tantamount to capitulation. Their demands for the
establishment of a provisional government, the complete integration of
armed forces, and thorough socioeconomic transforma-
guerrillas into the
tion were and may have been formulated for propagandistic
unrealistic
purposes only. By the early 1990s, these radical proposals had been largely
replaced by the call for the elimination of paramilitary groups, the purg-
ing of military officers responsible for the flagrant violation of human
rights, reductions in the armed forces, and judicial reforms. The guerrilla
movements were mainly concerned with avoiding a repetition of the
Colombian experience under President Virgilio Barco Vargas, when hun-
dreds of members of the Union Patriotica (Patriotic Union UP), estab- —
lished to facilitate the incorporation of the FARC into the political life of
the nation, were gunned down; the Left amply demonstrated the linkage
between death squads, which acted with impunity in these cases, and the
armed forces. 30 Another, more limited demand was the implementation of
democratic reforms. Thus, for instance, the Colombian government con-
voked a Constituent Assembly that encouraged the M-19 to accept an
amnesty agreement that the FARC also considered signing. A third
 Introduction 15

proposal, put forward by various armed groups and accepted by

the Colombian government, was the carrying out of developmental
programs in areas controlled by the insurgents and the granting of a min-
imum salary to former guerrillas along with credit to allow them to pur-
chase farmland. Gillespie shows that in recent years armed actions were
generally designed to force the government to the bargaining table rather
than to topple it. Salvadorian guerrillas even attempted to convince
Washington by word and deed that a long-drawn-out war would be
exceedingly costly for the United States at the same time that they
pledged not to endanger its vital interests once a solution had been
reached. 31 The radical change in the strategy pursued by Salvadorian
guerrilla leaders as a result of their determination to put an end to over a
decade of civil war is amply documented by Tommie Sue Montgomery in
her chapter in this volume.
The extended duration of the armed struggle presented guerrilla orga-
nizations with unforeseen difficulties. On the personal side, individual
guerrillas grew accustomed to a certain life-style, and, as Gillespie argues,
were unequipped for the radically different challenges of an above-
ground existence. At an organizational level, the transition represented
unknown and risky terrain, as was fully demonstrated by the UP expe-
rience in Colombia. Rosa Luxemburg and other socialists have pointed
out that a prolonged legal existence can foster the development of a
bureaucracy within leftist parties that has a vested interest in maintaining
the status quo and is unprepared for clandestine activity when circum-
stances require it.
32
Conversely, guerrillas who have spent most of their
adult lives engaged in armed struggle may be reluctant to seize the oppor-
tunity to achieve legal status, even in situations in which such a move is
highly beneficial to the revolutionary cause.

The Struggle to Deepen Democracy

Just as the terminologies "Left" and "Center" have been turned on
their heads in the socialist countries as a result of perestroika, the
con-
tinued relevance of these terms has been questioned in the rest of the
world. Parties such as the MAS in Venezuela have attempted to discard
the on grounds that it unnecessarily polarizes public opinion
leftist label

and reinforces damaging stereotypes and, in any case, is obsolete. This

assertion, although perhaps accurate from a pragmatic viewpoint, fails to
take into account the profundity of differences between those who advo-
cate far-reaching structural change to overcome underdevelopment in
Latin America and those who are mainly concerned with policy reforms.
Because of the fading out of radical populism in much of Latin America,
the Left is no longer divided between prosocialist and propopulist wings.
16 Steve Ellner

Nevertheless, consensus with regard to definitions and long-term goals

has hardly been achieved, in large part because recent events in Eastern
Europe have discredited traditionally accepted models of socialism. In
recent years, leftist theoreticians and party leaders have placed greater
emphasis on novel forms of democracy and participation than on public
ownership of the means of production. 33
—
Some leftists have challenged the notion posited by the French school
—
of "new philosophers" headed by Andre Glucksmann that socialism
and Marxism are inherently totalitarian by arguing that only under the
socialist system can authentic democracy prosper. This assertion has
gained credibility in Latin America as a result of the leading role that
leftist parties have played in the deepening of democracy following the

restoration of democratic regimes in the 1980s. Leftist parties such as

the Nunez Socialist party in Chile and Venezuela's MAS were the first to
implement primaries for the selection of party authorities combined with
a mixed system of nominal voting options and proportional representa-
tion of minority slates. In her essay's section entitled "The Novelty of the
PT" and in other works, Moreira Alves discusses in considerable detail
the structural and electoral reforms of the PT and the labor confederation
it controls.
34
The PT and other Latin American leftist parties were in the
forefront in calling for decentralization and similar mechanisms to foster
popular input into decision making. At the Constituent Assembly in
Colombia in 1991, for instance, the M-19 became the foremost proponent
of transferring authority from the nation's "presidential monarchy" to a
unicameral legislature that was to be more receptive to popular interests. 35
Finally, leftist parties have supported the model of worker participation in
companies (known as cogestion) embraced by organized labor in Venezuela,
Bolivia, and elsewhere. The traditional reformist parties, which for
decades had arrogated to themselves the image of paladins of the demo-
cratic cause, have been reluctant to follow the lead of the leftists
in actively backing these concrete proposals and initiatives (see, for
example, my chapter on Venezuela).
Complementary commitment to democracy was
to the Left's greater
its receptivity to pluralism,which found expression in intra-Left party
unity. The renunciation of the monolithic model by Communists and
other leftists opened the possibility for unity encompassing a larger num-
ber of parties and ideological currents than had ever converged before. In
the past, successful revolutions had been conducted for the most part
by single organizations, as was the case in Cuba and Nicaragua. In the
1980s, in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia between four and six
guerrilla groups attempted to overcome years of bitter infighting by
establishing single commands. In El Salvador they went so far as to carry
 Introduction 17

out integrated military actions and to make plans for coalescing into a
single party.
At the same time, electoral coalitions encompassing a host of leftist
parties were successful in electing candidates in important cities and
states in Venezuela, Peru, and Uruguay Nevertheless, the Left was unable
to establish a tradition of electoral cooperation as, for instance, the com-
munists and socialists in Chile had on the basis of support for the presi-
dential candidacies of Salvador Allende prior to 1973. Perhaps the
greatest obstacle to electoral unity was the sheer number of parties in-
volved. In Venezuela, the MAS attempted to gain hegemony on the left in
the form of a veritable veto power by arguing that numerous minuscule
parties would never be able to reach consensus on major issues and thus
represented a liability for those who were seriously interested in challeng-
ing the status quo. Peru was the nation in which the failure to sustain
unity did the most damage by condemning the Left's efforts to come to
power by electoral means. According to polls at the outset of the 1990
presidential campaign, Alfonso Barrantes of the Izquierda Unida (United
Left —IU) had the inside track, but the alliance ended up splitting in two.
Voters generally blamed Barrantes for the split, and as a result he drew
fewer votes than his less well-known rival on the left. The case of Peru
illustrates the potential benefits of unity and the disastrous consequences
of the failure to achieve it. This issue looms as the Left's most compelling
challenge in Latin America.

Concluding Comments
Both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios for the Latin American Left
can be constructed on the basis of an analysis of past events. Ronald
Chilcote, in the concluding section of his chapter, argues that the recent
swing of the pendulum to the right as a result of events in the socialist
world will reverse itself in favor of "an eventual resurgence of Marxist
thinking adapted to new and changing conditions/ That the problems of
7

dire poverty and extreme inequality in Latin America have been intensi-
fied by the economic crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s suggests that
the Left may recover from its ideological disorientation by reasserting an
anticapitalist critique and defending a revised vision of socialism. A sec-
ond prediction, less favorable to traditional Marxism, is that important
sectors of the Latin American Left will fill the void left by the virtual
disappearance of radical populism. Discouraged by the setbacks on the
world scene, these parties could conceivably follow the example of the
Sandinistas by ceasing to call themselves socialist, at least publicly, and
pursue a vague Third Worldist approach. 36
18 Steve Ellner

Three salient characteristics of Latin American leftist movements of the

early 1990s that distinguish them from the Left prior to 1973 are worth
underlining: the importance the Left attaches to the struggle to achieve
democracy and deepen democratic structures and practices; the diversity
of currents of opinion and organized groups on the Left, which do not
see their differences as irreconcilable; and the legitimacy attained by left-
ists, which has allowed them to overcome their marginal status. These

developments are partly the result of changes in the socialist countries

following Gorbachev's assumption of power, which marked the definitive
end of the Cold War and the myth of monolithic communism. Perestroika
and related occurrences in Eastern Europe encouraged the Latin Ameri-
can Left to upgrade the importance of the struggle for democracy and to
accept a pluralistic vision of ideological diversity; at the same time, the
negative stereotypes that had condemned the Left to a ghetto existence
for much of its history were largely effaced.
Nevertheless, these three characteristics cannot be attributed exclu-
sively to events in aworldwide context. The wider acceptance of the Left
and its enhanced legitimacy, for instance, reflect the erosion of support for
the reformist political parties that compete with it for the same constitu-
ency The popularity of reformism in Latin America had been under-
pinned by the strategy of import substitution, which was a viable model
until the exhaustion of its "easy" stage in the 1960s. More recently, the
many of the reformist parties, such as the Accion Democratica
leaders of
(Democratic Action —AD) in Venezuela and the peronistas in Argentina,
have opted for neoliberal formulas. The attractiveness of neoliberalism,
which in Latin America is a throwback to a previous period when foreign
capital was welcomed with open arms, is limited in comparison with
that of import substitution, which conveyed great hope because of its
nationalist overtones and the redistributive policies it promoted in favor
of the popular classes. These economic and political transformations in
Latin America strengthen the position of the Left in that they undermine
the appeal of its historical rivals.
The editors of this anthology have attempted to stress the diversity of
the Latin American Left by providing as many as twelve chapters on indi-
vidual topics, thus sacrificing some of the detail that would have been
included in a volume with fewer chapters of greater length. A discussion
of the Left in power in Cuba and Nicaragua was not included because it
would have exceeded the space limitations of a single volume.
A negative side has been included in this brief overview of the Latin
American Left. The worldwide questioning of socialism per se due to
the disruptions in the socialist nations has obscured the Left's long-term
objectives and placed in doubt whether it could count on international
financial or even political backing in the event that it came to power.
 Introduction 19

Furthermore, the Left's newly adopted Gramscian, democratic strategy,

based on its gradually fortified position in the institutional life of the

nation, fails to take into account the political instability and military inter-
vention that have plagued Latin America since independence.
While the turmoil in the socialist bloc has had a disorienting effect, the
Latin American Left's survival and growth demonstrate that it is not, as
has been widely assumed, dependent on foreign models and assistance.
What should be clear from this introductory overview of the Latin
American Left is that it can no longer be understood solely on the basis
of foreign influences, ideology (itself largely shaped from abroad), and
performance in organized labor. Support for the Left has extended
beyond its historical constituency of organized workers and intellectuals
at the same time that leftist parties have succeeded in identifying them-
selves with established traditions that they had previously belittled. In
short, in much of Latin America leftist and proleftist organizations have
become intimately tied to the institutional and cultural life of their respec-
tive nations and thus need to be analyzed in those contexts.

Notes
1. Marysa Navarro, "The Personal is Political: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo," in Susan
Eckstein, ed., Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1989), 244.
2. One standard work in this genre is Robert J. Alexander, Communism in Latin America
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1957).
3. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso,
1985). Socialist scholars have heavily criticized this work for abandoning class analysis and
long-term socioeconomic objectives altogether. See Norman Geras, Discourses of Extremity
(London: Verso, 1990).
4. For a discussion of the influence of the Allende experience on the Latin American Left
and that of Venezuela in particular, see Steve Ellner, "The MAS Party in Venezuela," Latin
American Perspectives, 13, 2 (Spring 1986): 102-104.
5. "XV Congreso del Partido Comunista: Adios a la armas," APSI, 291 (February 13-19,
1989):11-14.
6. Teodoro Petkoff, interview, Caracas, March 7, 1991. The Left, of course, faces this same

predicament throughout the world; see Daniel Singer, "The Last Superpower," Nation, Janu-
ary 7-14, 1991, 13.
7. Roger Burbach and Orlando Nunez, Fire in the Americas: Forging a Revolutionary Agenda

(London: Verso, 1987), 84.

8. "In Third World Nations, the Legacy of Marx Takes Many Different Shapes," New York
Times, January 24, 1989, A-l, A-ll.
9. Important exceptions are the M-19 in Colombia, the Montoneros of Argentina, and the
Tupamaros of Uruguay, who did not embrace socialism as a major goal even (as did the San-
dinistas) in private. For a discussion of these populist strains, see Richard Gillespie, Soldiers of
Peron: Argentina's Montoneros (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
10. For a discussion of recent modifications in the theory of the "bourgeois democratic
revolution" in developing nations, see Donald Hodges and Ross Gandy, Mexico 1910-1976:
20 Steve Ellner

Reform or Revolution? (London: Zed, 1979), 99-121; Steve Ellner, Venezuela's Movimiento al So-
From Guerrilla Defeat to Innovative Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), 25-
cialismo:
31.
11. Fernando Rospigliosi, "La paradoja del velasquismo: La oposicion del movimiento
sindical a la dictadura militar," Apuntes (Lima), 23, 2 (1988):57-159.
12. Robert Alexander, "Bolivia," in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs (Stanford:
Hoover Institution, 1987), 52.
13. Mark Falcoff, "Argentina," in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1987, 48; La
lucha por el socialismo con democracia: Conversaciones con Nahuel Moreno (Buenos Aires: Edicio-
nes La Chispa, 1986), 69.

The PT's former secretary-general Francisco Weffort has developed this critique in a
14.
works analyzed by John D. French in the introductory chapter of The Brazil-
series of scholarly
ian Workers' ABC: Class Conflict and Alliances in Modern Sao Paulo (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1992). See also Silvio R. Duncan Baretta and John Markoff, "Brazil's
Abertura: From What to What?" in James M. Malloy and Mitchell A. Seligson, eds., Authoritar-
ians and Democrats: Regime Transition in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1987), 56.
15. Jorge Nef, "The Trend Toward Democratization and Redemocratization in Latin
America: Shadow and Substance," Latin American Research Review, 23, 3 (1988):150. Terrie R.
Groth argues that the position of these political scientists, many of whom previously defend-
ed a corporatist framework, was "conditioned largely by the paradigm of their previous
work." Groth, "Debating Latin American Democratization: A Theoretical Guide," paper pre-
sented at the Latin American Studies Association congress in New Orleans, March 1988, 26.
16. Hobart Spalding, "The New Cauldron to the South," Monthly Review, 41, 11 (April
1990): 51.
17. Paul Cammack, "Resurgent Democracy: Threat and Promise," New Left Review, 157
(May-June 1986):121-128.
18. Alain Touraine, Anti-Nuclear Protest: The Opposition to Nuclear Energy in France (Lon-
don: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 34-57.
19. Touraine, The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements (London: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), 24; Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Social Movements: A Cognitive
Approach (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 26, 146.
20. Scott Mainwaring and Eduardo Viola, "New Social Movements, Political Culture, and
Democracy: Brazil and Argentina in the 1980s," Telos, 61 (Fall 1984):21-22. Judith Adler Hell-
man argues that new social movements in Latin America have the potential to exert a pro-
found influence on leftist parties, as has occurred in Europe on such issues as nuclear energy
and sexism. Hellman, "The Study of New Social Movements in Latin America and the Ques-
tion of Autonomy," LASA Forum, 21, 2 (Summer 1990):7-12.
21. Ellner, Venezuela's Movimiento, 175-176.
22. Spalding, "The New Cauldron," 50-51.
23. Tilman Evers, "Identity: The Hidden Side of New Social Movements in Latin Ameri-
ca," in David Slater, ed., New Social Movements and the State in Latin America (Amsterdam:
CEDLA, 1985), 43-71.
24. Jacqueline Roddick, "Chile," in Jean Carriere, Nigel Haworth, and Jacqueline Rod-
dick, eds., The State, Industrial Relations, and the Labour Movement in Latin America (New York:
St.Martin's Press, 1989), 1:210-211; Daniel H. Levine and Scott Mainwaring, "Religion and
Popular Protest in Latin America: Contrasting Experiences," in Eckstein, Power and Popular
Protest, 203-240.
25. Kathrine Yih,
"The Red and the Green," Monthly Review, 42, 5 (October 1990):26-27.
Cynthia McClintock, "Peru's Sendero Luminoso Rebellion: Origins and Trajectory," in
26.
Eckstein, Power and Popular Protest, 84. Americas Watch published a 123-page report entitled
 Introduction 21

The Killings In Colombia; see George Winslow, "Credibility: A Casualty in the War on Drugs,"
In These Times, May 17-23, 1989, 19.
27. Edmundo Morales, "The Political Economy of Cocaine Production: An Analysis of the
Peruvian Case," Latin American Perspectives, 17, 4 (Fall 1990):105-108. Certainly the term "nar-
co-guerrillas" used by some journalists is misleading; see, for instance, Georges A. Fauriol,
"The Shadow of Latin American Affairs," Foreign Affairs, 69, 1 (1989/1990):118.
28. Gabriel Puerta (former leading Venezuelan guerrilla, member of the Bandera Roja),
speech delivered in Cumana, March 22, 1989;Marco Moreira Alves, A Grain of Mustard Seed:
The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolution (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1973), 181.
29. Leftists debated whether these struggles could be considered "low-intensity warfare."
See the series of articles in NACLA: Report on the Americas, including William M. LeoGrande's
"Central America Counterinsurgency Revisited," 21, 1 (January/February 1987).
30. Voz [Colombian Communist party newspaper], November 12, 1987, 4.
31. These remarks were made by Salvadorian guerrilla leader Joaquin Villalobos in an
article published in Foreign Policy. See William Bollinger, "Villalobos on 'Popular Insurrec-
tion,' " Latin American Perspectives, 16, 3 (Summer 1989):46.

32. This same dilemma was noted by the sociologist Robert Michels in Political Parties,
first published in 1911.
33. Robert Barros, "The Left and Democracy: Recent Debates in Latin America," Telos, 68
(Summer 1986):50-52. See also the essays in the third part of Julio Labastida Martin del Cam-
po, ed., Hegemonia y alternativas politicas en America Latina (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1985).
34. Maria Helena Moreira Alves, "Trade Unions in Brazil: A Search for Autonomy and
Organization," in Edward C. Epstein, ed., Labor Autonomy and the State in Latin America (Bos-
ton: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 60-62.
35. New York Times, December 9, 1990, 3.
36. For a discussion of "new populism" see Michael L. Conniff, "Urban Populism in
Twentieth Century Joseph Tulchin and John Chasteen,
Politics," in Modern
eds., Problems in
Latin American History (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, in press).
 2
The Political Left in Chile,
1973-1990
Brian Loveman

Overview Prior to 1973

Nowhere in Latin America have Socialist, Communist, Marxist-Lenin-
ist, and radical Catholic political parties and movements had more
political influence than in twentieth-century Chile. From 1932 to 1973 the
Socialist and Communist parties achieved consistent electoral successes,
permanent participation in the legislature, periodic representation in
government coalitions, and, in 1970, the election of a Socialist president.
Ideological and organizational predominance in the labor movement, a
significant presence in poor urban neighborhoods, shantytowns, and
even the countryside, and a network of newspapers, party journals, and
cultural activities made the Socialist and Communist Left an active force
in Chilean politics.
Diversity on the Left increased from the late 1960s to 1973. Groups
favoring faster and more radical change splintered from the Christian
Democratic party, thereby adding several radical Catholic parties to
the traditional Marxist Left. These included the Movimiento de Accion
—
Popular Unitaria (Movement of Popular Unitarian Action MAPU), the
MAPU Obrero-Campesino (Worker-Peasant MAPU—MOC) and the
— 1
Izquierda Cristiana (Christian Left IC). In addition, in the mid-1960s
the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolu-
—
tionary Left MIR) and other smaller groups supported the Cuban model
ofarmed revolution.
The political evolution of the Chilean Left occurred within the legal
framework of Chilean formal democracy. Although some socialists
professed revolutionary Marxism and the Communists' ultimate objec-

23
24 Brian Loveman

tive was overturning capitalism in favor of socialism, the Left usually

behaved as a legal opposition as in European multiparty systems such
as those of France and Italy Although leftist groups were sometimes
repressed or outlawed, as, for example, were the Communists from 1948
to 1958, the political Left was effectively incorporated into the political
system. usually participated fully and accepted the "rules of the game"
It

in practice while condemning formal democracy and capitalism in princi-

ple. The Left and the Christian Democrats took democracy for granted.
2

They had forgotten and rights, the party and industrial

that civil liberties
relations systems, the labor movement, and military subordination to
civil authority were exceptions in Latin America that Chileans had won
through political struggle.
The coup that overthrew the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity UP) —
government of Salvador Allende in 1973 and what followed altered
the meaning of "democracy" for the Chilean Left, dramatized the danger
of denigrating "bourgeois rights," and eventually taught that democracy
and constraints on government authority were worthy ends in them-
selves rather than instrumental values useful for the transition to social-
ism. As had their counterparts in Eastern Europe and their socialist-
social-democratic compatriots in Western Europe, most of the Chilean
Left proclaimed by the mid-1980s that there could be no socialism without
democracy, that many of Marxism-Leninism's fundamental tenets had
been erroneous, and that it was Spanish and French socialism, Italian
communism, and even German social democracy rather than the socialis-
mos reales of Eastern Europe that provided proper direction for Chilean
development. 3
were more consistent with the history of
Ironically, these discoveries
the Chilean Left and, especially, of the Socialist partyand the Catholic
Left, than were the revolutionary bombasts of the 1960s and 1970s that
had led to disaster. For the first seventy years of the twentieth century
the political Left had helped to forge Chilean democracy. From 1970 to
1973, however, it sought to impose on the majority a vision shared by a
minority, using the instruments of the state in a fashion that allowed local
and international opponents to mobilize against the Allende coalition.
That peaceful revolution or deep reform requires a formidable consensus
on values and objectives was a lesson the Chilean Left had not yet
learned.

Dictatorship and the Chilean Left

Sixteen years of dictatorship followed, with brutal repression of the

leftist parties,the labor movement, and community organizations identi-
fied as "Marxist" or "subversive." Surviving, interpreting the causes of
 The Political Left in Chile 25

Popular Unity's defeat, responding to the dictatorship's policies and

their consequences, reconstituting effective party organizations, redefin-
ing socialism, and battling to restore Chilean democracy became the
agenda of the Chilean Left after 1973. 4
The military government sought to legitimate repression with the
declared fiction of "internal war." Institutional innovations by the mili-
tary junta also anticipated an effort to establish a new political system,
later called "authoritarian democracy" or "protected democracy," that
would severely curtail democratic politics as conventionally understood
and seek to outlaw Marxist parties and movements. The military junta
consolidated the authoritarian system in a 1980 plebiscite to approve a
new constitution. Implemented in 1981, the constitution provided guide-
lines for the transition from junta dominance to a permanent form of
authoritarian "protected democracy." 5 The government also adopted the
most radical version of neoliberal economic innovations in Latin America,
thereby undermining the social foundations of the traditional Left the —
—
labor movement and drastically reducing the role of the state in public
enterprises, the regulation of the private economy, and the overall
direction of Chilean development.

Initial Response to the Coup

The military junta moved quickly against the Popular Unity political
parties, the labor movement, and other opposition. Military tribunals con-
demned "traitors" to death, and many leftists were killed without benefit
of the kangaroo courts, joining their compatriots in mass graves. Thou-
sands more were brutalized and incarcerated. Despite the revolutionary
proclamations of the MIR, some Socialists, and other coalition parties, the
Left was not organized to offer effective resistance to the coup or the mil-
itary junta. From 1973 to 1976 survival took precedence, with the MIR,
6

the Communist party, and the Socialists taking numerous casualties

in military raids characterized euphemistically by the government as
"battles" or "confrontations."
Debates over tactical and ideological culpability for the coup and
methods of resistance to the military government's repression dominated
the Left. 7 The exile of thousands of leftists and other Chileans further
complicated the picture as internal and external directorates of the main
leftist parties differed over tactics, the desirability of collaboration with

nonleftist parties and movements, and long-term objectives. In 1975 rep-

resentatives of all the Popular Unity parties except Accion Popular Inde-
—
pendiente (Independent Popular Action API) met in Berlin and called
for a broad front, including the Christian Democrats, to end the dictator-
ship. After four years of frustration and fragmentation, however, the
 —

26 Brian Loveman

Popular Unity dissolved in 1979, this action coinciding with the formal
division of the Socialist party (1979) and a dramatic change in political
line on the part of the Communists (1980).

The Communist Party, 1973-1986

The Communist party, despite its moderate role in the
relatively
Popular Unity by the military junta.
coalition, suffered fierce repression
Party officials, union officers, and peasant and community leaders were
arrested, tortured, murdered, and "disappeared." In response, the party
sent key leaders into exile and established a clandestine directorate in
Chile. Funds from the Soviet Union, East Germany, Italy, and other exter-
supported the
resistance to
[ nalInsources its dictatorship.
assessing the coup from 1973-1975, the Communists noted the
role of U.S. imperialism, the intervention of the CIA, and the strength of
internal reaction. Ttjg served its harshest criticism, however, for " opp or-
tuni sts/' petty-bourgeois pseudorevolutionaries, and "ultraleitis.ts"
meaning the MIR, some and scattered Catholic radicals w hose
Socialists,
ta ctics alienated the middle class es >nd pushed the milita ry toward the
coup. 8 Basically, the Communists' first autocritica (self-criticism) consisted
of reaffirming its positions and lamenting its inability to impose its grad-
ualist line on the Popular Unity coalition. The Communists defined the
military regime as fascist, a "product of counterrevolution, of the violent
interruption of the revolutionary process." 9 To confront this challenge,
they proposed an "antifascist front" with both tactical and strategic objec-
tives: to create a broad coalition to oust the dictatorship and to sustain
the coalition to form a government and promote democratization of the
political system.
Most non-Marxists resisted participation with the Communists in
such a coalition. Whereas the Catholic church, especially the Vicariate of
Solidarity, proved willing to shelter individual Communists, denounce
human rights abuses, and call for relaxation of the government's cam-
paign of terror against the Left, it maintained an emphatic official distance
from the Popular Unity and the Communist party. The Christian Demo-
crats, especially those identified with former president Eduardo Frei,
insisted on their historical rejection of the Communists and sought an
opposition coalition that excluded most Marxist-Leninists. This doomed
the Communists' effort to be a principal voice in a broad opposition front
to the dictatorship —
even had the opposition been able to mount such a
front.
By 1979-1980, the political consolidation of the Pinochet regime, the
plebiscite that imposed a new constitution, and the economic recovery
that bolstered the neoliberal model confronted the Communists with in-
 The Political Left in Chile 27

soluble dilemmas. Elementspiihe^Cpmmunist Youthand some members

ofthe party directorate-jrei e cted the antifascist-front concept and the
jSar t^^unwiinn^nesTto support the MIR in armed struggl e against the
government. Similar dissent among community oigdi ii zatrons and resi-
dents of the peripheral urban shantytowns and slums, combined with
the obvious failure of the party's previous tactics either to weaken the
regime or to enhance relations with the Christian Democrats and Center-
Left groups, required reconsideration of its positions. In any case, the
formal division of the Socialist party in 1979 and the movement of many
socialists away from orthodox Marxism made insistence on the broad
antifascist-front line futile.
Communists'
International events also influenced redefinition of the
tactics and At the twenty-sixth congress of the Communist
strategic line.
party of the Soviet Union, L eonid Brezhnev remarked that " revolution s
must know how_t o defend themselves/ referring indirectly to the Popu-
'

lar Unity experience but also to the Cuban, Nicaraguan, and African
socialist regimes. The victory of the Sandinista s over the Somoza dictator-
ship in Nicaragua and intensified conflict in El Salvador also encouraged
some Communists to add a military component to their resistance to the
Pinochet government.
On September 4, 1980, the tenth anniversary of Allende's election, Luis
Corvalan, speaking from Moscow, marked a critical turning point in
Communist strategy and party evolution: "To defeat the fascist dictator-
ship there is no other path than confrontation on all fronts, making use
of all forms of combat/' 10 In November, speaking in Sweden, Corvalan
added: "The right of rebellion against tyrants figures in the Bible and in
the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church and the theologians of the Mid-
dle Ages. was recognized before Plato
It and inspired all the bourgeois
. . .

revolutions, the independence movements in Latin America, the proletar-

ian revolutions, and the movements of national liberation. There is no . . .

other way to recover liberty for Chile than by fighting. 11

, The official line of "antifascjst-front" was-chanppd to that of "popular
rebellion" c ulminating in '(popular insurrectio n3 This decision by the
Communists, however well justified by the government's repression and
the inability of the opposition to cast off the junta, did not mean an end to
the traditional political work of the party but did represent a dramatic
shift in emphasis and image. It produced further isolation of the Commu-
nists from the Center and the Center-Left, a pretext for increased govern-
ment repression, and, eventually, serious divisions within the party. It also
meant a t actical alliance w ith the "ultraleftists" earlier blamed for the
coupuand with the more orthodox Socialists and a number ot Catholic
radicals who shared the commitment to armed struggle. Strategically, it
also underscored the Communist assessment that a negotiated transition
 28 Brian Loveman

from dictatorship according to the terms of Pinochet's 1980 constitution

would leave Chilean politics permanently militarized, authoritarian, and
seriously constrained in overcoming the new socioeconomic model
installed by the junta.
In 1980 the Communist party lacked significant military capabilities to
implement the new line of popular rebellion. Gradually, contacts with the
MIR, the formal establishment in 1983 of the Frente Patriotico Manuel
—
Rodriguez (Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front FPMR) with linkages to
the party, and efforts to train, equip, and activate armed elements gave
operational meaning to the strategy announced in 1980.
From 1983 to 1986 Communist cadres, the MIR, the FPMR, and other
leftist resistance fighters carried out a number of actions, including sabo-
tage of power lines (apagones), bombings, attacks on police, kidnapping of
military personnel, and even destruction of Pinochet's helicopter. These
acts brought hope to some, provoked rage in others, and raised serious
// ,,
objections to the overmilitarization of the party, lack of control by the
directorate over armed cadres, deemphasis on traditional political work,
and lack of discussion and consultation concerning policies within the
directorate. This produced discomfiture for many militants accustomed
to the party's historical style and tactics.
In its 1985 report, the central committee of the Communist party recog-
nized the importance of the popular protests, strikes, reactivation of the
labor movement, and mass mobilization that had occurred since 1983,
pointing to the importance of "the introduction of new methods of strug-
gle, methods that permit the growing use of revolutionary violence by the
7
people against the violence imposed by fascism/ Making clear the party's
line regarding the end of the dictatorship, it declared: "The end of fascism
will not be the fruit of one battle, nor of the action of only one sector of the
opposition, but the result of a series of great and small struggles of the
Chilean people, until a state of national rebellion is created that makes the
situation unmanageable for the tyrant and makes possible steps toward
ending the fascist dictatorship and returning to democracy. " 12 Iteration of
this line evoked admiration among those suffering the regime's brutality
and fostered pride in the party's resolve and courage to overcome the
pervasive fear engendered by years of state terrorism.
The Communists apparently intended to intensify the armed struggle,
providing weapons and training to cadres and others willing to confront
the dictatorship-uaJ-hpm] mtrvside mines, and urban centers. This strat-
,

egy suffered(Wve re_rgyprgPQ jp^g^with the government's discovery of

large ar ms caches in northexrL^hile and anuinsuccessf"! assassination
* atjernpfoh Pinoche t. These setbacks further alienated the Communists
and other groups within the Movimiento Democratico Popular (Popular
Democratic Movement —MDP) from Christian Democrats, renovated
 The Political Left in Chile 29

Socialists, the church, and other non-Marxist opponents of the govern-

ment. The junta also used these events to validate its internal-war thesis
and justify intensifying attacks on party members and other leftists. As
it became clear that the military government had survived the wave of

protests and popular mobilization (1983-1986) and that armed struggle

by leftist cadres could not topple the regime, the Communists and other
advocates of popular rebellion and insurrection found themselves ever
more politically isolated.
Divisions within the MIR, the FPMR,Almeyda Socialists, and the
the
Communist party itself some militants retreating from
followed, with
insistence on a military ouster of the dictatorship. By 1988, formal separa-
tion of the FPMR from the more intractable FPMR-Autonomo, the emer-
gence of at least three distinct factions within the MIR, and adherence by
the Al meyda Socia lists to the Coalitio n of Parties for N CHn the plebiscit e
campaigfTieft ChUeanCommunistrwith fewer allies and~more divided
internally than at any time in the past half-century

The Socialist Party, 1973-1986

Unlike that of the Communist party, the official Socialist party

twenty-second congress in Chilian in 1967 had been that
line since its
"revolutionary violence is and inevitable." 13 Despite the official
legitimate
rhetoric, t he Socialist party had hardly armed itself fro m 1967 to 1973.
The military junta's postcoup repression decimated the ranks of Socialist
leaders, killing some, jailing others, and forcing many into exile. A \^
clandestine directorate headed by Ezequiel Ponce and Carlos Lorca at-
tempted internal resistance; in exile, Socialist leaders headed by Carlos
Altamirano attempted to reconstitute the party first in Cuba and then in
East Germany.
In 1974 the internal directorate issued the so-called Document of
March accusing the party of responsibility for the defeat of the Popular
Unity because of its lack of Leninist principles and organization, its petty-
bourgeois composition, and its incapacity to defend the revolutionary
process. This document virtually proposed fusion with the Communists. 14
Internal reaction to this document spawned the Coordinadora Natio-
nal de Regionales (National Coordinator of Regionals CNR), a loose —
coordination of regional units that was to recover the nationalist, autono-
mous, non-Leninist legacy of historical socialism. Both internally and in
exile, however, the Socialist party was divided over tactics, organization,
objectives, and coalition strate gies. Personalist animosities and ambitions
to thefragmentation/By 1978, opposition to the former firebrand
''Altamirano, now accused of right-wing opportunism, conflicts over
the extent of collaboration with the Christian Democrats, and the expul-
 30 Brian Loveman

sion from the internal directorate of "moderate" leaders such as Erich

Adonis Sepulveda, and Alejandro Jiliberto fractured the party.
VjSchnake,
A faction headed by Clodomiro Almeyda insisted on a Marxist-
Leninist definition of the party and on strengthening traditional ties with
the Communists and MIR. It also came to favor armed struggle
the
against the dictatorship. Altamirano complained about East German
intervention favoring the Almeyda faction; in 1979 a party plenum shifted
the secretariat to Chile, replacing Altamirano with Almeyda. The Socialist
party decomposed into numerous personalist and ideological factions, 15 a
process from which Almeyda emerged "victorious." Former leaders such
as Aniceto Rodriguez and Raul Ampuero formed minifactions, each with
its own view of the Popular Unity defeat, tactics for confronting the

dictatorship, alliance strategy, and goals. Repeated efforts to reunify the

party, initially under a Comite Permanente de Enlace (Permanent Linkage
—
Committee CEP), failed, after the CEP's 1983 initiative to encourage
collaboration with Christian Democrats was rejected by some Socialists.
Carlos Briones, secretary-general of the party from 1984 to 1986, declared
that the Socialists were neither social democrats nor Communists
but rather "revolutionary socialists, an original creation of the Chilean
16
people."
meant confusion and cleavage from 1979 to 1986, with
In practice, this
Socialists joining each of the three major blocks formed after 1983 to
challenge the Pinochet government: the Alianza Democratica (Christian
Democrats, some Socialists and the Republican Right), supporting civil
disobedience and peaceful negotiations for a democratic transition; the
MDP (the Communists, the MIR, and the Almeyda Socialists), supporting
armed struggle, popular mobilization, protests, and rebellion and calling
for the immediate deposition of Pinochet, abrogation of the 1980 constitu-
tion, and disavowal of the accords with the International Monetary Fund;
—
and the Bloque Socialista (Socialist Bloc BS) (some Socialists, the MAPU,
the IC), opposed to armed struggle but attempting to bridge the differ-
ences between the MDP and the AD to encourage a unified opposition to
the Pinochet government. 17
Prior to 1986, the Socialists were unable to overcome the personalist,
ideological, and organizational splits that had plagued them since the
1973 coup. Nevertheless, they had achieved tentative consensus on inter-
nal pluralism, intellectual toleration, and the importance of democracy
for Chile's future. They adopted a new political lexicon and a new view
of their relationship to the working classes and other groups in Chilean
society They rejected "vanguardism," "dictatorship of the proletariat,"
and any preconceived future Utopia. 18 These changes facilitated collabora-
tion with the Christian Democrats and allowed the gradual development
 The Political Left in Chile 31

of a Center-Left coalition to challenge the dictatorship in the plebiscite

of 1988.
Recognition that Pinochet intended to perpetuate his administration
into the 1990s and to insist on the terms of the 1980 constitution elicited a
proposal from the Socialist Ricardo Lagos in January 1986 that would also
affect the future of Chilean socialism. Noting the risk of complying with
the electoral and laws proposed by the dictatorship, Lagos
political party
suggested formation of an instrumental umbrella party, the (Partido por
la Democracia (Party for Democracy— PPD), in which all opponents to
Pinochet could register and vote against the junta's candidate in any
19
future plebiscite as prescribed by the constitution.
This "instrumental" party proposed by Lagos survived the plebiscite
and become a major actor in the new Chilean
also the elections in 1989 to
Congress. The domination of the PPD by Socialists raised the dilemma of
dual memberships, the rationale for continuation of the PPD, and the rela-
tionship between Socialists, PPD members, and the Catholic Left after
March 1990.

The Catholic Left, 1973-1986

The MAPU, the MOC, and the IC represented diverse constituencies

of the Catholic Left. Each had a narrow popular base but was led by influ-
ential intellectuals who played a key role in opposition to the Pinochet
government from 1973 to 1986 and in the Aylwin coalition government
that assumed office in March 1990. Close connections to church organiza-
tions offered some leaders of the Catholic Left a partial shield from repres-
sion unavailable to the Communists and the MIR. This did not prevent
some from being murdered, imprisoned, or exiled.
A trend after 1983 toward ideological convergence with the renovated
Socialists brought important intellectuals of the Catholic Left into per-
sonal and microorganizational alliances that ultimately resulted in their
merging with the Socialist party. By 1985 the MOC had amalgamated with
the Socialists, and shortly thereafter prominent MAPU and IC academics
and politicians joined the Socialists' non-Almeyda wing. Many preferred
the PPD in 1987. Others identified with the Almeyda Socialists and in 1988
joined the instrumental party created by Communists, left-wing Social-
ists, and the IC — the Partido Amplio de la Izquierda Socialista (Broad
Party of the Socialist Left—PAIS).
These talented and influential intellectuals, along with independent
socialists and a few former members of the MIR integrated into the
Socialist party after 1986, were to contribute both to the coalition that won
victory over Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite and to the technical commis-
32 Brian Loveman

sions that developed the program of the coalition that elected Patricio
Aylwin president in 1989.

The Invisible Left: Nongovernmental Organizations, 1973-1990

After the 1973 coup, the daily struggle for survival made the Left more
pragmatic and eclectic. With international cooperation from public and
private sources, a network of nongovernmental organizations emerged
that became a shadow political opposition and an organizational base
for a new opposition coalition. Emerging first under the umbrella of the
Catholic church and the Vicariate of Solidarity, human rights organiza-
tions, research programs, and private development corporations re-
sponded to the repression and neoliberal policies with nontraditional
programs and community organizations. These included community
kitchens, consumer cooperatives, alternative legal and health services,
and workshops producing artisan products to support families affected
by the military government's policies. 20
These organizations, novel in politics, contributed to the professional-
ization, technification, and sophistication of opposition political elites at a
time when political parties, the labor movement, universities, student and
community organizations, and other traditional political forces were sup-
pressed by the dictatorship. Staffed primarily by leftist (or, less frequently,
Christian Democratic) academics, former government officials, and pro-
fessionals, they also allowed reconsideration of the role of the state in
Chile by intellectuals of the Left and Center. The increasing emphasis on
grass-roots, local and autonomous initiatives in the development process
was a dramatic departure from the traditional state-centered vision of the
Chilean Left.
Equally important, the personnel of these organizations received
firsthand experience in private international cooperation efforts (called
"informal diplomacy" in the years of the dictatorship), familiarized them-
selves with the foreign policies and assistance programs of European,
North American, and Asian agencies and foundations, each with its own
orientation, favored clientele, and approach to development assistance,
and developed a sophisticated vision of Chile's international role. These
developments altered the sometimes insular attitudes of the Chilean Left
toward Eastern and Western Europe and the United States. Not by
chance, key personnel of these organizations appeared as high-ranking
officials in the Aylwin government's foreign relations bureaucracy and as
ambassadors after March 1990. 21
The nongovernmental organizations helped shape a new political
agenda for the Left that included a new emphasis on human rights, the
basic needs of the poor, the role of women in society and politics, and the
 The Political Left in Chile 33

.environmental deterioration that resulted from neoliberalism's intensifi-

cation of pressures on natural resources and the human habitat. It also
injected a new pragmatism into antiregime thinking and a new recogni-
tion of the value of entrepreneurship ,and nonstate enterprise and the
inherent limitations of bureaucratic administration. These "discoveries,"
combined with the experiences of leftist leaders in exile, altered the intel-
22
lectual foundations of tfie Chilean Left. Although these organizations
also increased in number elsewhere in Latin America in the 1970s and
19§0s~ (f° r example, in Uruguay and Brazil), nowhere did they play the
crucial role of shadow political movements and think-tanks for intel-
lectual reconstruction of the Left to the extent that they did in Chile.

The Left, the 1988 Plebiscite, and the Elections of 1989

Adoption of the 1980 constitution was a benchmark for the dictator-

ship and also for the opposition. It established the legal foundations of the
authoritarian regime, discarded Chilean democracy, proscribed key leftist

actors and ideologies from politics, and detailed procedures for a transi-
tion from junta government to full implementation of the 1980 charter.
What appeared be the high point in the Pinochet administration, how-
to
ever, rapidly way to economic recession and renewed political chal-
gave
lenges. Intensification of the economic disaster brought antiregime pro-
tests and a broader base of political opposition than at any time since
1973. Strikes, public rallies and demonstrations, and mass protest move-
ments gave the appearance that the dictatorship was losing some of its
control. By mid-1984 hopes were high that the military government could
be_ous_ted.
From 1983 to 1986 the Left and Center opposition looked for aminimal
coalition that could at least achieve Pinochet's replacement by a more
flexible ruler and a quicker transition to more democratic politics.
^By August 1985 moderate elements of the opposition supported by the
Catholic church had elaborated a National Accord for Transition to Full
Democracy, that called for immediate restoration of civil liberties and
rights, an end to exile, and constitutional reform. This accord attracted
support from former officials of the military government and elements of
the political Right, signifying some erosion of the regime's social base.
Pinochet skillfully played opposition factions against one another,
reminded Chileans of the dangers of returning to the chaos of 1973, and
pointed to the overt threat of violence by the Communists, the MIR, and
theFPMR. He used old-time rightist politicos to negotiate with opponents,
allowed some exiles to return, and permitted more latitude to the opposi-
tion press and selectivexrenewal of political party activity. On retention
of the 1980 constitution, the institutions of "authoritarian democracy,"
 —

34 Brian Loveman

his own permanence in office, and repression of protesters he yielded

nothing. Between 1983 and 1985 government suppression of public
dissent left over one hundred dead and hundreds more injured.
Between 1983 and 1988 resuscitation of overt political activity on the
Left and ideological renovation of the Socialist party permitted the con-
struction of a coalition that used the military regime's own institutions to
achieve victories in three key political contests: the plebiscite of 1988
(rejecting Pinochet's continuation in office), a plebiscite on constitutional
reforms in mid-1989 that set the stage for presidential and parliamentary
elections, and the elections of December 1989.
Pinochet's dictatorship drove the Chilean Left to painful introspection
concerning fundamental nature and purpose. After sixteen years of
its

dictatorship and unsuccessful efforts to oust Pinochet through armed

struggle by the MIR and, from 1980 on, by the FPMR and the Communist
party, most of the political Left joined the Christian Democrats and other
antijunta forces in a broad coalition. The coalition agreed to use Pinochet's
own constitution and new laws on voter registration, political parties, and
elections (1986).
Adopting this tactic for transition implied both short-term risks and
long-term impediments to democratization in Chile. In February 1987
the government opened up voter registries for a new registration system.
Initial resistance to participation in this system by most of the political
Left and the Christian Democrats meant that by June 1987 only 1,200,000
of approximately 8,000,000 eligible citizens had registered. In the mean-
time, protests and violence had marred a papal visit to Chile, and the
opposition continued to call for free, competitive elections instead of a
plebiscite. Pinochet steadfastly insisted on implementing the constitu-
tion's provisions.
A loosely organized leftist coalition decided not to register under
the restrictive conditions of the new law. The political Right, in contrast,
organized voter registration drives, as did, eventually, the Christian
Democrats. By December 1987 over four million voters had registered
enough make the plebiscite respectable and, if the Left insisted on its
to
ensure a Pinochet victory. Recognition of this possibility stimu-
tactics, to
lated agreement among most opposition groups, left and right, in Febru-
ary 1988 to form a coalition to prevent Pinochet's victory. 23
This decision was difficult, for it also legitimated the 1980 charter that
most opposition forces considered the product of a fraudulent plebiscite.
The signed declaration uniting the thirteen (later sixteen) parties of the
coalition called for free elections at the earliest possible time, constitutional
reforms, and respect for human rights but acknowledged that the govern-
ment's obstinacy made it imperative to participate in the plebiscite.
 —

The Political Left in Chile 35

The Communists, the MIR, and some Socialists delayed the decision to
participate in the plebiscite, being reluctant to validate Pinochet's new
political system or procedures would prevail.
to believe that fair electoral
For some the decision to participate meant capitulation. For the non-
Marxist-Leninist opposition the plebiscite, scheduled for October 1988,
was a long shot to catch Pinochet in his own "trap." Whatever the out-
come, acceptance of the 1980 constitution's framework for transition
meant acquiescence in a gradualism in overturning the dictatorship's
authoritarian institutions that would prove painful and frustrating long
after 1988.
Opposition victory in the 1988 plebiscite with 55 percent of the vote,
a minor miracle achieved under the scrutiny of the international news
media and on-site poll watchers, refocused Chilean politics. The attention
of the Left and all Chileans turned to the one-year transition period dur-
ing which Pinochet would remain in office and organize the presidential
and congressional elections stipulated in the 1980 constitution.
After preliminary political skirmishing, most of the Left adhered to an
expanded coalition supporting Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin as the
presidential candidate for the December 1989 election. The plebiscite out-
come, Aylwin's election victory, and the governing coalition of Socialists
and Christian Democrats further isolated the Communists, the MIR, and
other orthodox Marxist-Leninists. It also exacerbated internal divisions
within the Communist party and the MIR, leading to damaging resigna-
tions, expulsions, and public debates.
Although the Communists had belatedly supported the opposition
forces in the plebiscite, Christian Democrats and some Socialists rejected a
formal coalition with them for the 1989 elections. Whereas the Commu-
nists supported Aylwin's candidacy, they failed to elect any deputies
or senators on a separate slate with orthodox Socialists (PAIS) from the
coalition. In part this was a result of their still-illegal status, combined
with the effects of the military government's electoral law and their
serious internal conflicts.It left them without direct representation in the

legislature, without participation in the cabinet, and without influence in

the party coalition that governed Chile after 1990. Combined with the loss
of external support, the impact of perestroika, the demise of socialist
regimes in Eastern Europe, and the lack of a political line to replace "pop-
ular rebellion, popular insurrection," the isolation of the Communists
despite relegalization in 1990—brought political crisis. 24
A formal effort to "refound" the party took shape in 1990-1991 as
former Communists severely criticized Stalinism within the organization,
attacked "militarist deviations" resulting from the "popular rebellion"
line, called for renovation, and established an entity called the Asamblea
 —

36 Brian Loveman

de Renovacion Comunista (Assembly of Communist Renovation

ARCO). The sharp criticisms of these dissidents reflected the crisis of the
party and the challenges facing it in the context of the 1990-1994 political
transition specified in the 1980 constitution.
Overall, the share of legislators elected by the Left in 1989 had declined
from the approximately one-third of the early 1970s to about one-fourth.
Though perhaps a consequence of the unique electoral laws adopted by
the dictatorship to favor the Right and the slates elaborated by the oppo-
sition coalition for the 1989 elections, there was concern on the Left that
this outcome reflected the successful institutionalization by the military
regime of several adverse trends: fear of socialism and redistributive
policies, fear of military reaction to renewed popular mobilization, and a
shift of the electorate to the political Right.

The Left and the Aylwin Government, 1990-1991

After years of human and
rights abuses, political persecution, exile,
institutionalized dictatorship, a coalition that both Christian Democrats
—
and Socialists had rejected since the 1960s and one that might have
—
prevented the years of agony supported the newly installed Christian
Democratic president Patricio Aylwin. Aylwin had vociferously opposed
the Allende government's policies and initially supported the 1973 mili-
tary coup. Socialists and Communists had characterized Aylwin and the
Frei wing of the Christian Democratic party as halfhearted reformers at
best. Changes in the political Left and the Christian Democratic party
from 1973 to 1989 now permitted the creation of a coalition in support of a
program and policies that would have been ridiculed as reactionary by
leaders of both Frei's revolution in Liberty and Allende's Popular Unity.
Piec emeal reform had b ecpmejgs pectab le, democracy essential, prag-
matismdesirable, and moderation a virtue. The political culture of much
of the Chilean Left hacTbeerTtransformed. Prudence —
or understandable
—
fear of direct confrontation with Pinochet and the military permeated
public discussion and government initiatives. Fear of "another September
11, 1973" had been internalized; seeking consensus rather than imposition
of revolutionary programs was the new motif.
Whereas small groups of revolutionary leftists still preferred Cuban
socialism and sustained the anticapitalist, anti-imperialist rhetoric of the
1960s and 1970s, the Aylwin government, including former ministers
of the Popular Unity government, applauded the billion dollars of new
foreign investment in 1990, adopted an orthodox economic adjustment
program to curtail inflation shortly after assuming office, and insisted on
the priority of maintaining "macroeconomic equilibrium." This was the
case despite sharp criticism by the Left and the Christian Democrats of the
 The Political Left in Chile 37

military's economic model and the IMF-style adjustment programs prior

to 1988. Macroeconomic and political stability and "successful transition"
took priority. The coalition leadership stressed the need to legitimate
democracy through responsible fiscal and monetary policy as well as
caution in civil-military relations.
The Chilean Left that returned to office with the Aylwin government
exhibited important continuity of leadership from the 1970s. However,
with few exceptions, the continuity in personalities also entailed a more
reformist, sometimes social democratic Left matured by exile, sobered by
repression, and transformed by intellectual renewal and daily struggle
against the dictatorship.
25
For some, this "new" Left was neij^erjeftist nor revolutionary. Reno-
vation required jettisoning^asic Marxist tenets, such as the leading role
of the proletariat and the vanguard party, the state-centered character of
socialism in the passage to communism, and elimination of private prop-
erty in the means of production. Re novatio n alsj^rmpli ed reliance on
m arkets and Individual init iative in the eco nomy rather jhan administra -

tivfLallocation and acceptance of foreign investment rath er than attacks

o n "neoco lonialism," "dependency," and imperialism. The renovated Left
no longer insisted on the necessity to destroy the "bourgeois state," with
its formal democracy that "disguised class dictatorship."

For others, the renovated Left was a movement

that had recovered its
program of 1947 and the
historical roots, particularly those of the Socialist
legacy of Allende's commitment to socialism and democracy as requisites
one for the other. Viewing the Leninization of Chilean socialism as a recent
(1960s and 1970s) detour from a more nationalist, pragmatic, and demo-
cratic past, the renovados saw in Eurocommunism and democratic social-
ism signposts for a new via chilena. 26
The formation of this new Left had been difficult, uneven, wrought
with painful sacrifice and personal introspection. In 1990-1991 the new
Left remained without a clear long-term political and economic project,
allied with Christian Democrats in administering the economy be-
queathed by the dictatorship, accepting much of the neoliberal model,
and constrained by the constitution of 1980. Hesitant to mobilize popular
forces to demand redistribution of income or to support calls for institu-
tional reforms, the renovated Left would ultimately face the dilemma of
prolonging the coalition by continuing its moderation or following a more
independent path that entailed constructive opposition to the Aylwin
government. In either case, the old question of whether liberal democracy
in Chile could stimulate economic growth and successfully address
demands for socioeconomic justice remained unanswered.
For the hard Left, the orthodox Left, and those wishing to confront
more directly the legacy of the Pinochet government human rights —
38 Brian Loveman

abuses, authoritarian institutions, militarization of politics, and a linger-

ing fear of another coup that constrained political initiatives by the
—
Aylwin government the transition had already proved disappointing
by the end of 1990. Small groups resorted to armed attacks on military
officers, police, and judges held responsible for human rights abuses. The
assassination in early April 1991 of the rightist senator Jaime Guzman,
principal author of the 1980 constitution and political ally of Pinochet,
raised tensions and focused the attention of the Aylwin government on
"fighting terrorism." It also further isolated the Communist party and
others on the Left who objected to the creation of a new security appara-
tus and more severe antiterrorist legislation.
The underlying question whether authentic democracy could be
constructed on the foundation of concessions to military threats and a
permanent tutelary role for the military in politics was the basic challenge
for the Chilean Left —
and for Chilean democracy as President Aylwin —
completed his first year in office in March 1991.

Notes
1. For an overview of these parties and movements see Carlos Bascunan Edwards, La
izquierda sin Allende (Santiago: Planeta, 1990), 105-158.
2. See Benny Pollack and Hernan Rosenkranz, Revolutionary Social Democracy: The Chilean
Socialist Party (London: Frances Pinter, 1986); Carmelo Furci, The Chilean Communist Party and
the Road to Socialism (London: Zed, 1984).
See Ignacio Walker, Socialismo y democracia: Chile y Europa en perspectiva comparada (San-
3.

tiago: CIEPLAN-Hachette, 1990). On "Leninizacion" of the Left see Tomas Moulian, "Evolu-
cion historica de la izquierda chilena," in Democracia y socialismo en Chile (Santiago: FLACSO,

1983). For comparative discussion of the development of the Left in Latin America during this
period see Steve Ellner, "The Latin American Left Since Allende: Perspectives and New
Directions," Latin American Research Review, 24, 2 (1989):143-167.
4. In exile, Chilean socialists became more familiar with the work of Norberto Bobbio and

Antonio Gramsci, as well as the experience of Spanish and French socialists. See Walker,
Socialismo, especially Chapter 5, for details.
5. A short discussion of these innovations can be found in Brian Loveman, "Government

and Regime Succession in Chile," Third World Quarterly, 10 (1988):260-280.

6. In personal conversations, members of these parties affirmed this repeatedly. Indeed,
many Communists maintain that despite the "transition," the party should never again be
caught "unarmed" as in 1973.
7. Perhaps the least acrimonious and most positive view of the past is found in Sergio

Bitar, Chile: Experiment in Democracy (Philadelphia: ISHI, 1986). More illustrative is Carlos

Altamirano, Dialectica de una derrota (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1977).

8. "Los acontecimientos en Chile: Vision de los comunistas," Revista Internacional (July-
August 1974); "Informe al pleno de agosto 1977 del Comite Central del PC rendido por su
secretario general, Luis Corvalan"; "Ultraizquierdismo, caballo de troya del imperialismo,"
public declaration, Santiago, September 1975.
9. "Ultraizquierdismo"; Bascunan, La izquierda, 28-40.
10. Luis Corvalan, speech from Moscow, September 4, 1980.
 The Political Left in Chile 39

11. Luis Corvalan, speech from Sweden, November 18, 1980.

12. Central Committee of the Communist Party, Informe, 1985. For an overview of the
role of the Communists within the party system from 1973 to 1988 see Carlos Huneeus, "El
sistema de partidos politicos en Chile: Cambio y continuidad," Opciones, 13 (January-April
1988):63-197.
13. Cited in Bascufian, La izquierda, 64.
14. "Documento de Marzo," March 1974.
15. For a synoptic view of the numerous factions and efforts at reunification from 1973 to
1986 see Jorge Arrate and Paulo Hidalgo, Pasion y razon del socialismo chileno (Santiago: Orni-
torrinco, 1989), Chapters 8 and 9. Richard Friedmann, 1964-1988 La politica chilena de la A a la
Z (Santiago, 1988), includes brief historical sketches of the Socialist factions.
16. Cited in Walker, Socialismo, 196. An effort to assess the Socialist renovation is Manuel
Antonio Garreton, "i En que consistio la renovacion socialista? Sintesis y evaluacion de sus
contenidos," in La renovacion Balance y perspectivas de un proceso vigente (Santiago:
socialista:

Ediciones Valentin Letelier, 1987), 17-43.

17. See Brian Loveman, "Antipolitics in Chile, 1973-1987," in B. Loveman and T. Davies,

Jr., eds., The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1989), 426-455. In January 1985 the Tribunal Constitucional declared the
Almeyda faction illegal, along with the MDP, the Communists, and the MIR, for violating
Article 8 of the 1980 Constitution.
18. Arrate and Hidalgo, Pasion y razon, 108. An insightful article on the importance of
language regarding democracy, markets, private property, and conflict is Tomas Moulian, "El
lenguaje sobre la democracia: Mercado y guerra," Opciones, 16 (May-August 1989):45-51.
19. Ricardo Lagos, "Partido por la democracia," Convergencia, 12 (December 1987):18-19.

20. A useful overview of these organizations is found in Taller de Cooperacion al Desar-

rollo, Una puerta que se abre: Los organismos no gubernamentales en la cooperacion al desarrollo
(Santiago, n.d.). See also Francisco Vio, Primero la gente: ONG, estado y cooperacion internacional
en el tercer mundo (Santiago: CEAAL, 1989).
21. A partial list of these appointments is found in Brian Loveman, Organizaciones privadas
para el y cooperacion internacional: Chile 1973-1990 (Santiago: EFDES, 1990).
desarrollo
Perhaps the bluntest expression of these changes is Hernan Vodanovic, Un socialismo
22.
renovado para Chile (Santiago: Editorial Andante, 1988).
23. For a collection of articles detailing the evolution of the opposition and the creation of
the coalition see Paul Drake and Ivan Jaksic, The Struggle for Democracy in Chile 1982-1990
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991).
24. See various authors, "La crisis del partido comunista: Una reflexion necesaria," Segun-
da Reflexion, January 1991; Luis Guastavino, Caen las catedrales (Santiago: Hachette, 1991);
Volodia Teitelboim, "Intervencion," Acto de clausura de la campana de legalizacion, Teatro
Caupolican, 28 October, 1990. In 1987 the FPMR divided into an "autonomous" and a
Communist-linked faction.
25. "Tan distintos como dos gotas de agua," Punto Final, October 1989, 9. In 1987 the MIR
divided into two factions, the MIR-Pascal, favoring armed struggle and alliance with
the FPMR and the Communist party, and the MIR-Politico, led by Nelson Gutierrez, which
suspended armed struggle. By 1990, a third and more radical faction emerged, the MIR-
Comision Militar, which approved of execution of leftist "traitors."
26. See interviews with Oscar Waiss, "Partido Socialista de Chile (Fraccion Nunez) and
Ricardo Nunez Munoz," in Patricio Tupper, ed., Opciones politicas en Chile (Santiago: Edicio-
nes Colchagua, 1987), 320-343.
 3
Radicalization and the Left
in Peru, 1976-1991

Nigel Haworth

In July 1977, popular mobilization against Peru's military government

occasioned President Francisco Morales Bermudez to announce the
return to barracks of the military and the calling of elections to reestablish
democratic government. In 1978 elections were held for a Constituent
Assembly from which emerged a new constitution; in 1980 general elec-
tions produced the return to power of a Belaunde-led Accion Popular
—
(Popular Action AP), the same civilian party and president brought
down by the military in 1968. Since then, Peruvian democracy has seen six
—
further major electoral contests municipal elections in 1980, 1983, 1986
and 1989; general elections in 1985 and 1990.
Democratization seems, therefore, to have become fully established in
Peru as elsewhere in Latin America. However, one aspect of the process
differs markedly. Out of the popular mobilization of the late 1970s
emerged, for the first time in Peruvian history, a Left engaged in electoral
politics. Elsewhere in Latin America the Left has been an active constitu-
ent of democratic activity for a generation or more; in Peru this has not
been the case. The Left began to emerge as a coherent political force only
in the 1960s and was denied a chance to develop an electoral tradition by
the 1968 military coup. Thus, in the reactivated democratic process of the
late 1970s and the 1980s, the Left has had to come to terms with the com-
plex politics and procedures of liberal democratic organization and its

The Department of Management Studies and Labour Relations, Faculty of Commerce, and the
Research Committee of the University of Auckland together made the research for this paper
possible by providing generous funding. Their support is gratefully recognized.

41
 —

42 Nigel Haworth

associated contradictions without any previous experience upon which to

ground its strategy.
Simultaneously it has had to respond to the popular demands that pro-
voked the fall of Morales Bermudez and that have lodged great expectations
in the Left, and if this were not enough, it has had to confront the challenge of
the armed struggle waged by the Sendero Luminoso and other guerrilla
movements sworn to oppose participation in the democratic process. Inevi-
tably, therefore, the past fifteen years have seen the Left's fortunes ebb and

flow as circumstances have changed. Whatever the dilemmas it faces, the

emergence of the Left into national politics is a remarkable development.

The Demise of the Morales Bermudez Government

The popular opposition to Morales Bermudez and the consequent
rise of
retreat to barracks have their origins in the reforms introduced by Velasco
after 1968. During the so-called first phase of military rule (1968-1975), a
1

dramatic reform process was set in motion. It included a serious attempt at

agrarian reform; measures to increase popular participation in agrarian, in-
dustrial, and social decision making; reform of the media; the restructuring
of the relationship between Peru and the international economy; the restruc-
turing and strengthening of the state; the destruction of the traditional power
of Peru'sfamed "oligarchy"; and the implementation of a third development
path, "neither communist nor capitalist." As a model,
it was both unexpected

and contradictory and soon ran into major economic problems.

One consequence of itsimplementation was the deliberate fostering
of popular organization and expectation. Myriad organizations were
charged with developing a social base for the "Peruvian Revolution."
Simultaneously, leftist parties were, albeit grudgingly, permitted space to
develop and found roots in peasant, barrio, youth, and worker organiza-
tions alongside the mobilizing agencies of the first phase. In particular,
trade union growth was dramatic.
The importance of trade union growth to popular mobilization has
roots in the 1960s. 2 Until then, the Left was effectively marginalized in
popular politics by the powerful presence of the Alianza Popular Revolu-
cionaria Americana. The APRA and the Left disputed the popular leader-
ship role in the late 1920s and early 1930s and the APRA won, con-
demning the Left to relative obscurity. However, in the 1960s, popular
sentiment moved away from the APRA, primarily because of the ever
more pragmatic pursuit of political power that led it into ill-considered
alliances with parties of the oligarchy. Erstwhile APRA supporters
rejected the politics of compromise, particularly within the labor move-
ment. In 1968, the Confederacion General de Trabajadores del Peru
 Radicalization and the Left in Peru 43

broadly linked to the pro-Moscow Partido Comunista Peruano success- —

fully challenged the pro-APRA labor organization, the Confederation de
Trabaj adores del Peru (Confederation of Peruvian Workers CTP). —
The political impact of the emergence of a strong leftist union bloc com-
bined with the opportunity presented by the Velasco reforms to radicalize
union organization. Reinforcing this radicalization was the emergence of
groups and traditions farther to the Left that were highly critical of the Velas-
co model but took advantage of the opportunity it offered to build their own
bases. Thus the 1970s saw the consolidation of left-wing revolutionary polit-
ical groups and their union and community followings. The coherence of the
CGTP provided the Left with a strong core around which to build. 3
Economic crisis and opposition within the military to the radical
nature of the first phase resulted in the usurpation of power by Morales
Bermudez in 1975, setting in train the second phase. In practice, the
second phase had two important effects for the popular movement. First,
it began to dismantle the reforms enacted during the first phase, particu-

larly in the industrial and agricultural spheres. This inevitably produced a

strong feeling of betrayal and anger that was readily expressed through
the popular institutions created by the first phase and through the many
political and social channels that had used the opportunity of the early
1970s to develop. In particular, the CGTP brought under its umbrella
union groups that had in the 1970s been to the left of it and the PCP and
that in the 1980s saw in it the focus of opposition to unpopular govern-
ment policies. Simultaneously, however, the inclusion of these tendencies
diluted the PCP control of the CGTP and created in the dominant union
organization a more pluralist debate in tune with the political approach
of the Izquierda Unida. 4 Secondly, the Morales Bermudez government
rapidly moved to a more orthodox economic model designed to stabilize
the economy in the face of the post-1973 downturn. 5 The adoption in 1976
of a standard IMF package of reforms and the effects of this on the cost of
living and the paychecks of working people compounded popular anger
with the government for its betrayal of the first phase. Popular mobiliza-
tion was unleashed from 1976 on and took myriad forms workplace —
actions, community protests, student mobilizations, and the publication
of popular manifestos. 6
Crucially, argued by many commentators that two general strikes
it is

fatally wounded the Morales Bermudez government. 7 The July 1977

strike — —
the first general strike in Peruvian history was followed within
nine days by the announcement by Morales Bermudez of the democratic
transition program, with details of the elections proposed for 1978 and
1980. The May 1978 strike forced the military to confirm its intention to
relinquish political power.
44 Nigel Haworth

Popular Mobilization: Crucial or Incidental?

An issue of some importance for an understanding of the Left is
whether the fall of the Morales Bermudez government was the conse-
quence of popular mobilization or of institutional factors to which that
mobilization played a supporting role. Julio Cotler, for example, argues
that the significance of popular mobilization should be measured against
its inability to defeat the policies against which it railed. He gives greater
8

primacy to the debate within the military between the supporters of a

—
return to democracy who were, he suggests, motivated primarily by the
damage being done to the prestige of the armed forces by their continuing
—
involvement in government and those who favored a Pinochet-style
7
" third phase/ The pressure brought to bear by the Carter administration
in the United States resolved the internal debate in favor of the former
line, and this explains the mode of return to democracy adopted.
Other analysts place popular mobilization center stage, 9 arguing that
the scope and intensity of popular anger was such that it stripped the
military government of legitimacy and forced it to seek a democratic solu-
tion. Implicit in this argument is the belief that the " third phase" model
was made impractical by the quality of popular mobilization. Eduardo
Ballon makes the important point that popular mobilization was not sim-
ply beyond the power of the state to control; it was also beyond the power
// ,,
of the Left to order. 10 His implicit rejection of the institutionalist expla-
nation of democratization suggests that popular action sought nothing
less than the overthrow of the Morales Bermudez government and that
win particular or sectional demands (a central thesis of
the failure to
was secondary to the achievement of this fundamental goal.
Cotler 's case)
As Morales Bermudez was forced to retreat to the barracks, so, he argues,
may the success of the mobilization be measured.
Ballon's argument, amply supported by many other accounts of this
period, places the popular mobilization beyond the organizational scope
of the Left and in advance of the Left's strategic perspectives.
11
It follows,
therefore, that a Left resurgence under the newly established democratic
—
order even composed of leftist organizations and traditions that
—
had been part of the mobilization would face a critical appraisal from
the diverse sectors that constituted the popular mobilization, politically
empowered by their recent success.

The Left and the Constituent Assembly Elections

The sections of the Left that decided to stand in the 1978 Assembly
elections did remarkably well. The PCP gained 5.9 percent; the velasquista
Partido Socialista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Socialist party PSR) —
polled 6.6 percent; the Unidad Democratica Popular (Popular Democratic
 —

Radicalization and the Left in Peru 45

Unity —UDP) —an alliance of the Vanguardia Revolucionaria (the Revolu-

tionary Vanguard —VR), the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria
(the Movement of the Revolutionary Left —MIR), and others — polled
4.5 percent; and the Frente Obrero Campesino Estudiantil y Popular
(the Worker, Peasant, Student, and Popular Front—FOCEP) — a mainly
Trotskyist grouping—gained a singular 12.34 percent, with ex-guerrilla
Hugo Blanco head. Some key groups, the Maoist Patria Roja (Red
at its
Fatherland —PR) in particular, boycotted the elections.
The decision watershed
to participate in the 1978 elections involved a
debate within the Peruvian which continue. Until
Left, the ramifications of
the announcement of a democratization process by Morales Bermudez,
the Left was uniformly opposed to the "fraud" of liberal democratic
electoral politics. 12 This opposition took a number of forms. One universal
argument uniting the Left was its association of the call for the rebirth
of electoral politics with the parties of the Center and the Right
the APRA, AP, and Democracia Cristiana (Christian Democracy DC), —
parties deemed to represent the interests of the oligarchy and its support-
ers. It followed from this that the Left could not be associated either with
these demands or with the possibility that the Center or Right might
regain power. Within the Left, however, there were other reasons for
adopting a "rejectionist" stance.
—
One tradition, linked to the first phase model notably the PSR and the
—
PCP sought a deepening of the Velasco reforms and, in particular, a full
social democracy in which direct participation of diverse interests would
transcend the "limited" democracy of the electoral process. In many ways
supporting a Left-corporatist perspective, this tradition saw the democra-
tization process as a betrayal of the Velasco "revolution." During the
1980s, this tendency shared many views with the moderate wing of the IU
and also contributed to the "participationist" tradition represented by the
now venerable and stately journal Socialismo y Participation.
A second tradition simply argued that liberal democratic politics
were a fraud or a trick played upon the masses and that participation in
electoral politics would lead to demobilization of popular action and its
incorporation into "reformism." Both Maoist and Trotskyist organizations
associated themselves with this interpretation, variously seeing the situa-
tion as "prerevolutionary" or as requiring "an indefinite general strike"
and asserting the need for vanguard elements to seize the opportunities
offered by the conjuncture. The organizations of popular mobilization
—
thrown up in the late 1970s popular assemblies and defense fronts
seemed to bear out their revolutionary assessment, although in fact, they
were mistaken. 13
Fertile ground for internecine warfare existed between the two analy-
tical traditions and within the second. For much of the 1970s, the Peruvian
46 Nigel Haworth

Left was a highly fragmented, highly formalistic tradition, arguing about

the esoterica of theory and applying the "lessons" of Lenin and Jose
Carlos Mariategui (Peru's leading Marxist theoretician and icon and
key founder of the Peruvian Communist party) to the conjuncture in a
cabalistic manner. With the APRA appropriating the terrain of social
democracy and, significantly, the possibility of political power through its
pragmatic willingness to enter the electoral lists, it was left primarily to
independent socialists, grouped in research institutes and universities,
to recognize the strategic possibility of a break with this formalistic past
as democratization took place. Their actions and the transformation of
the rejectionist Left were an attempt to respond to the insistent demands
of popular mobilization for an effective leftist option. 14
What brought the Left into the Constituent Assembly elections?
A number of answers may be suggested. 15 Once Morales Bermudez
announced the democratization process, the parties of the Center and
Right (with the exception of AP) moved quickly to participate in the elec-
tions, seeking to dominate the writing of the new constitution and orga-
nize for the 1980 general election. 16 They were active in the barrios, and
their campaigning presence, combined with the Left's absence from that
terrain, reflected badly on the Left. With the extension of the franchise
anticipated for the 1980 election to persons over eighteen and others pre-
viously excluded from the voting procedure, the Left's rejectionist
perspective seemed even more illogical. The feeling grew that nonpartici-
pation might not be understood by many people and that this would
threaten the Left-popular mobilization relationship.
It is also argued that the leadership of the Left was and is primarily

Lima-based and has a strong desire to be heard in national councils. This

desire was frustrated by the oligarchic system before 1968 and was only
slightly reduced under the post-1968 military government. The opening
of a new liberal democratic period offered to this leadership a role in
national life that had long been denied it, and it may have been motivated
to take this opportunity.
At another level altogether, the Left was generally unable to offer an
With the obvious
alternative to participation in the electoral process.
exception of Sendero Luminoso, which consistently maintained its oppo-
sition to electoral involvement,and a few minor groups, none of the
rejectionist partieswere able or willing to begin an armed struggle
for revolutionary overthrow of the state. Caught between the inability
to wage armed struggle and the insistence of the masses that they do
something, such organizations found themselves drawn into the electoral
process.
However, the overwhelming argument for electoral participation
confronted the question of the nature of democracy and, implicitly, the
 Radicalization and the Left in Peru 47

relationship between liberal democracy and socialism. This debate, con-

ducted formally through the pages of tracts, journals, and newspapers,
also became a discourse in the popular organizations in which the Left
sought to base itself, although often it was translated into the practical
language of expectation fulfillment.
The structure of the debate followed a universal pattern of analysis in
17
leftist thinking. Liberal democracy was considered a constrained form of

democracy emerging from a particular historical juxtaposition of class

forces. Two key conclusions followed. First, one could counterpose other
forms of democracy to liberal democracy, and even while participating in
the latter one could be developing other democratic forms more appro-
priate to socialism. Thus, participation in the liberal democratic process
was seen not as an end in itself but as one aspect of a wider struggle for
popular power. 18
Secondly, it was argued that neither the power of capitalism as a
system nor that of the capitalist state could be eroded in any fundamental
way by success in the electoral forum; rather, such success offered an
environment in which tactical gains might be made in preparation for a
future rupture with the capitalist system. Thus, rhetorically at least, social
democracy was written out of the debate and replaced by a strategic-
tactical assessment of participation in liberal democratic processes.
Complementing this view of democracy were two other veterans of the
revolutionary discourse. TheMIR and the Partido Revolucionario de los
Trabaj adores (Revolutionary Workers' Party —PRT), for example, chose to
participate in the 1978 elections on the basis of exposing their fraudulence,
thereby making revolutionary circumstances more likely to arise. In
addition, the VR and some Trotskyists participated in the firm belief that a
revolutionary conjuncture lay ahead and that the electoral process was
merely useful agitation.
The tension between these responses and the process of participation in
the elections is clear. A campaign arguing that liberal democracy is simply
a context for future change or a fraud risked confusing and alienating
potential voters. Moreover, it raised the question how "realist" the Left
would be if it won a majority and came to control the ''bourgeois state. 7
'

This question was a constant source of concern in the 1980s.

The Popular Movement

The nature of the mobilizations of the later 1970s and 1980s has been a
constant source of debate on the Left. Five elements of popular mobiliza-
—
tion stand out youth, women, the urban community in general,
the unions, and the —
rural sector. The young unemployed, casually
employed, unstably employed, manifesting unfulfilled expectations,
48 Nigel Haworth

—
atomized, excluded are generally considered to have been radicalized
outside the institutions controlled by the Left, especially beyond the limits
of trade unionism. Consequently, their radicalization is complex and un-
stable. Young people may choose violence and accept the logic of Sendero
Luminoso; they may be moved by populist rhetoric of the Center-Right,
as was the case in the 1985 APRA electoral success; they may provide the
organized Left with a constituency in which radical alternatives may be
built. It cannot, however, be assumed automatically to provide a popular
electoral or organizational constituency.
The same has been argued for the other notable sectors. Women's
mobilizations have often occurred around particular issues and organiza-
tions —welfare, health, education, and nutrition, for example, which not
only separate women from other elements of popular mobilization but
also may induce different responses to change from those engendered
elsewhere. Women's mobilizations do not automatically conform to the
expectations and understandings held about popular mobilization by
traditional leftist thinking. Indeed, Susan Stokes, in a detailed empirical
survey of popular organizations, indicates that there may be an inverse
relationship between women's participation in popular mobilizations and
their commitment to the Left. Her explanation of this paradox suggests
that women become active in a range of organizations only some of which
are linked to the Left and some of which, implicitly, are critical of it. A
diffused popular involvement thus weakens the Left's hold on women's
organizations. 19
Community mobilizations such as those promoted during the first
phase involve complex political and ideological oppositions that may not
always coincide with the strategies of the Left. The Left has never been
able to incorporate community organizations into its ranks; at best it has
been able to converge with aspects of community struggle. 20 There are a
number of reasons for this weakness. Perhaps the primary factor is the
narrow, localized focus of popular community campaigns, which do not
lend themselves to the programmatic approach of the Left. The schisms
within the Left and the trade union movement exacerbate this difficulty.
Autonomous organizations set up by communities interpose themselves
between the Left and the community and are often not easily won over to
the Left's line. The state, through agencies such as the Sistema Nacional
de Apoyo a la Movilizacion Social (National System for the Support of
—
Social Mobilization SINAMOS), has played its part in separating the
Left from community organization, although without managing to create
a state-community political axis. Similar arguments may be made for the
rural sector. 21
The unions, perhaps the most powerful of the popular movements
of the late 1970s, are also a contradictory environment for the Left.
 —

Radicalization and the Left in Peru 49

The CGTP may be allied with the PCP, but, as noted above, its member-
ship encompasses a much more pluralist political spectrum. In particular,
economistic mobilization at the plant level may have little to do with
national CGTP political perspectives. Since the late 1970s unions have
also been subjected to both repression and erosion of employment and
incomes. It is argued that this has fragmented union unity, demobilized
sections of the union movement, and promoted asymmetry between the
7
economic and the political in union members consciousness. Conse-
quently, the relationship between the union movement's members, as
opposed to union leaderships, and the Left is complex and ambiguous. Of
course, the PCP has played an important role in union mobilizations since
the late 1970s, but because of the increasing pluralism of the CGTP and the
burgeoning of a "reformist" electoral tradition, its powers must not be
overestimated. The difficulties created for the PCP and the Left in general
by the events in the Eastern bloc have reinforced this movement toward a
more pluralist union tradition. 22

The Question of Unity

The Left's disappointing vote in the 1980 general election stimulated

moves toward greater operative unity The Izquierda Unida, created
in September 1980 under the leadership of the independent socialist
Alfonso Barrantes, included the FOCEP, the UDP, the Union Nacional de
la Izquierda Revolucionaria (National Union of the Revolutionary Left

UNIR), of which Patria Roja was the key component, the PCP, and the
PSR. Only the Trotskyist groups remained outside the unity, incanting
nostrums against popular-frontism. Since the municipal elections of 1980, the
IU has participated in all elections, with varying degrees of success.
However, there is a continuing and fundamental debate within the
ranks of the IU about its functions and the broader politics of participation
in the democratic process. Much effort has been expended to keep the
unity afloat between the cathartic periods of electoral activity, and it is

generally felt that the time and effort spent on internal appraisal have
resulted in a continuing distance between the IU and its constituency. This
has been translated into a particular debate within the IU in which, with
almost ritualistic frequency, it is pointed out that the popular masses are
still alienated from the party-based debates and that the popular mobili-

zations that reemerged under the Fernando Belaunde and post-1985

APRA governments have lacked significant political input from the IU.
The nonaligned IU membership, particularly the intellectual wing, has
been quick to formulate and repeat this criticism.
This concern is justified. After a brief honeymoon under Belaunde, the
application by Prime Minister Manuel Ulloa of supply-side policies
50 Nigel Haworth

brought about a remobilization of popular sentiment in the face of eco-

nomic restructuring and a dramatic worsening of living conditions for the
mass of Peruvians. 23 In principle, a unified and mobilized IU should have
been able to capitalize on this mobilization; yet, although election results
continued to be reasonably good and there were outstanding victories,
particularly in the 1983 municipal elections, still the IU failed to attract the
electoral support anticipated by many Perhaps most obvious, the resur-
gence of the APRA in both municipal and general elections and the 1985
victory putting Alan Garcia in office as the first APRA president were in
large part based on the APRA's electoral success in areas in which the IU
might have expected greater support. Notwithstanding the APRA tradi-
tion of organization, the inability of the IU to marginalize it in the barrios
stands as an indictment of the internal divisions within the IU. It pro-
duced a classic debate around the issue of whether the IU message
was too "watered down" and therefore had lost popular support, was
not coherent enough, or had not been delivered satisfactorily. 24 The
performance of the Left in the 1990 general elections against a background
of mounting economic and social distress confirms this analysis.
The unforeseen success of the Cambio 90 candidate, Alberto Fujimori,
standing on a platform of rejection of the old political traditions and
drawing on substantial popular support, is a worrying phenomenon for
the democratic Left.

Organizational Angst in the 1980s

The unimpressive performance of the Left in the 1990 elections has

tobe seen against the background of the splits within the IU that led to
—
two candidacies one of Henry Pease for the IU, the other of Alfonso
Barrantes and the newly created breakaway from the IU, the Izquierda
Socialista (Socialist Left — IS).

Barrantes was seen by many in 1980 to be the only person on the

Left capable of welding together the disparate elements of the IU. A labor
lawyer of notably independent views, he was the first truly national leftist
personality in Peru. 25 His status was enhanced by a period as mayor of
Lima after a major success in the 1983 municipal elections. In office,
he proceeded to stimulate a range of policies designed to promote the
welfare of the popular masses, stressing the need for democratic institu-
tions that accurately reflected people's requirements. His pragmatism
and his increasing personal stature gave him the power to attempt a
"democratization" of the IU, including the building-up of a nonaligned IU
membership. The parties in the IU saw this as an attempt to create an
independent bloc tied to Barrantes's "realism" or "reformism." 26 After
1985, Barrantes was widely criticized for his willingness to consort with
 Radicalization and the Left in Peru 51

the APRA government and his unwillingness to take the lead in criticizing
it.
27
In the event, he was forced
to resign from the leadership of the IU
in May 1987 and eventually took a section of the IU with him into the
explicitly reformist IS. This split did not resolve the debate within the IU
about revolution or reform, as numbers of supporters of Barrantes
remained within the IU, hoping to effect a reconciliation and promote his
approach to social change.
The paralysis within the IU continued. In many ways it was worsened
by the decline of the APRA government into what is often described as
caudillismo (strong-man rule) under Garcia. His increasing use of decrees
rather than legislation, his compromises with the military (particularly
after the horrific prison massacres of 1986 and generally in relation to
the security situation), and his dealings with the national and the interna-
tional financial community were but the most important of the reasons
that some elements within the IU questioned their involvement in the
democratic process. 28 The challenge from Sendero Luminoso also placed
strains on the alliance.

The IU in Power
Despite its uncertain future, the IU has presented Peru with an alterna-
tive vision of government when given the chance of municipal power. 29
The Barrantes team in Lima implemented a practical version of IU policy
with some success. This experience showed both the need for and the
acceptance by the IU of a pragmatic approach when in power. The most
significant policy tackled the issue of nutrition through an emergency
health and nutrition program based on popular participation. Attached
to this was a campaign to distribute one million glasses of milk daily to
children in need of dietary supplementation. Seventy-five hundred milk
committees involving a hundred thousand mothers were established and
linked to basic health education, vaccination, and health care programs.
Two hundred soup kitchens were also established. Programs in the
housing area were based on the creation of community housing units
bringing together sixty families on a quasi-cooperative basis to carry out
housing improvements. Further programs were established to deal with
the problem of infrastructural provision in barrios lacking basic services.
In the area of local democracy, more than 350 neighborhood commit-
tees were established, each covering a specific geographical area and each
assuming responsibility for rubbish disposal, public works, consumer
rights, and a range of other functions as it thought fit. Within the develop-
ment of local democratic procedures also fell the creation of democratic
planning structures, the most important of which were the district plan-
ning committees. These efforts were a response to a number of impera-
52 Nigel Haworth

tives. First, the overwhelming support given to Barrantes and the IU by

barrio voters required a serious response from elected representatives,
and popular participation was a vital and exciting feature of the local
programs. Secondly, local democracy complemented the decentralization
model at the heart of the IU's national economic and political strategy. The
IU proposed to decentralize decision making to regional bodies, which
were in turn expected to respond to popular demands at the regional
level. Thirdly, the IU was reflecting an international democratic Left mod-
el of decentralization seen in the proliferation of "alternative economic
strategies" in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop-
ment economies and early 1980s. As in the international
in the late 1970s
experience generally, the Left found the funding of these local initiatives a
major problem, particularly in the face of central government obstruction.
In the case of Lima, much of the funding for the programs discussed
above came from Europe. A World Bank loan for U.S. $150 million was
used to improve transport and garbage collection in Lima and contribute
to effective city planning.
In the Lima experience of local democratic government may be found
all the contradictions of power under capitalism. Nothing
leftist access to
captures this as much as the approach to the World Bank for local govern-
ment funding. Those faced with the problem of governing Lima were
convinced that under the circumstances there was little choice but to use
the channels of funding available, whatever they might be. 30 For them
such measures were not inappropriate because access to power in no way
constituted amove toward socialist local government; it was, rather, a
move within a particular limited space to prepare for a future transition.
Henry Pease argued that municipal politics serves as a school for democ-
racy, a particular space in which the political process may be captured.
Alfonso Barrantes also saw such activity as illustrating the Left's commit-
ment to democracy and consequently helping to eliminate the threat of
antidemocratic coups. 31
A second context in which the Left became involved in the "bourgeois"
manipulation of power occurred in Parliament. Once elected, IU deputies
and senators were forced to decide what was an appropriate attitude to
the institutions of liberal democracy. Their response was mixed: some
chose to take a serious view of the proceedings; 32 some were described as
behaving in a childish, callow way in order to satisfy personal sentiments
of rejection and also to establish their credentials as "noncollaboration-
33
ist"; and felt that the Left was confused and therefore poorly
still others
organized in Parliament. 34 The motivation of the "responsible" Left in
Parliament was to support the new democracy and in no way contribute
to its erosion. It was felt that the popular masses would not forgive a Left
that allowed democracy to decay after the struggle waged to achieve it.
 Radkalization and the Left in Peru 53

The result was to create a close parliamentary relationship with the APRA
during the AP government, especially once the effects of Ulloa's economic
policies had begun to be felt. 35 In time, the parliamentary wing of the
IU came to be seen by many as a moderating force, influenced by the
Barrantes perspective. 36 Such moderation continued under the APRA
government until the prison massacre trauma of 1986, which forced the
parliamentary Left to reassess its behavior. Sections of the IU outside
Parliament had been demanding such an appraisal since 1985.
Parliamentary involvement illustrates further contradictions for the
IU. Once in the process, it was forced to take it seriously because it
was felt that the IU's constituency expected responsible representative
behavior. Parliamentary involvement carried with it the possibility of
becoming an end in itself rather than one of a number of means to other
ends. The jockeying on election slates, although couched in
for positions
the terms of political debate, was viewed by the cynical as a tacit recogni-
tion by many party leaders of the privileges accruing to parliamentary
37
status. Once Garcia's caudillismo became the dominant feature of the
APRA government, the criticism of the parliamentary wing of the IU
increased, particularly when it was compounded by the challenge posed
by the growth and relative success of Sendero Luminoso.
A third aspect of the IU and its approach to power is its development of
an economic policy to deal with Peru's economic crisis. It advanced a very
explicit economic strategy at two levels: a rhetorical account of worker
and popular input into decision making related to economic performance
and a detailed set of proposals. 38 The essential feature of the economic
program was that it could be pragmatically implemented in the absence
of democratic participatory structures, a reality vigorously denied by IU
commentators but true all the same and specifically required if the IU was
to arrive in government still distanced to any extent from popular organi-
zations. In other words, the IU economic program elaborated in 1985 was
orthodox enough to be implemented even if popular participation was
disavowed. 39 It was to focus on increasing production and employment,
establishing external equilibrium, resolving the problem of inflation,
creating investment, and promoting income distribution. The means by
which these ends would be achieved were primarily interventionist,
directive, and participatory, with elements of both increased centraliza-
tion and decentralization.
Perhaps not an orthodox Left-Keynesian policy in its details, it was in
allessentials a Left social democratic package adapted to Peru's particular
situation. It could be little else, because its basic tenets were determined
by the possibility that it might become the economic strategy of govern-
—
ment a strategy with which IU politicians and technical staffs might
have to confront both national and international economic assessment.
54 Nigel Haworth

Such "realism," however understandable and necessary, could not sit

easily with groups in the "revolutionary bloc" calling for workers' control
of the means of production as an essential component of a truly left-wing
strategy. Thus, the economic policy of the IU was presented to its constit-
uency simultaneously as a practical way forward for popularly elected
government and, implicitly, as at best a smokescreen behind which "real"
socialism might be gestating and at worst a betrayal by reformists. This
context raises the interesting hypothetical question what would have
happened in 1985 had the IU been elected. Accession to power would
surely have caused a major disruption of its unity.

The Challenge from the Left

The decision of the Sendero Luminoso, an offshoot of the pro- Albanian

Bandera Roja, itself an originally Maoist grouping from the same stable as
Patria Roja, to resort to armed struggle in 1980 has made the pursuit
of unity on the Left substantially more difficult. Sendero is a peculiarly
Peruvian political movement not only in its often perverse analyses of
Peruvian society but also in its Jesuitical purism. Abimael Guzman, its
main ideologue, is an exceptionally talented philosopher, schooled in the
high abstractions of Peruvian revolutionary thought in the 1960s and
—
1970s precisely that period in which the revolutionary Left came to the
view that the parliamentary road was ineffective in Peru.
Arguably, it is less surprising that the SL took the path it did than that
more parties did not do the same. Assessing the Left's publications of the
late 1970s, the constant preoccupation of many groups with the prerevo-
lutionary conjuncture offered by the second phase is striking. Similarly,
their rejection of the liberal democratic path was unyielding. Despite the
plethora of analyses of the SL on offer, the choice of armed struggle seems
to have hinged on the existence of a degree of preparation by the SL in a
conducive environment, in line with the abstract analysis offered by most
groups to the left of the PCP. 40 Faced with the choice between the dangers
of reformism and the true way, the SL kept the faith, only to be betrayed
by its fellow revolutionaries; hence the vituperation heaped upon the erst-
while revolutionary groups for their backsliding and the consequent
discomfort felt by many participants in the IU. Inevitably, this created
ambivalence with regard to the SL's actions in some sectors of the IU;
equally inevitably, its "responsible" sectors have condemned the SL, if

only to ward off attacks from the Right and the threat of repression from a
hard-pressed police and army. 41 In turn, there has been some erosion of
theIU under the influence of the SL's "backsliding" critique. 42
The intra-IU effects of the SL's militant critique of the electoral path
were to be expected. Its rapid defeat would have removed a dilemma for
 Radicalization and the Left in Peru 55

the Left in general and the IU in particular; its survival and growth opens
up another more pressing issue for the IU and the democratic model.
We have seen that the popular movements in both town and city are not
"hegemonized" (to use a popular term) by the Left. There is evidence of
volatility in social forces, especially among young people. Few assume
from this volatility an inevitable or even likely bond between the SL and
the popular movement, but the potential is there for direct action to
usurp the complex strategies for change embedded in the formation and
activity of the IU.
The position of the legal Left toward the SL has come under the micro-
scope of the army and the Right, now eager to associate any leftist activity
with the SL. This has become a central issue for the Left and an important
feature of the post-1980 period. Early wishes to preserve the stability of
democratization were displaced by the authoritarianism of Belaunde and
the caudillismo of Garcia. Underpinning the criticisms of both govern-
ments were three features: the conduct of government, the handling of the
— —
economy, and at times looming largest the question of human rights.
Since the eruption of armed struggle in the sierra and, later, the cities,
the government has perceptibly increased the powers of the armed forces
to deal with the emergency. As a consequence, there have been well-
documented and often terrible abuses of human rights, frequently by
state forces. To question the armed forces' activities is for many politicians
on the Right to support the SL (a view shared by the military). One
extreme consequence of this situation is that many now think that the
Left, if ever elected to national power, would be swept away by the army.
This is a valuable weapon for the Right to use against the IU. It matters
little what the IU may say in response; its association with the SL and

other groups waging armed struggle is a constant theme of commentaries

and analysis. The polarizing effect of this propaganda in a situation
fraught with political, social, and economic tension threatens to under-
mine the stability of the democratic process assiduously fostered by
sections of the IU.

Conclusions
A number of themes emerge from this account of the Left since the
mid-1970s. First, the status of the Left as a mainstream political tradition
both in and out of Parliament is a great achievement. The creation of the
IU as an umbrella organization uniting previously warring factions is a
further success, although by no means total. The contribution of the
Left to the maintenance of a decade of liberal democratic politics is also
positive. The development of new and political perspectives
ideological
on the Left — local democracy, the popular movement, the approach to
56 Nigel Haworth

democratic power, and interpretations of socialism, for example stand —

out. Equally significant is the incorporation of new layers of people the —
urban poor, previously marginalized women, peasants remembering
Velasco's promises, and newly unionized urban workers.
Of course, the other side of this coin includes the continuing fragmen-
tation of the Left, the inability to overcome problems within the IU,
leading to a degree of paralysis in its activities, the challenge from
the extra-Parliamentary Left, the threat from the Right and the army, the
erosion of the democratic model by authoritarianism and caudillismo, the
country's difficult economic circumstances, the growth of a dangerously
destabilizing drug industry, and the distance between the organized Left
and its potential constituency, to name but the most obvious problems.
Elsewhere, the situation of the Peruvian Left has been described as
"brilliant and precarious, " and this phrase captures the complex circum-
stances of political life in Peru. 43
The future is uncertain. The divided Left
did poorly in the 1990 general elections; a common view is that all estab-
lished parties suffered from skepticism of political parties, thus explain-
ing the precipitous rise to prominence of Cambio 90. If the combination of
economic uncertainty, and political violence continues, it
social unrest,
is difficult emerging in which a government of the
to see a situation
democratic Left would be permitted to take office even if it could win an
election.
A more likely scenario is the continuation of an IU-IS-type division,
reflecting a clash between pragmatic and revolutionary perspectives,
with further realignments across this divide. In the recent elections, the
continuing pragmatism of Barrantes was clear, as was the more radical
"ideological" position of Pease, although rhetorically there was little to
distinguish between the IU and the IS campaign. The poor showing of the
APRA in government and in the 1990 elections adds another element to
the equation. In the past, the issue of IU-APRA cooperation was raised; it
may surface again. There may also be a movement of disillusioned apristas
to the Left, particularly toward more social-democratic traditions.
On balance, the Left's relationship with the popular movement during
the 1980s has been close. The successes of the IU, the development of a
radical pluralism in popular political debates, and the organizational
achievements in the parties and the unions testify to this. However, there
is an intractable tension in the democratic Left as it looks simultaneously

to formal political power and its attendant compromises and to the

demands of a mobilized and often angry popular movement. The adop-
tion of the electoral road has inevitably led to a sense of betrayal within
the groups that helped propel the military back to barracks and give
electoral and popular support to the IU, primarily because the Left has
been unable to deliver economic improvement, political stability, and a
 Radicalization and the Left in Peru 57

restructured power distribution in Peruvian society. Despite this, the Left

has entered the national political scene after fifty years in the wilderness
and in the process has radically altered the nation's political landscape.

Notes
1. There is a substantial literature on the Velasco reforms. Among the more recent works
is David Booth and Bernardo Sorj, eds., Military Reformism and Social Classes: The Peruvian
Experience (London: Macmillan, 1983).
2. For more detailed discussion of the trade union movement, see Nigel Haworth, "The

Peruvian Working Class: 1968-1979," in Booth and Sorj, Military Reformism, and "Political
Transition and the Peruvian Labor Movement 1968-1985," in E. Epstein, ed., Labor Autonomy
and the State in Latin America (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Jorge Parodi, "La desmoviliza-
cion del sindicalismo industrial peruano en el segundo belaundismo," in Eduardo Ballon, ed.,
Movimientos sociales y crisis: El caso peruano (Lima: Desco, 1986); Isabel Yepez and Jorge
Bernedo, La sindicalizacion en el Peru (Lima: Fundacion F. Ebert, 1984); Carmen Rosa Balbi,
Identidad clasista en el sindicalismo: Su impacto en las fdbricas (Lima: Desco, 1989); and Pedro
Galin y clases populares en Lima (Lima: IEP, 1986).
et al., Asalariados
Fernando Rospigliosi, "Izquierda y clases populares: Democracia y subversion en el
3.

Peru," in Julio Cotler, ed., Clases populares, crisis y democracia en America Latina (Lima: IEP,
1989).
4. Rospigliosi, "Izquierda y clases populares."
5. The
issue of economic policy during the second phase is dealt with in, for example,
Oscar Dancourt, "Deuda o crecimiento: Un dilema politico," in Luis Pasara and Jorge Parodi,
eds., Democracia, sociedad y gobierno en el Peril (Lima: Centro de Estudios de Democracia y
Sociedad, 1988).
6. On popular mobilization generally, the best starting points for its study are Ballon,

Movimientos sociales y crisis, and Movimientos sociales y democracia: La fundacion de un nuevo

orden (Lima: Desco, 1986); Teresa Tovar, Movimientos populares y paros nacionales (Lima: Desco,
1982); idem, "Movimiento popular: Otra historia prohibida," Quehacer, 16 (April 1982):68-75,
idem, Velasquismo y movimiento popular (Lima: Desco, 1985); Steve Stein and Carlos Monge, La
estado patrimonial en el Peru (Lima: IEP, 1988).
crisis del

7. For example, Jorge Nieto, Izquierda y democracia en el Peru: 1975-1980 (Lima: Desco,
1983); Rolando Ames, "Gran burguesia y movimientos populares," Quehacer, 5 (August 1980):
14-24.
8. Julio Cotler, "Los partidos politicos en la democracia peruana," in Pasara and Parodi,
Democracia, sociedad y gobierno en el Peru.
9. For example, Nieto, Izquierda y democracia, and Rospigliosi, "Izquierda y clases popu-

lares."
10. Eduardo Ballon, "El movimiento popular: De la derrota de enero a la victoria de
julio," Quehacer, 1 (October 1979).
11. Rolando Ames, "Gran burguesia y movimientos populares," Quehacer, 5 (August
1980):14-24; J. Calderon, "La batalla de los pueblos jovenes," Quehacer, 2 (November-

December 1979).
12. Luis Pasara, "La Tibanizacion' en democracia," in Pasara and Parodi, Democracia, so-
ciedad y gobierno en el Peru; Henry Pease, "Los partidos de izquierda en la transicion democrati-
ca," in Henry Pease, Democracia y precariedad bajo el populismo aprista (Lima: Desco, 1988).
13. movimiento popular."
Ballon, "El
Eduardo Ballon, Fernando Eguren, and Diego Garcia Sayan, "El partido en el Peru: A
14.
proposito de un estilo y una manera de construir la organizacion," Quehacer, 10 (March-April
1981):6-15.
58 Nigel Haworth

15. Rospigliosi, "Izquierda y clases populares."

16. The decision of AP not to participate had as much to do with personal pique on the
part of Belaunde as with tactics, but it did allow AP to enter the 1980 elections as the unsullied
renewer of democracy.
17. Pease, Democracia y precariedad.
18. Henry Pease, "Triunfo popular: La alternativa que se aleja," Quehacer, 7 (October
1980):4-19.
19. Susan Stokes, "Politica y conciencia popular en Lima: El caso de Independencia,"
Working Paper 31 (Lima: IEP, 1989). See also Cecilia Blondet, "Muchas vidas construyendo
una identidad: Mujeres pobladoras de un barrio limeno," Working Paper 9 (Lima: IEP, 1987),
and Maruja Barrig, "Crisis y empleo feminino," Actualidad Economica Especial, no. 8 (January
1986) and Las obreras (Lima: ADEC, 1986).
20. Stokes, "Politica y conciencia popular en Lima"; Ballon, Movimientos sociales y crisis;

Stein and Carlos, La crisis del estado patrimonial.

21. See, for example, Fernando Eguren, "Democracia y sociedad rural," in Pasara and
Parodi, Democracia, sociedad y gobierno; Carlos Franco, "Movimiento agrario y restructuracion
del estado," in Hector Bejar and Carlos Franco, Organization campesina y restructuracion del
estado (Lima: CEDEP, 1985); Efrain Gonzales de Olarte, Economia de una comunidad campesina
(Lima: IEP, 1984).
22. On the trade union movement see, for example, Jorge Parodi, "La desmovilizacion,"
in Ballon, "Movimientos sociales and Ser obrero es algo relativo: Obreros, clasismo y politica
y crisis,

(Lima: IEP, 1986); Julio Carrion, "Los jovenes en el Peru: Un examen de sus condiciones
economicas y sociales," Ms, IEP, Lima, 1987.
23. See Rosemary Thorp, "Politicas de ajuste en el Peru, 1978-1985," Economia, 7, 14
(1986)," and Parodi, "La desmovilizacion del sindicalismo," for a discussion of the conse-
quences of the Ulloa approach. Mike Reid, Peru: Paths to Poverty (London: Latin America
Bureau, 1985), also offers a useful summary of events in the period.
24. "Pueblos jovenes: <^Que paso con la IU?," Quehacer, 35 (June 1985):41-46.
25. Latin American Weekly Report [henceforth LAWR], 84-04.
26. LAWR, 84-09, 84-23.
27. LAWR, 85-15, 85-17, 85^9.
28. LAWR, 86-26.
29. Henry Pease, Democracia local: Reflexiones y experiencias (Lima: Desco, 1989).
30. Pease, Democracia local.

31. Alfonso Barrantes, "Trabajar con la comunidad democraticamente organizada en la

solucion de sus problemas," Quehacer, 7 (October 1980):14-21.

32. Enrique Bernales, "La izquierda ejerce la iniciativa parlamentaria," Quehacer, 8
(December 1980):18-23.
"
33. Pasara, "La Tibanizacion.'
Henry Pease, "Izquierda Unida, primer ano: Balance y perspectivas," Quehacer, 13
34.
(November 1981):4-12.
35. LAWR, 80-32, 82-01, 82-05.
36. See, for example, Eduardo Ballon, "IU y el APRA en la encrucijada de la oposicion,"
Quehacer, 19 (October 1982):28-34.
37. LAWR, 84-17.
The proposals can be found in Izquierda Unida, "Programa Economico 1985-1990,"
38.
Actualidad Economica Especial, no. 6 (March 1985).
39. "La ruptura de la herencia colonial: Entrevista con Javier Iguiniz," Actualidad Eco-
nomica Especial, no. 6 (March 1985).
40. Among the offerings are Gustavo Gorriti, "Democracia, narcotrafico y la insurreccion
de Sendero Luminoso," in Pasara and Parodi, Democracia, sociedad gobierno; Carlos Ivan
y
 Radicalization and the Left in Peru 59

Degregori, Sendero Luminoso: 1. Los hondos y mortales desencuentros. 2. Lucha armada y Utopia

autoritaria, Anthropological Series nos. 2 and 3 (Lima: IEP, 1987), and El surgimiento de Sendero
Luminoso (Lima: IEP, 1990); David Palmer, "The Sendero Luminoso Rebellion in Peru," in
DC: Georgetown University Center for Strategic and
Latin American Insurgencies (Washington,
International Studies, 1985); Cynthia McClintock, "Peru's Sendero Luminoso Rebellion: Ori-
gins and Trajectory," in Susan Eckstein, ed., Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social
Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 61-101. Gorriti suggests that a
crucial, if virtually unobtainable, source is the thesis of Manuel Granados Aponte, submitted
to the University of Huamanga in 1980. Its importance lies in the current status of Granados
as a leading thinker in Sendero's ranks.
41. LAWR, 87-24; Jose Maria Salcedo, "Sendero: ^Conciencia de la izquierda?" Quehacer,
16 (April 1982): 14-20.
42. LAWR, 87-18.
43. Haworth, "Between a Rock, a Hard Place, and Divine Wrath."
 4
Popular liberalism, Radical
Democracy and Marxism:
Leftist Politics in
Contemporary Colombia, 1974-1991
Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

The formal end of the sixteen-year joint rule of Colombia's two tradi-
tional parties in 1974 was followed by more than a decade and a half of
social protest, leftist electoral initiatives, and revolutionary armed insur-
gencies. Through the 1970s, revitalized working-class organizations with
strong links to leftist groups complemented a rising tide of rural protest
throughout the country, from various pockets of indigenous populations
to new zones of settlement such as the banana districts in the country's
northeastern corner. Simultaneously, widespread demands in the princi-
pal cities and in the provinces for basic state services evolved into formi-
dable civic protests. Such mobilizations nurtured embryonic human-
rights, feminist, ecological, civic, and Christian-based social movements
among the middle and lower classes. Many of these suffered harsh repres-
sion at the hands of the state and paramilitary groups, although some did
survive and continue to play a major role locally. Several short-lived leftist
electoral coalitions failed repeatedly throughout this period to break the
hold of the traditional parties at the ballot box. Ultimately, however,
electoral challenges and popular organizations on the Left were over-
shadowed by the dramatic expansion of revolutionary guerrilla move-
ments. These leftist insurgencies, inspired and supported by the Soviet
Union, China, Cuba, and later Nicaragua, grew markedly after 1980. By
decade's end, a handful of guerrilla organizations with diverse programs,

61
62 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

varying degrees of military capacity, and uneven support from the popu-
lace played crucial roles in Colombian politics.
The dramatic upsurge in protests against oligarchically rooted bi-
partisan rule after 1974 has been understood primarily in three ways. The
principal interpretation, cogently advanced by Francisco Leal Buitrago, is
that Colombia's traditional bipartisan system and the evolution of the
state and its sponsorship of a narrowly cast pattern of capitalist develop-
ment have prevented the "emergence of civil society and the forging of
citizenship," thereby providing few vehicles for the channeling of "con-
flicts generated by the process of permanent change" of the past half-

century 1 Jonathan Hartlyn and others present a more Huntingtonian

version of this view, arguing that the elite bipartisan coalition established
in 1958 could not respond to the new social and political challenges of the
1970s and 1980s. 2
A secondmajor argument for the marked rise of violence and social
protest during the past two decades asserts that the survival of a van-
guardist model rooted in the national-liberation enthusiasm of the 1960s
privileged revolutionary insurgency over a leftist electoral strategy;
this, more than the restricted nature of its political regime, prevented the
emergence of a broad-based leftist politics in Colombia. 3 In effect, the
guerrillas are regarded as captive to a Marxist-Leninist illusion that
became more and more irrelevant in the face of the increasingly complex
problems of developing societies and the crisis in the Soviet Union and
other communist regimes.
Finally, a structuralist analysis suggests that the redesign of Colombian
capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s contributedto the growing social protest,
violence, and reduced space for democratic options in that period. 4 The
unevenness of the world coffee trade, the volatility of nonrraditional exports
such as flowers and textiles, and, most important, the explosive growth of
the illegal commerce in marijuana and cocaine led to rising social conflict in
the cities and the countryside. A beleaguered and increasingly divided upper
class responded savagely to these demands from below even as it sought
accommodation with a powerful emergent drug elite.
This essay ultimately diverges from these interpretations. We argue
that the recent history of the Colombian Left is not principally the result of
the failure of modernizing elite coalitions or of the survival of atavistic
revolutionary ideologies ill-suited to a new era or merely the outcome of
a crisis in dependent capitalism exacerbated by the drug trade. Rather,
leftist politics after 1974 are best understood as the working out of
long-standing forms of opposition to elite rule within a major redesign
ofColombian capitalism and the state.
During the course of the twentieth century, neither a viable liberal
democratic challenge by middle-class reformers nor a social democratic
 Leftist Politics in Colombia 63

alternative under the aegis of a coherent working class with independent

political organizations emerged in Colombia. Rather, opposition to oligar-
chical rule was channeled primarily through widely dispersed social
movements or armed guerrilla organizations. The social movements,
both in the cities and more extensively in the countryside, sought radical
democratic transformations in social relations and politics at the local level
but had limited national projection. The armed insurgents, for their part,
possessed a revolutionary vision that combined in various ways national
political dissident traditions, Marxism-Leninism, and national liberation
doctrines.
Colombia's guerrilla movements fall into two broad categories. First,
the Communist-affiliated Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
originated in the midcentury agrarian struggles. Linked with radical
democratic movements in the countryside, particularly in areas of recent
colonization, this movement became the pillar of a nationwide insurgency
in the 1980s but seemed stymied in its efforts to evolve into a broad-based,
nonviolent popular movement of urban and rural poor. Second, three
—
insurgencies the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (Army of National
—
Liberation ELN), the Ejercito Popular de Liberacion (Popular Liberation
—
Army EPL), and the Movimiento 19 de Abril were born in the 1960s and
early 1970s among the middle class. Guided by an ideal of major social
and political change initiated from above and identified here as popular
liberalism, these groups generally lacked enduring popular support in
their principal areas of military action but proved successful in projecting
themselves as a national political force either by spectacular armed initia-
tives or, by the 1990s, through reincorporation into public life as novel
political actors challenging the traditional elites.

The National Front Period

With the power-sharing agreement known as the
initiation of the
National Front in 1958, Colombia's elites sought to establish the founda-
tions for stable oligarchical rule and capitalist development. The country
was exhausted after more than a decade of partisan civil war, having
suffered between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand
deaths and massive destruction during the previous decade. After 1958,
the leadership of the elite-dominated Liberal and Conservative parties
ensured partisan peace by guaranteeing parity at all levels of government
and, until 1974, presidential alternation between the two parties. This
arrangement formally excluded other movements and organizations
from participation in the nation's public life.
While some middle-class elements attempted without success to bring
about democratic reform in the 1970s, others had no such optimism about
 —

64 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

peacefully transforming Colombia's variant of oligarchical capitalism.

From its outset, the National Front faced various middle-class revolution-
ary movements. In the first place, the Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal
(Liberal Revolutionary Movement —MRL), headed by Alfonso Lopez
Michelsen (the son of a former president), won over intellectual dissi-
dents, Communists, and veterans of the midcentury Liberal guerrillas
who were attracted to armed struggle against the elites, especially follow-
ing the victory of the 26th of July Movement in Cuba. With the disbanding
of the MRL in 1964, several middle-class armed insurrectionary initiatives
arose in its wake. The ELN was founded in 1965 by Colombian students in
Havana, including some elements of the MRUs youth wing and radical
petroleum workers from Santander; the group quickly earned notoriety
for its kidnappings and assaults on police stations and widespread sym-
pathy after the radical priest Camilo Torres joined its ranks and perished
in an encounter with the Colombian army. Inspired by the Cuban Revolu-
tion and Che Guevara's foco model of revolutionary warfare, the ELN
expanded from its initial area of operations in the northeastern depart-
ment of Santander to other regions only to be virtually annihilated by the
Colombian military in 1973.
In 1968 the EPL, another predominantly middle-class guerrilla group,
made its appearance. Formed as the military wing of the pro-Chinese
Partido Comunista de Colombia, Marxista-Leninista (Colombian Com-
—
munist party, Marxist-Leninist PCCM-L), which had split from the
orthodox Communists in 1965, it too followed a foco strategy and was
also nearly destroyed by a successful counterinsurgency offensive in the
early 1970s. Finally, in 1974, on the eve of the formal end of the National
Front, another major guerrilla insurgency began with the theft of Simon
Bolivar's sword from the National Museum. The M-19 was composed
of middle-class activists from the Alianza Nacional Popular (Popular
—
National Alliance ANAPO), a movement that had supported the former
dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in the 1970 presidential elections, and
dissidents from the Communist guerrillas. Determined to shift guerrilla
activity from the countryside to the city, these radical nationalists con-
curred with the other groups in seeking to overthrow the regime by force
of arms in order to establish a more democratic and egalitarian society.
The middle-class guerrilla insurgencies of the National Front years had
complex origins. The middle class had grown frustrated by the limits
placed on its social mobility and exercise of political power. The guerrillas
—
also represented a generational protest nurtured in the rapidly expand-
ing Colombian universities and inspired by the Cuban Revolution and
national revolutionary movements elsewhere in the Third World
against orthodox Communists, reformers, and oligarchs alike. Marxism-
Leninism certainly resonated among these young men and women
 Leftist Politics in Colombia 65

hopeful of overthrowing the ancien regime through a carefully planned

and organized insurgency and creating a new, egalitarian order from
above. But, in the Colombian context at least, this vanguardist project
must also be understood as continuing a long tradition of insurrectionism
rooted in the nation's highly sectarian political culture and its particular
manifestations within Colombian liberalism.
Popular liberalism originated in antioligarchical and anticlerical senti-
ments during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. It was
characterized by powerful antagonism toward the upper classes, a deep
suspicion of political pluralism, and an affinity for armed struggle. As in
many traditional agrarian societies on the European periphery penetrated
by liberal ideals during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
politics became an extension of war. This jacobinist sensibility persisted
among large sectors of the Liberal party through the first half of the twen-
tieth century. In the three decades before the Great Depression, constant
political agitation and occasional conspiracies, including a failed uprising
in July 1929,marked the persistent popular liberal resistance by provincial
elites,urban middle-class groups, and elements of the rural poor against
Conservative rule. With the victory of the Liberals in the 1930 presidential
elections, popular liberalism found a channel for a reformist program
from above through the succeeding decade and a half of party rule. But
insurrectionism within the ranks of liberalism erupted once again at
midcentury in the face of Conservative repression.
The Liberal guerrillas of the late 1940s and 1950s saw armed struggle as
the means of reasserting Liberal control over the state. Several of these
MRL in the late 1950s, and the
Liberal insurgents joined the ranks of the
MRL in turn spawned the foquista ELN in 1964. The middle-class guerril-
las of the 1960s did not simply respond to the enthusiasms and paradigms
of global revolution, especially its particular incarnation in Cuba after
1959. Rather, their notions of politics, whether national liberationist
or more explicitly Marxist-Leninist, stood squarely in the militarized,
vanguardist, and exclusionary Colombian tradition. Their struggle was
directed against political and social inequalities, but they distrusted the
rule of law and rejected a pluralist, representative government as the basis
of Colombian democracy. 5
An alternative oppositional politics also with deep roots in Colombian
history existed alongside popular liberalism. A radical democratic tradi-
tion was movements against local
present in small, regional lower-class
notables and the state, especially in rural areas. The oldest, most sus-
tained radical democratic protests were to be found among southeastern
Colombia's indigenous communities. During the Great Depression,
peasant organizations in the Upper Magdalena Valley undertook pro-
grams of local transformation with the assistance of the newly founded
66 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

Communist party. By the late 1960s, the National Front government

itself had spawned considerable local claims making. Community organ-
izationsand particularly a national agrarian union, the Asociacion
Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (National Association of Peasant
—
Users ANUC) promoted by Liberal President Carlos Lleras Restrepo,
soon escaped their developmentalist tutelage to become increasingly
6
defiant in the provinces.
Radical democracy had highly diverse local origins and histories. In
these various contexts, it meant the freeing of the rural poor from depen-
dent social relations, guarantees for small proprietorship, community
control over the market, widespread participation in local organizations,
and the achievement of the full benefits of national citizenship. At the
same time, as did the popular liberals, participants in such movements
expressed ambivalence about electoral competition and constitutionalism
given shape by oligarchical rule.
The Communist party, founded in 1930, was the principal legatee of
radical democracy and the latter 's historically ambiguous relation with
popular liberalism. 7 Despite their middle-class, artisan, and to a lesser
degree trade-union origins, the Communists' principal arena of action
became the large-estate districts southwest of the nation's capital. During
the Great Depression and its aftermath, they fashioned a successful
strategy of agrarian opposition based on electoral challenges, mass orga-
nizations, and armed self-defense. The Communist orientation toward a
local, peasant agenda in the decade after 1935 generated a revolutionary
agrarianism focusing on the formation and protection of autonomous
smallholder communities as opposed to a nationwide insurgency. Under
these circumstances, Marxism-Leninism became less a strategy for taking
control of the central government than a guide for local struggles against
hacendados (estate owners) and government officials and a sensibility
linking a small segment of Colombia's rural poor to international revolu-
tionary movements.
Early in the National Front period, political elites seemed most
intent on eliminating these pockets of radical agrarianism linked to the
Communist party. In 1964, the government launched a massive military
operation against them that propelled these marginal, geographically
remote communes onto center stage. The military action transformed
a colonizing peasantry organized into armed self-defense units into
a mobile peasant guerrilla movement armed
against the state. The
Colombian Communist party backed the transformation even as its coun-
terparts throughout the continent opted for the popular-front strategies of
coalitions and elections. It hoped to gain a competitor in the field with
the middle-class insurgencies inspired by Cuba and China that were then
taking root in Colombian soil.
 Leftist Politics in Colombia 67

The FARC, the outgrowth of these peasant communities, was formally

new guerrilla army deepened its base in central
established in 1966; this
and southern Colombia during the succeeding decade and a half. In
contrast to the middle-class guerrillas, with their foquista strategy, these
agrarian revolutionaries guided local social transformations and earned
the support of the rural poor. While they did not aspire to national power,
their presence in the mountains and plains of Colombia nonetheless
signaled the government's failed agrarian policies and uneven hold over
the countryside.

Political Struggle in the 1970s

The end of the National Front in 1974 did not lead to the democratiza-
tion of Colombia's oligarchical republic. On the contrary, the 1970s and
1980s witnessed greater concentration of political and economic power in
the hands of old as well as emergent elites. They also saw the expanded
influence of the armed forces in the nation's public life and a dramatic
increase in official violence against both guerrillas and the generally
peaceful movements of peasants, workers, and varied civic groups. These
circumstances reinforced the character of the Colombian Left as predom-
inantly nonelectoral and tending toward armed insurgency. In effect, in
the sixteen years after the end of formal bipartisan rule, leftist opposition,
unable to find a base of support among either middle-class liberal
democrats or organized labor, oscillated between radical democracy and
popular liberalism, both strongly rooted in traditional forms of political
resistance and influenced by contemporary revolutionary ideology and
strategic doctrine.
There was hope that the presidency of Alfonso Lopez Michelsen (1974-
1978) would break decisively from the National Front; Lopez had been the
leader of the MRL, its principal Liberal dissidency However, this hope
proved illusory. Although Lopez had come to power with broad popular
support for a reformist program, both he and his fellow Liberal successor,
Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), helped midwife major transformations in
the nation's political economy that resulted in a further consolidation of
elite ruleand the strengthening of state power. Their two administrations
assisted in the fundamental restructuring of the Colombian economy
begun in the latter years of the National Front. This entailed a shift from
import substitution toward more capital-intensive manufacturing and the
encouragement of agricultural and mineral exports. Large-scale invest-
ments in metallurgy, automobile assembly, and chemicals coincided with
the expansion of petroleum, coal, nickel, and banana enclaves. Foreign
capital played a major role in this reconfiguration of the Colombian econ-
omy. At the same time, accelerated capitalist development in agriculture
68 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

reduced the peasant share of foodstuff production from two-thirds in

the 1960s to one-third in 1980. Finally, the drug trade became important,
beginning with marijuana in the early 1970s and culminating with the
boom in cocaine production and export a decade later.
The redesign of Colombian capitalism in the 1970s was accompanied
by the affirmation of the most authoritarian features of the National Front.
On the one hand, a resurgent regional bossism, previously held in abey-
ance by the centralizing technocratic elites of the 1960s, smothered free
electoral competition and popular organizations in the provinces. Local
elitesand national politicians created a latticework of influence extending
from Congress to the lowest levels of public administration. The majority
Liberal party, in particular, benefited from this process even though it still
shared high bureaucratic posts with the Conservative minority. At the
same time, the military assumed an ever-greater political role. In the face
of popular resistance in the countryside and the cities and emboldened
guerrilla movements, the elites ceded virtually unqualified control over
public order to the armed forces.
The labor movement during this period found itself increasingly debil-
itated. Proletarians endured high unemployment, reduced salaries, the
dismantling of social security provisions, and restrictions on trade union
activity. More Colombians found jobs in the informal sector, where they
were unprotected either by the state or by the labor movement. In the
mid-1970s, feuding trade unionists temporarily resolved their differences
to form a national labor committee, the Consejo Nacional Sindical
(National Union Council —CNS), which staged a massive national shut-
down on September 14, 1977. Yet the national strike proved to be a turning
point for the regime, as Lopez showed no hesitation in responding with
force and converting popular protest into a bloody confrontation with the
state. Following the national strike, the fortunes of the Colombian labor
movement declined in the face of sectarian struggles, government co-
optation, and harsh official repression. In the early 1980s, efforts to mobilize
the population once again in large-scale protests failed repeatedly. As
Lopez and then Turbay pursued neoliberal economic and social policies,
Colombia's working-class organizations offered little resistance.
Radical democratic movements among the urban and rural poor suf-
fered much the same fate as the working-class organizations through the
1970s. With the onset of the Lopez administration, the nationwide peasant
mobilization spawned by Lleras Restrepo in 1968 lay prostrate. ANUC
was divided from within by disputing leftist factions and battered by offi-
cial repression in areas where land invasions and
strikes gave affront to
provincial landowning indigenous movements,
elites. Similarly, the
particularly the Consejo Regional Indigena del Cauca (Cauca Regional
 Leftist Politics in Colombia 69

Indigenous Council —CRIC), which had emerged under ANUC sponsor-

ship, suffered intense repression in Colombia's southwestern corner. 8
The other principal agrarian challenger, the FARC, began to move from
its traditional zone of influence in the Upper Magdalena into new frontier

zones in the eastern plains, the mid-Magdalena Valley, and the banana
districts of western Antioquia. Although projecting a national liberation
program and linked to the Communist party, at this stage the FARC, in
William Ramirez Tobon's words, remained "little more than the advance
guard of a colonizing peasantry whose objective [was] the establish-
. . .

ment of a democratic statute concerning the agrarian question/ 79

The cities became the principal foci of radical democratic politics in the
second half of the 1970s. Community organizations created by National
Front technocrats went beyond their developmentalist and integrationist
charge to become far more radical, especially with regard to public
services. The mid-decade mobilizations instigated by the labor move-
ment, including the national shutdown of September 1977, could not have
had their powerful impact without the participation of neighborhood
10
associations, cooperatives, and a host of other popular organizations. By
the early 1980s, these dispersed movements felt the harsh hand of the
Turbay government, whose increasingly autonomous military apparatus
could not or would not distinguish guerrilla subversion from other forms
of social protest. Significantly, the Catholic church in Colombia provided
neither the resources nor the legitimation of radical democratic move-
ments as it did in other parts of Latin America, notably Brazil and Chile, in
the 1970s and 1980s. 11
After 1974, these repeated outbreaks of radical democratic claims
making could not be channeled by the Left. The Communists and other
leftist groups had forged a tenuous electoral alliance, the Union Nacional

—
de Oposicion (National Opposition Union UNO), in the 1974 election.
However, the UNO was unable to overcome factional differences or effec-
tively challenge the remnants of ANAPO for support among the urban
poor. Toward the end of the decade, radical intellectuals formed Firmes
(Stalwarts) in the hope of reducing the bitter sectarian disputes that per-
sistently crippled leftist electoral politics. Despite its radical-democratic
credentials, Firmes too was unable to serve as a standard bearer for
diverse local and regional organizations, being systematically destroyed
by official repression. It had even less success with guerrilla organizations
as yet unprepared to conceive of an electoral challenge to elite rule. 12
With liberals, proletarians, and radical democrats silenced and the
FARC still a relatively marginal, regional guerrilla movement, armed
popular liberalism emerged as the principal opposition to the Colombian
oligarchy in the years immediately after the formal end of the National
 —

70 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

Front in 1974. Whereas the major popular-liberal initiatives of the 1960s,

theELN and the EPL, suffered serious military defeats in the late 1960s
and early 1970s, the M-19 quickly emerged as a formidable challenger to
the elites.
The M-19 consciously embraced both populism and nationalism. It

also asserted a revolutionary stance through its determination to bring

guerrilla war to the cities in the manner of theTupamaros and Montoneros
of the Southern Cone. Both its nationalist and urban emphases set it apart
from the earlier Maoist and Castroite initiatives in the countryside. Its
kidnappings and other spectacular actions provoked and even embar-
rassed the elites and drew the applause of the lower classes. It was not,
however, a revolutionary politics with strong organizational roots either
among trade unionists or the urban poor. Intent on "nationalizing the
revolution," in the words of its principal leader, Jaime Bateman, the
M-19 proved to be ideologically flexible and capable of incorporating
lower-class languages of protest. 13 Nonetheless, it remained committed to
a revolution from above, fusing Colombia's jacobinist tradition with
national liberation doctrines of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
By the M-19 had transformed leftist politics in Colombia and
1980s, the
raised the ante for revolutionary action for all the nation's guerrilla move-
ments. The M-19's spectacular public presence, combined with the exam-
ple of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Frente Farabundo Marti para
la Liberacion Nacional (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front
FMLN) in El Salvador, reignited armed popular liberalism. After the
military defeats of the 1970s the foquista groups found more fertile soil for
their actions.The ELN was able to rebuild itself, emphasizing its Christian
revolutionary legacy, in the petroleum zones of Santander and Arauca.
The EPL also reemerged with renewed force in the 1980s in the banana
districts in western Antioquia and the cattle lands of Cordoba. Most
important in this regard, the FARC too reconceptualized its revolutionary
strategy and made a strategic decision in the early 1980s to expand its
regional bases and project itself nationally. In effect, the rural Communists
who had historically maintained themselves essentially as an armed
social movement based in peasant communities in the old self-defense
zones and the newer areas of colonization along the agriculture frontier
shifted toward a more insurrectionist position. In so doing, they effec-
tively joined and began to compete with the M-19 and the other guerrilla
organizations.
The resurrection of armed popular liberalism and the concurrent
militarization of the regime transformed Colombia's guerrillas from a
marginal position, defined largely in military terms, into central protago-
nists in national politics. Throughout the 1980s, their proposals for peace
and critique of the government undermined the legitimacy of the tradi-
 Leftist Politics in Colombia 71

tional political class on its own terrain and forced the traditional parties to
respond to the growing legitimacy crisis of the regime. 14

The Legal Opposition in the 1980s

The economic changes of the late 1960s and 1970s crystallized during
the administrations of the popular Conservative Belisario Betancur
(1982-1986) and the Liberal Virgilio Barco Vargas (1986-1990) and acceler-
ated after the election of Cesar Gaviria in 1990. The neoliberal program of
free trade, privatization, foreign investment, and responsiveness to
international financiers achieved more concrete expression in this period,
resulting in the expansion of extractive industries, metallurgical and
chemical manufacturing, and other capital-intensive enterprises. In
the countryside, large-scale commercial agriculture acquired greater
territory, state resources, and share of production. At the same time, the
burgeoning drug trade had a powerful impact. Marijuana in the late 1970s
and cocaine in the 1980s displaced coffee as the nation's principal export.
The illegal but highly profitable trade cushioned the economy against
international recession but also produced a new agro-exporting elite
among traffickers investing in agriculture, finance, construction, and
communications. The reshaping of Colombian capitalism in this period
resulted not only in expansion at the national level but also in the further
growth and consolidation of regional economies with their correspond-
ingly powerful regional upper classes.
Barco took office in 1986 in the wake of the breakdown of the first
round of peace negotiations with the country's major guerrilla move-
ments. The erosion and collapse of the peace process sponsored by his
predecessor Belisario Betancur, together with the newer forms of conflict
associated with the drug trade, resulted in a dramatic escalation of polit-
ical violence, returning the country to levels of bloodshed not seen
since the 1950s. Yet Barco, too, ultimately returned to a politics of political
opening toward the armed Left as the centerpiece of a program to restore
and political order. In his final year of office, his
political legitimacy
government signed a peace accord with a militarily debilitated M-19.
Within months of ceremoniously laying down its arms, the M-19 was
transformed from a small band of armed insurgents into an electoral
movement seeking to recover the loose populist coalition that had not
coalesced since the fateful presidential elections of April 19, 1970.
The efforts at political change of the previous decade finally seemed to
bear fruit after Gaviria became president in 1990. The new administration
made substantial advances toward peace accords
in its first year of office
with other guerrilla movements, negotiations with the drug traffickers,
and the convening of a constitutional assembly based on the unofficial
72 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

plebiscite that had been orchestrated by Barco during his last year of
office.
Yet there were major obstacles to political reform. In the first place, neolib-
eral economic policies would limit the scope of these changes after 1982.
Budgetary constraints undermined government efforts to rehabilitate former
guerrillas and finance critical welfare target areas such as rural integrated-
development programs. Second, regional clientelist networks restrained the
reach and impact of political reforms. Third, the drug elites penetrated local
and departmental bureaucracies and increased the militarization of politics
in their alliance with regional upper classes and local military officials against
peasants, trade unionists, and guerrillas. 15 Finally, the military, with its
corrupt ties to drug traffickers and death squads against the armed Left,
asserted ever greater autonomy vis-a-vis civilian authorities and under-
mined efforts to reach a settlement with the insurrectionists. 16
For its part, the labor movement, severely battered during the Lopez
and Turbay years, was unable to generate any substantial social demo-
17
cratic initiatives. The economy undercut the ability of labor organiza-
tions to assert their influence; as the informal sector grew rapidly, the
unionization rate declined from 15 percent to 9 percent of the work force,
with only one-third covered by social security and minimum salary
decrees. The emergence of a coherent labor movement was made the less
likely by the continuing political disarray in the trade unions.
The mid-1980s did witness a realignment of the labor movement with
the formation of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (Unitary Workers'
Central —CUT). Founded in 1986, the CUT presented a formidable chal-
lenge to the traditional confederations. Moreover, it envisioned itself as

the social democratic core for a renovated Colombian Left in the manner
of the highly successful Partido dos Trabalhadores in Brazil; it rejected a
narrowly trade unionist beckoning popular movements to its
strategy,
side. But, in contrast to the situation in Brazil, the divided, weak, and
demoralized working class failed to become the fulcrum for a new leftist
politics. The CUT became the target of death squads; by 1991 hundreds of
its leaders and followers had been assassinated.

Radical democrats throughout the country faced a similar quandary

in these years. The political opening of the post-Turbay era stimulated
widespread mobilization at a local level, but Colombia's variants of the
new social movements found themselves in complex relation to the
country's still principal leftist protagonists in arms. This grass-roots poli-

ticsattended to local demands and circumstances, bridged ideological

and political divisions to forge new alliances, and stimulated multiple
forms of nonviolent struggle, including marches, civic strikes, trade union
and diverse cultural activities. 18
organizing, neighborhood associations,
Such movements emerged with surprising force and vigor in the larger
 —

Leftist Politics in Colombia 73

urban areas, which had suffered harsh repression in the wake of the 1977
national strike. However, the countryside was the scene of the most
formidable popular protests, with organizations of small-town artisans
and merchants, the rural poor, and, in the southwest, indigenous groups
pressing the state for improved services, greater accountability of bureau-
crats, and protection from local elites and the military 19
This ground swell of mobilization acquired greater coherence and
national projection when several guerrilla groups in the mid-1980s
decided to test the government's policy of widening political participa-
tion and negotiated settlement to armed struggle. In 1985, the FARC spon-
sored the Union Patriotica, and a year later the ELN established A Luchar
(To Struggle). 20 Although intended by the guerrillas to be political fronts,
they captured the imagination of the demoralized and divided radical
democrats. The FARC, with its links to local movements (particularly
strong in zones of colonization), played some role in more than two-thirds
of the popular mobilizations of the mid- and late 1980s. The UP, in partic-
ular, provided a focus for popular organizations and challenges to local
elites; electorally the new party's gains were more modest but nevertheless

did garner support at the polls in the 1986 congressional races that translated
into fourteen congressional seats. In the 1988 balloting for mayors, the
nation's first direct election of municipal executives, the UP again demon-
strated its electoral presence.
However, economic interests and political bosses in the provinces
attacked the UP, particularly for its ties to an armed guerrilla movement.
The assassination in October 1987 of the UP's presidential candidate,
Jaime Pardo Leal, marked a new phase in the "dirty war." More than
fifteen hundred UP members, including dozens of elected officials
senators, mayors, councilmen, and two presidential candidates have —
been assassinated. Drug traffickers played a major supporting role for
right-wing reaction, but the ties of the death squads reached well into the
and party bosses.
military, parts of the state, local elites,
The dirty war of the 1980s, directed principally at new political parties
and social movements, constricted the emergence of an unarmed Left,
and one result of this was to strengthen the hand of elements intent on
pursuing an insurrectionist strategy. In effect, a fragile popular mobiliza-
tion and the dirty war prevented these new social movements from turn-
ing the Betancur-Barco political reforms into a springboard for a broad-
based radical democratic politics.

The Guerrilla Movement Since 1980

The crucial actors on the Left in the 1980s thus continued to be the
armed guerrilla organizations. Throughout this period, the guerrillas
74 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

attempted both to expand the scope of their military challenges to

Colombia's ruling elites and to augment their influence as political actors,
particularly within the framework of negotiations with successive admin-
istrations representing both traditional parties.
By the decade's end, one-third of the country's municipalities had been
the scene of guerrilla activity On the one hand, an unambiguous van-
21

guardism persisted among a substantial portion of the armed Left. The

EPL and the ELN revived dramatically in this period, and new groups,
such as the proindigenous revolutionary movement Quintin Lame (named
foran Indian leader of the 1914^1918 period) and the Partido Revolucionario
—
de Trabajadores (Revolutionary Workers' Party PRT) were founded. The
M-19 and the FARC, however, continued to represent the different forms
of armed and popular struggle during this period. Moreover, these two
movements became the key protagonists for political change, and one or
the other became the principal interlocutor for a succession of govern-
ment initiatives to open up the political system, reflecting the weakness of
the social movements and the legal Left.
The M-19 was seriously weakened during the peace processes of
the 1980s as they exposed its leadership to public view. From 1982 to
1990, almost all of the M-19's founding leaders were assassinated or killed
in combat. Major military reversals in the cities in the early 1980s led the
M-19 to search, unsuccessfully, for a rural base of operations in the eastern
llanos and then in the Cauca. Failing to establish any strong base of popu-
lar support, these radical nationalist, middle-class rebels persisted in a
vanguard strategy consistent with their popular liberal origins. In August
1984, the M-19 signed a cease-fire agreement with the Betancur govern-
ment; it withdrew ten months later, claiming that the government and the
military had violated the agreement's terms.
Five months after breaking the cease-fire, on November 6, 1985, the
M-19 seized the Palace of Justice in the center of Bogota and held
the Supreme Court hostage. It intended to use the judicial building as
a symbolic backdrop against which to charge Betancur with violating
the cease-fire agreement, but the strategy backfired. The guerrilla take-
over provoked a brutal military response that left twelve Supreme Court
justices, scores of civilian employees, and all but one of the estimated
thirty-five guerrillas dead in an orgy of counterinsurgency violence.
Although many questioned the military's response, almost no one rallied
to the M-19's defense. This time its spectacular armed propaganda actions
had failed to create a degree of public sympathy. Moreover, some of its
ablest political leaders, such as former ANAPO senator Andres Almirales,
died inside the palace.
The Supreme Court takeover and subsequent massacre proved to be
a crucial turning point for the popular liberals, causing them to shift from
 Leftist Politics in Colombia 75

and intraelite com-

a predominantly military strategy to electoral politics
petition for power.Weakened militarily lacking any substantial base of
regional support, and unable to contest the FARC's influence within the
guerrilla movement, the M-19, the EPL, Quintin Lame, and PRT entered
into negotiations with the Barco administration in 1989. Four years in the
wilderness after the Palace of Justice tragedy persuaded the surviving
leadership to change.
The M-19 was the first to lay down its arms and enter directly into
electoral politics, even though it was evident that the government was
unable to provide political guarantees or protect the lives of its leaders.
The M-19 reincorporated at a moment when the dirty war and the armed
challenge of the drug traffickers to the Colombian government had
engulfed the nation in unparalleled violence. 22 That violence quickly
claimed the life of the M-19's leader and presidential candidate, Carlos
Pizarro. Yet the M-19 persisted and won support and sympathy for its
political courage. Pizarro's funeral was a national catharsis; the M-19 and
multitudes of mourners in the streets of Bogota reaffirmed their commit-
ment to peace with chants of "The votes for Pizarro will now be given to
Navarro " (Antonio Navarro Wolff, then the number-two leader of the
M-19). Navarro received 12 percent of the vote, a margin with no prece-
dent for the Left or for any third party not affiliated with the two
traditional ones.
Led by the M-19, the popular liberal guerrillas' extraordinarily swift
reincorporation reflected their affinity with the prevailing hierarchical
and clientelist configuration of Colombian politics; deftly using
their charismatic history and populist rhetoric, the M-19 framed politics
as a choice between peace and war, with itself as the nation's principal
conciliator.
This strategy redefined the elements of Colombian politics and dovetailed
with the Barco-Gaviria strategy to reform the constitution. The M-19, under
the same banner of peace and political reform as Gaviria, won 27 percent of
the vote in a special election for the constitutional assembly. Navarro, who
briefly served as Gaviria's minister of health before resigning to run for the
assembly, became a central player —perhaps the central player—in the
writing of a new constitution for Colombia.
The new constitution, a potpourri of liberal reform instruments to
encourage pluralism and a welfare state wish list, appeared to provide the

highly popular former guerrillas with a vehicle for reform from above.
But without a major social base of support and a coherent political organi-
zation, thetriumph of disarmed popular liberals was imperiled from the
outset.These former guerrillas now faced the prospect of the domestica-
tion by the elites that had occurred with the MRL a generation before.
At the same time, their own deep-seated vanguardist and exclusionary
76 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

sensibilities presented serious obstacles to the development of a strategy

combining electoral coalitions with popular nonviolent mobilization
in order to implement the historic leftist program of dismantling elite
economic and political power. In the absence of a political party with an
organizational base of support and participation, the ground swell of
enthusiasm for the M-19 leading up to the constitutional assembly could
thus prove as ephemeral as the vote for ANAPO in the presidential
elections of April 19, 1970.
The politics of the country's largest guerrilla group, the FARC, and, to a
lesser extent, its principal ally, the ELN, differed from that of the M-19 and

the other fragments of armed popular liberalism during the 1980s and
early 1990s. 23 The FARC aligned the idea of peaceful resolution of armed
conflict with a program of economic and social transformation along
generally socialist lines, in contrast to the popular liberals' emphasis on a
political opening. This programmatic gap was mirrored in the difference
between the two groups in social bases of support. Whereas the popular
liberals had only a transitory presence among the lower classes in most of
their zones of military operation, the FARC, in particular, commanded
considerable support at the local level, especially in its pre-1980 areas of
influence. With the advent of the first peace process under the Betancur
government, it sought to convert popular mobilization and the limited
electoral strength of the Communist party into a national movement. The
ELN's A Luchar represented a largely instrumental effort to form a polit-
ical front, but it did have some foundation among local organizations
working on behalf of lower-class claims in various zones in northeastern
Colombia.
The FARC had far greater range and influence in this regard. Under
the leadership ofManuel Marulanda Velez, the agrarian revolutionaries
recreated peasant communism elsewhere in the country, particularly in
the new colonizing zones. From such communities the FARC was able to
launch itself into the national political arena through the UP in 1985.
Certainly, this focus on the ballot box and popular mobilization by the
FARC, the armed wing of the Colombian Communist party, well served
the latter 's view of the necessity to combine armed and nonviolent forms
of struggle against the elites. But it also demonstrated the persistence of
the radical-democratic strain that had originally spawned these peasant
rebels long before the Cuban Revolution.
The coherence and efficacy of such a politics was demon-
political
strated in the early and mid-1980s in Caqueta, in the northern reaches of
the Amazonian basin. There the FARC built an autonomous rebel territory
that, during the cease-fire period, achieved rapprochement with the state
in order to preserve gains for the rural poor under its influence. 24
 Leftist Politics in Colombia 77

However, the FARC and the ELN also demonstrated a certain ideolog-
kinship with the M-19 and the other popular liberals in these years as
ical
Colombia slid into a period of general violence and war with multiple
protagonists. The ELN, especially, had much shallower support than
the FARC in areas under its influence and never entirely jettisoned its
vanguardist vision of revolutionary action. In the late 1980s the FARC
assumed a much more insurrectionist position, thereby losing some of its
earlier will and capacity to focus on local concerns. This was partly
because the M-19 had raised the stakes for the Communist guerrillas early
in the decade, forcing the FARC to abandon its discrete cultivation of
regional agrarian communism. At the same time, the flow of resources
into the FARC's coffers from taxes on the cocaine trade in areas under its
control gave an added impetus to a national insurrectionist strategy. The
combination of a more unified guerrilla movement, greater access to
arms, and widespread popular protest suggested a critical revolutionary
conjuncture. Under these circumstances, the local politics of revolution-
ary agrarianism was necessarily subordinated to the broad strategy of
strengthening the FARC militarily. In effect, radical democracy, in a tense
relation since the 1930s with the Marxist-Leninist variant of popular liber-
alism, seemed nearly overwhelmed by the latter as the country descended
into multipolar civil war.
This dilemma persisted with the political opening of the early 1990s.
The FARC and the ELN, now allied through the Coordinadora Guerrillera
Simon Bolivar (Simon Bolivar Guerrilla Coordinator), failed to reach
agreement with the government on terms that would have permitted
them to participate in the constitutional assembly. Consequently, they did
not participate in the restructuring of Colombia's political institutions.
The dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union, the FARC's principal exter-
nal supporter, together with the new constitutional regime, could provide
it both the incentive and the opportunity to transform the continent's

oldest guerrilla movement into a legally constituted political force.

However, the FARC may find it difficult to make the transition from an
agrarian revolutionary movement into a national contender on the Left
within the new constitutional arrangements. The Communist guerrillas
have traditionally made devolution of elite wealth and power the center-
piece of any political agreement leading to a cessation of hostilities and
their incorporation into the nation's public life. But such preconditions
would likely be unacceptable to government authorities resistant to
any linkage of peace with a full-scale reformism under the aegis of leftist
mobilization.
Beyond the wide gap between the elites and the agrarian revolution-
aries, the latter faced other difficulties in transforming themselves into a
78 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

nonmilitary popular movement of national dimensions. The FARC's

influence was largely limited to the newly colonized zones in the country.
The insurgency had created geographical bases of support in zones
far from the major concentrations of rural poor in the Andean corridor. It
did not appear, however, that the FARC's long experience among the
peasantry would be easily translated into the bases for a radical agrarian
party, particularly in areas where commercial agriculture had dramati-
cally altered the social landscape in the last quarter-century. Moreover, the
FARC's three decades of rural insurgency and deep roots in areas of
peasant colonization had left them unprepared for the social complexity
and the political challenges of a rapidly industrialized and urbanized
Colombia as the century drew to a close.
Most important, however, the traditional tensions within the FARC
between radical-democratic and popular-liberal elements would likely
be heightened during an expected lengthy process of peace making and
political integration of the armed agrarian revolutionaries. On the one
hand, the M-19's example might prove attractive to many middle-class
cadres hoping to compete for political power within the new constitu-
tional regime. The strains on the radical-democratic aspirations and prac-
tices of the FARC during the period of escalated military action in the
1980s could thus be exacerbated by efforts to project power nationally;
popular mobilization and electoral politics at that level threatened to
drain local claims making of resources and leadership. Peasant commu-
nism, which had pushed the country toward major social and political
reforms during more than three decades of armed struggle, seemed incap-
able of becoming the centerpiece of a renewed Left. The radical-democratic
elements within the FARC thus faced the prospect of being overwhelmed
by the popular-liberal model of politics rooted in Colombian political
culture and reinforced by the continuing, if much diminished, influence of
Marxist-Leninism on the left.
Simultaneously, the participation in Colombia's civic life by a disarmed
FARC would likely encounter major obstacles in the provinces, where the
dirty war has continued. Persistent social conflicts in the countryside
have the potential to reaffirm the older forms of self-defense within which
radical democracy flourished in the middle decades of the century in the
Upper Magdalena and elsewhere. However, revolutionary agrarianism
may have reached so high a level of militarization during the 1980s as to
erode the fragile bases of radical democratic practice within the FARC. In
effect, continuing social warfare in vast areas of rural Colombia has seem-

Communist guerrillas into a critical deadlock: unable to raise

ingly led the
widened insurgency and yet
the level of rural mobilization in support of a
constrained from transforming themselves into a nationwide movement
for radical change within the new constitutional regime.
 —

Leftist Politics in Colombia 79

Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, as the last decade of the century opened, the patterns of
leftist opposition to oligarchical rule of the early 1970s remained largely
unaltered, despite surface appearances to the contrary. Exhausted by
guerrilla war and escalated drug violence in the late 1980s, Colombians of
all classes favored peaceful resolution of conflicts and political renova-
tion. The enthusiasm for the Constituent Assembly and the breathtaking
pace of charter revision presented new opportunities for the historically
marginal democrats, whether liberal or leftist. However, major obstacles
appeared to contain the prospect of a remaking of Colombian civil society
and the emergence of a renovated, parliamentary Left. The will and
capacity of traditional political elites, especially within the Liberal party,
to obstruct a more inclusionary politics within the new constitutional
framework could very well constrict the political space for either a multi-
class liberal democratic politics or a social democratic project emanating
from the trade union movement, as in Brazil. In short, the infrastructure
of oligarchical politics remained in place despite charter reform and wide-
spread public debate, including the beginnings of a policy of increased
civilian control over the armed forces.
Moreover, the quickened pace of neoliberal policy initiatives and the
continued restructuring of Colombian capitalism in favor of a narrow
economic elite and foreign interests appeared likely to continue to extact
major sacrifices from the mass of the Colombian population; downward
pressures on the middle class and increased impoverishment of the rural
and urban poor would soon place considerable pressures on the largely
untested new political framework. More broadly, the permeation of the
nation's institutions and everyday life by violence imperiled the long
journey toward creating a new civil society. Under such circumstances,
opposition to oligarchical rule would likely continue to find its customary
—
expression. On the one hand, popular liberalism either in populist guise
or through Colombia's native reworking of Marxism-Leninism
would reassert itself. On the other, efforts to make claims and defend
rights would persist at the local level and struggle, probably with little
success, to coalesce into national movements wherein social reform and
democratic politics would be conjoined.

Notes
1. Francisco Leal Buitrago, Estado y politica en Colombia (Bogota: Siglo XXI, 1984), and "Los
movimientos politicos y sociales: Un producto de la relacion entre estado y sociedad civil,"
Analisis Politico, no. 13 (May-August 1991):7-21.
Jonathan Hartlyn, The Politics of Coalition Rule in Colombia (New York: Cambridge
2.

University Press, 1988). Huntington's analysis of political change overwhelming the capacity
80 Marc W. Chernick and Michael F. Jimenez

of political institutions to maintain authority can be found in Samuel F. Huntington, Political

Order and Changing Societies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968).
3. Eduardo Pizarro Leongomez, "Elementos para una sociologia de la guerrilla colombi-
ana," Andlisis Politico, no. 12 (January-April 1991):7-22, and, with a different theoretical
accent, Daniel Pecaut, "Colombia: Violencia y democracia," Andlisis Politico, no. 13 (May-
August 1991):35-50.
Jenny Pearce, Colombia: Inside the Labyrinth (London: Latin America Bureau, 1990).
4.

For an argument that mirrors this view of the guerrillas but differs in emphasizing
5.

foreign influences, see Leon Zamosc, "The Political Crisis and the Prospects for Rural Democ-
racy in Colombia," Journal of Development Studies, 26, 4 (July 1990):44-78. Zamosc, referring
to the ELN and the EPL, writes that "their subjective orientations reflected a mechanistic
brand of revolutionism. They were revolutionaries because they wanted to achieve radical
change through violent means. At the same time, their mechanistic bent was revealed in the
transplantation of foreign models, and in the sway of an extreme vanguardism that took for
granted that the masses would automatically join their armed project" (57).
6. Leon Zamosc, The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia: Struggles of

the National Peasant Association, 1967-1981 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
7. Medofilo Medina, Historia del partido comunista de Colombia (Bogota: CEIS, 1980).
8. Cristina Escobar, Experiencias de organizacion campesina en el Valle de Cauca, 1960-

1980 (Bogota: Taller PRODESAL, 1987); Equipo de capacitacion del CRIC, "El movimiento
indigena," in Gustavo Gallon, comp., Entre movimientos y caudillos: 50 anos de bipartidismo,
izquierda y alternativas populares en Colombia (Bogota: CINEP/CEREC, 1989).
9. W. Ramirez Gustavo Tobon, "La guerrilla rural: Una via hacia la colonizacion
armada," Estudios Rurales Latinoamericanos, 4, 2 (May-August 1981), my translation.
10. Oscar Delgado, comp., Los paws civicos en Colombia (Bogota: Editorial Latina, 1978);

Jaime Carrillo Borda, Los paros civicos en Colombia (Bogota: Editorial La Oveja Negra, 1981);
Luis Alberto Restrepo, "Movimientos civicos en la decada de los ochentas," in Francisco Leal
Buitrago and Leon Zamosc, eds., Alfilo del caos: Crisis politica en Colombia de los anos 80 (Bogota:
Tercer Mundo Editores/Universidad Nacional, Instituto de Estudios Politicos y Relaciones
Internacionales, 1990), 381^09.
11. Daniel H. Levine, "Colombia: The Institutional Church and the Popular," in Daniel H.
Levine, ed., Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1986), 187-218; Fernan Gonzalez, "La iglesia jerarquica: Un actor ausente," in
Leal Buitrago and Zamosc, Alfilo del caos, 229-273.
12. Diego Montana Cuellar, "Nucleos para el analisis de experiencias organizativas:
Izquierda legal, Firmes, Frente Democratico," in Gallon, Entre movimientos y caudillos, 172-180.
13. Jaime Bateman, interview, in Patricia Lara, Siembra vientos y recogerds tempestades
(Bogota: Planeta, 1982), 110-112.
14.Eduardo Pizarro Leongomez, "La insurgencia armada: Raices y perspectivas," in Leal
Buitrago and Zamosc, Alfilo del caos, 341; also Marc Chernick, "Insurgency and Negotiations:
Defining the Boundaries of the Political Regime in Colombia," unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
tion, Columbia University, 1990, especially Chapters 3 and 4.
15. Bruce M. Bagley, "Narcotrafieo: Colombia asediada," in Leal Buitrago and Zamosc,
Al filo del caos, 445-474; Alejandro Reyes Posada, "Paramilitares en Colombia: Contexto,
aliados y consecuencias," Andlisis Politico, no. 12 (January-April 1991):35-42.
16. See Chernick, "Insurgency and Negotiations," 4.

17.Rocio Londofio Botero, "Problemas laborales y reestucturacion del sindicalismo,"

in Leal Buitrago and Zamosc, Alfilo del caos, 275-308.
18. Luis Alberto Restrepo, "Movimientos civicos en la decada de los ochentas," in Leal
Buitrago and Zamosc, Alfilo del caos, 381^408; Jairo Chaparro, "Los movimientos politicos
regionales: Un aporte para la unidad nacional," in Gallon, Entre movimientos y caudillos,
 Leftist Politics in Colombia 81

208-226; J. Giraldo and Sergio Camargo, Paros y movimientos civicos en Colombia (Bogota:
Centro de Investigation y Education Popular/Controversia 128, 1985); William J. Cartier,
"Civic Movements and Politics in Colombia," Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean
Studies 12, 24 (1989):103-120.
19. Leon Zamosc, "El campesinado y las perspectivas para la democracia rural," in Leal
Buitrago and Zamosc, Alfilo del caos, 311-380.
20. Nicolas Buenaventura, Union Patriotica y poder popular (Bogota: CEIS, 1987);
Jose Arizala, "Union Patriotica," in Gallon, Entre movimientos y caudillos, 159-165; Comite
Ejecutivo Nacional, Organization 'A Luchar/" in Gallon, Entre movimientos y caudillos,
181-186.
21. Alejandro Reyes Posada and Ana Maria Bejarano, "Conflictos agrarios y luchas
armadas en la Colombia contemporanea: Una vision geografica," Andlisis Politico, no. 5
(September-December 1988):6-27.
22. W. Ramirez Tobon, "La liebre mecanica y el galgo corredor: La paz actual con el
M-19," Andlisis Politico, no. 7 (1989):46-59.
23. This echoes Zamosc, who writes in "The Political Crisis and the Prospects for Rural
Democracy" that the "mechanistic variant is whose demobilization follows
that of the M-19,
the long-standing Colombian model of re- incorporation of armed counter-elites. The variant
that tries to be organic is that of the FARC and the EPL, whose incorporation project includes
an effort to represent the peasants and lead their struggles" (60).
24. A rich portrait of the FARC's role in the colonizing zone of Caqueta is Jaime Eduardo
Jaramillo, Leonidas Mora, and Fernando Cubides, Colonizacion, coca y guerrilla (Bogota:
Alianza Editorial Colombiana, 1989).
 5
Mexico: The Perils of Unity
and the Challenge of
Modernization
Barry Can

In October 1968 the army's bloody suppression of the student-popular

movement led most sectors of the fragmented and weak Mexican Left to
campaign for electoral abstention in protest against presidential despo-
tism and the antidemocracy of the ruling Partido Revolutionario Institu-
cional (Institutional Revolutionary party —PRI). Small sections of the
Communist Youth and groups of radicalized Christians embraced a futile
campaign of armed struggle. Twenty years later, however, in the July
1988 presidential elections, a Center-Left coalition led by Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas (son of Mexico's nationalist president of the 1930s) came close
to defeating the PRI. A Center-Left coalition incorporating dissidents
from the ruling PRI now emerged as the second largest political force in
the country, displacing the conservative Partido de Accion Nacional
(National Action party —PAN), traditionally the PRI's most important
opposition. However, in the period since the election the Left, and
in particular its major organizational focus, the Partido de la Revolution
—
Democratica (Party of the Democratic Revolution PRD), has been unable to
consolidate the gains of 1988 and confront the many challenges posed by the
neoliberal project of the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-).

Portions of this chapter draw heavily on my chapter "The Left and Its Potential Role in
Political Change" in Wayne A. Cornelius, Judith Gentleman, and Peter H. Smith, eds.,
Mexico's Alternative Political Futures (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of
California, San Diego 1989).

83
84 Barry Carr

The transactional environment within which the Left operates is partly

to blame. Whereas a degree of democratization (more accurately civilian-
ization) has occurred elsewhere in Latin America, political change has
been blocked in Mexico. The neoliberal economic policies of the Salinas
government reject the corporatist and statist traditions of post-1940s
Mexico while at the same time modernizing and preserving the authori-
tarian character of the political system that sustains the PRTs monopoly of
power. A new electoral code has recently strengthened the PRTs position
—
and has done little to minimize electoral fraud the "political alchemy" of
Mexican folklore.
The biggest long-term challenge to the Left is posed by the deepening
integration of the Mexican and U.S. economies signaled by the proposal
that Mexico join the North American Free Trade Agreement. The enthusi-
astic embrace of the concept by the Salinas government suggests that
the technocratic managers of the official party (as well as their strong
supporters in the Bush administration) see the NAFTA as the key to stabi-
lizing the PRI-dominated regime. Building closer political alliances with
the United States will necessarily erode what remains of the economic and
political nationalism bequeathed by the revolutionary nationalist tradi-
tion that has shaped much of the Left's strategic orientation.

The Transformation of the Left

The changes in the map of the Left need to be considered against the
background of the political and economic shocks delivered to the post-
war Mexican model of development during the past twenty years. The
1970s and 1980s witnessed the exhaustion of Mexico's model of "stabiliz-
ing development." The student-popular movement of 1968 and its bloody
repression by the government of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970) deliv-
ered a massive shock to the Mexican political system, a shock that was
followed in the mid- and late 1970s by a rising curve of worker militancy
linked to a resurgent independent trade unionism. Moreover, the official
party of the Mexican Revolution, the PRI, showed growing signs of
sclerosis, and a disturbing trend toward electoral abstentionism began to
accelerate.
The 1970s and 1980s also produced growing inflation, a burgeoning
foreign debt, high interest rates, and balance-of-payments deficits. The
crisis of 1976-1977 introduced a series of economic stabilization programs
that mounted a sharp attack on the real wages and living standards of
working Mexicans. The massive development of Mexico's petroleum
reserves softened the blows for a while, but by the beginning of 1982
petroleum prices had begun to decline. This event, combined with an
 Mexico: Unity and Modernization 85

and Mexico's huge foreign debt, produced an

international liquidity crisis
economic debacle of formidable proportions.
These economic and political difficulties opened up new options
for the Mexican Left and created important breaches in the corporatist
system of domination. The Mexican state responded with initiatives
designed to relegitimate the ruling party and weaken radical opposition
by channeling it in an electoral direction. The apertura democrdtica (demo-
cratic opening) of President Luis Echeverria (1970-1976) involved the
selective release of political prisoners, the incorporation of political dissi-
dents into the state administration, and attempts to accentuate the Third
Worldist features of Mexico's foreign policy.
The most important of the state's responses, however, was the political
reform of 1976-1977, initiated by the Echeverria administration but
implemented during the first year of the presidency of Jose Lopez Portillo
(1976-1982). Under the political reform legislation, the Partido Comunista
—
Mexicano (Mexican Communist party PCM) obtained its official regis-
tration as a political party, and in 1979 it legally participated in elections
for the first time since 1948.
The political "earthquake" of 1988, therefore, was the culmination of
more than fifteen years of major developments in which the map of the
Mexican Left underwent a drastic transformation. Moves to unify the
Left, initially driven by electoral concerns, led to the formation of a series
of multiparty electoral coalitions, forced the dissolution in 1981 of the
Mexican Communist party, Mexico's oldest leftist organization, and gave
—
birth to a number of broad Left "successor" parties the Partido Social-
ista Unificado de Mexico (Unified Socialist party of Mexico —PSUM) in
1981, the Partido Mexicano Socialista (Mexican Socialist party PMS) —
in March 1987, and the Partido de la Revolution Democratica in 1989.
But the transformation of the Left involved more than changes to the
political "alphabet soup." Even more important was the appearance of
new sensibilities and ways of expressing political awareness through art,
literature, and popular culture. Parallel with these developments was the
emergence of new associational forms linked to a variety of projects that
were critical of postwar capitalism. The working class and the peasantry,
traditionally viewed as the natural subjects of the Left, were joined in the
1970s and 1980s by new urban social movements and coalitions. Class
was now just one of many constructs around which the Left and the pop-
ular movements coalesced. Community, place of residence, religiosity,
and gender also become powerful mobilizing forces.
New grass-roots social movements emerged, especially in urban areas,
—
and a series of networking organizations or coordinadoras the earliest and
best-known being the Coordinadora Nacional del Movimiento Urbano
 —

86 Barry Carr

Popular (Coordinating Committee of the Urban Popular Movement

CONAMUP), founded in 1981 —sprang up. What became known as
the urban popular movement received a further boost in the aftermath of
the September 1985 earthquake, when the impotence and corruption
exhibited by the state in the face of the disaster gave birth to a second
wave of popular organizations. The activities of the Coordinadora Unica
—
de Damnificados (Coordinating Body of Earthquake Victims CUD), for
—
example, and later the Neighborhoods Assembly founded in 1987 and
linked to the spectacularly effective work of the hooded and masked
"Superbarrio Gomez," a Superman with class consciousness have —
become symbols of the rebirth of civil society 1
Challenges to the corporatist style and practice of the PRI and its affil-
iated mass organizations also produced new peasant groups such as the
Coordinadora Nacional "Plan de Ayala" (National Plan of Ayala Coordi-
—
nating Body CNPA), launched in 1979 with the encouragement of
Mateo Zapata (the son of the peasant revolutionary). In the urban labor
sector the best-known of the new coordinadoras was the Coordinadora
Nacional de Trabaj adores de la Educacion (National Coordinating Body
—
of Educational Workers CNTE), which became a powerful site of mass
resistance to the corrupt leadership of Mexico's largest (750,000 strong)
trade union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabaj adores de la Educacion
—
(National Union of Educational Workers SNTE). The latest wave of
coordinadoras (prominent examples are the National Coordinating Body
of Indian Peoples and the Emiliano Zapata Union of Comuneros) has
developed among indigenous peoples, an area in which the political,
union, and social-movement Left has been notoriously absent.
While the new social movement protagonists (impoverished urban
dwellers or colonos, students, university workers, poor peasants) clearly
form part of the Left, ideologically they are very diverse, drawing on
anarchist and syndicalist traditions, prophetic-revolutionary Christianity,
and Maoist-tinged populism ("learn from the people"). During the early
1980s, from these last two tendencies sprang such organizations as the
Organization de Izquierda Revolucionaria-Linea de Masas (Revolution-
—
ary Left Organization-Mass Line OIR-LM), the Movimiento Revolucio-
—
nario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Movement MRP), and the
—
Linea Proletaria (Proletarian Line LP), all three of which were active on
such fronts as the mine-workers' and teachers' unions, struggles for the
democratization of municipalities, and collectivist and cooperative exper-
iments among the urban poor in several areas (including Colonia "Tierra
y Libertad" in Monterrey, Colonia "Ruben Jaramillo" in Morelos, and
Campamento "2 de Octubre" in the Federal District).
The coordinadoras and the urban popular movement, concerned
more with the politics of reproduction and consumption than with the
 Mexico: Unity and Modernization 87

more traditional "classist" issues of production, certainly opened up

fertile terrain for struggle, but they also posed major challenges to the
forces of the more traditional Left. Although some of the organizations
incorporated activists from socialist parties (the dissident teachers in the
CNTE, for example, attracted a number of cadres schooled in Maoism
and Maoist populism), many of the newer groups were suspicious of and
sometimes hostile to the involvement of the traditional parties of the Left.
Their suspicions were fueled by bitter memories of the way in which the
Left had sometimes subordinated the concerns and needs of specific
movements to the interests and goals of its own organizations.
This newer Left also argued that some of the new spaces (municipali-
ties, for example) were more promising terrain for its activities because

they had not been so heavily colonized by bureaucratized union struc-

tures and organs of the state. This municipal orientation occasionally
facilitated thedevelopment of broad coalitions (/rentes de masas) of Left
parties and local and regional grass-roots organizations that have helped
smooth some of the tensions between the older "party Left" and the
newer tendencies, with their ultraradical political style and discourse.
The best-known example of a frente de masas in action was the alliance
between the Coalition Obrera-Campesina-Estudiantil del Istmo (Worker-
Peasant-Student Coalition of the Isthmus—COCEI) and the PSUM, which
in 1981 won a short-lived municipal victory in Juchitan, the second city of
2
Oaxaca state.
Alongside these organizational changes has come a major alteration in
the strategic orientation and style of the Left. The past weighs heavily on
all the participants in the Mexican political game. Over the years the

major Left currents have not only uncritically assimilated a series of

imported and often deformed socialist models but also, more than they
are prepared to admit, replicated many of the antidemocratic traditions of
the official party. Nevertheless, slowly and unevenly but with growing
self-confidence, the Mexican Left has begun to discard the most backward
aspects of its heritage. It has embraced the logic of unity, moved away
from sectarian positions and, to a much lesser extent, personalist rivalries,
and tried to forge a distinctively Mexican socialist agenda. The Left has
also begun to accept that socialism requires not only a change in property
relations but also the transformation of social relations in a democratic
direction.
Central to the overall revision of the Left's strategy (at least until the
late 1980s) was the contention that the Mexican Revolution
had finally
exhausted its progressive potential. As a result the Left, led by the now-
dissolved Mexican Communist party, finally abandoned its illusions
about the possibility of transforming the PRI and pushing it to the left. The
rejection of the conception of "vanguard party" was another significant
 —

88 Barry Carr

development that led to moves to unify the fragmented collection of

Left parties. The new opening took a number of forms. In 1976, for
example, the PCM forged a tactical electoral alliance with the major
Trotskyist party, the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabaj adores (Workers'
—
Revolutionary party PRT). Later, the PCM formed a programmatic
alliance with a number of other small left-wing parties and groupings
7
sympathetic to the Mexican Communists style. This initiative resulted in
the creation of the Coalition of the Left in 1979. Led by the PCM, the
Coalition received three quarters of a million votes in the congressional
elections and won eighteen seats in the Chamber of Deputies.
The demand for Left unity eventually embraced calls for the formation
of a single party of the socialist Left. The attempt to forge such a party
began in the 1980s, when the Communist party dissolved itself and,
together with some former satellite parties, established the PSUM in 1981
and later the PMS in 1987. 3 On the eve of the 1988 presidential elections
the map of the Left looked like this:
The independent Left consisted of parties or movements that did not
depend on state subsidies and political largesse. They supported the inde-
pendence of mass organizations of workers, peasants, and agricultural
laborers and embraced political and economic policies that challenged
both neoliberal economic programs and the populist and corporatist
heritage that formed part of the Left's ideological baggage from the 1930s
until the Cuban Revolution. This independent Left was represented by the
PMS, various Trotskyist organizations of which the largest was the
PRT, and the rapidly proliferating regional and local frentes and social
movements such as the Comite de Defensa Popular (Popular Defense
—
Committee CDP) in Chihuahua, the COCEI in Juchitan, and the Colonia
"Tierra y Libertad" in Monterrey.
The largest grouping within the independent Left was the PMS.
Its style and the policies it articulated maintained and deepened the prin-

cipal characteristics with which the independent Left (the PCM and the
PSUM, for example) had come to be associated since the mid-1970s
greater openness to the notion of Left unity, a commitment to seeking
indigenous solutions to problems, and a preparedness to dialogue with
progressive sectors of the PRI. On the negative side, the formation of
thePMS resembled the creation of earlier umbrella parties (such as the
PSUM) in several other ways. For example, negotiations about the
merger process tended to take place at the level of national leaderships,
with limited grass-roots participation.
The PMS announced its intention to adjust its brand of socialism to
Mexican traditions and to underline the indissoluble ties between demo-
cracy and pluralism, on the one hand, and its socialist goals, on the other.
This meant an abandonment of some elements of the Left's traditional
 Mexico: Unity and Modernization 89

baggage —for example, a final rejection of democratic centralism and a

strong critique of statism. It also involved the acceptance of amixed econ-
omy and regulated foreign investment, the development of good relations
with the United States, and the now-obligatory rejection of " foreign
7
socialist models/
The PMS reaffirmed some positions that had been rejected by
certain sectors of the Left during the 1980s —the commitment to political
rights for the clergy beingone example. It now began to conform to the
vision of a "Mexicanized" and pragmatic party of the kind that left-wing
nationalists such as Heberto Castillo, an influential engineer and activist,
had long demanded.
The PMS and later its successor, the PRD, also made substantial if
somewhat uneven progress toward democratizing its own structure and
processes. In September 1987, for example, it had organized primaries to
select the party's presidential candidate in an attempt to show up the
authoritarianmethods that the PRI used to "uncork" its chosen candidate
and to deepen grass-roots participation. In order to underline its claim to
represent a broad swath of progressive opinion, the PMS even allowed
nonmembers to vote in the primary.
The "loyal Left" or "satellite Left" comprised parties that, in spite of
the dogmatic Marxist and Marxist-Leninist rhetoric on certain issues ex-
hibited by some of its constituents, such as the Partido Popular Socialista
—
(Popular Socialist party PPS), have subordinated their action and elec-
toral politics to the PRI. Ideologically, this segment of the Left combines an
ossified Marxism (and even Stalinism) with a continuing belief in the
progressive and socialist potential of the Mexican Revolution.
The "loyal Left" has limited tactical independence in the political arena
and has normally supported the PRI's presidential candidate in national
elections in return for financial support and, sometimes, an officially engi-
neered inflation of its vote in elections. 4 The best-known representatives
of this current are the PPS and the Partido Frente Cardenista para la
Reconstruccion Nacional (Party of the Cardenas Front for National
—
Reconstruction PFCRN), surely one of the most opportunistic examples
of party naming in Mexican history.

The Political Earthquake of 1988

Although the drive for unification, internal democratization, and a
serious engagement with electoral politics were positive developments,
other parts of the Left's heritage took longer to jettison. There were con-
—
tinuing problems with caudillismo a tendency to see parties as an exten-
sion of the personality of particular individuals. Moreover, within the
new umbrella or "successor" parties to the old PCM
"party patriotism"
90 Barry Carr

was slow At the same time, the Mexican state had lost none
to disappear.
of its skills and co-opting sections of the Left. The PRI contin-
in dividing
ued covertly to sponsor, reward, and electorally register new parties of
the Left, so that by the late 1980s there were more self-styled socialist
parties represented in the Mexican Congress than in any other Latin
American legislature. Also, some of the Left's hopes with regard to urban
popular movements were dashed in the 1980s. Some analysts and activ-
ists concluded that movements that are concerned with quotidian strug-
gles cannot articulate theory and practice capable of democratizing the
broader national political culture. Many urban social movements
were still trapped in webs of clientelism and patrimonialism and easily
fell prey to the government's strategy of signing agreements and entering
5
into dialogues.
But it was the 1988 elections and the preelection mobilizations that
most radically modified the new composition of the Left and forced a
reevaluation of some of the changes introduced during the preceding
decade. The appearance of a Left critical current within the PRI and its
subsequent split from the ruling party introduced a radically new element
into the calculus. The neo-cardenistas who abandoned ship in 1987-1988
posed several challenges to the independent Left. In particular, their
mobilizing capacity seemed to demonstrate the continuing vitality of a
discourse that appealed to elements of the ideology of the Mexican
Revolution and thereby challenged one of the Left's major gains of the
—
1968-1988 period its declaration of independence from the populism
and nationalism of that tradition.

The Neo-Cardenistas
Revolutionary nationalism has for a long time been part of the intellec-
tual and political baggage of progressive members of the PRI and of large
sections of the Mexican Left, especially parties in the satellite group dis-
cussed above. In mid-1986 a number of leading figures within the revolu-
tionary nationalist current of the PRI formed a pressure group to press
for a democratic modernization of the official party. The Corriente
—
Democratica (Democratic Current CD), as it was called, was the nucleus
around which the Center-Left challenge to the PRI was mounted in 1988. 6
The CD is very difficult to locate politically. For some of its adherents
it was simply the "the Left of the PRI," and its members saw themselves

as convinced priistas as far as the ideological program of the official

party was concerned. 7 Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a major CD figure, character-
ized the coalition built around Cuauhtemoc Cardenas as a "populist-
nationalist current of the Mexican Revolution—but we do not stand for
socialism." 8 The CD and its leading propagandists did not indeed define
 Mexico: Unity and Modernization 91

themselves as Time and time again Cuauhtemoc Cardenas

socialist.
insisted that he was simply calling for the effective implementation of
the precepts of the 1917 constitution.
However, the platform of the CD and of its electoral coalition, the
Frente Democratico Nacional, involved more than just a restatement of
the classic slogans of economic and political sovereignty and support for
self-determination and nonintervention in foreign policy outlined in the
1917 constitution. It included calls for an end to presidentialism (echoing
the positions of socialist Left parties such as the PMS) and the abandon-
ment of electoral corruption and manipulation. 9 The directing authority
of the state in economic matters was reaffirmed, and there was an explicit
rejection of many of the features of the neoliberal economic model. The
neo-cardenistas all saw the internal market as the engine of economic
activity. Finally, they strongly supported calls for the independence of
worker and peasant organizations and a break with the authoritarianism,
caciquismo (bossism), and vertical power relations that have disempow-
ered working people. 10
The campaign appeal of neo-cardenismo was very striking. Almost
overnight, an independent mass movement of impressive size and
national character had arisen in Mexico. In its long history, the indepen-
dent Left had never been able to mobilize the population to this degree. 11
Even more remarkable was the extent to which neo-cardenismo attracted
the support of sectors of the socialist Left that were normally suspicious of,
if not openly hostile to, the cardenista legacy of revolutionary nationalism

because of its reputation for crude populism and political opportunism.

There is no more striking example of this phenomenon than the embrace
of the cardenista drive by a number of leading Trotskyists who considered
the mass mobilizations around the Cardenas campaign a springboard
for socialist politics and a sign of the disintegration of the corporatist
structures in place since the late 1930s. In another indication of the hold
that neo-cardenismo has on the Left the FDN also won the support of
several former guerrilla organizations, including the Guerrero-based
Revolutionary National Civic Association founded by Genaro Vasquez in
the late 1960s.
The official results of the July 1988 elections gave Cardenas 31.29
percent of the presidential vote (with a bare majority of 50.03 percent to
the PRI), but there was evidence of massive fraud. The Center-Left
emerged as the second-largest political force in Mexico, with acknowl-
edged majorities in such key areas as the Federal District. A closer exam-
ination of the election results, however, reveals a more complex picture.
The big losers in the 1988 elections were the parties of the independent
Left (the PMS and the PRT). The percentage of the total vote cast for the
PMS (3.57 percent) actually fell slightly in comparison with the 1982
92 Barry Can

presidential elections (3.84 percent). The satellite or loyal Left, however,

was massively rewarded. The PPS saw its vote increase from 1.53 percent
in 1982 to 10.53 percent, while that of the PFCRN rose equally drama-
tically from 1.43 percent to 10.51 percent.
The impressive performance of the FDN coalition and the size of the
vote could be seen as proof that revolutionary nationalism
satellite Left's
was the only consistent and vital current within the Mexican socialist
tradition and certainly the only current capable of mobilizing successive
generations of students, professionals, and skilled workers. If this is the
run at least, the rise of neo-cardenismo involves a repu-
case, in the short
diation of attempts to establish a clear separation between the socialist
agenda and the ideology of the Mexican Revolution.
One must also ask whether the large vote for the FDN was in any
sense a vote for the Left. The nearly six million votes cast for Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas certainly represented a protest against the neoliberal strategy of
modernization. It would be wrong, however, to label the neo-cardenista
phenomenon merely a negative vote. The growing involvement of
the independent Left in the cardenista mobilizations provided excellent
opportunities for advancing debate beyond the narrow limits of revolu-
tionary nationalism.

Into the 1990s

In the past three years the unification process that created the FDN
electoral coalition and the PRD (founded the year after the 1988 elections)
has faltered. Of the parties that formed the FDN, only the old PMS and
the cardenistas joined the PRD. The satellite PPS remained outside,
and the PFCRN also quickly dropped out.
This rapid disintegration has many causes. The PRD does not seem to
have been able to make the jump from being a conjunctural coalition of
anti-PRI forces to creating an organically new political force. Its leaders,
and in particular the figuresaround Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, have been
accused of caudillismo. Although this is probably an unfair characteriza-
tion of the leadership style, there is no doubt that the enormous personal
popularity, appeal, and prestige of Cardenas have encouraged an uneasy
centralization of authority in the party.
The new party's fragility is also partly a function of the character of the
PRD itself, an amalgam of different tendencies hegemonized by the neo-
cardenistas, most of whom are imprisoned in a discourse of uncompro-
mising anti-priismo that has at times been prepared to envisage a violent
break with the system. Cardenas himself after July 1988 denounced the
elections as a "technical coup d'etat." 12 Some sectors of the Left have even
accused the PRD of encouraging or not restraining popular mobilizations
 Mexico: Unity and Modernization 93

of party rank and file that threatened violence. The ongoing debates
between PRD was brought to the surface
different tendencies within the
in December 1990 with the resignation of Jorge Alcocer, who represents a
group of former Communists and social democrats open to the possibility
of dialogue proposed by President Salinas. Alcocer accused Cardenas of
excessive confrontationalism designed to further his electoral ambitions,
antidemocracy, intolerance, and authoritarianism. 13
There problem with the party's definition of its relationship to
is also a
Left projects. certainly not a socialist party. According to its secretary
It is

of organization Saul Escobar Toledo, the PRD identifies with social

democracy and has applied for membership of the Socialist Interna-
tional.
14
Finally, repression continues to weaken the Left; fifty of the
party's members have been killed and more than five hundred injured in
the short period since the PRD was formed.

The PRD's Electoral Performance

Superficially, the PRD's organic development has been impressive. At

the PRD's first (November 1990), Cardenas claimed
national congress
that the party had 1,730,000 members, of whom 900,000 had joined during
the period November 1989-November 1990. The PRD claimed control of
118 municipalities (with the exception of Morelia, most of them were very
small) and minority representation in another 680. The party had 63
deputies in local congresses, 4 senators, and 54 federal deputies (out of
15
500) in the national congress. These figures should be compared with the
140 deputies that the parties of the pro-Cardenas coalition won in the July
1988 elections, when it still included several parties of the satellite Left.
Given that the PRD has placed so much importance on electoral mobi-
poor performance on the hustings has been a shock. To some
lizations, its
extent this outcome can be explained by the PRI's ever more sophisticated
use of fraud. A recognition that the struggle for democracy and against
fraud required the forging of broad tactical alliances with all antiregime
forces had led the PRD to sign a national agreement for democracy with a
number of groups, including the rightist PAN, in early 1991. Thus far,
however, the results have been poor. The national leadership of the PAN
has made deals with the Salinas administration, and it is only at the state
level that antiregime pacts have worked —
as in the state of San Luis
Potosi, where the PRD, the PAN, and even the far-right PDM (Mexican
Democratic Party) came together to support a long-established political
crusader, Salvador Nava, in the August 1991 gubernatorial elections.
The Left's electoral decline culminated in the PRD's disappointing
performance in the mid-term congressional elections of August 1991, but
those results had already been anticipated in a series of local elections for
94 Barry Can

state governors and the renewal of state legislatures. In the northwestern

state of Baja California, for example, where Cardenas won 37 percent of
the total vote in the 1988 presidential elections (Baja California being one
of five states and territories in which the anti-PRI opposition came first
even in the official figures), the PRD vote had fallen to 6 percent by the

time gubernatorial elections were held the following year. It was clear that
in the absence of an effective and relevant Left option, a large part of the
pro-Cardenas vote moved swiftly over to the rightist PAN. Two years
later the internal elections (open also to the general public) that chose the
PRD's candidate for the senate seat of Baja California for the midterm
1991 elections attracted only thirteen hundred voters, a mere 1 percent of
16
the votes captured by the Center-Left in 1988.
In the ardently cardenista state of Michoacan, another even more
important center of the Left with the largest number of PRD state legisla-
ture deputies, town councilmen, and federal deputies in the country, the
municipal and state legislative elections of 1989 substantially reduced
the PRD's representation. In this case the impact of fraud was amplified
by the party's difficulties in delivering promised benefits to its support-
ers, a familiar problem facing the strategists of municipal socialism in a
country where the penury of local government is so marked.
In the Federal District, where the FDN did best of all in 1988 (winning
72.4 percent of all votes cast), the situation seemed unlikely to be re-
peated. In 1988 the Left had gained votes from disaffected priistas (21
percent), panistas (19 percent), and former abstentionists or new voters
(44 percent) — in other words, a very unstable blend of support. 17 A return
to abstentionism was predicted for the 1991 elections in the Federal
District as had already happened in the Mexico State elections a few
months before. The early signs were certainly not good. The PRD's inter-
nal "primary" to select a senate candidate attracted only twenty-five
thousand voters. 18
Against the background of these disappointing events, the poor perfor-
mance of the Left in the congressional elections of August 1991 is not so
surprising. The PRD gained only forty-one seats (down from fifty-four)
and the satellite Left thirty-five. The Trotsky ist PRT once again lost its
electoral registration, as did the newly formed Green party and the Labor
party, the latest in a long line of leftist parties with close ties to the PRI. The
PRI, meanwhile, seems to have recovered its nerve (and some of its
support). Its two-thirds majority in the Chamber of Deputies will enable it
to push through the constitutional amendments (modification of the
status of the ejido [collective property], reforms to the labor code, etc.) that
Mexico's impending incorporation into the NAFTA will require.
Clearly, the electoral gamble of the independent Left has not yet paid
off. The PRD has been unable to break down widespread public cynicism
 "

Mexico: Unity and Modernization 95

and the long-standing tendency to see all political action (including that of
the Left) as tainted by corruption, demagoguery and struggles among
rival camarillas (clans). But perhaps the greatest failure of the Left has been
its inability to incorporate into its strategy and practice the concerns that

spring from the massively changed conditions of the lives (in workplaces,
homes, and urban environments) of ordinary Mexicans. Thus a particu-
larly disturbing omission in the Left's performance so far has been its
failure to move beyond mere protest and translate anti-PRI sentiment into
actions in the labor and peasant arena that challenge the traditional power
relations of corporatism. The great popular mobilizations that accompa-
nied the 1988 presidential campaign certainly aroused the enthusiasm
of millions of workers, peasants, and middle-sector activists —
what one
author has recently labeled "a civic-electoral insurrection. 19 But the
energy they unleashed was channeled largely into the electoral fight and
into protests against the "antipopular" consequences of government
economic policy rather than into the creation of new organizational forms
that could promote empowerment and deepen the newly won self-
confidence of the disenfranchised.
If the Left is to maintain the momentum it exhibited in 1987-1988, it

must, therefore, intensify its efforts to intersect labor and peasant organi-
zations as well as the new social movements. Here the Left, as we have
already seen, faces a number of problems. It will have to overcome deeply
rooted suspicion concerning political parties' involvement in the affairs of
unions and popular organizations. The Left has a long way to go to dispel
view their union and mass-movement cadres as
fears that political parties
conveyor belts for party directives. It also faces the dilemma of how to
gain a presence in the unions and social movements without provoking a
violent response by the state. Mexican governments have always blocked
moves by the Left to gain a foothold in the organizations that form the
base of the corporatist structure.
The big challenge for the independent Left is to come up with a
definition of modernization that defies the conservative agenda of the PRI
and its conservative opponents without returning uncritically to the
—
shibboleths of an unreconstructed cardenismo crude statism, populism,
and the restoration of the authority and prestige of the increasingly
displaced oficialista (state-supported) mass organizations such as the
Confederacion de Trabajadores de Mexico (Confederation of Mexican
—
Workers CTM) and the Confederacion Nacional Campesina (National
Confederation of Peasants CNC). —
This is a major challenge because the revolutionary nationalist and
populist Left that is so strongly represented in the PRD (especially among
the neo-cardenistas) has not confronted its own traditions with the same
reforming zeal as have some of the Marxists who joined with them to
96 Barry Carr

form the new party. As we have seen, certain features of the old corpor-
atist system were clearly rejected in the discourse of the cardenistas. But
the men and women of the CD are, when all is said and done, authentic
children of the PRI and they will have to struggle hard to break out of the
straitj acket represented by the dream of a revived corporatism that some

of them, especially those with strong ties to the labor sector, still harbor.
The extent of the neo-cardenistas' ties to the corporatist labor
system and its most regressive features was eloquently revealed during
the first month of the new presidential term. When the Salinas govern-
ment mounted a violent assault on the labor czar of the Sindicato
de Trabaj adores Petroleros Mexicanos (Oil Workers Union STPRM), —
Joaquin (La Quina) Hernandez Galicia, arresting him on weapons charges
in mid-January 1989, it was clear that for the first time in the labor history
20
of modern Mexico a charro had fallen victim to a charrazol Cardenas and
his supporters criticized the move, branding it a blatant intervention in
the internal affairs of a major union, which was certainly the case, and an
assault on an authentically nationalist labor figure, a much more dubious
claim. The government's move against the STPRM leadership not only
exposed the cardenistas' debt to a union that had reputedly helped
finance the FDN's election campaign but also produced a damaging split
within the independent Left. Part of the leadership of the PMS con-
demned the government's moves against Hernandez, while an influential
group of socialist intellectuals and labor movement figures publicly disas-
most arbitrary and
sociated itself from any action that defended one of the
antidemocratic labor fiefdoms in Mexico. 21

Challenges and Opportunities

few
In spite of the generally disappointing electoral results of the past
years, the events of the late 1980sand early 1990s demonstrated that the
Mexican Left is learning from its mistakes. A significant development has
been the decision by a number of urban social movements to modify and
in some cases abandon their previous policy of electoral abstention and
shunning of parties and national organizations of the Left. The major
breakthrough here occurred in the mobilizations that preceded the 1988
elections, when thousands of social movements moved from isolated
civic protests to a national civic insurrection in support of the Cardenas
candidacy. In Mexico City, for example, the powerful Neighborhoods
Assembly entered the fray in support of the FDN. This trend was contin-
ued in the 1991 congressional elections, when, as one campaigner in the
sprawling "lost city" of Nezahualcoyotl north of Mexico City explained to
a North American researcher, "people's desire to exercise and defend
their vote is as strong as their desire for water, housing, or services." 22
 Mexico: Unity and Modernization 97

The 1991 elections also saw the establishment of much more significant
ties between the women's movement and the independent Left. The
formation of the Women's Convention for Democracy in early 1991,
for example, was accompanied by a decision to develop a cross-party
strategy in which the Convention selected thirty candidates whose spon-
sorship was then be negotiated with the various opposition forces. 23
to
It is on the economic front, however, that the independent Left has

experienced most difficulties. 24 Often, the Left has limited its intervention
to oppositional rhetoric or nostalgic repetition of slogans from the statist
and populist repertoire and has been unable to offer a coherent response
to the economic project of the Salinas government. The state's obsession
with deregulation and sell-offs of public enterprises has been fiercely and
in most cases correctly contested, but neither the Center-Left (such as the
PRD) nor the older Marxist Left (such as the PRT) has devoted much
effort to thinking through how socialists might exploit issues such as
privatization and antistatism to promote democratic and noncorrupt
forms of social and economic organization in production.
The disorientation of the Left on economic issues grew as certain indi-
began to show signs of improvement during the first two years of
cators
the new decade; the 1991 inflation rate, for example, was about 20 percent
compared with the heady 170 percent registered in 1987, and government
revenues have boomed with the massive drive toward privatization. The
problem has been compounded by the appearance of divisions within the
grass-roots Left and some national Left parties over whether to accept
dialogue (concertacion) with the state and the material resources offered
under the National Solidarity Program or preserve at all costs the popular
movements' autonomy from the state.
The Left is also divided over whether to reject the integrationist project
of the Salinas government or work within current NAFTA proposals.
There have been demands for an alternative model of economic integra-
tion that rejects Mexico's assigned role under NAFTA as a permanent
supplier of cheap labor power as well as calls for an expansion of the
project to embrace the entire Latin American region. 25 But so far these are
rhetorical wish lists and yearnings for a renewed model of economic
nationalism. They do not demonstrate a serious commitment to grappling
with the painful fact that an ever-more-dominant and unitary inter-
national financial system makes the notion of independent capitalist
26
(let alone socialist) development very problematic.

However, while the Left has been unable to specify concretely how its
economic vision can be translated into a viable program of action under
current conditions, the actual practice of old and new Lefts is already
showing signs of creative responses to the challenge posed by projects of
regional economic integration. There is now greater continental consulta-
98 Barry Carr

tion between left-wing parties; in June 1991, for example, representatives

from sixty-eight Left parties in Latin America met in Mexico City under
the sponsorship of the PRD. 27
At a more grass-roots level, the NAFTA concept has spawned a series
of developments that could greatly accelerate the creation of horizontal
relations between labor, community, ecological, and political activists and
their organizations across national borders. This can already be seen in the
automotive industry (where Mexican, U.S., and Canadian automobile
unions in the Ford empire have intensified exchanges during 1990 and
1991), in the dramatic emergence of cross-border discussion and organi-
zation by progressive groups concerned with the impact of the NAFTA,
and in the deepening of the PRD's lobbying and organizational efforts in
the United States among the Anglo and Latino populations. 28
It may very well be that the development of these binational and even

trinational links will partly compensate for the erosion of the Left's
"socialist identity" over the last three years. But with most of the Marxist
Left in dissolution and the PRD's relationship to socialist objectives barely
discernible, it is increasingly difficult to give a clear answer to the ques-
tion "What is left of the Mexican Left?"

Notes
1. "Superbarrio: Bane of the Landlords, Defender of Poor Tenants," The Other Side of Mex-
ico, 3 (October-December 1987):3-4; "Superbarrio: We Didn't Make the Border, We Don't
Want the Border," The Other Side of Mexico, 9 (March-April 1989):l-2.
2. On Juchitan, see Jeffrey W. Rubin, "State Policies, Leftist Oppositions, and Municipal
Elections: The Case of the COCEI in Juchitan," in Arturo Alvarado, ed., Electoral Patterns and
Perspectives in Mexico (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, 1987), 127-160.
3. For developments on the Mexican Left during the 1970s and 1980s see Barry Carr and
Ricardo Anzaldiia Montoya, eds., The Mexican Left, the Popular Movements, and the Politics of
US-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1986);
Austerity (La Jolla: Center for
Barry Carr, "The PSUM: The Unification Process on the Mexican Left, 1981-1985," in Judith
Gentleman, ed., Mexican Politics in Transition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), 281-304.
4. For example, Rafael Aguilar Talamantes, a leader of the PFCRN, has admitted that his
party received funds from the PRI before 1987.
5. Movements and the Process of Democratiza-
Judith Adler Hellman, "Mexican Popular
tion: IsThere a Link?," paper presented to the Latin American Studies Association confer-
ence, Washington, DC, April 4-6, 1991.
6. The formation of the Corriente Democratica can be traced back to a series of discussions

in mid-1986 held by some twenty-five PRI figures in Mexico and overseas, where some of the
priistaswere serving as ambassadors (among them Porfirio Muhoz Ledo, who was ambassa-
dor to the UN, and Rodolfo Gonzalez Guevara, who was ambassador to Spain). "The Demo-
cratic Current: A New Era in Mexican Politics: Interviews by Andrew Reding," World Policy

Journal, 5, 2 (Spring 1988):323-366.

7. Martinez proudly noted in May 1988 that the members of the Democratic Current left

the PRI only because the party had shifted so much to the right. Jose Luis Gaona Vega, "Somos
priistas convencidos de ideologia y programa," Punto, May 9, 1988, 11.
8. Reding, "The Democratic Current," 35.
 Mexico: Unity and Modernization 99

9. The first item on the PMS electoral program deals with "presidentialism —obstacle for
democracy." PMS: Plataforma Electoral, 5. On the peculiarity of Mexican presidentialism, see
Luis Javier Garrido, "The Crisis of Presidencialismo," in Wayne A. Cornelius, Judith Gentle-
man, and Peter H. Smith, eds., Mexico's Alternative Political Futures (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-
Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1989), 417-434.
10. Trejo, Punto, May 2, 1988, 8; La Jornada, April 6, 1988, 32; May 2, 1988, 11; Excelsior, May
12, 1989, 4, 14.
The enthusiastic analyses of the neo-cardenista phenomenon written by the Trotskyist
11.

Adolfo Gilly reflect the awe felt by much of the socialist Left. See, for example, "Cartucho
quemado," La Jornada, May 23, 1988, 1.
12. Adolfo Gilly, "El perfil del PRD," Nexos, 152 (August 1990):63.

13. LatinAmerica Regional Report, Mexico-Central America, February 21, 1991:6.

14.Osvaldo Leon, "PRD: Democracy, Country for Every One," The Other Side of Mexico, 18
(September-December 1990) :8-9.
15. "Cuauhtemoc Cardenas' Political Message in the Opening Session of the First Con-

gress of the PRD," The Other Side of Mexico, 18 (September-December 1990):9.

16. Gustavo Hirales M., "Baja California: El siguiente experimento," Cuadernos de Nexos,
36 Qune 1991):xix-xx.
17. Guadalupe Pacheco Mendez, "La batalla por el Distrito Federal," Cuadernos de Nexos,

36 Qune 1991):viii.
18. Luis Salazar C, "PRI y PRD: El show del enfrentamiento," Cuadernos de Nexos, 36
Qune 1991):v-vi.
19. Alberto Aziz Nassif, "Regional Dimensions of Democratization," in Cornelius,
Gentleman, and Smith, Mexico's Alternative Political Futures.
20. The term charro (cowboy) has been used to designate the corrupt and antidemocratic
trade unionism practiced by much of the "official" trade union leadership ever since the more
militant national industrial unions were "tamed" by the state in the late 1940s and early 1950s
(during the so-called charrazos against the oil, railroad, and mining unions).
21. The veteran railway workers' leader Valentin Campa was particularly outspoken in
union leaders. For a characteristically sharp criticism of the
his criticism of the arrest of the oil
from the authoritarianism of the union bureaucracy, see
Left's failure to disassociate itself
Roger Bartra, "Nacionalismo, democracia y socialismo: Invitacion a la polemica," La Jornada
Semanal, 84 (January 20, 1991):35-37.
22. Elaine Burns, "Mexico's PRI Wins Bid to Ensure that Change Continues," Peacenet:
Carnet Mexnews.
23. Mexico Insight, October 28, 1991.
24. A representative sample of the PRD's thinking on economic issues can be seen in the
party's fortnightly magazine Coyuntura. See, for example, the special issue entitled 1990:
Situacidn nacional (balance
y propuestas).
25. Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, "TLC: Una propuesta alternativa," Nexos, 162 (June 1991):
51-55.
"Nacionalismo, democracia y socialismo," 41-43.
26. Bartra,
27. The such meeting was held in 1990 under the auspices of the Brazilian PT. Latin
first

America Weekly Report, WR

91-24 (June 17, 1991):12; Victor Quintana, "The Popular Summit of
the Americas," The Other Side of Mexico, 17 (July-August 1990):6-8.
28. Apart from Cardenas himself, the most active international lobbyists of the PRD have
been Jorge Castaneda and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser. Luis Javier Garrido, interview, Mexico City,
February 19, 1991. There have been meetings between Canadian and Mexican unions as in the
First Mexico-Canada Encounter: "Social Organizations and Free Trade," in October 1990. See
"Mexico-Canada: Common Borders," The Other Side of Mexico, 18 (September-December
1990):l-2.
 6
Armed Struggle and Popular
Resistance in El Salvador:
The Struggle for Peace
Tommie Sue Montgomery

On December 31, 1991, the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberation

Nacional and the government of El Salvador reached agreement to end a
civil war that had raged for eleven years. The war itself, however, was
only the longest and most violent chapter in a struggle that began with the
conquest, with the first efforts of the Spaniards in the early 1520s to estab-
lish a permanent settlement in what was then called Cuscatlan. The colo-
nists soon found that El Salvador's only wealth lay in the land, and they
proceeded, throughout the colonial period, to usurp the indigenes' com-
munal lands and plant them in a succession of export crops. As land was
increasingly concentrated in fewer hands, the Indians periodically revolt-
ed but were put down with ruthless efficiency. In an 1882 decree the gov-
ernment of El Salvador eliminated the last of the communal lands on the
ground that such lands were " contrary to the political and social princi-
—
ples on which the Republic was established" in other words, the Lock-
ean principle of private property. This was accompanied by another
Hobbesean-Lockean principle: that the purpose of government is to main-
tain order. These two principles undergirded Salvadorian state and soci-
ety until 1979; they were also the root, if not the proximate cause, of a
series of peasant revolts that occurred in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, the 1932 uprising, and the contemporary revolutionary move-
ment that began in 1970.

101
102 Tommie Sue Montgomery

The Course of Revolution

Four themes shape this chapter. The first is that, since 1970, El Sal-
vador's revolutionary movement has evolved through a series of five
phases into a sixth that began with the signing of the peace treaty.
The second theme is that the Left in El Salvador encompasses more
than the constituent organizations of the FMLN. It also includes labor
unions, political parties, church-related institutions, and grass-roots orga-
nizations that are not affiliated with the FMLN but that do share with it
important components of a common vision of a just society and political
democracy
The third theme is that the FMLN as a coalition and its constituent
organizations have gone through a slow and sometimes painful process
in the past two decades of political maturation, becoming progressively
less ideological and more pragmatic along the way without sacrificing
their fundamental principles of social and economic justice for all Salva-
dorians. While becoming militarily the most successful leftist movement
in Latin America, they have also become politicians capable of compromising
with each other and meeting and talking rationally with heads of state and,
more significant, with Salvadorian military and political opponents.
The fourth theme is reflected in a comment that Commander Roberto
Canas made in early 1980: "The armed struggle is necessarily a part of the
struggle not because we would have chosen that path but because there is
no other way to wrest political and economic power from the dominant
forces and change the structures to a more just and humane system." 1

I will argue, by way of conclusion, that while the FMLN has not "wrested

political and economic power from the dominant forces," Cartas was
correct on the fundamentals: without the armed struggle, despite its
extremely high cost, none of the FMLN's socioeconomic and political
goals would have been achieved. The armed struggle forced the domi-
nant forces, especially the economic elite, to change their attitudes
and behavior. 2
The history of the Left in El Salvador over the past two decades breaks
down into six periods:

• Mass Struggle, 1970-March 1980. During this decade the emphasis

was on building broad, mass-based organizations and on political
education. Some attention was given to training a military arm, but
the accent was on political work. Many young people, in particular,
gave up on traditional politics after the army refused to honor presi-
dential election results in 1972 that would have brought a civilian,
Jose Napoleon Duarte, to office.
• Transition, March 1980-January 1981. This period begins with the
assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero on March 24 and ends
 Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 103

with the FMLN's first offensive, initiated on January 11. During

these months, as repression increased, the mass organizations were
dismantled and resources were shifted to building a revolutionary
army.
• Armed Struggle, January 1981-1984. During these three years the em-
phasis was on military expansion and training. The FMLN, which
was concentrated in five departments, organized its forces in units of
as many as a thousand combatants and kept the government army
off balance and on the run. In zones under the FMLN's political con-
3

trol campesinos were organized politically and provided the food,

clothing, medicine, information, and other forms of support neces-
sary to sustain a guerrilla army.
• Armed and Political Struggle, 1984-1988. In 1983 the United States sup-
plied enough air power and armaments to carry out an unrelenting
air war against the FMLN and the zones in which its civilian sup-
porters lived. This led to a change in strategy, in which the FMLN
broke down its large units into small, self-sufficient platoons of about
combatants even as
fifteen it expanded operations into all fourteen
departments.

Meanwhile, a series of U.S.-sponsored elections, beginning with the

election of a Constituent Assembly in 1982 and followed by presidential
contests in 1984, had the unanticipated effect of opening political space
that had been closed by the massive repression of the early 1980s.
Although repression did not end, it diminished significantly, and unions,
cooperatives, and new grass-roots organizations waded, then plunged
into the new political waters, much to the chagrin of the government, the
military, and the U.S. embassy, which hastened to paint them as FMLN
" fronts " and to create parallel organizations to siphon off their support. In
addition, Center-Left political parties, which had formed a political alli-
ance with the FMLN in 1980, began sending members back to El Salvador
in 1985 and all of their leaders by late 1987.

• Negotiating Struggle, 1989-1991. The FMLN opened this phase in

January 1989 with an audacious offer to participate in the presi-
dential election, scheduled for March, if it were postponed until Sep-
tember. The offer was rejected, and the candidate of the Alianza Re-
publicana Nacionalista (Nationalist Republican Alliance ARENA), —
Alfredo Cristiani, was elected to succeed the Christian Democrat
Duarte. In the spring FMLN Commander Joaquin Villalobos pub-
lished a thoughtful and largely nonideological analysis of the Salva-
dorian situation in Foreign Policy4 that was widely interpreted as a
message to the new Bush administration that the FMLN was reason-
 —

104 Tommie Sue Montgomery

able and seriously interested in a negotiated settlement. The FMLN

sent Cristiani a message proposing talks, and the new president, in
his inaugural address, pledged to seek negotiations with the rebels.
This was the beginning of a difficult process that took place in the
war that ended only with the formal cease-fire and
context of a civil
was punctuated by the entry of the United Nations, the largest
that
FMLN military offensive of the war, and growing international pres-
sure for a negotiated settlement.
• Political The formal cease-fire and all
Struggle by Other Means, 1992-
the agreements leading up
did not spell the end of the revolu-
to it

tionary movement in El Salvador. It did signify standing Clausewitz

on his head; if war is the continuation of politics by other means,
which was certainly the case in El Salvador for a decade, the peace
agreement signified the formal declaration of intent by the FMLN to
pursue its struggle to transform Salvadorian society by other, politi-
cal It would be an irony of history
means, including electoral politics.
if some of the FMLN's whose disillusionment with tradi-
leaders,
tional politics following the stolen 1972 election caused them to take
up arms, became candidates for public office in 1994. They would,
however, be competing in a vastly different electoral setting, with the
army in its barracks and a radically different set of electoral rules
both political victories for the FMLN in the peace negotiations.

Antecedents to War
Until 1932, peasant revolts in El Salvador had a nonideological char-
acter: they were generally spontaneous uprisings against perceived
injustices. The only organized revolt, in 1831, lasted a year, until its leader,
Anastacio Aquino, was captured and beheaded and his head displayed as
a warning to other would-be rebels. In the 1980s the FMLN would name
one of its four war zones, the Central Front, for Aquino. The January 1932
uprising, however, had a decidedly ideological cast. The Left formally
emerged with the founding of the Partido Comunista de El Salvador
—
(Communist Party of El Salvador PCS) during a period of political liber-
alization in the late 1920s. Founded by Augustin Farabundo Marti, the
educated son of a mestizo landowner, the party focused its early organiz-
ing in urban areas and in the southwest, where there was still a sizable
indigenous population. Miguel Saenz, a physician who joined the PCS
as a teenager, has related how, when Jose Feliciano Ama, an indigenous
cacique or leader, joined the party he held up his card and said, "This
card represents membership for all my people/' The party leaders
were appalled and tried to disabuse Ama of the idea of collective mem-
bership, but Ama was adamant; his card would represent membership for
—
everyone or no one. 5 Ama kept his card and became the most prominent
 Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 105

indigenous leader of the 1932 revolt, for which he was subsequently

hanged in the plaza of Izalco, Sonsonate, the center of the failed rebellion.
The FMLN's Western Front would be named for him. After the brutal
suppression of the revolt the party was proscribed and went under-
ground for the next forty years, its members being subjected to severe
repression. 6 Nonetheless, every significant popular protest against the
military governments from 1944 on included PCS militants.
In the 1960s a debate arose over whether the time had once again
come for armed struggle. Those who followed Moscow's recommended
policy of entering mainstream politics created the Union Democratica
—
Nacionalista (Nationalist Democratic Union UDN) in 1967, a legal
political party. Salvador Cayetano Carpio, the PCS secretary-general,
argued, however, that traditional political parties and organizations
" denied the possibility and necessity of the Salvadorean people under-
taking the process of revolutionary armed struggle. ... By the end of 1969
it was very clear that El Salvador, its people, needed an overall strategy in

which all methods of struggle could be used and combined in dialectical

7
fashion." The party itself acknowledged in a January 1982 declaration
that "tendencies appeared that, evaluating the [1932] insurrection only on
the basis of its results, renounced the armed struggle thereby giving birth
to and perpetuating reformist positions." 8 In 1986 Secretary-General
Schafik Handal explained that elections were not "to achieve power" but
"an instrument for placing our program at the center of political debate,
and ... for raising the political consciousness of the masses of workers
arriving from the countryside to work in the factories. 9 Not until 1977,
following a massacre in a downtown plaza in the wake of yet another
stolen presidential election, did the PCS adopt a policy of armed struggle
and begin training militia in the Salvadorian countryside. By 1979 these
guerrillas had become the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion (Armed Forces
of Liberation —FAL).
The Rise of the Contemporary Revolutionary Organizations
As a result of this position, the Communist partyCarpio and his
split;

faction went underground and began organizing the contemporary

first

revolutionary organization, the Fuerzas Populares de Liberacion (Popular

—
Forces of Liberation FPL). Meanwhile, the PCS, behind its legal front,
the UDN, participated in elections between 1968 and 1977. In 1972
it joined a three-party coalition that ran Christian Democrat Duarte

for president —
an election denied him by the army, which refused to give
up power. Three other revolutionary organizations appeared in the 1970s,
each with some previous link to the PCS: the Ejercito Revolucionario del
—
Pueblo (Revolutionary Army of the People ERP) in 1972, the Resistencia
—
Nacional (National Resistance RN) in 1975, and the Partido Revolucio-
106 Tommie Sue Montgomery

nario de Trabajadores Centroamericanos (Revolutionary Party of Central

American Workers— PRTC) in 1976.
The ERP drew its membership from Young Communists, youth from
the Christian Democratic party (PDC), and the radicalized sector of
—
the Salvadorian bourgeoisie even, in a few instances, the oligarchy In
contrast to Carpio, who was fifty when he resigned from the PCS, most
members of the ERP were teenagers or in their early twenties. The two
organizations shared, however, a militaristic conception of the revolu-
tionary struggle. The ERP adhered to that line, consistently placing less
emphasis on while the FPL soon
political organization of the grass roots,
came to recognize the importance of an organized mass base.
Within the ERP, two tendencies struggled for supremacy. One was
the militaristic tendency just described. The other, the RN, believed that
political as well as military action was required. By 1975 ERP hardliners
had decided that the RN's principal theoretician, the poet Roque Dalton,
was not only politically incorrect but a traitor. A kangaroo court tried and
convicted him in absentia, condemned him to death, and subsequently
assassinated him. The RN split from the ERP, which became an outcast
among the other revolutionary groups for the next five years.
The founders of the PRTC came out of the ERP as well as unions under
PCS influence. In contrast to the other four organizations, whose focus
was national, the PRTC had conception of revolutionary
a regional
struggle and, at the time of its founding in January 1976, was part of
a pan-Central American party. In late 1980, however, after the FMLN
was formed, the party broke up into its national units while retaining
intraregional ties.

The Development and Demise of the Mass Movement

About 1970, members of the RN faction began working around Suchi-
toto, forty-five kilometers northeast of the capital, among peasants who
had been dispossessed of their lands by construction of the Cerron
Grande hydroelectric dam. This work coincided with the pastoral work of
two young Salvadorian priests, Jose and Higinio Alas, who had been sent
to Suchitoto in 1968. Both Alas brothers had been strongly influenced by
7
the Second Vatican Council and, more immediately, the Catholic Bishops
Conference at Medellin, Colombia, in 1968. They set out to organize
Christian base communities among their parishioners, to conduct bible
study classes, and to encourage people to reflect on the biblical message in
the context of their own lives. One former parishioner told Charles
Clements in the early 1980s that when, one day, Father Jose asked his
opinion about some issue, it was the first time anyone other than another
peasant had ever done so. 10 The pastoral work, in short, gave people
 Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 107

experience in organizing; selecting leadership from among themselves,

receiving training in catechism, leadership, health care, and agricultural
techniques —in sum, beginning to take responsibility for their lives both
collectively and individually.
The pastoral work of the Alas brothers and others awakened thou-
sands of Salvadorian peasants and urban poor from the slumber of
fatalism into which the traditional, sacramental church had lulled them;
a process of "consciousness raising" occurred, and that process coincided
with the founding of the modern revolutionary organizations. It became
clear to the people of Suchitoto that their church organizations were both
inadequate and inappropriate to press eminently political demands
concerning land and agrarian reform. Therefore, in April 1974, a group of
people from the parish of Suchitoto, accompanied by Jose Alas and joined
by members of teacher and student organizations, labor unions, and
people allied with the RN and the FPL, met in the Basilica of the Sacred
Heart in San Salvador and formally organized the first of five "popular
—
organizations" to emerge in the 1970s the Frente de Accion Popular
Unificado (United Popular Action Front—FAPU). While the FAPU was
the only popular organization to emerge directly from the nexus between
radical Christianity and revolutionary politics, one cannot explain the
rapid expansion of the popular organizations during the 1970s without
acknowledging the evangelizing role of the church after 1968.
The modern Left in El Salvador is heir not only to a tradition of revolt
against economic oppression and political repression dating back to
the colonial period and to an organizational tradition represented in the
Communist party but also to a tradition of urban public demonstrations
against authoritarianism and dictatorship dating back to 1944, when a
series of massive, public demonstrations led to the resignation and exile
of Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez. 11 Periodically throughout the next
three decades, the political frustration level of students, teachers, and
unionists boiled over and into the streets. (Peasants were notably absent,
any organization thereof having been proscribed after the abortive 1932
uprising.) Predictably, demonstrations were met with the full, repressive
apparatus of the state. Miguel Saenz, who as a high school and university
student in the 1950s and 1960s participated in many demonstrations, has
described how they learned, experience by experience, how to confront
the security forces. 12
By 1979 each of the five "political-military organizations," as they
described themselves, had an affiliated popular organization. The first of
these organizations, the FAPU, grew rapidly, but political, strategic, and
tacticalsquabbles grew as well. The main political debate was over how to
view the struggle: Should it be in terms of a "prolonged war," as Carpio
insisted, or in terms of short-, medium-, and long-term stages? The most
108 Tommie Sue Montgomery

significant differencewas over who should be the primary focus of their

organizing efforts. The RN faction favored an emphasis on trade unions;
the FPL believed the focus should be on the peasantry. By July 1975 the
latter had split off and created the second popular organization, the
Bloque Popular Revolucionario (Popular Revolutionary Bloc —BPR).
By 1979 the BPR was the largest mass organization in El Salvador, with
sixty thousand members and nine affiliated organizations. The FAPU's
membership was estimated at half that, with much of its leadership more
middle-class and union-based. The FAPU, meanwhile, had acquired a
reputation for incisive political analysis and for its theoretical publica-
tions. It had great influence on the development of a unified program in
1980. Most significant, its insistence on revolution and democracy and on
forming alliances with progressive sectors of the churches, political
parties, labor unions, and private sector became the official policy of
the FMLN.
The same tactics that had been honed through three decades were
increasingly —
employed in the 1970s and met by increasingly virulent
repression. The Catholic church, which had become more and more iden-
tified with the Left in the eyes of the extreme Right, was not spared; Jose
Alas was kidnapped and left for dead in 1970; a priest was killed in 1972
and two more in 1977; by 1990 sixteen priests, an archbishop, and at least
four nuns had been murdered by security forces or death squads. 13 Hun-
dreds of catechists (lay teachers) had also died or disappeared. It was the
popular organizations, however, that bore the brunt of the repression. In
May 1979 the national police opened fire on unarmed BPR members who
had occupied the San Salvador cathedral and three embassies to demand
the release of five political prisoners. Twenty-three died. In late October,
lessthan two weeks after a coup d'etat by progressive young officers
overthrew General Carlos Humberto Romero, the national guard fired on
another demonstration, killing twenty-one.
The Left also employed tactics that were clear violations of human
rights; apart from the occupation of embassies and public buildings in
which people were held hostage, most notorious was the kidnapping of
ten Salvadorian oligarchs and several foreign businessmen for at least
sixty-five million dollars in ransom. Roberto Canas explained that the
kidnappings were viewed as a means of "recouping some of this wealth
for the people, to shape and develop the political struggle for their libera-
tion/' He denied that all the money was used to buy arms; "much of it,"
he said, "has been used to build the popular organizations." 14 Given the
size of the organizations (at least two hundred thousand by late 1979), the
quantity of flyers and pamphlets they produced, and the number of
people working full-time in the movement with no visible source of in-
come, this is not difficult to believe. 15
 Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 109

Women were incorporated into both political-military and popular

organizations very early and had become significant by the late 1970s. 16
They assumed the same responsibilities as the men in political and
military activities, including combat, diplomacy, communications, public
relations, education, cooking, health, and, for women at home, caring for
the children of combatants. At the military level women commonly
FPL and the FAL had
composed 20-30 percent of military units; both the
units composed entirely of women; over a dozen rose to the rank of
commander and, by 1988, composed 20 percent of the FMLN's national
leadership. In 1991 Commander Ana Guadalupe Martinez was one of the
FMLN's three top negotiators in the peace talks.
Despite El Salvador's being an extremely sexist society, most guerrilla
women say that they encountered little machismo among their com-
paneros. While some women suffered the breakup of a relationship or
marriage because their mates or spouses did not share their political
commitments, many others found enduring relationships within the
movement or saw their husbands evolved along with them, remaining
supportive of their political activities and often learning to do nontradi-
17
tional (for men) tasks such as cooking and taking care of the children. By
the early 1980s, the male leaders recognized that many women were
mired in support roles and not working to their full potential. They began
pushing for women to take on more responsibilities, and it became formal
policy for the FMLN to enroll, train, and change the responsibilities of
women and men. In the field, for example, men were forced to work in the
kitchens. By the late 1980s perhaps half of all the radio operators with
FMLN units were women, whereas in the early 1980s very few were.
Attitudes toward women among the Salvadorian Left are radically
different from those of the larger society. Charles Clements has said that,
in his year on the Guazapa Front, north of San Salvador, he never
observed a case of wife or child abuse. Rape was virtually unknown in
—
zones under FMLN control except when the army moved through; it
was a crime punishable by death, a punishment that was meted out once
or twice in the early 1980s. A different attitude toward women also ex-
tends to the democratic Left; an employee in the Legislative Assembly
confided that sexual harassment is rampant among the deputies except —
for the proleftist ones who won a total of nine seats in the Assembly in the
March 1991 elections. 18
By late 1979 there were demonstrations in the streets of San Salvador at
least once a week; occupations of various sites occurred on an almost
weekly basis; the cathedral was occupied more often than not, forcing
Archbishop Romero to hold Sunday mass in the Basilica of the Sacred
Heart. In this period the five organizations, which had been characterized
by nothing so much as their sectarianism, began serious talks about unity
110 Tommie Sue Montgomery

One lesson they had learned from the triumph of the Sandinista Revolu-
tion in Nicaragua the previous July was the need to unify. In late Decem-
ber the FPL, RN, and the PCS quietly formed the Direction Revoluciona-
ria Unificada (Unified Revolutionary Directorate —
DRU); two weeks
later all five popular organizations called a press conference and an-
nounced the creation of the Coordinadora Revolucionaria de las Masas
—
(Revolutionary Coordination of the Masses CRM). On January 22, 1980,
the forty-eighth anniversary of the 1932 insurrection, the CRM put
the largest demonstration in Salvadorian history on the streets of San
Salvador; at least two hundred thousand people joined in a march charac-
terized —
by extraordinary order, discipline, and patience until security
forces and paramilitary groups began firing, simultaneously, on the
marchers from fourteen public and private buildings in the city center.
The march, in historical perspective, was the culmination of the mass
struggle. Repression increased almost weekly thereafter, and the number
killed would reach almost twelve thousand in 1980 and over sixteen thou-
sand in 1981. The assassination of Archbishop Romero brought the era of
mass struggle to a close. During the summer the organizations shifted to a
strategy of general strikes, with diminishing success. Again repression
was part of the problem; poor planning was another factor.
In March the Christian Democratic party split, following the assas-
sination of Attorney General Mario Zamora. Led by his brother,
Ruben, former Christian Democrats soon organized the Movimiento
Popular Social Cristiano (Popular Social Christian Movement MPSC) —
and helped found the Frente Democratico Revolucionario (Democratic
—
Revolutionary Front FDR), an alliance of popular organizations, parties,
unions, professionals, and small business people. In May the DRU voted
to include the PRTC and the ERP In October the five political-military
organizations founded the FMLN and began to prepare for their first
military offensive. The FMLN's strategic alliance with the FDR was a
concrete recognition of the need to reach out to broader sectors of
Salvadorian society and not remain a narrowly based Marxist-Leninist
revolutionary movement.

The Long Road to Peace

On January 11, 1980, after the five popular organizations announced
the formation of the CRM, they issued a document that described the
"profound economic and political crisis" in El Salvador and argued that
"the revolutionary alternative is the only solution to the crisis." 19 The
"revolutionary alternative," however, as published in late February by the
CRM, included a series of proposals all of which would be acted on in the
1980s or directly addressed in the final peace agreements in 1991. It was
 Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 111

documents that would appear over the next eleven

the first in a series of
years, each of which demonstrated increasing flexibility and pragmatism.
In an effort to steal the Left's thunder, the United States pushed the
Salvadorian government to implement most of the structural changes
for which the CRM had called just a week earlier, in particular bank
and external commerce nationalization and agrarian reform. After the
ARENA gained control of the Constituent Assembly in 1982, it sought to
reimpose the Lockean principles of private property with which coopera-
tives are inconsistent and succeeded to a great extent in gutting the
agrarian reform by denying technical assistance and credits to the co-ops
and holding up paperwork for titling the farms. Nonetheless, in late 1991
there were four hundred cooperatives, though many were deeply in debt;
land reform covered 13 percent of the national territory; and 23 percent
of agrarian land was in the reform sector. Furthermore, the FMLN had
extracted a commitment at the peace table to allow all tenants of land in
conflict zones to remain on their land. This was critical because in many
areas government supporters had abandoned their lands in the late 1970s
or early 1980s, never to return. The FMLN was concerned that they would
return after a peace accord, reclaim their lands, and force the people who
had been working it to leave or once again become virtual serfs.
On no issue was the FMLN's policy evolution greater than with regard
to the future of the armed forces. The February document called for a
"Popular Army, incorporating those elements of the troops, noncommis-
sioned officers, officers, and commanders of the present Army who
maintain 'clean conduct/ reject foreign intervention, and support the
. . .

7
liberating struggle of our people/ In August 1981, the FMLN's General
Command spoke of "the integration of the Popular Revolutionary Army
and the and democratic sector of the army ... in an army of
patriotic
a new type/' Two months later, in a document read by Nicaraguan
President Daniel Ortega before the UN General Assembly, the FMLN said,
"The . Armed Forces [will be restructured], based on the officers and
. .

troops of the present Army who are not responsible for crimes and geno-
cide against the people, and .the commanders and troops of the FMLN/' 20
. .

The FMLN's growing flexibility was attributable to three factors:

increasing military capability and confidence, recognition by France and
Mexico August 1981 of the FDR/ FMLN as a "representative political
in
force," and a growing unwillingness to prolong the war unnecessarily by
holding out for an absolute military victory. By 1991, the FMLN position
regarding the armed forces bore little resemblance to that of a decade
earlier. For most of the 1980s, however, the Left's calls for negotiations
were dismissed or ignored, the result of a U.S.-imposed policy of seeking
the FMLN's military defeat and civilian governments incapable of defy-
ing the Reagan administration.
112 Tommie Sue Montgomery

U.S. policy and an ARENA-controlled Constituent Assembly ensured

that no negotiations would take place between 1982 and 1984. Meanwhile,
the FMLN passed through its worst internal crisis since the murder of
Roque Dalton. In April Carpio, who had become increasingly dogmatic
—
and intransigent on two critical issues unity and negotiations and —
whose position against both had lost in an FPL congress earlier in the year,
ordered the murder of the FPUs second-in-command, Melida Anaya
Montes, who had led the winning faction at the congress. When the
Nicaraguan government confronted Carpio with the evidence of his own
perfidy, he committed suicide. His demise removed the single greatest
obstacle to further unity of the FMLN, and within a month greater coordi-
nation between the FPL and the other four organizations was evident.
For most of the 1980s the FMLN did not learn how to respond in a
politically appropriate manner to the elections that the United States had
engineered as a means of giving El Salvador a "legitimate, moderate and
reformist" government. 21 Its various methods of disrupting and discrediting
the elections included attacks on military targets in towns and villages on
election day, cutting off the power to the capital, collecting the identity cards
required to vote, destroying ballots and ballot boxes, and calling national
transportation strikes. Meanwhile, in 1984 Christian Democrat presidential
candidate Jose Napoleon Duarte ran on a platform of peace negotiations and
economic reforms. Once Duarte had defeated the ARENA'S extreme-Right
candidate Roberto D'Aubuisson, the Left took a first step toward recognizing
the new government as legitimate when in May 1984 the FDR acknowledged
Duarte as a "valid speaker" in any negotiations and the FMLN put forth
another proposal for a "provisional government of broad participation." At
this point, however, the Left still did not accept the 1983 constitution as legit-
imate and argued that the 1984 elections were the result of a "dark, anti-
democratic process" and did not have a "national character" because only
had voted. 22
two-thirds of the country
The most significant development to come out of the early years
of Duarte's rule was the permanent return to El Salvador of FDR
leaders Ruben Zamora and Guillermo Manuel Ungo, secretary-general of
the small, social democratic Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario
(National Revolutionary Movement —MNR), after seven years in exile.
On November 7, 1987, Ungo, Zamora, and Mario Reni Roldan, head of the
new —
Partido Social Democratico (Social Democratic party PSD) met in
Guatemala and founded the Convergencia Democratica (Democratic
—
Convergence CD). They decided not to participate in the 1988 municipal
elections, but in September 1988 the CD published a "Programmatic
Platform" in which it defined "four great problems facing the country:
civil war; loss of national sovereignty; absence of real democracy; and the
extreme poverty of the Salvadorian people." 23 Some observers quickly inter-
 Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 113

preted the decision to return and the creation of the Convergencia as the
with the FMLN. In fact, the FDR and FMLN had signed a pact
result of a split
in November 1986 in which they agreed that, although they would seek to
strengthen their alliance, in certain areas each was autonomous. The decision
to return, the creation of the CD, and, ultimately, its decision to participate in
the 1989 and 1991 elections were all manifestations of this autonomy.
The decision of the Convergencia to participate in the 1989 presidential
campaign drew considerable attention; it was, after all, the first time since
1977 that parties on the Left had participated in electoral politics. But the
FMLN effectively derailed the campaign for a month with an audacious
proposal, published on January 23, 1989, that the elections be postponed
for six months, the military be kept in their barracks on election day, the
CD be placed on the Central Election Council, and the possibility of
voting in absentia be provided to Salvadorians living abroad, in return for
which the rebels would agree to participate in the elections and to honor
the outcome. According to Saenz, the FMLN had gone through a long
process of analysis of and the national reality during the previous
itself

fall and had concluded that it had broad support that would be converted
24
into votes were it to participate in elections.
In the end the FMLN's proposal was rejected; the elections went
forward as originally planned, and the FMLN did its best to disrupt them
with a blackout of the capital and a national transportation stoppage, and
the ARENA candidate, the political neophyte Alfredo Cristiani, a relative
moderate, won The CD, with Guillermo Ungo as its
in the first round.
presidential candidate and Mario Roldan for vice president, won 3.8
percent of the vote. But the FMLN had changed the political landscape of
El Salvador, revived itself as a force with which other actors had to
contend, and put peace back at the top of the national agenda. 25
Two days after the March 19 election President-elect Cristiani called for
immediate peace talks with the FMLN. The FMLN responded on April 6
in Washington with a new seven-point proposal:

• Negotiations with the participation of the three branches of govern-

ment, the armed forces, and political parties.
• A cease-fire between the FMLN and the armed forces.
• General elections for president, mayors, and a Constituent Assembly.
• Discussions leading to measures that addressed the structural causes
—
of the war that is, socioeconomic reforms.
• FMLN participation in the elections under its own flag or with those
who might wish to form coalitions with it.
• Reduction of the armed forces and judicial proceedings against those
responsible for the repression.
• Cutting of military aid and withdrawal of U.S. advisors. 26
1 14 Tommie Sue Montgomery

In his inaugural speech on June 1, Cristiani unveiled a five-point plan

for negotiations and, in contrast to Duarte, did not call for the FMLN's
surrender. This was a popular position; on May 30 the Central American
University published the results of a national poll showing that 76 percent
of respondents believed that the new government "should open a dia-
logue and negotiate with the FMLN." 27
The Central American presidents met in Tela, Honduras, in August,
and soon thereafter the FMLN proposed "to initiate as soon as possible a
definitive process of negotiation to put an end to the war and place all our
28
forces at the service of constructing a true democracy." These develop-
ments were the result of several factors: pressures on the FMLN and the
government from Latin American leaders and others to negotiate; the
escalating social and economic costs of the war; a U.S. administration no
longer committed to military victory over the insurgents; a private sector
that increasingly recognized the impossibility of economic recovery
without an end to the war; and recognition that in the 1991 elections the
ARENA could suffer the fate of the PDC in 1988 and lose its majority in
the assembly and town halls.
A meeting between the two sides was scheduled for November 20,
1989, in Caracas, but, on October 31 a noontime bomb at the headquarters
of the Federacion National Sindical de Trabajadores Salvadorenos
(National Union Federation of Salvadorian Workers FENASTRAS), —
El Salvador's largest and most militant trade union federation, killed
its secretary-general, Febe Elizabeth Velasquez, and nine others and

wounded thirty. That assault had been preceded by several bombings,

including bombings of Ruben Zamora's home and the Lutheran church
offices, and a grenade attack on the National University. It was also
preceded by increasingly frequent statements from the armed forces and
the U.S. embassy indicating that they had come to believe their own
propaganda: that the FMLN was militarily and politically finished. The
FENASTRAS bombing, however, was the last straw; it convinced the
FMLN that the government was not serious about negotiations. "We are
faced with a new situation that forces us to defend the people's struggle,"
an FMLN communique said. "We had become more flexible in our
positions in an effort to open real negotiations, but the current unaccept-
able situation reaffirms that we cannot abandon the armed struggle. We
reaffirm before the nation that we will never lay down our guns in the face
of state terrorism." 29 President Cristiani went on national radio, asked for
calm, and promised a full investigation. Nothing happened. Two weeks
later the FMLN opened a countrywide offensive, the largest of the war,
and brought the war to San Salvador. When the army was unable to
mount a counteroffensive in the streets of the capital the air force took
over, bombing working-class and poor neighborhoods on the periphery of
 a

Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 115

the city from which the offensive had been launched. (When, on two occa-
sions, the rebels moved into the wealthy Escalon neighborhood, neither
soldiers nor air force did anything, and the guerrillas had the run of the
area as long as they chose to stay —much to the chagrin of its inhabitants.)
The FMLN shook the Salvadorian government, army, and oligarchy
to its foundations. The army was confronted by insurgents who ran it

in circles for days. Unable to respond in meaningful military form, a

right-wing cabal of senior officers decided to cut off what they regarded
as the head of the monster: the Jesuit scholars of the Central American
University, who for twenty-three years had been calling for social and
economic justice and an end to militarism in El Salvador. U.S.-trained
units of the Atlacatl Batallion entered the Jesuits' residence on the campus
at two in the morning and shot them, including the rector and
six of
vice-rector, as well as their housekeeper and her daughter. Not until the
fall of 1991, under continual international pressure, including pressure

from the U.S. Congress, were three officers and five soldiers tried for the
crimes. Two officers were convicted; the rest were acquitted. 30
Although some guerrillas in the streets told journalists that they
were fighting to overthrow the government, the FMLN's official position,
and the one expressed privately, was "unconditionally committed to
a political-negotiated settlement."
31
In early 1990 the UN secretary-
general's office, at the behest of both sides, initiated several months of
shuttle diplomacy that led, on April 4, to an agreement between govern-
ment and FMLN to begin UN-mediated negotiations. In May they met in
Caracas and issued a joint statement on the schedule and agenda of future
talks. They also agreed to address political issues prior to a cease-fire —
—
concession by the government and aimed to achieve agreement on this
by September. In June talks were held in Mexico and proposals regarding
the future of the armed forces exchanged.
When they met in San Jose in July the government submitted a hardline
proposal concerning the armed forces: they would regulate themselves
and set the limits of their functions; abusive units would be transferred,
intact, within the system. The fundamental difficulty was that the govern-
ment viewed the problem within the military as a matter of criminal and
corrupt individuals whereas the FMLN defined it as systemic.
A significant breakthrough came, however, with a partial human
rights accord and an agreement to UN monitor human rights.
have the
This led, in July 1991, to the creation of the first— in history—UN human
rights observerteam to monitor the peace process at the end of a civil war;
150 observers from twenty-nine countries spread out across El Salvador
to deal with human rights violations on both sides as they occurred.
In August 1990 the FMLN, seeking to drive home the point that the root
of the problem was militarism, submitted a proposal for the total demili-
226 Tommie Sue Montgomery

tarization of Salvadorian society, leading, through a series of preliminary

steps, to the dismantling of both armies. The UN submitted a secret pro-
posal that, when it became public in November, was widely seen as closer
to the FMLN's position than to that of the government. The key elements
included disbanding two of the three security forces and placing the third
under civilian control, eliminating the armed forces intelligence branch,
and establishing an independent commission to investigate and dismiss
military officers guilty of human rights abuses. When the stalemate on
this issue continued into September, the UN negotiator, Alvaro de Soto,
convened a series of secret meetings separately and together as well as
with other social forces in the country. One of the agreements that came
out of these meetings was for the creation of a new, civilian police force,
for which both honest, competent officers of the current national police
and FMLN guerrillas who qualified would be retrained. 32
By December 1990 the two sides were seen as close to signing a cease-
fire agreement. In early January 1991 de Soto brought them together to

discuss a confidential UN
proposal on the future of the armed forces.
Then the Bush administration, outraged over the cold-blooded murder of
two U.S. servicemen by a guerrilla platoon in mid-January, restored 42.5
million dollars in military assistance thathad been withheld by Congress
and leaked its displeasure with de Soto to the press, accusing him of being
too easy on the FMLN. When talks resumed the next day, February 2, they
ended in a deadlock that continued through the March 10 assembly and
mayoral elections. As had happened to the PDC in 1988, the ARENA lost
its majority in the assembly and a significant number of mayoralties. Even

more significant, however, was the performance of the Convergencia,

which increased its vote total to almost 13 percent and won eight seats in
the Legislative Assembly. Ruben Zamora was elected one of the assembly
vice presidents.
Following the election, the FMLN submitted a new proposal that
was introduced by Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro to foreign
ministers of the European Community participating in a Central Ameri-
can summit meeting in Managua. The same day, Secretary of State James
Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh expressed
both countries' support for the negotiations and the UN role in them.
April brought a marathon twenty-four-day negotiating session that
produced the most significant military, political, electoral, and judicial
agreements since the negotiations began. These agreements achieved in
large measure what the Left had been fighting for:

• Under the 1983 constitution the armed forces were its " guarantor";

now they would be responsible for defending the territorial integrity

of the country. They could be used to maintain domestic order by
order of the president, with the possibility of veto by the assembly.
 a

Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 117

• The three security forces would be dissolved and a new national civil
police created under civilian control.
• The armed forces intelligence directorate would be eliminated and
replaced by a state intelligence agency under the president.
• The armed forces' ability to try civilians as well as military personnel
and to determine what cases fell under its jurisdiction would be
curtailed; it would have jurisdiction only over cases of a strictly
military nature.
• The existing Central Election Council, withmembership limited to
would be replaced by
the top three parties in the preceding election,
a Supreme Electoral Tribunal whose membership was nonpartisan.
• Under judicial reform, the Supreme Court, attorney general, chief
prosecutor, and head of a new national office of human rights would
be elected by a two-thirds vote of the assembly.
• A three-member Truth Commission, appointed by the UN secretary-
general, with wide authority to investigate the most serious crimes of
the war years, would be created.

Talks continued through the summer inMexico with some advances

and a few setbacks. With awareness that a agreement was
final cease-fire
in sight, however, the extreme Right in El Salvador began to react in typi-
cal fashion: in July the Frente Anticomunista Salvadoreno (Salvadorian
—
Anticommunist Front FAS), issued a threat against supporters of the
UN observers, the decade-old Crusade for Peace and Work published a
thinly veiled threat against the observers in local papers, and death squad
threats and murders slowly increased.
In late August UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar invited
President Cristiani and other top officials to New York for "consultations"
on how to "unblock and breath new life" into the negotiations. When talks
resumed in New York on September 16, things began to move, in large
part because the Salvadorian government was under enormous pressure
from Spain, the major Latin American countries, and the United States to
reach an agreement. On September 26 the two sides signed an accord that
went beyond Mexico. The FMLN, for its part, dropped its long insistence
that it be incorporated into the army At the same time, the agreement
included incorporation of FMLN forces into the new civilian police —
much more significant victory, because the army, under the accords, will
sit in its barracks while the police carry out the functions of a regular

police force on a daily basis across the country.

After two more rounds of talks in Mexico in November, the negotia-
tions returned to the United Nations on December 16. The remaining
issues, according to Roberto Canas, were important: details concerning
the civil police, reduction of the army, socioeconomic issues, and
the cease-fire itself were all on the agenda. 33 For two weeks the talks
118 Tomtnie Sue Montgomery

proceeded The government's delegation, with no author-

at a snail's pace.
ity to make decisions, had
to consult on every detail by fax or phone.
Then, under pressure from the UN and the United States, Cristiani flew to
New York on December 28. On December 29 the Bush administration sent
six senior State Department officials and diplomats to the UN to talk with
Cristiani. The talks went into round-the-clock sessions, and the political
will was found to reach agreement just minutes before New Year's Day,
1992, and the expiration of Perez de Cuellar's term. Discussions to iron
out final details continued until January 11, 1992, and then both sides
returned to Mexico to sign the accords on January 16.

Conclusions
The 1994 elections would be the first public test that the FMLN would
face. Inan election that happens only once every fifteen years, the presi-
dency, Legislative Assembly, and mayors' positions are all open. Whereas
the Convergencia had two electoral experiences under its belt and had
learned how to conduct an electoral campaign, the FMLN not only had to
reorganize itself as a political party but had to learn how to select candi-
dates, make stump speeches, debate opponents, speak in "sound bites,"
and write and distribute campaign materials.
A frequent topic of conversation in San Salvador in the fall of 1991 was
how the parties would line up in 1994. One principle was already widely
held: "Everyone against ARENA." On the Left the most likely scenario
was that the Convergencia and the FMLN would run their respective can-
didates and, at the local level, would probably not compete against each
other. This would not be difficult, since the CD had been concentrating its
organizing in urban areas and the FMLN's strength, in general, was in
rural areas. At the national level, so the favorite scenario ran, each party
would run its respective candidates for president and then unite behind
the top vote-getter on the Left for the runoff against the ARENA.
Assessments of how well the FMLN would do were mixed. The FMLN
itself had a favorable assessment of its chances to do well. A more critical

view, however, pointed to public disenchantment with its long-standing

policy of economic sabotage and suggested that it would take more than
two years for the former guerrillas to overcome that negative image. The
reality was that no one knew and only 1994, under new electoral rules and
international observation, would tell.

Regardless of the outcome, the FMLN has already achieved extra-

ordinary success, particularly given that the war ended in stalemate. Its
victories include agreements on human rights, the creation of the UN
observer team, constitutional reforms, the Truth Commission, elimination
of the security forces, creation of a new national civil police with former
 9

Armed Struggle and Resistance in El Salvador 1 1

FMLN included, involvement in the education and training of the police,

protection of land tenancy in former controlled zones, conversion of itself
into a legal political party, purification and reduction of the armed forces,
and the checkmating of the army.
The Salvadorian Left, in short, ended twenty-one years of struggle
and eleven years of war with a political victory at the negotiating table.
It remained to be seen if it could consolidate and expand that victory. If

it did, it could legitimately claim that the Salvadorian revolution had

triumphed.

Notes
1. Roberto Canas, interview, San Salvador, January 1980, my translation. Canas became
the FMLN's chief spokesperson during the negotiating process.
2. A good
example of pragmatism's winning out over ideology is the National Associa-
tion of Private Enterprise,which in 1980 was controlled by men who, in the words of one,
thought it necessary to kill a hundred thousand people in order to eliminate the Left and
restore the status quo ante (privileged interview, March 1980). In January 1990, with new
leadership, it advanced the idea of "concertacion," which implies negotiating differences
toward a common end. It met four times with the FMLN outside El Salvador between May
1990 and November 1991 (interview, November 19, 1991).
3. For a discussion of the military course of the war and the U.S. role, see Tommie

Sue Montgomery, "Fighting Guerrillas: The United States and Low-Intensity Conflict in El
Salvador," New Political Science, 17-18 (Fall/Winter 1990):21-53.
4. Joaquin Villalobos, "A Democratic Revolution for El Salvador," Foreign Policy, 74
(Spring 1989):103-122.
5. Saenz recounted this anecdote in an interview in 1981. In the early 1980s he was an
FMLN diplomat, primarily in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. By the end of the decade,
however, he was a member of the Political-Diplomatic Commission, the FMLN's diplomatic
arm, based in Mexico
6. Salvador Cayetano Carpio, a baker by trade, recounts in detail the repression and meth-

ods of torture in the "reformist" regime of Colonel Oscar Osorio in the early 1950s. Carpio,
Secuestro y capucha en un pais del "mundo libre" (San Jose: EDUCA, 1979). The book was written
in 1954.
7. Mario Menendez, "Salvador Cayetano Carpio: Top Leader of the Farabundo Marti

FPL" (written for Prensa Latino), February 1980, mimeo.

8. "Declaracion del CC del PCS en ocasion del 50 aniversario del levantamiento armado

de 1932," El Salvador, January 1982, my translation.

9. Handal, interview. Handal was also a member of the FMLN's general command and, in

1990-1991, one of its top negotiators in the peace talks. Interestingly, he is from a wealthy
Palestinian immigrant family that has a variety of investments in El Salvador.
10. Charles Clements, Witness to War: An American Doctor in El Salvador (New York:
Bantam Books, 1984):101.
11. For an excellent study of the 1944 period, see Patricia Parkman, Nonviolent Insurrection
in El Salvador: The Fall of Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,
1988).
Miguel Saenz, interview, 1982.
12.

There was not always a distinction between the two. Every security force had its death
13.

squads; there were also paramilitary units in the pay of extremist members of the oligarchy.
120 Tommie Sue Montgomery

14. Roberto Canas, interview, San Salvador, January 1980.

15. I was doing research in El Salvador from early November 1979 until mid-March 1980

and had ample opportunity to observe all of this firsthand.

16. The discussion in this section is based on interviews with over two dozen women in

the FMLN, including nurses, combatants, and four of the top woman commanders, Ana
Guadalupe Martinez, Mercedes del Carmen Letona, Sonia Aguihada Carranza, and Maria
Marta Valladares (Nidia Diaz). The interviews have been conducted since 1981; interviews
with the commanders were conducted in Mexico in July 1989.
17. A wonderful example of a mutually supportive and understanding relationship is

portrayed in "Maria's Story," a documentary that aired on public television's "P.O.V." in the
summer of 1991. Maria and her husband, Jose, are campesinos; she is a political officer; he is in
charge of supplies.
18. Conversation, September 1991.
19. Revolutionary Coordination of the Masses, "Nuestras organizaciones populares
marchan hacia la unidad," January 11, 1980, mimeo.
20. "Avanza la guerra popular revolucionaria y se agrava la crisis de poder de la
dictadura," Declaration of the FMLN General Command, Boletin de Prensa, 38 (August 12,
1981), my translation.
21. These were the terms most commonly used by U.S. officials in the early 1980s to
explain and justify the elections.
22. "Declaracion del Frente Democratico Revolucionario," reprinted in Proceso, 146 (May
14-27, 1984):12-13.
23. "Plataforma Programatica de la Convergencia Democratica," September 1988, 1, my
translation.
Miguel Saenz, interview, January 13, 1989.
24.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the FMLN did not fear or worry about an ARENA
25.
victory; on the contrary, explained Miguel Saenz in a January interview, the FMLN recog-
nized that, were ARENA to win, the Left would for the first time be dealing not only with a
government in control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches but a government
that enjoyed good relations with both the private sector and the military and was less under
the thumb of the U.S. embassy. Thus, Saenz argued, whatever position the Cristiani adminis-
tration took, it would likely be clearer and more coherent than that of its predecessor,
although it still had to deal with the extreme Right. In general, time proved Saenz correct.
26. "Focus on El Salvador: Commentaries by the FDR-FMLN Political-Diplomatic Com-
mission," April 18, 1989, mimeo.
27. "Poll Says Salvadoreans Want Talks With Rebels," UPI wire story, May 30, 1989; 1,303

people were polled in all fourteen departments between May 6 and May 20.
28. "Communique," FMLN General Command, September 7, 1989, mimeo, my translation.
29. Douglas Farah, "Salvador Rebels Vow Vengeance for Killings," Washington Post,
November 2, 1989.
30. Reams have been written, in English and Spanish, about the Jesuits' case. The best,
relatively short, overview is The 'Jesuit Case': The Jury Trial (New York: Lawyers' Committee
for Human Rights, 1991).
31. "Radio Farabundo Marti Notices," November 11, 1989; privileged interviews.
The information in this section, unless otherwise cited, comes from "Highlights of
32.
El Salvador Negotiations—Chronology, April 1990-August 1991," San Francisco: U.S.-E1
Salvador Institute for Democratic Development, September 1991.
33. Telephone interview, Mexico City, December 13, 1991.
 7
The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism
James Dunkerley

At the end of the 1980s it was widely believed within the Bolivian Left
that the country's radical movement was in crisis. Moreover, despite
predictably varied views as to its precise depth, causes, and effects, this
was broadly understood to result from the failure to exploit the consider-
able opportunities that had existed for socialists in the early years of the
decade. It was, in effect, the consequence of a series of defeats at the center
—
of national political life rather than as had been the case during the
—
1970s that of a failure to break out of a peripheral existence. The ramifi-
were all the more acute because since the National
cations of this crisis
Revolution of 1952 the Left had only been fully marginalized through
coercion, and even in clandestinity it had enjoyed sufficient popular
sympathy to hold justifiable expectations of consolidating socialist
policies as a major feature of the political landscape. The fact that such
expectations had been dashed in the mid-1980s under conditions of
constitutional government was the cause of appreciable disorientation
that delayed and complicated efforts at recovery.
In order to understand the special difficulties and challenges faced by
the Bolivian Left, it is necessary to take into account the backward condi-
tions of the country's economy. In particular, the industrial working class
— —
was very small less than 10 percent of the labor force and depended
heavily upon the mine workers in the tin industry, which by the early
1980s was in sharp decline because of low ore content and weak interna-
At least one-third of urban workers did not receive a regular
tional prices.
wage but were either self-employed or engaged on a daily basis in
the informal economy. Similarly, very few rural laborers were hired, the
overwhelming majority working on small subsistence farms distributed
under the agrarian reform of 1953. Although large commercial farms pre-

222
122 James Dunkerley

dominated in the east of the country (Departments of Santa Cruz and

Beni) and employed workers on a seasonal basis, the great bulk of the
population was still concentrated in the Andean altiplano and valleys.
This sector of the population was not fully integrated into the money
economy, did not generally speak Spanish as its mother tongue, and
remained closely preoccupied with local, community affairs as an essen-
tial means of survival. Although on occasion the peasantry could consti-

tute a decisive force in national political life, it continued to be fragmented

and prey to the overtures of local caciques, conservative populists, and
military commanders.
—
The weakness of the Bolivian economy the poorest in mainland
—
America was also reflected in the small size and cautious, highly conser-
vative character of the national capitalist class. This elite had long lacked
an independent economic project that might produce more than a few
scattered enclaves of modernity and tended to concentrate its activity in
speculative operations. As a rule, it was content to accept the vagaries of
world mineral prices and to acquiesce in the stagnant rural economy. It
also depended heavily upon the military, which had held political power
almost continuously since 1964. This reliance had, in turn, provided the
Left with a strong orientation toward antimilitarism as well as a strategy
for socioeconomic change based on the strategic mining sector. Indeed,
it was precisely through the campaign for democratic liberties that the

Left had made significant progress since the end of the 1970s. Yet the
formidable structural obstacles mentioned above, together with more
conjunctural and political problems, impeded the realization of this
promise during the 1980s.
Some sense of the scale of the setbacks suffered by the Left may be
gleaned from comparing its position in October 1982 with that in October
1989. In 1982 a series of mass protests and strikes under the leadership of
the Central Obrera Boliviana had played a central role in forcing the
military to withdraw from the power that it had seized in the coup of
July 1980. Although the dictatorship had also come under pressure
from Washington because of its association with the cocaine trade, the
workers' movement had maintained a resolute resistance to military
government and had always threatened to repeat the mobilization of
November 1979, when, within the space of a fortnight, it had combined
with unprecedented campesino activism to destroy at birth an earlier dic-
tatorship. Moreover, because the COB rather than the political parties had
been the principal vehicle of the Left since 1952, it was now expected to
ensure against any backsliding by the incoming administration of the
Union Democratica y Popular (Democratic and Popular Union UDP), —
whose president was Hernan Siles Zuazo (1982-1985), over its pro-
claimed commitment to progressive social and economic policies.
 —

The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism 123

The further fact that the UDP front encompassed the Partido Comunista
de Bolivia and the Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria, which
contained an important socialist current, seemed to augur well in that
the Left was strongly represented both in government and out of it,
covering the need to initiate and invigilate policy without being fully
associated with either the administration or the opposition. The civilian
Right, the military, and Washington had all been obliged to accept this
unprecedented state of affairs, and it seemed more auspicious than that
prevailing after the elections of 1980, when parties upholding some form
of socialist platform had won 25 percent of the vote and thus provoked a
military intervention before the UDP could take office. Indeed, in 1982
some on the Left, principally the PCB, called fornew elections in order
to secure proper constitutional reflection of their much enhanced posi-
The MIR, however, opposed this option on the grounds that "el
tion.
—
hambre no espera" (hunger won't wait) a position that enjoyed broad
support within a populace that expected the combination of a "popular
front" government and a workers' movement dynamized and legitimated
by antimilitarist struggle to deliver substantial economic and political
advances.
In October 1989 the Left stood outside the mainstream of national
politics and was confronting the consequences of a second resounding
electoral defeat, having secured less than 12 percent of the popular vote in
May and barely 8 percent in the election of July 1985.
of that year
Moreover, the COB had lost much of its national authority, and after four
years of a right-wing civilian government that had imposed a neoliberal
deflationary program of exceptional severity it had proved unable to lead
a concerted campaign of opposition despite a high level of popular dis-
content and activism. All the major parties that in 1982 might legitimately
be considered either to be on the Left or to incorporate important left-
—
wing currents the PCB, the MIR, the Partido Socialista-Uno (Socialist
—
Party One PS-1), and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupaj Katari
de Liberation (Tupaj Katari Revolutionary Movement of Liberation
MRTKL) —had suffered debilitating divisions that had undermined the
radical challenge at the polls and weakened the leadership of the COB.
Closure of the country's major tin mines had all but eradicated the long-
standing mine workers' union, the Federation Sindical de Trabajadores
Mineros de Bolivia (Trade Union Federation of Mine Workers of Bolivia
FSTMB), and the campesino movement, which had joined the COB only
at the turn of the decade, was badly split and distrustful of the Left. Along
with the tens of thousands of newly unemployed who had voted for the
Left in 1980 and habitually supported the COB, most peasants now either
cast tactical votes for the least unsavory candidate from the three estab-
lished right-wing parties that had a clear field or took a chance with
124 James Dunkerley

new populist formations that had rapidly arisen to exploit the Left's
failure to move beyond a purely denunciatory politics. Outside the realm
of electoralism, popular organization had shifted significantly toward
clientelist and civic bodies, where the traditional and "new" Right gener-
ally prevailed, and to a focus on plant or sector-based unionism, where
narrow economic objectives predominated. It would be misguided to see
this process as one of emergent, dynamic new social movements rather
than as a shift in political orientation and a reduction in expectations.
Nevertheless, some of the consequences for the organized Left were quite
similar to those faced in other countries, not least in terms of accepting
the problems of "co-opting" movements resistant —through choice or
design —to becoming the site of ideological or programmatic competition.
Two widely accepted as causing this tangible retreat of the
factors are
Left: the severe economic crisis that broke in 1983 and the disastrous
experience of the UDP government. Both phenomena sorely taxed the
traditions and programs of a radical movement that had minimal experi-
ence in dealing either with hyperinflation or with a tractable civilian ad-
ministration in which it had a partial interest. The resulting dilemmas
were as complex as they were acute, and although this is not the place to
explore the full scope of these experiences and the responses to them,
some brief comment on the broad developments of the 1980s is necessary
to convey a sense of the stark peculiarities of the Bolivian case.
1

The performance and organization of the economy during that decade

exhibited wide fluctuations. At one extreme, inflation under the UDP
between 1982 and 1985 exceeded 12,000 percent. At the other, one of the
world's most emphatic deflationary programs, imposed in August 1985
by the government of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario
—
(Nationalist Revolutionary Movement MNR) led by Victor Paz Estens-
soro, reduced inflation to less than 15 percent in the space of weeks at the
cost of a profound recession, extensive unemployment, and radically
reduced public spending. Throughout the 1980s the economy contracted
by about a quarter. Tin mining, which had been the country's strategic
export sector since the turn of the century and the principal economic
activity of the public sector since 1952, all but disappeared following the
collapse of the international tin price in October 1985 and the determina-
tion of the MNR to enforce the closure of unprofitable pits. 2
At the same
time, there was an upsurge in the production of cocaine, which, although
based on the legal cultivation of the coca leaf (almost exclusively by small-
holders), was an illegal activity subjected to the laws of primitive accumu-
lation. By 1986 cocaine revenue very probably exceeded that of all legal
exports together, and the coca /cocaine subeconomy provided the means
of subsistence for perhaps an eighth of the economically active population
while employment in the mines had fallen by two-thirds to less than ten
 The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism 125

thousand workers. These developments had exceptionally serious conse-

quences for the Left, which had not only championed a reorganization of
the economy through industrialization and nationalization but also
drawn much of its programmatic culture from the miners' militant
—
trade unionism. Moreover, the close association of the Left both in and
—
outside government with the catastrophic state of the economy under
the UDP that had preceded the radical capitalist restructuring of the MNR
weakened socialist claims to possession of a viable alternative.
The experience of the UDP was traumatic on two counts. First, the two
largest avowedly radical parties (the PCB and the MIR) participated, by
virtue of holding posts in the cabinet, in a series of inept and ineffective
deflationary measures that simply spurred inflation and cut real wages by
about a third. Second, the COB, backed by the "revolutionary Left"
(dedicated to the armed overthrow of the state), crippled the government
with a succession of strikes and refusal to make concessions over its "ulti-
matumist" program of a moratorium on the external debt, widespread
nationalization under workers' control, and state control of foreign trade. 3
By mid-1984 this dynamic had reached the point at which the now-
habitual devaluation of the peso was met by a general strike of three
weeks simply in order to secure a negotiated compensatory wage hike. In
October of that year, having acquiesced in the COB's demand to cease
interest payments on the debt and having accepted the de facto imposi-
tion of workers' control in the state mining corporation (COMIBOL), a
government bereft of reserves and relations with international finance
was confronted with a further major stoppage that openly challenged its
capacity to rule. When the strikers demanded complete implementation
of the COB's program, the UDP simply capitulated to the Right by
agreeing to advance elections by a year, in the clear knowledge that these
would yield a landslide victory for the advocates of "public order" and
neoliberal deflation.
For our present purposes the key feature of this scenario is that the
combination of "gradualist reformism" and "maximalist syndicalism"
drove each tendency to an untenable extreme, impaired the state of the
economy, and permitted the Right not only to take power but also fully to
exploit the mercantilist logic of possessive individualism in both the
backlash against inflation and the scurry for survival under restructuring.
As a consequence, the Left entered a period of bitter recrimination
between advocates of "capitulationism" and those of "ultraleftism."
These exchanges were undoubtedly sharpened by the fact that they
resulted from acute manifestations of each tendency under exceptionally
difficult circumstances. Before we turn to the impact of these tendencies
on the contemporary position of the Left, both of them have to be placed
in historical context. This is particularly important because the trajectory
 —

126 James Dunkerley

of the socialist movement in Bolivia differs in both its chronological devel-

opment and its ideological temper from that in neighboring countries.

The Influence of Historical Experience

Two crucial historical experiences shaped leftist thinking and behavior

the National Revolution under the MNR between 1952 and 1964 and the
Asamblea Popular The revolution may plausibly be
in early 1971.
4

described as "populist" in that the MNR

depended heavily upon the
rhetoric of class alliance, nationalized the major mines, introduced an
agrarian reform and universal suffrage, and adopted a vague anti-
imperialism while upholding an anticommunism that stopped only just
short of outright proscription of the PCB. As a result of this hostility and
the fact that the Cold War was at its zenith, the PCB was unable to pursue
a popular-front alliance and was forced into an isolated position of
"critical support" for the MNR. At the same time, it proved possible for an
important current of socialists influenced by Trotskyism to take leading
positions within the COB and develop a base inside the by MNR
"entryist" tactics. 5 Although this tendency was soon embattled as the
second revolutionary administration under Hernan Siles (1956 1960) —
was brought to heel by Washington, imposed an orthodox stabilization
and reconstructed the military (effectively destroyed in 1952), it was
plan,
draw strength from the pursuit of a number of policies that had
able to
become enshrined as leitmotifs of the COB and enjoyed popular support.
Key among these were what might be termed the "transitional de-
mands" of workers' participation in both the management of state indus-
tries (cogestion) and government itself (cogobierno). However, as the MNR
withdrew its initial tolerance of some radical pressure, cogobierno was
increasingly seen as collaborationism with state capitalism, and cogestion
lost any managerial authority. When the COB and the MNR entered into
outright conflict in the late 1950s, these mechanisms for popular power
within the state and the leading sector of the economy were rendered
redundant in practice but remained core issues of debate within a
Left seeking to regain the momentum it had held in the early years of the
revolution.
The experience of the MNR years fortified the orthodox Marxist critics
—the PCB and the Trotskyist Partido Obrero Revolucionario
of cogobierno
(Revolutionary Workers' Party — POR), which attacked as simply a it

device for co-optation. These parties recognized, however, both that the
COB continued to be their primary sphere of organization and debate
and that it was more than a simple trade union confederation, having
operated in the early days of the revolution as something akin to a soviet
or workers' council. The resulting elision of the distinct tasks traditionally
 The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism 1 27

ascribed to the revolutionary party and trade union was reflected in the
Tesis Politicapromulgated at the COB's fourth congress in 1970. To all
intentsand purposes, this upheld a platform for socialist revolution that
replaced cogobierno with a strong insistence upon class independence
and the primacy of the COB as an organ of popular democracy with
6
cogestion mayoritaria (workers' control) as a central plank.
This partial but critical shift was rapidly put to the test in 1971 under

the weak but progressively inclined military regime of General Juan

Jose Torres. Torres,who had been impressed by the policies of the Velasco
regime in Peru and was anxious to revive popular support for the "nation-
alism" of the 1950s to counter the threat of foquista guerrillaism, sought to
reestablish cogobierno with the COB but was swiftly rebuffed by its
leadership under Juan Lechin Oquendo. 7 Although Lechin was deeply
distrustful of the PCB and remained within the orbit of a now-fractured
MNR, both he and the leadership of the FSTMB were determined at all
costs to avoid a repetition of the experience of collaboration in govern-
ment that had so weakened the COB both as a trade union body and as a
wider workers' institution bisecting state and civil society. As a conse-
quence, they agreed upon the formation of an Asamblea Popular that
would operate as a type of workers' parliament, with representation allo-
cated to both unions and "revolutionary parties" (excluding the MNR) in
recognition of the fact that this would create a state of dual power.
Despite their antagonism, both the PCB and the POR viewed the
Asamblea within the traditions of the Russian Revolution and the classic
prospectus for soviet power. For the majority of the COB leaders, who
rejected the vanguardist ambitions of these orthodox parties, it repre-
sented a restoration of the promise of 1952 that had been corrupted by the
MNR and that would complement the introduction of cogestion mayori-
taria in COMIBOL —
which itself incubated a revolutionary potential
through its control of the commanding heights of the economy. These
currents stood together against the self-proclaimed "revolutionary
Left" composed of Maoists (the Partido Comunista de Bolivia, Marxista-
Leninista [Communist party of Bolivia, Marxist-Leninist] —PCBM-L) and
the Cuban-inspired advocates of the armed overthrow of the state. 8
Perhaps the most crucial issue of programmatic contention was the role
ascribed to the campesino movement, which was central to the strategies
of Maoism and foquismo. The peasantry was treated with great suspicion
by the COB and the orthodox Left, which not only attributed to it a subor-
dinate revolutionary role but also were mindful of its comprehensive
co-optation by first the MNR and then the military through the agrarian
reform and clientelism. Peasant conservatism had played an important
part in permitting the MNR to reverse the radical features of the revolu-
tion in 1956 — 1964, and it provided a secure base for the army to destroy
128 James Dunkerley

the guerrilla campaigns of Che Guevara (1966 —

1967) and the Teoponte
—
group of radicalized Christian youth (1969 1970). This record contrasted
sharply with the militant resistance of the industrial proletariat repre-
sented by the FSTMB, which had included sufficient recourse to armed
struggle to weaken the criticism that the urban workers had succumbed
to the "peaceful road to socialism" as well as regressive economism.
Hence, the Asamblea divided into two broad blocs: the "conserva-
tives" (the PCB, POR, and COB leadership), dedicated to proletarian
primacy and the development of mass organization parallel to the institu-
tions of the state, and the "ultras" (PCBM-L and what was shortly to
become the MIR), who inveighed against such industrial elitism and
demanded a rapid resolution of the question of state power through a
politico-military offensive. As in the early 1980s, this familiar dispute over
strategy was undertaken and with exception-
at the center of national life
allyhigh political stakes. Yet it had barely begun before a bloody coup led
by Colonel Hugo Banzer imposed an authoritarian regime (1971 1978), —
drove the Left underground, and forced it to undertake far-reaching
reconsideration of its strategy for the better part of a decade. It was
during this period that the lessons of the revolutionary era, the short-lived
experiment of the Asamblea, and the experience of antidictatorial resis-
tance were distilled into the distinct currents on the Left that predom-
inated during the chaotic transition to constitutionalism (1978 — 1982) and
the UDP government. Many on the Bolivian Left, including militants of
the PCB, who were exiled in Chile during the Allende government, held
and its eventual overthrow
distinctly sober expectations of its survival,
did not greatly alter the broad conclusions that they had already drawn
from the Banzer coup.

The Left in the 1970s and 1980s

Parliamentarianism had never secured a hegemonic hold over the
Bolivian masses, being a distinctly subordinate feature of the revolution-
ary period and little more than a vanity under the succeeding dictatorship

of General —
Rene Barrientos (1964 1969). This was one important reason
that the COB was able in 1971 to take the initiative in convening a quasi-
legislative body in the form of the Asamblea and that its restriction of
participation to the unions and the Left was not widely challenged (except
by the Torres regime and some peasant leaders). However, the precipitate
overthrow of that effort to establish a vehicle for popular democracy
prompted reconsideration of the narrowness of its constitution with
respect both to the peasantry, which largely supported Torres, and the still
formidable mass base of the MNR, which split over the Banzer coup
 The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism 129

(Victor Paz backed the dictatorship while Hernan Siles went into opposi-
tion and formed the MNR Izquierda (MNR-Left— MNRI).
The PCB, for its part, laid stress upon the damage that the Asamblea
did to the Torres regime before it was itself in a position to take on
governmental powers, especially in terms of the military question. Less
concerned with the rural population, where it had a very slight presence
indeed, the PCB moved away from a position of "socialist unity" within
the orbit of the COB toward a cross-class alliance on the grounds that this
would provide some necessary "middle ground" against the golpismo
(support for military coups) of the Right. In effect, the Communists
reverted to the familiar protocols of popular-frontism, which was made
possible by the existence of a multiclass opposition to dictatorship and
which acquired an increasingly constitutionalist momentum as demands
for civil rights accumulated. The corollary to this was that the PCB, which
had been unable to pose a major challenge to Lechin in twenty years,
sought to reduce the political role of the COB and effectively disregarded
the anti-cogobierno thrust of the Tesis Politica of 1970 despite the fact that
it had played a major role in drafting it and retained a strong presence in
the leadership of both the FSTMB and the COB. Equally, despite their
historical enmity, the PCB and the MNRI shared an economic strategy
founded upon the expansion of national capitalism and the development
of industry on the basis of COMIBOL. 9
—
The third main component of the UDP the MIR traversed much —
more political ground between 1971 and 1978, when the UDP was set up.
Formed after the Banzer coup, the MIR brought together radicalized
Christian Democratic youth close to the short-lived Ejercito de Liberacion
—
Nacional (Army of National Liberation ELN) guerrilla experience of
—
1969 1970, socialist intellectuals critical of the "outmoded" and "mono-
lithic" approach of the orthodox Marxist parties, and a significant stratum
of young people for whom the example of Che Guevara was more
compelling than that of 1952. In practice the MIR never properly engaged
in armed activity, which even in 1970 had failed to have an impact and
was thenceforth largely eclipsed among the options of the Left except,
notably in 1980, in defense of the mining camps against army attacks.
Moreover, the MIR's weak base in the workers' movement and the very
slight and heterogeneous influences manifest in its ideology prompted an
early loss of leading figures to the PCB and subsequently a far greater
emphasis upon radical nationalism than socialism. At root, under Banzer
the MIR came to see itself as a "generational" formation destined to
replace the MNR, which had brilliantly expressed the revolutionary
content of nationalism in the late 1940s and early 1950s but then capitu-
lated to Washington. The MIRistas were the most active and effective
130 James Dunkerley

propagandists against the dictatorship, and, in a clear extension of their

original guerrillaist inclinations, they concentrated heavily upon the issue
of state power, albeit increasingly in terms of replacing dictatorship with
democracy. This, together with the conviction that they would, through
both a more modern character and greater moral standing, replace the
entronque historico (historical relationship) of the MNR, produced a kind of
political "stagism" complementary to, if distinct from, that of the PCB.
The resultant rhetorically driven left-wing populism was highly condu-
cive to alliance with both the Communists and the MNRI. At the same
time, it suppressed a number of key differences of outlook that broke into
the open once the constraints of dictatorship were removed and absence
of a clear programmatic focus became a political challenge rather than an
operational asset. 10
Although the MIR was a little less sectarian in its dealings with the
rest of the Left than were the PCB and the POR (which lost much of its

influence after 1971), its public persona was too activist-led and depen-
dent upon denunciation to draw in more than a small but critical urban
constituency of professionals and intellectuals that also rejected the inher-
ited holistic rigidities of the orthodox parties but perceived the need to
retain a clear Marxist core in a modern radical politics. During the Banzer
period part of this educated middle sector coalesced in the PS-1 around
the figure of Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, an exceptionally talented
speaker of upper-class and falangist background whose charisma threat-
ened to dissolve the party in personalism. Yet Quiroga succeeded in
—
developing a modest movement in the late 1970s its electoral support
far outstripped its organized base —
of sufficiently resolute socialist
principles that one Trotskyist group attempted, with limited success, to
colonize it. 11 Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the PS-l's conduct
was its recognition that parliamentary politics were a necessary but insuf-
ficient factor in building a socialist movement and that both the necessity
and the insufficiency should be scrupulously demonstrated rather than
idly asserted. This approach lay behind Quiroga's leadership of the
congressional impeachment of Generals Barrientos (1967) and Banzer
(1979), for which he paid with his life in the 1980 coup, and the steadfast
refusal of the PS-1 to accept any electoral alliance that would dilute its

program in popular-frontist minimalism. Thus, in early 1980 it alone of

the major forces of the Left refused to participate in an all-party front
dedicated exclusively to the defense of constitutionalism (in which the
COB also participated). 12 During the 1980s this deep suspicion of alliances
acquired a more sectarian character in that it was maintained, particularly
in 1988 — 1989, in the face of efforts to establish a united Left slate. None-
theless, the party was prominent in demanding electoral reform and at the
end of the decade had established itself as the most consistent and
 —

The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism 131

effective critic of government corruption. Its new leader, Roger Cortez,

proved an eloquent advocate of political morality when this appeared to
be one of the Left's few remaining assets and a gravely underexploited
resource.
What is notable about the leaderships of all the parties discussed above
is were overwhelmingly composed of mestizo lowlanders,
that they
usually of urban background. Few spoke the indigenous languages of
Aymara and Quechua, and most adopted a purely token respect for the
causes of the campesino and indio that had acquired impetus with
the collapse of the pact with the military under Banzer and, for the first

time, offered the possibility of the majority of the electorate's being won
over from the MNR-military clientelist axis. The Left failed to respond
to this challenge, its lack of interest in and experience with the rural pop-
ulation fusing with an instrumentalist approach in reliance upon an alter-
native clientelism (most marked within the UDP through the MNRI's ties
inherited from the 1950s). This was also true of the COB, which even at its
seventh congress in 1988 insisted, as in 1971, upon proletarian primacy
the peasantry representing a mere 14 percent of delegates even though it

constituted the great majority of the laboring population. 13 Aside from the
residual "urbanism" already mentioned as a strong trait of both orga-
nized labor and the traditional vanguard parties, it should be noted that
the tasks of organization in the Bolivian countryside are exceptionally
demanding. The chief factor in this scenario, however, was the tension
between the politics of class articulated in terms of the Hispanic republic
—
and those of ethnicity based upon autonomy if not independence for —
the indigenous peoples or nations subsumed by imperial and republican
colonization.
The emergence of this indigenista current —known as katarismo theafter
rebel leader Tupaj Katari, killed by the Spanish in 1781 —was most marked
among the Aymara and contained enough expressions of racism and
millenarianism to justify some aspects of socialist caution. 14 Yet it also
proferred an unparalleled opportunity to correct the urban, Occidental,
and elitist characteristics of the Left's past conduct and beliefs. This was
especially the case in 1979 — 1980, when the peasantry of the altiplano ex-
hibited a rising radicalism in the formation of the Confederation Sindical
Unica de Trabaj adores Campesinos de Bolivia (Sole Trade Union of Rural
—
Workers of Bolivia CSUTCB), integration within the COB, and the stag-
ing of particularly efficacious roadblocks in protest against both dictator-
ship and devaluation. 15 (These were repeated under the Siles government
and increased under that of Paz Estenssoro in opposition to the govern-
ment's coca policy.) The strength and autonomy of this radicalism may
certainly be exaggerated; it was clearly influenced by urban mobilization
and soon fell prey to a debilitating parochial caudillismo that had been
 —

132 James Dunkerley

nurtured by decades of competition for state patronage. All the same, the
— —
general failure often based on reluctance of the Left to engage with
this challenge beyond the bounds of rhetoric inhibited the construction of
an authentic peasant-worker alliance under the UDP. It also constrained
full exploitation of the state's offensive on coca in the late 1980s, when
many former workers had undergone at least partial campesinacion and
had taken more than a vestige of trade union culture and radical politics
into the countryside.
The from a past urban bias should not, however,
difficulties inherited
be confused with those emanating from what was in essence a new phe-
nomenon, to which the COB did turn its attention in the late 1980s. This
revolved around the class and ethnic recomposition of the population
of the valleys compelled by the recession in the formal economy
—
both urban and rural in the altiplano and the precarious dynamism
experienced by a trade based upon subsistence agriculture (cultivation of
the coca plant) but dependent upon processing into an illegal substance
and commercialization by a mafia that made it subject to sanction by a
foreign power. 16 The coca issue, therefore, restored the question of anti-
imperialism to the political agenda in a manner that had not occurred
with the debt. This was something of a paradox in that the United States
had been relatively consistent in its opposition to dictatorship after 1978
and had contributed to the downfall of the military regime because of its
association with the cocaine trade. Increased U.S. intervention after
—
1984 including the deployment of troops in 1986 —
provided an issue
that allowed the Left to challenge the Right over national sovereignty and
to introduce into its own politics a recognition of ethnic culture that
had previously been subordinated by strenuous emphasis on class and
nation-as-republic. It should be noted that some elements of the Right also
attacked the United States on this question and that relations between the
coca growers organization and the COB were sometimes strained. Yet it
7

is notable that the Left's campaign was free of many of the presumptions

of the previous decade, exhibiting resourcefulness as well as sharpness on

a matter that posed a number of acute dilemmas for policy.
The counterproductive legacy of the 1960s and 1970s for the Left was
more pronounced in the altiplano, where katarismo foundered upon
internal sectarianism (often based on regionalism and personalism) and
was reduced as a political force first by tactical voting for the MNR
(still associated with the agrarian reform) and then by the rapid expansion

of what may be termed "cholo populism." 17 This was most forcefully

represented by Conciencia de Patria (Conscience of the Fatherland
CONDEPA), which was based on Aymara migrants to greater La Paz and
disseminated, largely through radio and television, an agile expression of
the travails of an expanding underclass that had been ignored by the
 The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism 1 33

Left as "lumpen" and that could no longer afford to restrict itself to a rural
and ethnic vision. The ascendency of CONDEPA was confirmed by its
sweeping victory in La Paz in the 1989 elections and complemented the
national triumph of the traditional Right.
In 1980 the UDP had easily won in the capital, but now the Left paid the
price for both its association with the economic conditions under Siles's
government and its previous lack of work among the peasantry, signifi-
cant elements of which were either directly or indirectly connected
with the urban sphere to a much greater degree than had been the case a
decade earlier. Moreover, whereas the Left had lost a natural constituency
through "deproletarianization," it found it difficult to address a new one
thrown up by descampesinacion, remaining attached to a culture of mass
meetings and pamphleteering that had little leverage with largely illiter-
ate recent migrants lacking trade union experience and scavenging an
individualist or kinship-based survival in the informal economy. Equally,
katarismo was reluctant to embrace those elements of acculturation
(choloficacion) that tested its central indigenista nerve.
In this connection, note should be made of the signal absence in Bolivia
during the past decade of an insurgent force comparable to Sendero
Luminoso in Peru. Although at the end of the 1980s the depleted promise
of katarismo and the depths of the recession had provoked some slight
moves in this direction in the form of discrete terrorist acts by the Fuerzas
Armadas de Liberacion-Zarate Willka (Zarate Willka Armed Forces of
Liberation), these were much less than might have been expected in the
light of the failures of the orthodox Left and the degree of popular pauper-
ization. Here a number of factors may be mentioned: the existence of
survivalist opportunities in the coca circuit, the weakness of the ultra-Left
in the countryside and, particularly, the eclipse of Maoism at the end of
the 1970s through wholesale class collaboration, the legacy of the agrarian
reform of 1953 in the altiplano, and the relatively low stigma attached to
race compared with Peru. 18

The Left's Emergence from

the Experience of Power Sharing
The Left, therefore, entered the postdictatorial period in 1982 both in
the same organizational form and on the broad understanding that it
should be engaged to some degree in parliamentary politics. Even the
POR, which entertained a particularly robust critique of "parliamen-
tary cretinism," participated in local and national elections. Moreover,
although the COB eventually drove the UDP to the wall in late 1984, it had
previously taken care to modulate its pressure in the face of right-wing
threats to constitutionalism. There were, as already indicated, widely
134 James Dunkerley

differing views as to the extent to which might progress within

socialists
the confines of liberal democratic institutions and ideology, but on only
two occasions did elements of the Left seriously consider reversing
their position: in November 1979 (when the short-lived coup of Colonel
Alberto Natusch enticed the PCB to explore a bonapartist pact, which was
forestalled by popular resistance) and in March 1985 (when, in a final,
bitter general strike against the UDP, the COB came close to repudiating
the elections tabled for August as a golpe constitutional (constitutional
coup) and thus at heart no different from any other golpe). 19 It should be
added that in July 1986, a year after the MNR's stabilization plan was
imposed, the COB staged an extremely well-supported national consulta-
tion on government economic policy and the deployment of U.S. troops.
This initiative resembled more the traditional cabildos abiertos (public
town meetings) than the Asamblea of 1971, but it did reintroduce into
the political arena the possibility of "dual authority" and was fiercely
attacked by the government as unconstitutional. For some this type of
activity represented the best means by which to adjust to the contraction
of the unions and the emergent importance of local bodies such as
comites civicos and juntas vecinales under conditions of constitutionalism.
Although the COB did not attempt to repeat its national exercise, the
incidence of cabildos abiertos, particularly in provincial towns, increased
markedly with the frequent support of the Left.
After nearly a decade of civilian government and economic recession,
a number of general features may be identified in the conduct and outlook
of the Bolivian Left. First and most important is the decline of syndicalism
through both an erosion of its social base and the defeats suffered by
autogestion (worker control) that lacked any political prospectus. Insis-
tence upon workers' control by the COB leadership in an effort to avoid
repeating the defeats of the 1950s represented a return to reliance on
the tradition of intransigent struggle that had served it so well over two
decades of dictatorship. However, this was now shown to be insufficient
and, indeed, dangerous insofar as its veto power raised more political
questions than it was prepared to answer. 20 Secondly, the popular-
frontist strategy was comprehensively discredited. This led to the divi-
sion of the PCB after its fifth congress early in 1985 that laid the basis for
subsequent disputes over the lack of democracy within the party but did
not force the leadership into anything more than a limited critique of
errors committed under the UDP 21
At the same time, the MIR split into
MIR-Nueva Mayoria (New Majority) under Jaime Paz,
three factions: the
which swung sharply to the right, retrieved many features of its Christian
Democratic origins under the guise of social democracy, and came to
office in August 1989 in alliance with Banzer; 22 the MIR-Masas (Masses)
under Walter Delgadillo, which initially led the offensive against the
 The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism 135

PCB within the COB; andthe MIR-Bolivia Libre (Free Bolivia) (later
Movimiento under Antonio Aranibar, which formed the
Bolivia Libre)
core of the left-wing electoral alliance (Pueblo Unido in 1985, Izquierda
Unida in 1989) to which the various factions of the PCB and the MIR-
Masas adhered. 23
Third, the lack of a military threat to constitutionalism after 1985 and
the consolidation of the Right on the basis of severe neoliberal deflation
led the Left to place far greater emphasis upon socioeconomic change
than on defense of the liberal democratic order. Nevertheless, the Right's
extensive manipulation of the constitution prompted renewed attention,
particularlyon the part of the PS-1, to the importance of legal guarantees
and the need to adjust the prescriptions of proletarian democracy inher-
ited from the 1950s and cultivated under conditions of dictatorship to
those of the nominal rule of law and a popular movement of unprece-
dented heterogeneity. This involved a questioning of the centralist prac-
tices of the COB more than of the parties themselves, which were notably
reluctant to revise internal practices that remained largely determined by
caudillismo in the guise of "democratic centralism/' As a result, much of
the reappraisal of received beliefs about the relation between socialism
and democracy took place among independent intellectual groups. 24 This
was also the case with respect to the issues of gender and the environ-
ment. The former had long received expression within the mining com-
munities through the comites de amas de casa, which had led the mobiliza-
tion against Banzer in 1978 and had extended, albeit in less emphatic
fashion, to the campesina movement. 25 Yet these movements had exer-
cised a strictly limited influence on the practice of the unions and parties
and remained distant from the very small groups of urban and largely
middle-class feminists. Despite the fact that Bolivia could lay claim to
Latin America's first woman president other than by courtesy of marriage
(Lydia Gueiler, 1979-1980), representation of women in the leadership
of the Left was notably poor. It was, rather, the populist Right, such as
CONDEPA, that exploited the fact that women were a majority of the
labor force and lacked real protection of their rights, let alone the opportu-
nity to escape the formidable sociocultural limits imposed on the basis of
gender. Similarly, the ecological question remained subordinate, although
at the end of the 1980s it acquired increasing importance as a result of
state plans to eradicate coca, wanton exploitation of mineral resources for
short-term gain both on the altiplano (particularly lithium) and in the low-
lands (particularly gold), and the lack of restrictions on slash-and-burn
agricultural practices, the microclimatic effects of which were substantial.
Because the Left was obliged to turn its attention to the new locus of both
economy and population in the rural sector, it was correspondingly
forced to remedy its lack of interest in this sphere.
136 James Dunkerley

although the 1980s had witnessed the complete marginaliza-

Finally,
tion of the continent's most redoubtable advocate of permanent revolu-
tion (the POR), the developments of the decade provoked a fundamental
questioning of "stagist" stratagems, not least because the long MNR—
considered by many on the Left to be at least the surrogate of a "national
—
bourgeoisie" could no longer meaningfully be presented as a progres-
sive and anti-imperialist force. This shift was not made explicit within the
PCB leadership itself, but it was evident in the widespread acceptance
that the political era opened by the 1952 revolution had come to an end.
Since 1952 had broadly been interpreted as a kind of "bourgeois demo-
cratic revolution," the notion that it would have to be repeated defied
credibility. Here it should be stressed that the experience and interpreta-
tion of national developments far outstripped external influences, which
had never played a major part in determining the activity of the Left (with
the partial exception of the POR as well as the PCB) in a landlocked moun-
tainous country with particularly poor communications and very slight
immigration in the twentieth century. In one sense these circumstances
had restricted the "modernity" of the Left, but they also served to give a
high profile to the cultural features of oppression and exploitation both
within the country and from outside. Whereas katarismo placed greatest
emphasis upon internal colonialism, there was a perceptible shift among
other leftist currents toward engagement with those varied communi-
tarian forces in the struggle against payment of the debt, the offensive
against coca, the imposition of free market economics, and the progres-
sive erosion of the gains of 1952. There was growing recognition of the
fact that it was no longer feasible to undertake struggle simply along the
lines of the organizations and ideology bequeathed by the revolution.
However, the process of distinguishing between those elements that had
been superseded by history and those that still retained validity for the
construction of a socialist alternative in the post-tin and postdictatorial
epoch remained exceptionally uneven and taxing.

Notes
1. For an overview of the main developments of the decade and their background, see

James Dunkerley, "Political Transition and Economic Stabilization in Bolivia, 1982-1989,"

research paper, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1990.
2. The crisis in tin mining is analyzed in Latin America Bureau, The Great Tin Crash: Bolivia

and the World Tin Market (London: Latin America Bureau, 1987).
3. There is as yet no detailed analysis of the economic policy of the UDP by the Left, al-

though a sense of the objectives of those who were part of the government in its early phase
can be gleaned from Rolando Morales, "La Crisis Economica," Informe R (La Paz), May 1985,
and Horst Grebe Lopez [of the PCB], "Notas criticas sobre la gestion economica de la UDP," in
Movimiento Bolivia Libre, Repensando el pais (La Paz, 1987).
 The Crisis of Bolivian Radicalism 137

4. A narrative account of this period may be found

in James Dunkerley, Rebellion in the

Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952-1982 (London: Verso, 1984).

5. The Trotskyist POR was responsible for drafting the 1946 Tesis de Pulacayo of the
FSTMB that served a programmatic reference point for the COB in the early years of the
revolution.
6. For details, see Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins, 168-196; Jorge Lazarte, Movimiento
obrero y procesos politicos en Bolivia: Historia de la COB, 1952-1987 (La Paz: ILDIS, 1988), 45-58,
143-147.
7. The complex personality and activity of Lechin, who headed the FSTMB from 1944 to
1986 and the COB from 1952 to 1986, is explored in Lupe Cajias, Historia de una leyenda (La Paz:
Ediciones Graficas, 1988).
8. The two positions are presented and reconsidered in Rene Zavaleta, El poder dual en
America Latina (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1974), and Guillermo Lora, Bolivia: De la asamblea popular al

golpe fascista (Buenos Aires: El Yunque, 1972).

9. PCB, IV Congreso: Documentos principales (La Paz, 1980). The PCB's paper is Unidad.
10. One of the marked features of the MIR was a paucity of strategic political analysis,
especially following the departure of Rene Zavaleta in the mid-1970s. Some sense of its per-
spectives at the start of the 1980s can, however, be gleaned from the essays in Bases (Mexico,
1980), and, very occasionally, from the party's paper Bolivia Libre.
11. Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, El saqueo de Bolivia (Buenos Aires, Ediciones de
Crisis, 1973); Oleocracia o patria (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1982). The PS-l's paper was Mariana el
Pueblo.
12. Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, Bolivia recupera la palabra: Juicio a la dictadura (La Paz,
PS-1, 1982). This tactic was later used by MIR-Bolivia Libre against the MNR. Antonio
Aranibar and Alfonso Ferrufino, Interpelacion al gobierno del MNR (La Paz, 1986).
13. COB, VII Congreso: Documentos y resoluciones (La Paz, 1988). This did not vary the posi-
tion adopted at the previous congress dominated by the radical Left opposed to the PCB.
14. Javier Hurtado, El Katarismo (La Paz: Hisbol, 1986); Silvia Rivera, Oprimidos pero no
vencidos (La Paz: Hisbol, 1984); Javier Albo "From MNRistas to kataristas to Katari," in Steve
Stern, ed., Rebellion and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1987).
15. Rene Zavaleta Mercado, Las masas en noviembre (La Paz: Juventio, 1983), reprinted in

Zavaleta, ed., Bolivia hoy (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1983).

16. Kevin Healy, "Coca, the State, and the Peasantry in Bolivia, 1982-1988," journal of
Inter-American Studies, 30, 2 and 3 (September 1989).
17. Carlos F. Toranzo Roca and Mario Arrieta Abdalla, Nueva derecha y desproletarizacion
en Bolivia (La Paz: ILDIS, 1989).
18. In 1979 the PCBML, led by Oscar Zamora, allied itself with the MNR on the grounds
that it represented the national bourgeoisie. Subsequently the party decomposed into a per-
sonalist vehicle for Zamora, who became minister of labor in the MIR-Accion Democratica
Nacionalista (National Democratic Action —ADN) government formed in August 1989.
19. For 1979, see Pablo Ramos, La democracia: Sus defensores y sus enemigos (La Paz:
Juventud, 1979), and Zavaleta, Masas en noviembre, which synthesizes for a specific conjunc-
ture the author's efforts to apply ideas developed from Gramsci to Bolivian history and social
structure: Clases sociales y conocimiento (La Paz: Los Amigos del Libro, 1988); Lo nacional-
popular en Bolivia (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1986). Zavaleta's tragically early death in 1984 deprived
the Bolivian Left of its most outstanding intellectual.

20. See the important debates reprinted in FLACSO, Crisis del sindicalismo en Bolivia (La Paz,

1987). It is worth noting hunger strike became the preferred tactic of

that in the mid-1980s the
both the COB leadership and the unemployed. Perhaps there was no more striking symbol
of the fortunes of the miners than the mock crucifixion of redundant workers demanding
138 James Dunkerley

severance pay in La Paz in 1989 when just four years earlier they had occupied the city center
for tendays and cowed the government with frequent discharges of dynamite in the streets.
21. For the polemic over strategy, see Unidad, 639 Quly 19, 1985), for the official line, and
641 Ouly 20-26, 1985), for the dissident line. Early in 1990 the PCB leadership came under
renewed internal challenge of lack of democracy in the party.
22. Paz Zamora's Bolivia: Una necesidad para los bolivianos (La Paz, 1985), clearly prefigures
the full shift to the Right effected in 1989.
23. In 1986 the Communist dissidents, organized as PCB-V Congreso (Fifth Congress
Communist Party of Bolivia), joined with the MIR-Masas and a small group of independent
intellectuals known as the Bloque Popular Patriotico (Patriotic Popular Bloc) to form the Eje
de Convergencia (Convergence Axis), which successfully challenged the PCB for the leader-
COB but was soon forced to modulate its aggressive line by the collapse of the 1986
ship of the
miners' mobilization.
24. See, in particular, Autodeterminacidn (La Paz), 6 and 7 (December 1988), which contain
an extensive debate on the state and prospects of the Left.
25. The best-known account of the movement of the women of the mines is Domitila
Barrios de Chungara, Let me Speak! (London: Stage 1, 1978). It is notable that the 1989 IU pro-
—
gram devoted some space to the women's question an innovation for the Bolivian Left.
 8
The Venezuelan Left:
From Years of Prosperity
to Economic Crisis
Steve Ellner

The Venezuelan Left — positions, locus in the political party

its its

system, and its prospects —has been thoroughly transformed as a conse-

quence of political and economic changes and external factors since the
mid-1980s. Up sought legitimacy and incorporation
until then, leftists
into the existing political system. Their electoral focus was demonstrated
by the significance they attached to —and the meticulous analyses they
provided of —variations at the polls of a mere one or two percentage
points. This orientation in the 1970s and early 1980s was no doubt a reac-
tion to the "ultraleftist" errors committed during the guerrilla warfare of
the 1960s, when the Left attempted to enforce an electoral boycott. Never-
no time did leftists apologize for their decision to take up arms,
theless, at
which they now viewed as an honest, perhaps even necessary, mistake.
In spite of the negligible recuperation of leftist parties in the 1970s in
both organized labor and national elections, leftists did make a rich
literary contribution in the form of a spate of provocative books, periodi-
cals, and newsletters in which innovations in organization and strategy
were debated. 1

The sharp decline in prices in the first half of 1986 marked a turning
oil

point for the Left, as did for the nation as a whole. Violent confronta-
it

tions between students and security forces became a frequent occurrence,

The author is grateful for critical comments by Susan Berglund and Dick Parker, both of the
Universidad Central de Venezuela.

139
140 Steve Ellner

as they had been in the 1960s, although they paled in comparison with
the spontaneous mass disturbances during the week of February 27,
1989, which resulted in hundreds if not thousands of deaths. This popular
protest compelled leftists to harden their stand toward the government
and converge in their positions on concrete issues. They also moved
somewhat away from their sectarian fixation on party identities, which
had contributed to intraleft divisions. Simultaneously, perestroika not
only encouraged the Partido Comunista de Venezuela (Communist party
—
of Venezuela PCV) to affirm its commitment to democracy but also led
leftists in other parties to abandon their resistance to unity on the ground

that the PCV defended totalitarianism. The efforts of leftists of the 1970s
to explore and experiment with novel forms of democracy were far from
exhausted by the 1980s. Now, however, the renovation current on the left
had the entire nation behind it in its democratic reform impulse: the
model of worker participation (cogestion) was embraced by organized
labor, and "state reform " became a government catchword and even the
name of a new ministry.
The willingness of the Left to unite, its more critical stands, and its

success in disassociating from traditional Left stereotypes, all in a

itself

context of severe and prolonged economic crisis, paid handsome divi-

dends at the polls. In the elections of December 1989, the Left elected three
governors and broke the bipolarized pattern that had provided virtually
monopoly two main establishment parties for over
status to the nation's
fifteen years. The "great electoral leap forward" that the largest leftist
party, the Movimiento al Socialismo, had been striving to achieve since
the 1970s finally became a reality, its candidates receiving 20 percent of the
municipal vote —double that of five years before.

The Oil Boom and Its Immediate Aftermath

The first presidency of Carlos Andres Perez (1974-1979) was replete
with surprises for Venezuela. The threefold increase in oil prices at the
outset of his term transformed the nation in many ways, particularly in
creating an ambience of material well-being and optimism. This was
reflected in Perez's proclamation that Venezuela had achieved "full
employment"; the phrase, which became a political catchword exploited
by his Accion Democratica party, not only indicated that levels of un-
employment had been substantially reduced but reflected widespread
acceptance of the myth that it had, for all intents and purposes, been erad-
icated. At the outset of his administration, Perez introduced a series
of proworker reforms and nationalistic policies including the Ley de
—
Estabilidad Laboral (Labor Stability Law) later watered down and re-
named the Ley Contra Despidos Injustificados (Law Against Unjustified
 The Venezuelan Left 141

Dismissals), the establishment of a minimum wage, price regulations on

basic commodities, the nationalization of the iron and petroleum indus-
tries, and the pursuit of a vocally pro-Third World foreign policy. Perez's
left-leaning populism was not in keeping with the image stemming from
the hard line he had adopted toward the insurgent Left as minister of the
interior in the early 1960s. It also seemed unlikely following a recent split
in AD, in which £arty conservatives retained control of the organization
and its left-wing faction withdrew to form the Movimiento Electoral del
—
Pueblo (People's Electoral Movement MEP). Political observers were
also surprised by the qualified support extended to the Perez administra-
tion in 1974 by the "ultraleftist" MAS. The MAS had been founded in 1971
by Communists who had been among those most committed to the guer-
rilla struggle in the 1960s and were impatient with the traditional Left's

relegation of socialism to the distant future.

The MAS's turnabout signaled a profound change in the Left's political
strategy and discourse. MAS leaders now ruled out excessive reliance on
mass mobilizations, arguing that Venezuela's privileged status as an oil
producer translated into greater economic and political stability than
existed elsewhere in Latin America. The MAS also dissolved parallel
unions and entered the AD-dominated Confederation de Trabaj adores de
—
Venezuela (Workers' Confederation of Venezuela CTV), which leftists
had severely denounced in the 1960s for impeding class struggle and pro-
moting party interests. In addition, the MASistas redefined the concept of
socialism to emphasize democracy over changes in property relations.
The MAS's commitment to democracy was not limited to theoretical
formulations: it pioneered in organizational reform, the most far-reaching
of which was the recognition of internal "tendencies" (a euphemism for
factions) that were allowed to proselytize within the party, ran their own
slates in internal elections, and received proportional representation at all
2
levels of the party
The MAS was a pacesetter on the left. Other leftist parties also aban-
doned the notion that Venezuelan democracy was inextricably tied to the
capitalist structure. As did with the MAS, they entered the CTV and, in
spite of their limited representation at its congresses, were given positions
on its executive committee. At first, leftist parties pledged themselves to
struggle within the CTV to democratize and radicalize it and to eliminate
corruption within its ranks. Nevertheless, in the course of time the leftists
on the CTV's executive committee did not always forcefully pursue these
objectives. Furthermore, the leftists coincided with AD's trade union
leadership on certain basic issues, such as the need to deemphasize labor
conflict in state-run industries and to avoid public questioning of the
ethical conduct of fellow CTVistas, limiting criticism to internal discus-
sion. By the late 1970s, the Causa R (Radical Cause) and a host of other
142 Steve Ellner

marginal left parties that opposed these restraints made important

inroads in conflict-ridden sectors, specifically in the steel company
Siderurgica del Orinoco (SIDOR) and other state-run basic industries in
3
the state of Bolivar, as well as in the textile industry. Contrary to the
general impression conveyed by many leftists that labor harmony pre-
vailed during the oil boom period, strike activity, while tapering off after
1973, was still considerably greater than during the 1960s.
Up until its 1985 congress, the MAS was greatly concerned with
staking out an identity that would differentiate it from the PCV, from
which it had emerged, and social democracy as represented by AD, which
a minority of MASistas felt their party should approximate. According to
many MASistas, such delineation was obstructed by the party's decision
to choose an independent leftist, Jose Vicente Rangel, as its presidential
candidate in 1973 and 1978. For the latter election, they pushed for the
nomination of the MAS's principal theoretician, ex-guerrilla Teodoro
Petkoff, arguing that this would stimulate the party to seek greater ideo-
logical clarity. Subsequently, Petkoff was selected to represent the MAS
in the presidential elections of 1983 and 1988. The determination of
MASistas to disassociate themselves from the traditional Left because
of the nondemocratic implications of its doctrine led them to rule out a
priori any electoral pact that included the PCV.
The MAS's approach, which rejected compromise on any of its posi-
tions in an attempt to appeal to voters on the basis of an undiluted
program and ideology, was at odds with the united-frontism promoted by
the PCV As a result, in spite of considerable interest in a united leftist
candidacy, the Left ran several presidential candidates in the elections of
1973, 1978, 1983,and 1988. In these elections (with the exception of that
of 1978, in which there were four leftist candidates), the united-front
strategy supported by the PCV and the MEP succeeded in drawing a host
of smaller leftist groups that Petkoff contemptuously called "alphabet
soup letters." In these three elections the MAS's only ally was the
Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolu-
tionary Left—MIR), a 1960 split-off from the AD. While the fledgling
MAS's 5.3 percent in the 1973 congressional elections was considered a
breakthrough at the time, the party's vote in the three subsequent
congressional contests, which ranged from 5.2 percent to 10.3 percent,
was a disappointment to the MASistas, who were convinced of social-
ism's short-term prospects in Venezuela. The three other main leftist
parties (the MEP, the MIR, and the PCV) fared even worse, the entire
leftist vote in the presidential elections and congressional elections re-

spectively being 9.4 percent and 12.5 percent in 1973, 7.8 percent and 11.7
percent in 1978, 7.5 percent and 13.6 percent in 1983, and 4.0 percent and
13.6 percent in 1988.
 The Venezuelan Left 143

The stability of Venezuelan democracy during this period contrasted

sharply with the situation in the rest of Latin America, mostly governed
by military dictatorships and subject to considerable unrest. These condi-
tions influenced Petkoff and other MASistas to view the Venezuelan road
to socialism as largely free of violence and more akin to the democratic
path mapped out by the Italian Communist party than what could be
expected elsewhere in the continent. For this reason, the MAS was clearly
in the forefront in the modification of socialist doctrine, emphasizing
pluralism and rank-and-file participation, that other Latin American
leftist parties would begin to stress only in the latter part of the 1980s,

after democracy had been restored in their nations.

The Deepening of the Economic Crisis, 1986-1991

The recession that set in during the administration of Luis Herrera

Campins (1979-1984) of the Social Christian Comite de Organization
Politica ElectoralIndependiente (Committee of Independent Electoral
Political —
Organization COPEI), AD's main party rival, grew worse
under the government of AD's Jaime Lusinchi (1984-1989) and the begin-
ning of Carlos Andres Perez's second term (1989-1994). During the 1980s,
the popular and progressive policies of Perez's first administration were
abandoned in favor of neoliberal economic formulas and a less defiant
stand toward the United States, in spite of the previous reputation of all
three presidents as being left-leaning or at least reformist. The MAS's
positions shifted to the left, partly as a result of the election of hard-liner
Freddy Munoz as secretary-general at the party's national convention in
1985 and his reelection in 1990. At the time of the 1985 convention, most
members of its social democratic faction left the party, after which it was
less concerned about disputing AD's claim to the social democratic label.
Perez's conservative tendency after his reelection in 1988 and the MAS's
move to the left were part of a veritable polarization in Venezuelan poli-
tics in which the "Center-Left" position ceased to be as attractive and
promising as it had been in the 1970s, when Perez and the MAS seemed to
be converging on it from opposite directions.
The MAS's shift to the left must also be placed in a historical-
international context. The MAS had always avoided a staunchly anti-
United States position and made a conscious effort to balance criticism of
Washington with that of Soviet foreign policy. 4 Underpinning its refusal to
take sides in U.S.-Soviet disputes was the conviction that the Cold War
impaired Third World interests. It opposed U.S. belligerence toward the
Sandinista regime, for instance, because this thrust Nicaragua onto center
stage in the East- West conflict and undermined that government's efforts
to experiment with policies that did not accord with either U.S. or Soviet
144 Steve Ellner

models. When the Soviet Union dropped out of the Cold War under
Gorbachev, the MAS's denunciations of U.S. policies were no longer
moderated or counterpoised by attacks on the other camp. At its 1990
convention, it hailed the ending of the Cold War: "The cessation of
bipolarity has and will continue to have positive effects on all fronts.
Options in the area of economic relations and international politics will be
opened up in favor of plurality. ... It will also reduce the obstacles to a
'new treatment' between the 'big' nations and the 'small' ones/' 5
The historical implications of this revised focus were apparent in the
MAS's reaction to the U.S. attack on Iraq in 1991 and its criticism of both
the Venezuelan government and the United Nations for failing to remain
evenhanded in the dispute. Petkoff argued that, whereas the U.S. decision
to enter the Korean War and the U.S. confrontation with the Soviet Union
in the Cuban missile crisis had been justified by the risk of alteration of the
international balance of power, such constraints were no longer operative
and therefore the U.S. action amounted to no more than the naked asser-
tion ofhegemony in the Third World. 6
Reactions in COPEI, AD, and the Left to privatization and other
IMF-inspired economic policies in the 1980s were varied. The COPEI,
under the leadership of the party's 1988 presidential candidate Eduardo
Fernandez, urged President Perez to accelerate official plans for privatiza-
tion, which included seventy state-owned firms. The PCV, the MAS, and
other leftist parties rejected proposals to turn over operations in strategic
industries to private interests, although they were not opposed to privat-
ization per se. The PCV, for instance, accepted the privatization of certain
companies as long as "it is carried out with absolute rectitude and does
not contribute to a greater concentration of wealth ... in favor of monop-
7
olies." The Left also insisted that Congress set general guidelines for pri-
vatization, including worker input in the management of privatized
—
firms something that the CTV also called for. At first glance, it would
have appeared that the Left had the same concerns as certain influential
traditional sectors in both COPEI (particularly former president Rafael
Caldera) and AD (especially members of the "orthodox" faction, which
included former president Jaime Lusinchi) about the neoliberal bent of
Perez's economic policies. Nevertheless, by the late 1980s Caldera's influ-
ence in COPEI's leadership was marginal. More important, those AD
leaders who resisted privatization were swayed by clientelistic impera-
tives to which the Left was not subject: state companies, in contrast to
private ones, provided opportunities to AD and its members in the form
of employment, contracts, and resources. 8
Within the leftist camp divergences of opinion on other measures im-
posed by the IMF were evident. The Left, for instance, criticized the
"shock treatment" embraced by the Perez administration, whereby tariffs,
 —

The Venezuelan Left 145

preferential dollars for nonluxury imports, subsidies for the production of

basic commodities, and the regulation of their prices were to be almost
completely eliminated in a short period of time. The main thrust of
the critique put forward by Teodoro Petkoff was that the strategy of
opening Venezuela to foreign capital and imports had to be implemented
gradually in order to limit adverse socioeconomic effects. Other leftists
emphasized the need to go beyond the "easy" stage of import substitu-
tion, although few offered blueprints based on the state interventionism
9
that had been considered a virtual panacea prior to the 1980s.
Petkoff, Munoz, and other leftists defended different criteria for the
role of foreign capital in the nationalized oil industry. Petkoff viewed with
favor the proposed joint venture for the exploitation of natural gas in the
Peninsula of Paria, in which the state oil company was to hold only
40 percent of the stock. Petkoff pointed out that none of the company's
foreign partners would have a greater share and that, in any case,
Venezuela was to have veto power over all decisions. Mufioz, while also
going along with the deal, adhered more strictly to the original terms of
the nationalization of oil, which circumscribed the participation of private
capital in the industry. In contrast, MEPistas, among others, refused to
endorse the arrangement, arguing that it represented a step toward the
denationalization of the industry. 10
The more aggressive opposition of the Causa R to the government's
economic policies nearly led it to a direct confrontation with SIDOR in the
state of Bolivar, where the party's standard-bearer, Andres Velasquez,
was elected governor in 1989. The Sindicato Unico de Trabajadores de la
Industria Siderurgica (Single Union of Workers of the Steel Industry
SUTISS) had been a stronghold of the Causa R since the 1970s, when
Velasquez was elected its president, only to be ousted by the union's affil-
iate federations two years later. SIDOR was being prodded by its creditor
the World Bank to carry out a plan of industrial reconversion that consist-
ed of the closing of several plants and the immediate dismissal of three
thousand workers. The Perez government was also motivated by the
prospect that the Bush administration's commitment to a hemispheric
union would be translated into the lifting of voluntary restrictions on
Venezuelan steel exports to the United States.
The Causa R-controlled SUTISS called several symbolic strikes and
proposed that the three thousand jobs be preserved by eliminating over-
time work, contracted work, and bureaucratic waste. The union also
claimed that SIDOR's real aim was to streamline individual operations
in order to privatize them. The Causa R, which in the 1970s had sharply
criticized other leftists in SIDOR for overrelying on strikes, was now
encouraged by its control of the governorship and threatened to call a
general strike in the region. SIDOR, for its part, raised the specter of the
146 Steve Ellner

militarization of the zone and the dismissal of the union's entire leader-
ship. Governor Velasquez played a key role in persuading the Perez
administration to set up a commission with union and company partici-
pation towork out a plan to mitigate the negative effects of reconversion.
The agreement created a labor exchange whereby discharged workers
would be employed in other state firms in the region for two years, during
which time they would receive 80 percent of their former salaries (SIDOR
had wanted it to be reduced in time to 50 percent) and be covered by
certain clauses inSIDOR's labor contract. In addition, workers who left
SIDOR voluntarily would be granted double severance pay. Velasquez
recognized that both sides had made important concessions and hailed
the agreement as a breakthrough that improved upon similar arrange-
ments in countries such as Spain. 11
Another important issue to which the Venezuelan Left lacked a uni-
form approach was the problem of ecological disruption and preservation
of national borders. In the late 1980s thousands of Brazilian miners,
known as garimpeiros, illegally entered Venezuela's southern rain forest
region in search of gold and diamonds. Not only did the use of mercury in
the extraction of gold contaminate the Orinoco River system, but the
miners presence threatened the precarious existence of indigenous tribes.
'

Individual leftists defended two diametrically opposed positions. On the

one hand, the ex-MEPista national deputy Alexander Luzardo argued
that the area's delicate ecological equilibrium would be upset if the popu-
lation were to exceed two inhabitants per square kilometer. On the other,
some leftists favored colonization schemes and the promotion of eco-
nomic activity such as tourism as the only way to check Brazilian expan-
sionism, purportedly sponsored by the armed forces of that nation. They
questioned "ultraconservationism" and alleged that certain conserva-
tionist organizations were a cover for multinational interests seeking to
exploit the region in a supposedly orderly manner. Leftist parties did
not have a fixed stand. Most of them, however, were undoubtedly sensi-
tive to the possibility that a vocal defense of the ultraconservationist
strategy would leave them vulnerable to criticisms of failing to defend
national boundaries and being antipatriotic. Prior to the 1970s, the Left in
Venezuela and elsewhere in the continent, under the influence of "inter-
12
nationalism," had generally committed this error.

The Left in the Nation's Democratic Setting

Some of the Left's positions on democratic reforms and party reorgani-

zation —as with the issue of privatization—were supported, at least in
theory, by individual leaders of Venezuela's two main establishment
parties. Interest in the deepening of the nation's democracy became
 —

The Venezuelan Left 147

increasingly widespread as the memory of the violence-ridden decade of

the 1960s, which had convinced many that national security required
strict controls on expression, faded and political stability set in. The
MAS's structural reforms —including the decentralization of authority
and the granting of autonomous status to internal electoral commissions
—
and voting privileges to non-card-carrying "friends of the party" were
designed to demonstrate that the party's commitment to democracy was
not confined to theoretical formulations such as repudiation of the dicta-
torship of the proletariat.
The most far-reaching organizational reform was the liberty given to
internal "tendencies" to propagate ideas within the party, which was
seen as a corrective to the orthodox Communist practice of suppressing
minority opinions. In the party's 1985 congress, nearly all delegates were
clearly identified with one of the tendencies, and because of their disci-
pline Petkoff, who at the time remained aloof of the internal currents, was
not elected a regular member of the party's executive committee. Some
MASistas claimed that the selection of their national authorities in 1985
was to all intents and purposes based on the system of direct elections
much as are presidential elections in the United States, in which members
of the electoral college are pledged to vote for a given candidate.
At the time of the 1985 congress, it appeared that the MAS had ex-
hausted its reformist democratic impulse and that consensus existed on
the need from the "legalization of tendencies" whose resultant
to retreat
factionalism was threatening to tear the party apart. Since 1985, the activ-
ities of the MAS's internal tendencies have been curbed in concrete ways:

they no longer publish magazines and bulletins for internal circulation,

nor are their positions articulated in public. Furthermore, the MAS's three
major historical leaders (Petkoff, Munoz, and Pompeyo Marquez) are no
longer in charge of the tendencies they formerly led.
Nevertheless, since 1985 the MAS has continued to pioneer reforms in
favor of the deepening of democratic structures and practices. Decentral-
ization of decision making, part of the MAS program since the late 1970s,
became the cornerstone of its strategy in the 1988 national elections.
The MASistas called their campaign "bicentric" in that Petkoff shared
the limelight he received as presidential candidate in order to promote
the images of the party's congressional aspirants. This effort came to
fruition in the 1989 municipal and state elections with the emergence of
strong MAS gubernatorial candidates who were clearly identified
with the interests of their respective states in Aragua, Zulia, Tachira, and
Lara.
The MAS's 1990 internal elections were noteworthy for several
reasons. Munoz and his only rival for secretary-general, Victor Hugo
D'Paola, had both been leading members of the same tendency. This
148 Steve Ellner

situation signaled the abatement of the ongoing, often bitter struggle

among factions that had characterized the party nearly since its founding
in 1971. Furthermore, ideological and even programmatic issues were
largely absentfrom the internal campaign. Munoz's supporters hailed the
secretary-general for having checked factionalism and guided the party to
its much-acclaimed success in the 1989 elections. Petkoff, who actively

campaigned on behalf of DTaola, recognized Munoz's merits but pointed

out that the MAS had to set an example for Venezuelans, whose skepti-
cism toward parties and politicians was demonstrated by an increase in
abstentionism amounting to 54 percent in 1989. He pointed out that if
reelected Mufioz might end up occupying the secretary-generalship for
ten years, thus contradicting the MAS's commitment to rotation in
office and its opposition to the tight control by political cliques (known
as cogollitos).
Finally, in 1990 for the first time in Venezuelan history primaries were
held for party authorities, including the national and statewide posts of
secretary-general and president. At the same time, MASistas were given
the opportunity to vote for delegates to the national convention either by
slate or nominally. In several states neither of the two main slates emerged
triumphant for all leadership positions, which demonstrated that a large
number of MASistas split their votes. Furthermore, the "independent"
Argelia Laya was elected president (becoming the first woman president
of an important political party in Venezuela) with more votes than were
received by Mufioz. Some MASistas considered this voting behavior
a healthy sign in that it indicated that party members were forming
their own independent criteria and drew the conclusion that solidified
tendencies at the national level were in the process of disappearing.
The MAS's reforms served as a model for other political parties in
Venezuela. By the late 1980s, proposals that copied aspects of its reorgani-
zation and practices were put forward in AD and COPEI, although resis-
tance from the cogollitos in both parties placed in doubt their short-term
implementation. Thus, for instance, a "renovation" current in AD associ-
ated with President Perez called for such organizational changes as
proportional representation for minority slates, sharp reduction in the
number of delegados natos (who automatically attend party conventions
without having been elected), the granting of the right to vote to "friends
of the party," and the electoral commission's autonomy vis-a-vis the
party's executive committee. The renovators' proposal to hold primaries
to elect party authorities was turned down in favor of nomination at
conventions by delegates elected by the membership. The defeat of the
plan discredited the claim of its architect Carlos Canache Mata that AD
throughout its history had always been in the forefront in the struggle
for democracy and that it was currently ahead of the MAS in internal
 The Venezuelan Left 149

organizational reform. 13 One of COPEI's top leaders, Gustavo Tarre, in a

book critical of his party's failure to keep pace with popular support for
the deepening of democracy, admitted that the MAS's regionalization and
decentralization had made possible the triumph of its candidate over that
of COPEI in Aragua
14
in the 1989 gubernatorial elections.
Other leftist parties moved in the same direction as the MAS. The MIR
abandoned its intransigent positions of the 1960s and, shortly before the
1988 elections, merged with the MAS. In 1990, the PCV implemented
direct elections for party authorities at local and regional levels. At the
same time, rank-and-file Communists were given the opportunity to
nominate some of the members of the party's central committee.
At the PCV's eighth congress in August 1990 neither renovator Hector
Mujica, a former presidential candidate, nor old-timer Pedro Ortega Diaz
received a majority of votes for the presidency, and therefore it was
decided that the position would rotate between the two. Ortega Diaz and
other orthodox Communists opposed the proposed self-criticism of the
party's endorsement of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that
had set off the MAS split. Ortega pointed out that this proposal, as well as
Mujica's blanket support of perestroika, repeated the previous Commu-
nist error of uncritically accepting models and policies from abroad
15
in their entirety. The renovators, for their part, hoped that their self-
criticism would convince ex-dissidents to rejoin the party. They proposed
amalgamate existing leftist parties and, similarly, the
a unity congress to
Communist-run Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de
dissolution of the
—
Venezuela (United Center of Workers of Venezuela CUTV) in order to
create a united workers' confederation.
The favorable outcome of the 1989 elections, in which the opposition
emerged triumphant in nine of the nation's twenty gubernatorial contests,
including seven of Venezuela's eight most populated and industrialized
states, encouraged interest in broad-based unity. In most areas the MAS
and the PCV supported common candidates. In addition, in four states
virtually the entire opposition, including COPEI, endorsed the winning
gubernatorial candidate. In agreeing to these electoral pacts, COPEI put
aside its anticommunism and the MAS replaced the go-it-
traditional
alone approach that it had embraced in previous elections.
The victory of the MAS's Carlos Tablante in Aragua and Andres
Velasquez in Bolivar put in evidence the primary importance of the
struggle against corruption and identification with regional interests
in the outcome of the elections. As vice-president of the Chamber of
Deputies, Tablante had been a major protagonist in the inquiry into the
illicit sale of preferential dollars by the state foreign-exchange agency

Recadi, which led to indictments against President Lusinchi's minister of

interior as well as his private secretary. Velasquez's Causa R skillfully
150 Steve Ellner

focused national attention on issues related to SIDOR and other

heavy industries controlled by the state-run Corporation Venezolana de
—
Guayana (Venezuelan Guayana Corporation CVG) in Bolivar. The
Causa R accused the politically appointed heads of CVG-affiliated
companies and other government officials (including AD's candidate for
governor) of favoring their own private companies with contracts. It also
attacked the CVG for overextending its authority and, in the process,
eclipsing local and state governments.
The triumph of the socialist MEP's candidate in Anzoategui was made
possible by the support of a host of political parties; as governor he was
forced to satisfy the clientelistic appetites of his COPEI allies. In contrast,
the victories of both Tablante and Velasquez were largely due to their own
reputations rather than to party backing. Indeed, Tablante disappointed
some MASistas by refusing to favor them in top positions as part of his
declared war on clientelism. He also created special boards of bidding
and purchases consisting of upstanding citizens to award state contracts
to businesses without political considerations. Tablante and his followers,
known as the "Force of Aragua," attempted to draw ideological conclu-
sions from his experiences in the governorship. They argued for a model
of government based on a nonsectarian approach that incorporated all
citizens into the decision-making process independent of their political
affiliations. This task, rather than socialism, had to be the MAS's priority
goal. 16 Tablante's critics in the MAS argued that the Force of Aragua
exalted administrative skills at the expense of class analysis and socio-
economic objectives.
Governor Velasquez, for his part, refused to modify his unpretentious
style; thus, for instance, he avoided formal attire and drove a car rather
than using a chauffeur. He continued the practice, which had become a
veritable tradition in the area, of speaking at informal gatherings of
workers outside the SIDOR plant. The Causa R sponsored public assem-
blies, which they had previously organized for the workers at SIDOR, in
neighborhoods and towns to facilitate popular input into decision making
at the gubernatorial level. The Causa R, whose coupling of politics and
imagination had always been its trademark, undertook a campaign initi-
ated by Velasquez of collecting fifty cents from every citizen in order to
finance a professional audit of the past AD state administration.
Velasquez, Tablante, and a number of other governors and mayors
(including COPEI's charismatic governor of Zulia) called for the imple-
mentation (at least in local and state contests) of uninominal elections, in
which voters select candidates individually rather than by slate. They
pointed out that they themselves had been elected on the basis not of
identification with their respective parties, but of voter confidence in their
personal integrity and political competence. The uninominal system,
 The Venezuelan Left 151

which threatens to undermine the dominant role of political parties, was

opposed by Venezuela's major parties (although more recently AD has
expressed qualified support for it). The MAS, for instance, argued that
elimination of slates would deny minority parties proportional represen-
tation (as is the case in the United States) and would thus reduce if not
completely do away with the Left's legislative presence. Nevertheless,
Tablante's position was supported by some MASistas who claimed that
forcing voters to take into consideration the candidate's qualifications
and not his party affiliation would strike a blow at party machines and
thus represent an important step in favor of the perfection of democracy.
Indeed, at the MAS's 1990 convention, several leading MASistas ran for
party positions independent of any of the slates and urged delegates to
abandon the outworn practice of voting for lists elaborated by others
without considering the merits of each candidate.

Critical Appraisals of the Venezuelan Left

The disturbances that broke out simultaneously throughout the nation
on February 27, 1989, in response to IMF-imposed price increases took the
entire nation by surprise. Many commentators pointed out at the time
that the violence was a testimony to the CTV's loss of leadership and
credibility and its failure to channel mass discontent. In fact, the same
observation could have been applied to the Venezuelan Left. Over the
previous two decades the Left had concentrated its efforts along electoral
lines and had learned to play by the rules of the democratic system, even
helping to reform them in constructive and creative ways. Nevertheless, it
had neglected the task of establishing tight links with popular organiza-
tions and engaging in grass-roots organizing. Illustrative of the short-
coming of this approach was the Left's failure to make inroads in orga-
nized labor: in the CTV congresses of 1975, 1980, 1985, and 1990, AD
retained an absolute majority, and the representation of the combined
parties of the Left declined from 19 percent to 15 percent.
The events of the week of February 27 led some leftist intellectuals and
activists to criticize the Left's performance and call for a reconsideration
of the strategy based on electoralism. They pointed out that the distur-
bances demonstrated the potential for a mass movement in favor of
thoroughgoing change and that the principal impediments to such an
achievement were the Left's mistaken policies and priorities. Some drew
the conclusion that organizations in civil society including neighborhood
associations and unions, acting largely outside the realm of political party
influence, would be the main instruments for radical change in Venezuela.
Others placed a premium on the Communist practice prior to the 1960s of
sending cadres to chosen locations and industries to organize around
152 Steve Ellner

bread-and-butter issues. This tradition was allegedly maintained by the

handful of former Communists who founded the Causa R in the early
1970s and who engaged in grass-roots politics in priority areas without
attempting to project the image of their nascent party In an attempt to
revitalize the tradition, several national PCV leaders (including Jose
Manuel Carrasquel, president of the CUTV) voluntarily stepped down
from their bureaucratic positions in order to establish themselves in the
rank and file in the nation's interior. Belonging to the renovation current
of their party, these PCVistas maintained that the main lesson of pere-
stroika was the danger of the ossification of leadership and its isolation
from ordinary working people. 17
Other leftists argued that neither trade unions nor neighborhood asso-
ciations were sufficiently autonomous to conduct revolutionary struggle
on their own and displace leftist parties. They defended unity from above
in the form of interparty agreements as the first step toward increasing the
18
Left's effectiveness at the grass-roots level. This position was embodied
in the proposal of a unity congress in 1991 for the purpose of forming a
united party or front, which was endorsed by the MEP, the PCV, a group
of dissident Communists, and several other small groupings. Only the
MAS, which had generally spurned intraleftist unity, and the Causa R,
whose explicit policy was to reject endorsement of its candidates by other
parties, failed to show interest in the meeting.
The differences in leftist perceptions of civil society are understandable
given the changes that have taken place in recent years. Although Vene-
zuelan civil society is weak in comparison with others in Latin America,
assertions of autonomy and independent action have become increasingly
pronounced. Most neighborhood associations are controlled by AD and
to a lesser extent COPEI. Nevertheless, in the latter half of the 1980s
a movement within these organizations emerged in opposition to party
interference and in favor of uninominal elections in order to curb
party control of local government. At the same time, militant protests
against the deficient public services in individual communities became a
daily occurrence in Caracas and other large cities. In university elections
after 1985, slates of independents mostly with a radical orientation
triumphed over those identified with political parties at the Central
University and elsewhere. 19 In organized labor the most important strikes
were led by federations of professional workers in the state sector (grade
school and university teachers, medical personnel, laboratory techni-
cians), which were largely independent of the CTV and therefore less
subject to outside control than most trade unions. Finally, in 1990, inde-
pendent women's groups organized protests outside of congressional
offices in defense of the provisions in the new labor law regarding paid
 The Venezuelan Left 153

leave of absence and absolute job security for female workers fol-
lowing childbirth, which had come under heavy attack from business
spokesmen.
The greatest achievement of the Left in the period under study has
been the legitimacy and credibility conferred on it by its commitment to
democracy, which has effaced the negative stereotypes engendered by
the guerrilla fiasco of the 1960s. This success made possible the electoral
gains in 1989 that transformed Venezuela's political landscape. It can be
expected that the congressional-presidential elections in December 1993
will break the AD-COPEI bipolarization of national expectation and atten-
tion. On the negative side is the Left's electoralism and neglect of grass-
roots political work. shortcoming is not corrected, leftist parties run
If this
the risk of being left on the sidelines in the face of spontaneous popular
protests at the same time that discontent is being channeled through the
two main establishment parties. Throughout its history the Venezuelan
Left has shown an exceptional capacity to reflect on previous errors
and change its strategy in an effort to correct them. Given this pattern, it
may be expected that with the resurgence of popular movements in the
post-oil-boom years the Left will modify its priorities, which up until
now have been biased in favor of electoral politics.

Notes
1. Steve Ellner, "Diverse Influences on the Venezuelan Left: Five Books by Venezuelan
Leftists," Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 23, 4 (November 1981):483^93.
2. Steve Ellner, Venezuela's Movimiento al Socialismo: From Guerrilla Defeat to Innovative
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1988); Jorge A. Giordani, La propuesta socialista del
Politics

MAS: iHacia un reformismo de izquierda? (Valencia: Vadell Hermanos, 1989).

3. Daniel Hellinger, "Venezuelan Democracy and the Challenge of Nuevo Sindicalismo,"

paper presented at Thirteenth International Congress of the Latin American Studies Associa-
tion, Boston, October 23-25, 1986.
4. Steve Ellner, New York Times, August 25, 1981, A-19.
5. Punto, January 24, 1991, my translation.
6. Punto, January 24, 1991.
7. Tribuna Popular [PCV newspaper], August 10-16, 1990, 5.

8. This point has been made by various prominent analysts, including Jose Antonio Gil
Yepez, the journalist Alfredo Peha, and even the AD leader Hector Alonso Lopez. See El
Nacional, February 24, 1991, D-2; May 5, 1991, D-2.
9. Petkoff, interview, Caracas, March 7, 1991; El Nacional, June 8, 1980, D-16.
10. El Nacional, September 12, 1990, D-7.

11. Andres Velasquez, speech delivered in Barcelona, December 13, 1990; Tello Benitez
(former secretary-general of the steelworkers' union), speech delivered in Puerto La Cruz,
February 6, 1991.
12.Alexander Luzardo, interview, Caracas, August 8, 1991; Punto, October 11, 1990, 13;
October 25, 1990, 8-9; Ellner, Venezuela's Movimiento, 81.
13. El Nacional, May 8, 1990, A-4; May 22, 1990, A-4.
154 Steve Ellner

14. Gustavo Tarre Briceno, Carta abierta a los copeyanos (que puede ser leida por quienes no
lo son) (Caracas: Ediciones Centauro, 1990), 83-84.
15.Pedro Ortega Diaz, interview, Caracas, August 14, 1990.
16. MAS es la Fuerza de Aragua," speech at MAS's Seventh Regional
Carlos Tablante, "El
Convention in Maracay, October 1990, mimeo.
17. Jose Manuel Carrasquel, interview, Barcelona, February 25, 1991; Pablo Medina en
entrevista (Caracas: Ediciones del Agua Mansa, 1988), 24.
18. Eustoquio Contreras (secretary of organization of the MEP), interview, Barcelona,

March 2, 1991.
19. Luis Gomez Calcano, "Introduccion," in Gomez Calcaho, ed., Crisis y movimientos
sociales en Venezuela (Caracas: Editorial Tropykos, 1987), 15.
 9
The Argentine Left Since Peron
Donald C. Hodges

Is some Argentine
political pattern discernible in the evolution of the
Left since the death of President Juan Domingo Peron on July 1, 1974?
Broken down into its components, this question reduces to what has
happened to the principal sectors of the Argentine Left: the populist, the
national, and the socialist.
Representing the interests of a broad majority, populism in Argentina
rests on a truce between industrial capital and organized labor aimed at
their common enemy —
the landed and financial oligarchy Although a
multiclass movement, its leftwing advocates a new deal for labor based
on collective bargaining, a welfare state with a strong public sector, a fifty-
fifty division of national income between labor and capital as an alterna-
tive to profit sharing, and a corresponding share of political power. While
the main populist party has increasingly come under the sway of its right
wing since Peron's death, a majority of Peronist trade unionists in the
leadership of the Confederacion General del Trabajo have been consis-
tently faithful to his ideology of justicialism (a compound of "justice " and
"socialism "). Justicialism stands for a mixed economy but one that contin-
ually evolves toward socialism as labor's share in the national income,
seats in Congress, and control over the provincial governments exceed
the fifty-fifty mark. 1
Th e Peronist Left is broad enough to include not only populists but also
a self-styled national Lef t. Within the Peronist movement during the
1960s, the conviction that a con sist ent nationalism must ally itself with
^socia UsjJLeft and with the socialist countries against U.S. imperialism
tj

and the multinational corporations received its classic exposition in the

writings of John William Cooke. As do the corresponding movements in
Bolivia and Peru, t he Argentine n ational Left believes that the struggle

155
 156 Donald C. Hodges

agains t economic dependence can ultimately succ eed only through a

socialist revolutionwith nationalist overtones. 2 Within the Peronist
party, th ^national Left
Le embraces the various tendencies associated with
Evolutionar y Peronism, bu t jt is not an exclusivdy_Peror»6t
Cooke's fcevolutiona
phenomenon ut Marxist origin, the national Left dates back to a 1940s
,

split from the Trotskyist Fourth International led by Jorge Abelardo

Ramos. Thus it also includes his Frente de Izquierda Popular (Popular
—
Left Front FIP). B ut despite their socialist and Marxist leanings, all
secto rs of t he national Left have consistently chosen to ally themselves
with the Peronist r ather than the socialist Left._
j^ fTh g_ socialist Left/iiffers from the national Left in its commitm ent
T* independent strategy for socialism by stages unencjjjnbered
fp sTj
by populist constraints With few exceptions, Argentine socialists are
.

Marxist-Leninist s, but although communists in name they are not egali-

|

tanans concerned with equalizing wages and leveling the salaries of

/

^managers and professionals. 3 Although differing on how to acquire polit-

ical rx^we^rkyjy^ul d use it to exp ropnatetr^multmationals^ tojiation-
alize_trTe_land along with large and m j ririlp-sj zpH pntprprisp.^ and to lay
thp^roundwork for wo rkers' self-management Socialists are not always
true to their calling, but at one time or another the socialist Left
has included the Par tido Comunista de Argentina (PCA), the neo-Trotskyist
Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism^NTAS), the
ex-Trotskyist Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (Revolution-
7
—
aly^ASrkeri party PRT), its now-defunct Ejercito Revolucionario del
*

—
Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army ERP), and their various splinter
groups.

Lessons of the Historic Defeat of 1976-1982

In Argentina the restructuring of the Left during the 1980s responded
not only to the seven years of military dictatorship beginning in 1976
but also to the advances of the world socialist movement and the Latin
American revolution in particular. The influence of Unidad Popu lar, the
popular-front experiment in Chile (1970-1973) hegemonized by the Com-
munist and Socialist parties, e ncouraged the socialist Left to emulate the
Chile an experience 4 The unity of the Left that undergirded the Cuban
.

Revolution of 1959, the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, and the promise of

victory by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador
was another pole of attraction.
These positive incentives toward a unified Left were not, however, the
most compelling ones. Thp single most importan t fartnr in restructuring
the Argentine Left was the^ustoric defeat of 1976- 1982. This sanguinary
episode, which decimated the Left, went hancllnhand with a system of
 U

The Argentine Left Since Peron 157

state terrorism aimed at eradicating MarxisCc ul tural as we ll aspolitical- __

m ilitary subversion. Reflections on its causes gave birth to a spate of

books beginning in 1982, a literature about the Left's defeat aimed at

recovering from the "holocaust," ensuring that it would never recur, and
correcting mistaken assessments of the Argentine situation and corre-
sponding strategic errors. 5
The military dictatorship concentrated on stamping out not only
the insurgent Left but also its legal and political structures. In the convic-
tion that armed subversion was nourished by the national Left as well as
by the Communist and Trotskyist parties, the armed forces were deter-
mined to cripple them. As a condition of preventin g a recup^nTe~of~th
million and more vo tes a massed by the socialist Left in th£ March 1973
el^Tggns ana the la n dslide victory or the Frente Justicialista de Li ben
(J usticialist Liberation Front— FREJULI) with the support of most oTth e
s ocialist parties in Septem bp r 1 973 the milit ar y regime overrode the con -
,

F/^^<X(J
sanation to ban all political activity It also systematically discredited the
-

ideologies of the Left. That these military policies bore fruit is confirmed
by the convergence of the political Right that contributed to the electoral
victory of the Radical party in October 1983.
The principal lesson drawn from this defeat by most sectors of the Left
is that strength comes from unity but not with parties that have moved

over to the Right. 6 Although there is still a debate about whether the Per-
onist party is a party of the Left, the differences between it and the Radical
party are not what they used to be, and therefore an alliance with main-
stream Peronism is increasingly perceived by socialists as self-defeating.
Thus the Argentine Left now recognizes not only the imperative of unity
but also its perils.
The critical point in a populist government arrives when the masses
begin to question its intentions and threaten to desert it for not keeping
its promises, thereby encouraging military intervention. Thus another

lesson of defeat is that populist governments have to respond to the ex-

pectations of organized labor or face the prospect of being overthrown.
One Argentine leftist expressed the dilemma this way: "When the govern-
ments of these past seven decades promoted policies of 'transformation'
. . and made evident they had popular support, coup-mongering did
.

not appear on the political scene to 'dissuade' them. It appeared in the

political calendar when, on the contrary, the institutional governments
did not complete those transformations or abandoned them." 7
Two widely respected Peronist intellectuals, Jose P. Feinmann and
Alvaro Abos, broke with the Peronist party and refused to vote for it in the
1985 congressional elections because the Peronist option had atrophied
and ceased to represent the national interest. Although it still whistled a
populist tune, the party had become stymied by its right wing. 8 Just as
 158 Donald C. Hodges

Argentina had ceased to be the same country it was before the March 1976
coup, so the Peronist party had compromised its populist substance while
retaining its populist image. To Feinmann it seemed that "todos unidos
perderemos" (together we shall all lose), and to Abos that "para crecer,
hay que romper" (to grow, we have to split). 9
Feinmann stressed the urgency of an anti-imperialist policy on which
the entire Argentine Left could agree, the "formation of a national front
. .including all the social and political sectors objectively opposed to
.

imperialism." 10 On the premise that "the contradiction between the prole-

tariat and the bourgeoisie is a secondary contradiction in the dependent
countries," this front would not be a workers' front with socialism as its
objective. 11 Yet no less a revolutionary than Lenin advocated a coalition in
which the socialist Left might have to play second fiddle. 12 That was the
kind of coalition promoted by the PCA in March 1973. Hegemonized by
the moderate leftist Intransigent party, the PCA's Popular Revolutionary
(a tffi Alliance polled almost nine hundred thousand votes compared with
#• *
A some seventy-four thousand for the Partido Socialista de los Trabaj adores
'
v (Socialist Workers' Party —
PST), the Trotskyist forerunner of the MAS that
pursued an independent strategy.
There was a reasonable chance that the socialist Left might some day
prevail in such an alliance, but in September 1973 both the Intransigent
and the Communist party supported Peron's candidacy for president in
Wan electoral coalition that neither party could ever hope to dominate. At
*tj 'fj^that point Communist party strategy became a caricature of Lenin's and

'iJv^ys an independent strategy began to pay off. The PST more than doubled its
*
AJr vote of six months earlier by polling 181,000 votes, more than 1.5 percent
of the total. Although the FIP improved its standing considerably in
September compared with a meagre 49,000 in March, it was at the cost of
joining an alliance with the Peronists and effectively abandoning its
socialist project. At least the PST had the prescience to realize that both the
populist and the national Left had been induced by the prospect of seats in
Congress to table their socialist agendas and that Peronism no longer con-
tained a solution to economic dependence. Only recently, in response to
the historic defeat of 1976-1982, has the Communist party also acknowl-
edged the force of this predicament. 13

Convergence of the Socialist Left

After rethinking its former strategy, the PCA responded to an appeal

by the MAS by launching the Frente del Pueblo (People's Front— FREPU)
in September 1985. The MAS itself was an instance of socialist conver-
gence in response to the military dictatorship. Formed in 1982 through a
merger of the PST and other socialists, it spurned the strategy of alliances
 The Argentine Left Since Peron 1 59

with the populist Left. 14 Instead, it called for the "political unity of the
workers in a new massive Workers' Party" and for the organization of a
revolutionary front limited to the organizations of the working class. 15
The FREPU formed the nucleus of such a front.
The FREPU aimed to overcome the "false option" at the polls between
the Radical and Peronist parties. With memories of their persecution,
imprisonment, and torture under the government of Isabel Peron still
fresh, many in the Peronist Left had voted for the Radical presidential
candidate, Raul Alfonsin, in October 1983. 16 They could not forget that the
military's dirty war against subversion had been authorized by Isabel
Peron in a presidential decree of February 1975, fully a year before her fall.
But Alfonsin's human rights record hardly sufficed to command their
enduring allegiance; hence their support for the FREPU's independent
alternative in 1985.
In the congressional elections of November 1985, with the support of
the disenchanted Peronist Left and the illegal PRT, the FREPU polled
some 250,000 votes. Its comparatively poor showing induced the PCA to
broaden the alliance by wooing elements of the national Left. In May 1987
a new front was launched, the Frente Amplio de Liberation (Broad Front
—
of Liberation FRAL), based on a seven-point program, a "new alter-
native that includes Peronists, Radicals, Intransigents, Communists,
Humanists, Socialists, Christians, and ecologists that expresses the
. . .

project of national liberation against dependence, that revindicates

authentic democracy with social justice and popular participation." 17
Since the MAS refused to endorse the new front, which it viewed as a
betrayal of working-class unity and an impediment to building an inde-
pendent labor party, the PCA relied on the Humanist party and splinter
groups from the Intransigent, Peronist, and Radical parties to float the
new organization. Among the signatories of the FRAUs program were
also a newly formed Green party and the illegal PRT, under the cover of its
legal front.
The Broad Front fared even worse than its predecessor. By mid-1987
the Humanist party had deserted the FRAL to run an independent cam-
paign, while the July 26th Peronist Movement returned to the Peronist
fold. Consequently, in the September 1987 congressional elections the
FRAL polled only 224,000 votes. Its response was to broaden the front by
wooing officials of the Radical party. In mid-1988 a tiny sector of the Rad-
ical leadership agreed to form a coalition with the Communists but only
on its own terms. Since the PCA was meager 20 percent of the
offered a
never materialized. 18
contested seats, a Center-Left coalition
The PCA then resumed negotiations with the MAS, by then predis-
posed to a renewed alliance owing to the defection of its left wing. But a
coalition with the MAS was not the PCA's first choice. By tradition, it
 —

160 Donald C. Hodges

would have preferred to resume its alliance with the Intransigent party in the
kind of front first proposed by the latter in May 1975, a broad front of the
populist, national, and socialist Left similar to the Broad Front in Uruguay 19
At its third Congress in 1988 the MAS reaffirmed its commitment to a
government of workers. Its electoral ambitions were better served, how-
ever, by a broad front with the Communists than by a united front with
minuscule pro-Trotskyist parties to its left. Consequently, it reneged on
the resolution voted at its previous congress and proposed that the
FRAL's successor, the Frente de Izquierda Unida (United Left Front
FIU), should be limited to a "struggle for national and social liberation/' 20
It also hoped to impose Luis Zamora, the MAS's main theoretician, as

candidate for president. But the PCA prevailed, thanks to superiority

its

inmoney, apparatus, and access to the mass media, and because the
Communists hoped to attract the votes of nonsocialists the FIU's program
contained no Leninist slogans.
The shift of the PCA toward an independent strategy made socialist
convergence a reality, but an about-face followed in response to the poor
electoral showings of 1985 and 1987. After the defection of its left wing,
the MAS too abandoned a strategy of socialist convergence. Thus both
have gravitated toward an alliance with new parties and political group-
ings whose socialism is either nominal or merely lukewarm.

The Impact of Perestroika

No discussion of the convergence of the electoral Left would be complete

without considering the role of perestroika. By disputing Communist dog-
matism and the claim of Communists to be the only genuine representatives
of the workers' interests, perestroika appeared to promote a convergence of
But that was not its principal impact.
socialist parties.
As the new political line adopted at the twenty-seventh congress of the
Soviet Communist party in March 1986, perestroika had an adverse effect
on revolution-prone movements in Latin America. First, it meant the affir-
mation of Western-style democracy, a political and economic pluralism at
odds with nearly sixty years of Stalinist and neo-Stalinist forced marches.
Second, it signified a renewed struggle against "Left Communists"
and "Trotsky ites" in the conviction that "promoting revolutions from out-
side, and even more so by military means, is futile and inadmissible." 21
Together, they would be translated into a repudiation of both the forcible
imposition of socialism in Eastern Europe and the export of the Cuban
and Nicaraguan revolutions with the help of local political-military
vanguards. As interpreted by its critics in Argentina, perestroika heralded
the abandonment of the PCA's celebrated "left turn," the abandonment
of an independent strategy for the working class. 22
 —

The Argentine Left Since Peron 161

Perestroika responded to a crisis not only in Marxism-Leninism but

also in Marxist ideology. Marx believed that economic growth was com-
patible with workers in control, the abolition of the market, and social
protection from the cradle to the grave. Perestroika is an admission that
once the industrial infrastructure has been built or rebuilt, as in the wake
of World War II, these other objectives may become impediments to
growth. By 1970 the centralized command economy had resulted in eco-
nomic stagnation coupled with chronic shortages and a failure to inno-
vate, and the absence of negative incentives to work such as the fear of
dismissal and the threat of unemployment contributed to low produc-
tivity and lack of responsibility on the job. Thus, as a condition of modern-
izing the economy, the fetters on the operation of market forces and
material incentives began to be scrapped. In Argentina as in the Soviet
Union, the response to this Marxist dilemma was disenchantment not
with socialism but with its mismanagement. However, only several
Trotskyist parties remained true to their Marxist origins by continuing to
defend centralized planning.
The partisans of perestroika want economic growth and modernization
but also a bigger slice of the economic pie for professional and managerial
cadres. Although they have yet to repudiate Lenin openly, Marxist-
Leninists long ago trashed his principle of equality of burdens and
equality of benefits. This accounts for the shelving of his interpretation of
the first The change in name of the parties in Eastern
stage of communism.
Europe —from "Communist' 7
to "Socialist" —
amounts to a recognition
that the reform-minded intelligentsia does not want to "work equally . . .

and get equal pay" any more than do party bureaucrats. 23 Challenging
them in Argentina, as in the Soviet Union, are the perestroika sceptics
the neo-Bolsheviks and social Luddites who look to Che Guevara, not to
Gorbachev, as their hero. 24
In Argentina, Moscow's adoption of perestroika took the Communists
by surprise. The Soviets' new line scarcely figured in the proceedings
of the party's sixteenth congress. It was at this congress that the PCA
abjured its past reformist errors and its failure to support the Guevarist
vanguards of the 1970s. A united front with the parties on its political left
became official policy as opposed to a popular front hegemonized by the
populist parties on its right.

What did Moscow think of the PCA's new "revolutionary line"? Victor
Volski, director of the Latin American Institute of the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, was on hand to give his opinion to the Argentine press. Inter-
viewed by La Razon (November 21, 1986), he said it was dangerous to
support the policies of the extreme Left. Although he supported what he
called a policy of "global revolution," by that he meant peaceful revolu-
tions from below and above through movements in the Third World
162 Donald C. Hodges

over which Communists had virtually no control. Volski even questioned

the FREPU's call for a moratorium on debt payments on the ground that it
might provoke a counterrevolution.
In response to Moscow's criticism, the PCA scrapped the FREPU and
launched the FRAL, without the MAS's support, and then the FIU with
the help of a changed MAS relieved of the impediment of its left wing.
Perestroika made the difference. It contributed less to socialist conver-
gence than to a coalition of Communists with other sectors of the Left. As
a result, the polarization of the socialist Left (between those who favor an
exclusively socialist front and those who promote a broader alliance)
continues to be a fact of Argentine political life.

The Eclipse of the Insurgent Left

The most vociferous champion of the broad fronts sponsored by the

PCA and the MAS was the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All for
—
the Homeland Movement MTP). Since its founding in March 1986 it had
become the most intrepid defender of the democratic process. As the
political arm of the monthly Entre Todos, whose first issue appeared in
December 1984, it had the structure not of a political party but of a supra-
party movement of the Left. Foj^ndejiny- former p adres of the ERP, backe d
andfrojvtedb y political mod erates, the MTP hoped to attract all sectors of
theHLeftth at chens ned naEonal and social liberation and were willing to
tTghTTor Pero nists, Radicals, Intransigents. Christians, Socialists
iti ,

Communist s, Independents. 25
But the bulk of its members and supporters
remained in the dark concerning its secret intentions. To their dismay,
they learned in January 1989 that its leaders had been using the MTP as
a front for a political-military vanguard aimed at uniting the insurgent
Left.
This strategy had been masterminded by the ERP's former commander,
Enrique Gorriaran Merlo, with the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion
—
Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front FSLN) as his model. 26
The MTP was launched as a social movement comparable to the Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo and other human rights groups linked to the Left. 27
As did these movements, it cut across party lines; in contrast to them, it
was manipulated by a camarilla of former guerrillas who had only
momentarily abandoned the armed struggle. As Gorriaran noted in an
interview in Cali, Colombia, where he was then in hiding: "We believe . . .

in a synthesis of the progressive wings of the traditional parties with what

survived of the revolutionary movement of the last decade, plus the new
generation and the sectoral organizations that emerged during recent years,
all united in a great political and social movement prepared to lead the
struggle for genuine national liberation with everything that this implies." 28
 The Argentine Left Since Peron 1 63

Today, we know what this implied: a revival of Che Guevara's strategy

of armed struggle adapted to the new conditions in Argentina after 1983.
"What is our duty?" asked Guevara. "To liberate ourselves at any price
... a liberation that will be brought about in most cases through armed
struggle and will, in our America, almost certainly have the characteristic
29
of being a socialist revolution." To succeed, such a struggle had to be
supported by all sectors of the Left. Consequently, in the absence of mili-
tary dictatorship, Gorriaran sought a pretext in the defense of democracy.
In preparation for this event, Gorriaran organized the nucleus of an inter-
national vanguard with links to other national movements committed to
armed struggle. 30 To finance the struggle, he embarked on a series of "expro-
priations." The first such action in 1986 involved the kidnapping for ransom
of a businessman in southern Brazil, followed by that of a Chilean colonel, the
publisher Luis Sales in Sao Paulo, and in 1989 the Brazilian businessman
Abdilio Diniz, for whom the guerrillas demanded sixty-five million dollars.
This last operation was crushed by Brazilian police intelligence through the
capture and torture of its local leader, a Gorriaran disciple. 31 The international
composition of the guerrillas adds credibility to a report by Uruguayan
military intelligence that Gorriaran proposed to extend his organization to a
sizable part of South America in conjunction with the Tupamaros, the
followers of the slain Brazilian guerrilla leader Carlos Marighela, and Chile's
Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. Among those captured in Brazil
were five Chileans affiliated to the MIR, two Canadians, two Argentines
belonging to the MTP, and only one Brazilian.
Because its commitment to armed struggle was tied to a populist pro-
gram, Argentine military intelligence described the MTP as an example of
"social-democratic militarism" aimed at installing a "Swedish-style
MTP was also shared by influential
socialism." 32 This perception of the
sectors of the Left. 33 In fact, the MTP supported the FREPU-FRAL-FIU
series of electoral alliances but perceived its role as that of the armed fist

Whatever the
of a united Left in defense of the constitutional government.
defects of Argentine democracy, said the MTP, it had to be defended as a
condition of broadening it and bringing about a fundamental change in
the social structure. As a first step, it began organizing cadres for an
eventual showdown with veterans of the Malvinas war, the carapintadas
(painted faces) responsible for the military rebellions of Holy Week 1987,
January 1988, and December 1988. But in proposing an armed response to
military rebellions, the MTP's leadership ran afoul of its membership and
suffered a split in December 1987 in which it lost most of its activists. At
issue was its vanguardism, its vertical structure of authority, and the
alleged sectarianism of its leaders. 34
In response to the first military uprising in April 1987, Francisco
Provenzano and his comrades in control of the MTP concluded that the
164 Donald C. Hodges

advance of the military was irreversible without an armed counter-

response. A former ERP militant, Provenzano argued that no matter who
might win the elections in 1989, sooner or later the increasing aggressive-
ness of the military was bound to culminate in a coup. As early as April
1985, when I interviewed him, he was obsessed with an armed show-
down with the military. Convinced that he and others like him were slated
he believed that armed struggle was the best defense.
for extinction,
Matters came to a head with the publication of a second interview with
Gorriaran in August 1988 with a foreword by Tupamaro leader Raul
Sendic. Encouraged by what he called the "democratic explosion " in
Argentina, Gorriaran outlined his strategy for uniting the insurgent Left:

In our country there are many revolutionaries who, from different organi-
zations, have struggled for the same ultimate objectives. ... I mean those
who belonged to the Argentine Liberation Forces, the Peronist Armed
Forces, the Montoneros, the Popular Commandos of Liberation, the Work-
ers' Power Revolutionary Organization, the PRT-ERP, and others. Many of
those comrades gave their life for those objectives of liberation, but others
are alive. Those who are alive have the duty ... to unite their combative
35
experience, this time from within a single political organization.

Although the new organization would resemble Peronism in its ideo-

logical smorgasbord, it would have a "revolutionary leadership." 36 In
other words, it would function as a political-military vanguard.

Did the former cadres of the insurgent Left respond to Gorriaran's invi-
tation? Although the PRT worked closely with the MTP leadership, it
would have nothing to do with Gorriaran's armed strategy. By then it was
committed to an electoral option shared with other ex-combatants of the
1970s. In short, Gorriaran's appeals for unification of the insurgent Left
fell on deaf ears.
But that was not enough to stop the MTP in its tracks. Within three
years of its founding, the moment of truth arrived. To the third military

rebellion in December 1988 the MTP responded with an advertisement in

a major newspaper that for the first time included Gorriaran's name at
the head of those who would "resist the coup." 37 This was followed by
an attempted bank "expropriation" suggestive of links to the MTP and
by an article in Entre Todos giving Provenzano's interpretation of the pop-
ular mobilization against the December uprising. Democracy was not the
only issue, he maintained, but also "the people's defense of lives against
the threat of genocide [and] the search for paths that will lead to a
. . .

fundamental change." 38
One such path was the counterresponse of January 23, 1989. In antici-
pation of a fourth military rebellion from units of the Third Infantry
Regiment stationed at La Tablada on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, the
 The Argentine Left Since Peron 1 65

MTP launched a preventive attack on the barracks. The assault lasted

almost thirty hours, resulting in the partial takeover of the military base
by more than fifty guerrillas. Twenty-eight of the assailants along with
nine soldiers and two policemen died in the attack. Another eighteen
guerrillas surrendered, but in a revival of the tactics of the dirty war
Provenzano and five others were executed without trial.
7
Whatever the guerrillas intentions, popular support for the operation
failed to materialize,and the assault was universally condemned by the
MTP's Meanwhile, the Right used it as an excuse for reviving
allies.

national security legislation and launching a witch-hunt against the Left.

It was said that international terrorists were involved in the assault. A

week later these suspicions were confirmed in an announcement from

Uruguay by the hitherto unknown Frente de Resistencia Popular (Popular
—
Resistance Front FRP) claiming credit for the operation. From a second
statement by the FRP on March 12, 1989, one learns that two Paraguayans
and a Brazilian were killed in the assault and that a Bolivian died after
being taken prisoner. Thus Gorriaran was accused of responsibility for the
entire episode.
With its founders dead or imprisoned, Entre Todos collapsed as a polit-

ical venture while the Guevarist Left had to return underground to carry
on its project for a ''fundamental change/ 739
It was not the first time and

perhaps would not be the last. It is fair to say that from its inception the
MTP, along with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Ecumenical
Movement for Human Rights, helped to sustain a subterranean Left
whose shared objectives of the "defense of life" and "fundamental
change" presupposed an independent strategy for socialism a strategy —
of profit sharing aimed at immediate inroads on the rights of private
ownership as a source of human exploitation. Although opting for a
fundamental change different from that of the Communists, these social
movements went to greater lengths than the Communists in promoting
social transformation.

Results and Prospects

There is no longer a viable populist option in Argentina. The 1980s

were marked by severe setbacks in economic and social fields, leading
to its characterization as a "lost decade" not only for Argentina but for
most of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. 40 What was
happening in Argentina was part of a worldwide phenomenon: "every-
where in the industrialized democratic world the old manual working
class was in decline, trade union membership was falling, old class loyal-
ties were crumbling." Although this was far from heralding the end of
41

the socialist age, it meant that populists were scrapping the welfare
166 Donald C. Hodges

state and that socialists too were sponsoring measures aimed at privatiz-
ing and deregulating the economy.
The populist premise of a community of interests between the orga-
nized proletariat and the national bourgeoisie producing for the local
market had collapsed in the face of persistent economic decline. There
was no escaping the fact that a strategy of development undermines a
populist coalition by cutting into wages as a condition of accumulation,
whereas a strategy of mass consumption undermines it by cutting into
profits. Faced with this Hobson's choice, President Carlos Saul Menem
42

opted in 1989 to take the path of Isabel Peron by giving priority to

economic growth, market forces, and the private sector.
Left populists too were reversing their historical emphasis on statist
and welfare policies. The CGT split in October 1989 over support for
Menem's new program, popularly referred to as thatcherismo. This should
not have come as a surprise, for the populist Left in Western Europe and
Latin America during the 1980s was a Thatcherite Left that agreed in prin-
ciple with the British prime minister's policies of privatization, reduced
government spending, and a moratorium on income redistribution. 43
As matters turned out, however, the Argentine Left was an exception to
the global shift to the ri ght of the trade uni ons, for the menemistas were
cTefeated in their bi d_to]co ntrol Argentine labo r. In 1985 the CGT hacP
adopted a 26-point program that was both statist and redistributionist, a
program that continues to have the overwhelming support of labor 's rank
and file. It also enjoys the backing of other sectors of the Argentine Left.
First, they agree with the CGT's call for a moratorium on servicing the
foreign debt and for the nonpayment of whatever portion may be decided
to be illegitimate. Second, they agree with the CGT's resolve to expand the
public sector and system of workers' self-management. Third, they agree
with the CGT's strikes for higher wages and its program of redistribution.
Finally, they agree on the revival of public works and welfare benefits to
be financed by the state. 44
By March 1990 the Argentine Left had further agreed on the following
concrete steps: price controls on basic consumer goods, an end to the pri-
vatization of public enterprises, an end to streamlining the public admin-
istration through downgrading positions and reducing personnel, and
massive wage increases 45 Ironically, the populist CGT rather than the
PCA-MAS had become the nucleus of a united workers' front in Argentina.
Said the PRT after abandoning its independent strategy for socialism:

The Front we need to curb the monopolies and bring about social changes of
different magnitude must include all the popular, democratic, anti-imperi-
alist, and revolutionary forces. It must bring together the representative or-

ganizations of the whole people, of laborers and employees, the urban petty
 The A rgen t ine Left S ince Peron 167

bourgeoisie, poor and middle peasants, the poor and marginal urban and
rural populations, workers on their own account, and even sectors of the
middle bourgeoisie uncompromised by the interests of the monopolies. 46

While other sectors of Peronism had moved to the Right, most of the CGT
had made a left-turn. Yet even Menem's policy of selling off state-owned
enterprises, firing government workers, and reducing corporate taxes
had another side to it. For he also promised to restore labor's share of the
national income, estimated at less than 32 percent in 1987, to its former
peak of 50 percent during the 1950s. 47
But did Menem really stand for a reinvigorated populism? At most he
can be credited for dismantling a bureaucratic-infested and inefficient
welfare system, which was being financed mainly through sales taxes that
weighed most heavily on the workers. Taxes on profits in 1989 repre-
sented less than 5 percent of the total, compared to 24 percent in Mexico,
50 percent in the United States of America, and 68 percent in Japan, while
some 10 percent of public spending consisted of subsidies to private
industry. 48 Under such conditions, the Populist State had become a cari-
cature of its former self by taxing the poor and subsidizing the rich.
On the debit side of this ledger, the process of privatization and reli-
ance on market forces was making Argentine industry bankrupt instead
of competitive, while "recreating the basis of the Oligarchical State/' 49
Periodically challenged by military dictatorships since 1955, the Populist
State never really had a chance to prove itself. What failed were the efforts
to implement the model whenever economic liberals took over the man-
agement of the state and the economy.
This is not to say that populism might have worked or that it may
still have another chance to prove itself. For there are only two realistic

scenarios for Argentina covering the next few decades, and a populist
revival is incidental to both of them. First, the country may continue to
drift or muddle along with a capitalism that discourages investment, an
armed establishment that periodically threatens to intervene, a labor
movement that is less than socialist, and a socialist Left that is politically
ineffectual. Furthermore, a temporary capitalist recovery may be made
possible by technological modernization of a few key industries capable of
competing on the world market, by renewed concentration on agricultural
exports where Argentina enjoys a comparative advantage, and by a biparti-
san accord between the Peronist and Radical parties capable of breaking the
stalemate with organized labor without military intervention.
In the latter event, there may be a marked shift from populist to
socialist ideologies in response to labor's disillusionment with a Peronist
party that is only nominally Peronist. As for Peron 's goal of a fifty-fifty
division of the national income between labor and capital, the setback to
168 Donald C. Hodges

organized labor during the military process convinced many Argentine labor
was already obsolete. Thus, in a report
leaders that this half-and-half solution
on comparative wages undertaken by a commission of twenty-five trade
unions, labor's share was unfavorably contrasted with that in Canada and
Australia, where it had already passed the 60 percent mark approximately —
twice the share in Argentina at the time. To these figures should be added
those for the United States, which recorded the same percentages as early as
1929 and by the time of the report boasted a 75 percent share for labor com-
pared with a total of profits, including net interest and rents, of 25 percent! 50
That the United States meets Peron's criterion for a socialist new order must
be a bitter pill for the Peronists. At the same time, it suggests that something
is seriously wrong with Peronist ideology and that the Argentine Left may be

acquiring a palate for more potent medicine.

Notes
1. Donald C. Hodges, Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and Resistance (Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 16-17, 136-139, 279-280.
2. Enrique Zuleta Alvarez, El nacionalismo argentino (Buenos Aires: La Bastilla, 1975),
2:619-657.
3. Donald C. Hodges, The Bureaucratization of Socialism (Amherst: University of Massachu-
setts Press, 1981), 77-173.
4. Juventud Intransigents Apuntes para la liberacion (Buenos Aires: Editorial Apuntes para la

Liberacion, 1985), 10-24; and, representing the new line of the PCA, Claudia Korol, El Che y los
argentinos (Buenos Aires: Dialectica, 1988), 145-166.
5. The literature of counterdefeat of the insurgent Left includes Envar El Kadri and Jorge
Rulli, Didlogos en (Buenos Aires: Foro Sur, 1984); Roger Gutierrez, ed., Gorriardn:
el exilio

Democracia y liberacion (Buenos Aires: Reencuentro, 1985); Samuel Blixen, ed., Treinta anos de
lucha popular: Conversaciones con Gorriardn Merlo (Buenos Aires: Contrapunto, 1988); Julio
Santucho, Los iiltimos guevaristas (Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1988); Miguel Bonasso, Recuerdo de
lamuerte (Buenos Aires: Bruguera, 1984); Juan Gasparini, Montoneros: Final de cuentas (Buenos
Aires: Puntosur, 1988); Roberto Mero, ed., Conversaciones con Juan Gelman (Buenos Aires: Con-
trapunto, 1988); Roberto Cirilo Perdia and Fernando Vaca Narvaja, Existe otra Argentina
posible (Buenos Aires: Olguin, 1986).
6. See Jorge Luis Bernetti, El peronismo de la victoria (Buenos Aires: Legasa, 1983); Mora
Cordeu et al., Peronismo, la mayoria perdida (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana/Planeta, 1985);
Mona Moncalvillo and Alberto Fernandez, eds., La renovacion fundacional (Buenos Aires: El
Cid, 1986); Alberto Kohen, La izquierda y los nuevos tiempos (Buenos Aires: Antarca, 1987), 3-1,
168-170, 190-193; and Alvaro Abos, El posperonismo (Buenos Aires: Legasa, 1986), 77-81,
120-121, 132-133.
7. Carlos A. Brocato, La Argentina que quisieron (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana/Planeta,
1985), 200, my translation.
8. El posperonismo, 11-13, 67-69; Jose Pablo Feinmann and Carlos "Chacho"
Abos,
Alvarez, "Dialogos con Alberto Fernandez," in Moncalvillo and Fernandez, La renovacion,
152-154, 179-180.
9. Abos, El posperonismo, 132-133; Feinmann and Alvarez, "Dialogos," 159-160.
10. Jose Pablo Feinmann, "^Adonde va el peronismo?" Unidos (December 1984):29, my
translation.
 The Argentine Left Since Peron 1 69

11. Feinmann, "^Adonde va?" 22, my translation.

12. V. I. Lenin, "Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution," in
Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 1:516-518.
13. Kohen, La izquierda, 4, 193-198, and the prologue by Isidoro Gilbert, i-iv.

14. MAS, Participemos en las elecciones para llamar a la movilizacion obrera y popular contra el
pago de la deuda externa (August 12, 1983), 5. See the program adopted at the second national
congress of the MAS in March 1985, Programa del MAS (Buenos Aires, 1988), 2, 31, 36.
15. Programa del MAS, 5; Nahuel Moreno and Mercedes Petit, Conceptos politicos elemen-
tales (Buenos Aires: Antidoto, 1989), 41.
16. Jose Osvaldo Villaflor [former labor secretary of the Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas (Per-
onist Armed Forces —
FAP) and, after the military process, the vice-secretary of the Printers'
Union], interview, Buenos Aires, January 17, 1985; Raimundo Ongaro [secretary of the
Printers' Union], interview, Buenos Aires, January 26, 1985. In the congressional elections of
November 1985, Villaflor was a candidate of the FREPU.
17. FRAL, Programa y declaration de principios (May 1987), 2, my translation.
18. Jorge Altamira, La estrategia de la izquierda en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Prensa
Obrera, 1989), 200.
19. See Hodges, Argentina, 1943-1987, 129-131.
Mario G. Cravero, "El Frente de la Izquierda Unida propondra
20. la formula Luis
Zamora-Nestor Vicente," El Informador Publico (September 30, 1988):7.
21. Mikhail Gorbachev, Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 27th Party
Congress (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1986), 15-16.
22. Altamira, La estrategia, 108.
23. Lenin, "The State and Revolution," in Selected Works, 2:344-345.
24. See Leon Aron, "Waiting for Yeltsin," The National Interest (Summer 1990):43-45; Boris
Yeltsin, Against the Grain (New York: Summit Books, 1990), 157-169.
25. From the epigraph of the head-piece of Entre Todos.
26. Gutierrez, Gorriardn, 44-46, 67-68.
27. On the resistance of the "Mothers," see Jean-Pierre Bousquet, Las locas de la Plaza de
Mayo, 5th ed. (Buenos Aires: El Cid, 1984).
28. Gutierrez, Gorriardn, 45^46, my translation.
29. Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdes, eds., Che: Selected Works of Ernesto Guevara
(Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1969), 173, 179.
30. "Proximo cambio de gobierno," El Informador Publico (February 9, 1990).
31. "Gorriaran Merlo al frente de un rebrote subversivo en Sudamerica," El Informador
Publico (January 12, 1990):2.
32. Guillermo Cherashny, "Gorriaran Merlo, detectado en Montevideo por los servicios
de inteligencia uruguayos," El Informador Publico (August 25, 1989).
33. Mario G. Cravero, "Segun la izquierda, el MTP nunca formo parte de ella," El Informa-
dor Publico (February 10, 1989); Altamira, la estrategia, 239-242.
34. Cravero, "Segun la izquierda."
35. Blixen, Treinta anos, 376, my translation.
36. Blixen, Treinta anos, 381-382.
37. Clarin (December 8, 1988).
38. Pablo Hernandez, La Tablada: El regreso de los que no sefueron (Buenos Aires: Fortaleza,
1989), 97-98, my translation.
39. Hernandez, La Tablada, 74, 76, 98-99.
40. United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLA),
Notas sobre economia y el desarrollo (December 1990), 20.
la

41. Peter Jenkins, Mrs. Thatcher's Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1987), 335.
170 Donald C. Hodges

42. Hodges, Argentina, 1943-1987, 182-183.

43. Seymour Martin Lipset, "The Death of the Third Way," The National Interest (Summer
1990), 25-31, 34.
44. CGT, "Un llamado a todos los argentinos," in the documentary appendix to Perdia
and Vaca Narvaja, Exista otra Argentina posible, 262-264.
45. "Ubaldini rallies support," Latin American Regional Reports, Southern Cone (April 9,
1990):2.
46. "iQue f rente necesitamos?" El Combatiente (November 1987), special supplements.
47. Carlos Saul Menem and Eduardo Duhalde, La revolucion productiva (Buenos Aires:
Pena Lillo, 1989), 13-14, 41-48, 80-85, 92-96.
48. Hugo Chumbita, El enigma peronista (Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1989), 149.
49. Chumbita, El enigma.
50. See Hodges, Argentina, 1943-1987, 279-280.
 10
Left Political Ideology
and Practice
Ronald H. Chilcote

"Ideology" is any given set of values, beliefs, expectations, and pre-

scriptions about society. Ideologies have evolved in a past and continuing
association with the process of capitalism and industrialization and the
consequent economic and social problems that accompany that process.
—
They tend to address Utopian goals problems of human existence and —
to be delineated in unrealistically Utopian terms, whether they envision a
free market or a classless society.
This chapter aims to survey ideological trends in Latin America by first
briefly examining the legacy of political ideas that has guided the political
thought and action advanced by classical writers and identifying tradi-
tional ideological tendencies and then tracing the evolution of these ideas
and noting new developments since the death of Salvador Allende in
September 1973.

Traditional Ideological Currents

Left ideology has stimulated the formation of diverse political and

revolutionary movements and political parties in Latin America. During
1

the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries anarchist, anarchosyndical-

and socialist currents were influential among leftist intellectuals and
ist,

immigrant workers and others associated with the labor movement.

The ideas of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, Stalin, and Mao especially
stimulated the Left.
Among the important Marxist intellectuals in Latin America were Jose
Carlos Mariategui of Peru, Julio Antonio Mella of Cuba, and Luis Emilio

171
172 Ronald H. Chilcote

Recabarren of Chile. All three of these thinkers questioned Stalinist

orthodoxy on the necessity of a national-bourgeois and democratic party
and all three were associated with the founding of Communist parties and
labor movements in their respective countries. Stalinism, in particular,
was associated with the evolution of the traditional Communist parties in
the region, founded in the wake of the Russian Revolution. These parties
generally aligned themselves with progressive forces favoring socialism
through the electoral process, although there were examples of armed
struggle (in El Salvador in 1932 and Brazil in 1935), and they often
supported bourgeois democratic regimes (in Mexico in 1934 to 1940, in
Bolivia in 1952, in Guatemala in 1944-1954, in Costa Rica in 1948, and
in Venezuela in 1958).
The theory and practice of the Stalinist parties in Latin America were de-
pendent in large measure on the policies of the Third International, founded
in 1919. Communist parties, formed in Argentina and Mexico (1919), Chile
and Uruguay (1921), and Brazil (1922), emerged out of anarchosyndicalist
and socialist currents led by workers and intellectuals, many of them
European immigrants. Generally, the Comintern and later the Cominform
determined the political line of the Latin American parties, with the
Partido Comunista Brasileiro (Brazilian —
Communist Party PCB) serving
as a prime example of while
this link, the Partido Comunista de Chile,
influenced by the popular-front policy of the seventh congress of the
Comintern in 1935 and its own participation in a popular front in 1938,
was especially instrumental in forging the project of Unidad Popular
around Salvador Allende during 1970 to 1973. The pro-Soviet parties
usually projected a two-stage revolution, first a bourgeois democratic or
national liberation to confront imperialism and the domestic ruling
classes (oligarchic, semifeudal, and monopoly capitalist forces) and
second a socialist revolution. This revolution might be implemented
through armed struggle (advocated by the Partido Guatemalteco del
—
Trabajo [Guatemalan Labor Party PGT] and the Partido Comunista de
Venezuela during the 1960s), electoral participation, or a combination of
the two (practiced by the Colombian Communists from 1966 to 1976). The
Cuban Revolution stimulated revolutionary activity in some countries
(Guatemala and Venezuela during the 1960s, in particular), and the
victory of Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular fostered a strategy
of broad popular fronts (as especially employed in Chile from 1970 to
1973 and in Uruguay in anticipation of the November 1971 elections).
According to one observer, the Soviet-oriented parties were "relatively
adept ... at adjusting strategy and tactics to shifting national and interna-
tional conditions while seeking to avoid what they consider the extremes
of moderate reformers of the right and ultra-revolutionists of the left/' 2
 Left Political Ideology and Practice 173

After Stalin's death in 1953 and the denunciation of his personality

the traditional parties splintered, some groups being influenced by
cult,
Maoism and others by allegiance to Stalinism and reaction to revisionism.
Beginning early in the 1960s, Maoist and Marxist-Leninist movements
were prominent in Brazil and Peru. Usually, youth elements of the estab-
lished Communist parties broke away to form Maoist organizations and
generally advocated a two-stage revolution through a worker-peasant
alliance and the leadership of a proletarian Marxist-Leninist party. These
parties encouraged the formation of united fronts of the proletariat, the
semiproletariat, and the petty bourgeoisie threatened by imperialism.
Such alliances were not to include the "rightist" or revisionist Communist
parties sympathetic to the Soviet Union or the "ultraleftist" Trotskyists
and some Castroist movements.
During the early 1960s national liberation movements influenced by
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara appeared in most Latin American coun-
tries. Guevarism was premised on the principles that popular forces can

defeat a regular army, that revolutionary conditions can be created

through the insurrectional foco, and that armed struggle should take
place in the countryside of backward countries. This theory allowed Che
to deemphasize the vanguard party during the insurrectional period and
concentrate on a military and political struggle. He believed in continental
revolution to defeat imperialism reminiscent of Trotsky's permanent
revolution. Castroism was characterized by the strategy of a united front
in support of a liberation struggle in which unity of forces rather than
was a principal object. The idea stemmed
leadership by a vanguard party
from the 26th of July Movement founded by Castro in March 1956, its
name commemorating his abortive attack on the Moncada Barracks in
Santiago in 1953. Castroism thus tolerated populist politics in an initial
stage of struggle, while Guevarism became a second stage emphasizing
popular support for guerrilla struggle through the coalition of peasants
and workers. Whereas Fidel had included the national bourgeoisie
and petty bourgeoisie in the Cuban Revolution, Che denied their revolu-
tionary potential.
The death of Guevara, the demise of his rural revolutionary movement
in Bolivia,and the liquidation of the urban guerrilla movements in Brazil
and Uruguay did not deter revolutionary movements elsewhere. The
Sendero Luminoso in Peru, for example, emerged from the radicalizing
experience of sons and daughters of Quechua-speaking peasants at the
University of San Cristobal de Huamanga during the 1960s. Upon gradu-
ation they dispersed throughout the sierra as teachers and education
workers and carried their revolutionary ideology directly into com-
munities. According to one observer, "the new ideology followed from
174 Ronald H. Chilcote

peasants being placed within exceptionally intense social networks

(university and family), rather than ideological conversion leading to a
wave of new senderista recruits." 3
Revolutionaries in Central America were successful in recruiting
peasants, in Nicaragua using the remnant network of Augusto Cesar
Sandino's 1930 guerrilla movement and building, in the words of the
Sandinista leader Henry Ruiz, "en cadena," calling upon kinship and god-
parenthood ties. Guerrilla movements in Guatemala and El Salvador
recruited peasants through religious base communities, the solidarity
exhibited within Indian communities, and other networks of common
cause and mutual contact. Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley has analyzed
this link between peasant networks and guerrilla movements, noting that
peasant participation usually was the consequence of the channeling of
peasant insurrection through the apparatus of the guerrilla organization:
"the concatenation of both the guerrilla network and the peasant network
served to strengthen the insurgency both militarily and socially, and the
disruption of either or both could lead to a sharp decline in guerrilla
fortunes." 4
Trotskyism has carried some weight in Latin America since about 1929,
when Leon Trotsky went into exile and opposition to the emerging
Communist parties appeared. The principal lines of early Trotskyism
revolved around Juan Posadas, Jorge Abelardo Ramos, and Nahuel
Moreno in Argentina, Mario Pedrosa in Brazil, Luis Vitale in Chile,
Sandalio Junco in Cuba, and Guillermo Lora in Bolivia. A central issue of
—
Trotskyism related to national liberation a line supported by Ramos,
whose movement constituted a left wing of Peronism envisaged as an
anti-imperialist front. A proletarian tendency, however, opposed any
alliance with nationalist movements unless hegemony of the proletariat
were ensured. These and other political positions divided Trotskyists not
only in Argentina but elsewhere during the 1950s. In 1963 Trotskyists
joined with the Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre (13th of
—
November Revolutionary Movement MR-13) in Guatemala to proclaim
the socialist nature of revolution and to build a workers' party from the
guerrilla movement. In Peru two Trotskyist tendencies appeared in 1960,
one led by Ismael Frias that sought association with the reformist APRA
and the other involving Hugo Blanco and the organization of militant
peasant unions in the La Convencion area of the Andes. Although both
movements eventually were repressed, Peruvian Trotskyists demon-
strated that peasant militias could be closely linked to the needs of the
masses, in contrast to the confrontational strategy of guerrilla warfare
modeled on the experience of the Cuban Revolution.
The failure of the Chilean experiment under Salvador Allende was a
blow to sympathizers everywhere who had hoped for an alternative
 Left Political Ideology and Practice 175

peaceful means of implementing socialism in the Third World. The

Unidad Popular emphasized radical reformist policies, carried out in a
bourgeois parliamentary context and in the face of a conservative military
that controlled arms. A national plebiscite provided legitimacy for nation-
alization of the U.S. copper industry; the takeover of private banks and
some monopolies was carried out under obscure legislation enacted
during the brief 1932 revolutionary intervention of socialist military
officers under Marmaduke Grove and others, and the expansion of
agrarian reform was based on legislation implemented by Allende's
predecessor, the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. The radical wing of
the Socialist party favored a strategy of "advancing so as to consolidate/'
whereas the Communists pushed for a policy of "consolidating so as to
7
advance/ Allende turned to the latter alternative, and policy thereafter
tended to be conciliatory
In Havana during June 1975 the Cuban Communist party held a conti-
nental congress uniting it with all the old pro-Soviet parties. The meeting
brought an end to the Cuban effort, represented especially in the 1967
Tricontinental Congress, to form an alternative to the traditional interna-
tional communist network. In a retrospective acknowledgment of the
popular front in Chile, the resolutions of the seventh congress of the
Comintern, the formation of antifascist and anti-imperialist fronts during
World War II, and even the abortive UP in Chile, the 1975 congress pro-
claimed the possibility of future fronts and alliances. At the same time,
efforts to export or replicate the Cuban Revolution were acknowledged to
have failed, and it was recognized that class struggle and actions of the
mass vanguard would evolve through lines other than those set forth by
the Cuban leadership. By 1979 the strategy of coalition was acceptable
even to the recalcitrant Chilean MIR, which called for a convergence
with the Communists. Although in 1981 the Chilean Communist party
adopted a policy in favor of armed struggle and its Manuel Rodriguez
Patriotic Front actually initiated armed action, most Left parties joined
with the Christian Democratic center to pressure the Pinochet dictator-
ship to relinquish power and permit elections. Thus, the failure of the
Cuban effort to establish a continental revolution inspired by the example
of Che Guevara, the crushing of the urban-based movements in the early
1970s, and Cuba's gravitation toward a Soviet model contributed to the
convergence of the orthodox Communist parties and the radical Cuban
alternative.

Recent Ideological Trends

In response to the stagnation of traditional radical ideas and the intran-
sigence of the movements and vanguard parties that espoused them,
176 Ronald H. Chilcote

some Left intellectuals turned in new The radical ideologies

directions.
usually focused on some and
concept of imperialism, after World War II
intellectuals began to note changes in the international order. For exam-
ple, large multinational or transnational firms were appearing in Latin
America; their activities no longer concentrated on a single commodity
within a country (petroleum in Venezuela or tin in Bolivia) but cut across
national economies and markets. Theotonio dos Santos associated this
development with a "new dependency" and demonstrated the need to
examine internal structure for an explanation of backwardness; he con-
trasted this new form with the colonial and industrial dependencies that
characterized earlier historical periods. 5
The new dependency was partially influenced by earlier currents.
One emanated from the Argentine economist Raul Prebisch of the UN
Economic Commission for Latin America, who advanced a theory of un-
equal exchange based on relations between the capitalist center and the
backward periphery of Latin American nations; another stemmed from
the work of the law professor Silvio Frondizi, the intellectual leader of a
small group named Praxis that opposed the Stalinist line of the Argentine
Communist party and included some Trotskyists within its ranks. The
economist Paul Baran had inspired Latin American intellectuals with his
account of backwardness and forms of surplus in his 1960 work The
Political Economy of Growth, a best-seller in Latin America. Influenced by
Baran and by Brazilian intellectuals during the early 1960s, the economist
Andre Gunder Frank advanced his well-known thesis on capitalist devel-
opment of underdevelopment. 6 These studies of underdevelopment and
dependency were complemented by slightly different lines of thinking,
including the internal colonialist thesis of the Mexican sociologist Pablo
Gonzalez Casanova, the associated and dependent capitalist develop-
ment suggested by the Brazilian political sociologist Fernando Henrique
Cardoso, and the notion of subimperialism of the Brazilian political
economist Ruy Mauro Marini. 7
These ideas were occasionally assimilated into the platforms of revolu-
tionary parties. The Mexican Communist party entertained a theory of de-
pendency as an explanation for underdevelopment. The Cuban historian
Francisco Lopez Segrera incorporated a dependency perspective into a prize-
winning book on Cuba. 8 Although during the early 1960s dos Santos and
Marini were associated with the revolutionary Politica Operaria (Political
Operation), which had Trotskyist and Marxist leanings, dos Santos later (in
the 1980s) joined the Partido Democratico Trabalhista (Democratic Workers'
Party —
PDT), led by the progressive politician Leonel Brizola, and Cardoso
organized a rival social democrat Partido Social Democrata Brasileiro
(Brazilian Social Democratic Party—PSDB). Both the PDT and the PSDB
were affiliated with the Socialist International.
 Left Political Ideology and Practice 177

away from orthodox perspectives as

Radical intellectuals also turned
authoritarian regimes gave waydemocratic openings during the early
to
1980s. Labor strikes and a general economic crisis led to democratic
elections and a new constitution in Brazil, and the military regime in
Argentina collapsed in the face of defeat in the war with the British over
the Falklands-Malvinas in 1982. Uruguay gradually evolved toward
representative democracy, and by the end of the decade the Pinochet
regime in Chile had stepped down. During this period the Marxist dis-
course of intellectuals and practitioners began to shift toward a new
understanding and a "post-Marxist terrain." The shift was led by Ernesto
Laclau, an Argentine residing in England who had once attacked Frank's
thesis of capitalist underdevelopment for its emphasis on capitalist rela-
tions of exchange rather than production. Laclau now argued that the
9

working class had not evolved into a revolutionary movement, that eco-
nomic class interests were relatively autonomous from ideology and pol-
itics, that the working class held no basic position within socialism, that

the objectives of socialism transcended class interests, and that the strug-
gle for socialism consisted of a plurality of resistances to inequality and
oppression. Laclau saw a need for blocs of Left-Center political forces to
ensure a political majority within a fragmented multiparty setting, popu-
lar reforms to satisfy the demands workers and
of the popular classes of
peasants, and an end and intolerance. The new
to political sectarianism
discourse was particularly popular in the Southern Cone nations of
Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, where the realities of mainstream politics
appear to have obscured the revolutionary rhetoric, with the result that
terms such as "class struggle," "working class," "dictatorship of the
proletariat," and even "Marxism" were dropped from Left dialogue. A
class analysis was excised from a socialist perspective once the working
class was no longer viewed as essential for its revolutionary potential.
Further, politics were seen as autonomous of economics, and classes and
class struggle were displaced by an emphasis on political pluralism, polit-
ical organizations, and interest groups.

Democracy: Representative and Participatory

The decade of the 1980s witnessed a search for democracy, generally of
a formal, representative kind under governments elected to power in the
period of transition from dictatorship and authoritarianism. The parlia-
mentary systems provided for the reemergence of the traditional parties,
necessitating a shift in tactics on the Left toward conciliation and accom-
modation. In Brazil the legalization of the Communist party and its
radical offshoots necessitated alliances to the left and the right in order
to ensure representation in Congress.
178 Ronald H. Chilcote

New leftist political parties also appeared, and two examples serve to
illustrate their impact. The Partido dos Trabalhadores, founded in 1979,
marked the beginning of a new era of the workers' movement in Brazil
(see the chapter by Maria Helena Moreira Alves in this volume). Michael
Lowy has characterized it as "the building of a mass party that expresses
the political independence of the working class and working people; a
democratic, pluralist, militant party, free of all ties to the dominant classes
and their state, with a clearly anticapitalist program; a party in solidarity
with workers' struggles throughout the world yet independent of the pol-
itics of any particular post-revolutionary state."
10
In 1989 the PT spon-
sored Luis Inacio da Silva as its presidential candidate and nearly ushered
into office the first Latin American worker to serve as president. To the
right of the PT, intellectuals within the PSDB led by Fernando Henrique
Cardoso called for democratic socialism through social and economic
reform. Although Cardoso believed in periodic elections to legitimate
those who governed, he did not advocate democratization by pressure
from below. Direct democracy, he felt, was useful when formal party-
based representation broke down, but democracy generally prevailed
when the people had confidence in established institutions. This view was
extended by his wife, Ruth Cardoso, who argued that political parties and
not social movements force the democratization of the democratic state. 11
Such an assumption may have been influenced by Fernando Henrique's
personal involvement in party life and in Congress, but it also reflected
the dependence of parties on the state in Brazil and the marginalization of
popular movements outside the parliamentary system.
Beyond the traditional and new leftist parties that appeared in the
1980s, popular movements also exercised influence at the informal and
grass-roots level. In his provocative analysis of new cultural trends in
Latin America, David Lehmann has focused on the grass-roots influence
of liberation theology,which he believes has weakened Marxist class
analysis, the dependency perspective, and revolutionary change while
assimilating these tendencies within it. He has also argued that the
authoritarian regime may have pressured Left intellectuals to turn
toward post-Marxism, resuscitate social democracy, and reconsider
liberal democracy. His own analysis attempts to bridge the gap between
post-Marxist democratic theory and the grass roots in the struggle for
social justice. 12
Social conflict in Latin America today often takes nontraditional forms
such as neighborhood councils in poor communities, Catholic base com-
munities, women's organizations, ethnic associations, and so on. Tilman
Evers shows that, although it is often assumed that these new forms of
struggle substitute for activities or repressed labor movements and polit-
ical parties, many of them are not new but decades old. 13 For example,
 —

Left Political Ideology and Practice 1 79

Fernando Ignacio Leiva and James Petras argue that during the military
regime in Chile "the shantytown has eclipsed the factory and neighbor-
hood organizations have displaced trade unions as the locus of political
action/ This shows that through the development of new types of orga-
714

nization, action, and mobilization, the unemployed and urban poor "have
been at the forefront of the popular struggle challenging authoritarian
rule, transforming themselves from victims to protagonists, from social
15
outcasts to social actors."
Liberation theologians turn to principles of Christianity that they
identify as egalitarian and socialist. Enrique Dussel has argued, "In
theory there no reason why we cannot contemplate the implementation
is

of socialism." 16 Manzar Foroohar argues that progressive Christians, in

support of the poor and working classes, have found biblical justification
for involvement in the struggle against exploitative capitalist regimes in
Latin America: "The division in the Catholic Church over liberation
theology has its roots in the ongoing class struggle in the Third World
countries. The question is centered not on the doctrinal purity of the
factions but on their sociopolitical alliances." 17
In Venezuela, the Movimiento al Socialismo emerged from the PCV in
1971 to redefine the democratic road to socialism and attract large
numbers of people. Their model envisaged a democratic and peaceful
course in which socialism would be possible in the short run but not
through the two-stage revolution in which socialism is realizable only
after national liberation. The MAS favored decentralization of economic
decision making and worker participation at the factory level. It rejected
bureaucratic socialism and the concept of a working-class vanguard and
popular-frontism, but it supported pacts between leftist and nonleftist
18
parties to achieve important objectives.

The Left in Power

The question of the vanguard has been reassessed by the Chilean
Marxist scholar Marta Harnecker, who argues that class struggle has a
dual character, democratic and socialist: "Revolutionary vanguards
postponing their strategic project of socialism only in order to be able to
—
fight with greater efficacy for it had to take the leadership of all those
oppressed by ruling regimes by raising the democratic banners of peace,
bread, land, liberty, sovereignty, and the defense of oppressed nationali-
19
ties, depending on the specific situation in each country" Democracy,
she believes, also has a twofold character, bourgeois in the restoration
of bourgeois democracy and popular in the building of proletarian de-
mocracy. She notes that, because the forces of the Right block the Left
from popular victories through legal means, other roads, including the
180 Ronald H. Chilcote

military-political one, to revolutionary and full participatory democracy

may be necessary. The strategy must be adapted to the conditions of each
country rather than blindly following the models of others, for "the error
of many parties and movements in Latin America is that they have placed

the problem of the organizing structure above the requirements of strug-

when is not the same as the
20
gle, it should be the reverse/' The vanguard
party, she insists. Many are misled into believing that the attainment of a
single leadership is when in fact
tied to organic unity or a single party
there may be many revolutionary organizations or parties, necessitating a
collective or shared vanguard. Leadership of the masses is not based on
law and control from above: "No organization can simply proclaim itself
the vanguard either before or after the seizure of power political. . .

leadership is something that must be won on a daily basis, in the struggle

for the seizure ofpower as well as the building of a new society." 21
The transition to and consolidation of socialism implies meeting the
basic needs of all people, ending poverty, satisfying requirements for
nutrition, health care, housing, and education, and ensuring employment
and redistribution of income. Ultimately socialism involves the socializa-
tion of the means of productionunder public rather than private owner-
ship, but there is consensus over the extent of state or other collective
little

forms of ownership. Social democrats and democratic socialists may be

willing to postpone the issue of ownership and concentrate on redistribu-
tive taxation and social welfare programs. Traditional Marxist-Leninists
may advocate that power must reside with the vanguard party. In both
instances, existing conditions may require either participation in an elec-
toral process or resort to revolutionary means. Thus, although the transi-
tion to socialism is largely an economic undertaking, it has a political
dimension as well. Essential is the dominance of a coalition of class and
political forces interested in attaining socialism through either the peace-
ful takeover or through the revolutionary seizure of state power and the
consolidation of that power.
Several examples illustrate this transition. 22 In the case of Cuba
the struggle for liberation began early in the nineteenth century, was
advanced in the independence wars against Spain, and ended with the
overthrow of the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. The seizure of state
power initially involved an insurrectionary strategy aimed at mass
uprising; the attack on the Moncada military garrison failed but became
the impetus for a successful campaign of military action in the country-
side and urban resistance. The consolidation of state power involved the
opening of participation to all segments of society, the articulation of the
7
interests of the peasant-workers coalition supporting the revolution, and
the establishment of a new ideological basis. It also necessitated agrarian
and other reforms, redistribution of wealth throughout society, and
 Left Political Ideology and Practice 181

provision of basic needs. Finally, it required mobilization of the popula-

and a U.S. campaign
tion against the resistance of bourgeois class interests
of diplomatic pressure, economic blockade, and covert war. The develop-
ment of a socialist economy was first carried out through the strategy of
"moral incentives" advocated by Che Guevara as a means of stimulating
voluntary work and commitment to the revolution, but the results were
mixed. Differences in levels of consumption were mitigated, but central-
ization of planning had reduced workplace democracy and created eco-
nomic problems. After the failure of the 1970 sugar harvest, Cuba turned
toward material incentives such as production bonuses and overtime pay
to deal with absenteeism and laziness in the workplace. An attempt to
open up political space was initiated with the experiment of democratic
elections in Matanzas province during 1974, and organs of "people's pow-
er" were established throughout the island, each electoral unit being
based on the neighborhood rather than the workplace. This effort at limit-
ing the bureaucracy and decentralizing administration allowed for some
popular participation and expression of popular grievances but did not
result in a self-managing economy or a decentralization of power at high
levels. Linda Fuller found that union leaders were chosen through a regu-
larized electoral procedure and unions were relatively autonomous and
essential to workers' efforts to control production: "The picture ... is one
of more autonomous unions, with a more powerful presence in worksite
decision making, with particular areas of primary authority, which antic-
ipate that conflicts between the interests of their members, the party, and
management will arise and need to be resolved in the daily course of
production." 23
After 1970 Cuba experimented with two strategies, one highly central-
ized,with egalitarian distributive policies, and the other decentralized
and recognizing individual and collective involvement in the political
economy At issue was whether socialist development would avoid the
tendency toward tolerating dominance by a privileged technical and
managerial bureaucracy and allow the masses to practice participatory
democracy. Harnecker provides a glimpse of participatory experience
through a series of interviews with Cubans at many levels and in many
walks of life. 24 Throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s, however, the
economy became highly centralized and corrupt, prompting the leader-
ship in 1985 to implement a rectification process that at the political level
resulted in "a new civility" and a "participatory political culture." 25
Carranza reports that the reorganization of the Soviet economy had an
impact on external trade, forcing Cuba to redefine its participation in the
world market and to make adjustments in domestic production in order
to alleviate discomfort and dissatisfaction among the people. Faced with
26

this crisis in the international and national economy, however, Cuba

 "

182 Ronald H. Chilcote

chose not to roll back the standard of living of most people and actually

increased some of the social achievements of the revolution (spending on

education and health, for example, increased by 45 percent). At the
same time Cuba continues to search for more political space to confront
tensions, contradictions, and outcomes.
In the case of Nicaragua the struggle for state power aimed to over-
throw the Somoza family and the well-trained national guard left behind
by U.S. marines in 1933; it also sought to avenge the assassination of the
revolutionary hero Augusto Cesar Sandino. The FSLN, founded in 1961,
initially operated as guerrilla bands along the Honduras-Nicaragua
border, later emphasized political work in the cities, and ultimately
came to power through sporadic attacks on military outposts and mass
uprisings against the repression of the Somoza national guard. Three
tendencies prevailed within the FSLN, one oriented to prolonged military
struggle in the countryside, another to organization of urban workers,
and a third to converting mass opposition into popular insurrection. Once
in power, the FSLN attempted to reorganize the economy, provide for the
basic needs of people, and mobilize the population against counterrevolu-
tionary attacks sponsored by the United States. Nationalization was
limited largely to former holdings of the Somoza family, and the economic
program recognized the importance of the private sector in stimulating
the capitalist forces of production. State policy encouraged private
enterprise while attempting to redistribute resources in the interests of
peasants and workers. Efforts to encourage a mixed economy comple-
mented the establishment of a pluralistic political system through demo-
cratic elections held in November 1984. The revolution attempted to im-
plement a strategy of "socialist populism " within a politics of human
rights and needs but without adopting the economistic view that social-
ism is ultimately determined or revealed by one's relation to the means of
production. According to Doug Brown, under Sandinismo a new socialist
politics based on a rights discourse evolved as a product of Western
capitalist experience and the traditions of stable democracies. 27 Illya
Luciak has examined the Sandinista grass-roots movements that he be-
lieves fundamentally changed conditions in the countryside: "Sandinista
democracy, based on new relations of production, has benefited the
worker and peasant classes. 28 Steve Ellner has commented that collective
leadership and a novel form of popular participation were reflective of
changing conditions throughout the world. The Sandinistas, he argues,
came to power through assault in a country that lacked a tradition
of democracy, yet they supported pluralism, elections, and popular
organizations in a process reminiscent of the Gramscian approach to
—
hegemony a concept associated with gradual and peaceful transition
to socialism in Europe. 29 Continued U.S. aggression and support for
 Left Political Ideology and Practice 183

the Contra war against the Sandinistas disrupted the economy, creating
hardships, and threatened the political pluralism within a Sandinista
ideological hegemony. The contradictions of the counterrevolution also
served to stimulate the underlying class struggle and slow down the
movement toward a socialist economy. The project of formulating a
radical democracy ultimately suffered a serious setback with the electoral
defeat of the Sandinistas early in 1990 by opposition forces under Violeta
Chamorro.

Conclusion
Latin America has provided a variety of ideas and experiences, some
influenced by classical Marxist thought and revolutionary successes and
others emerging from the particular conditions and needs of peoples in
search of a socialist outcome. The democratic openings in the Southern
Cone and the collapse of dictatorships everywhere during the 1980s were
accompanied by the decline (Brazil) and demise (Mexico) of monolithic
communist theories of semifeudalism and the prospects for alliance with
a national bourgeoisie. Theories of dependency and underdevelopment
were obscured by the rise of democratic regimes, and the new ideas asso-
ciated with revolutionary movements of various tendencies, including
the Maoist and Trotskyist parties, eventually faded with the collapse of
dictatorships everywhere. The establishment of parliamentary systems,
the resuscitation of traditional political parties, and the formation of new
ones necessitated diversity, a new dialogue toward pluralism, Left unity,
broad alliances and coalitions, and a new intellectual discourse, much of it
post-Marxist. The openings provided political space for the participation
of new grass-roots and popular organizations, including neighborhood
associations, church-based communities, ecological movements, and
feminist and gay groups.
What is the future of political struggle in Latin America? Will the drive
toward an improved society, whether capitalist, socialist, or some post-
form, be peaceful (as in Chile in 1970-1973 or the Southern Cone in the late
1980s) or violent (as in revolutionary Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua)? Once a
strategy has been adopted, what kind of system is likely to evolve? If the
authoritarianism and central control characteristic of corporatist fascism,
bureaucratic authoritarianism, and the national security state are to be
avoided, what kind of democracy (formal or informal, representative or
participatory, indirect or direct) should be pursued? Will the new social
movements meaningfully in civil
(ecologist, pacifist, feminist) participate
society, or will they be marginalized, dispersed, and rendered powerless
by the political parties, the labor movement, or other traditional forces?
What of the role of the traditional (financial, commercial, industrial,
184 Ronald H. Chilcote

agrarian) bourgeois class and of new class forces (especially the new
middle class of the state sector) in the reorganization of capital? Will the
focus for a changing society be social classes or institutional forces or
perhaps some combination of the two? Will the labor movement stand
opposed to capital, or might it align itself with capital to improve local
conditions in particular situations? What is the impact on labor of the
recomposition of capital at both the national and international levels?
In the development of the capitalist forces of production, should the
transition be democratic or autocratic? What kind of socialism (social
democracy, democratic socialism, revolutionary socialism) should be
adopted? Finally, in either the capitalist or the socialist transformation,
what of the role of the state bureaucracy, corporate groups, and bourgeois
parliamentary forces? What are the prospects for popular unity (popular
fronts and united fronts) and class alliances as opposed to the fragmenta-
tion or co-optation of popular forces? If goods and services are to be dis-
tributed in some egalitarian manner, how are human needs to be met
(planned system or free market)? How do individual preferences relate to
collective activity?
These are but some of the important questions being addressed by the
Left in Latin America today Its central problem is the transition to a better

society through democracy and socialism. Among the obstacles are the
bourgeois economic interests that may be decisive in stemming the tide
toward socialism as the new regimes turn from radical alternatives to
bourgeois parliamentary and social democratic forms and the political
parties overshadow the popular and revolutionary movements. Indirect
formal representative forces may obstruct direct participatory democracy.
Talk of pluralism premised on individual choice, bargaining, and com-
promise may undermine the possibilities of alliances and coalitions of
popular movements outside the political party system and interfere with
the goal of achieving a "new" society Excluded also may be the working
class as the agent deeply involved in carrying out the transformation.
Szymanski reminds us that Marxism in crisis is but a cyclical reflection
of the society at large. 30 The apparent exhaustion of Marxism among the
popular social movements and political parties in Latin America during
the early 1990s may signal an eventual resurgence of Marxist thinking
adapted to new and changing conditions. Indeed, ideas and ideological
currents historically have corresponded to such cycles of activity. This
proposition can be simply illustrated by reference to patterns of contra-
dictions in historical experience. One contradiction appears in cycles of
democratic openings (1920s, 1940s to 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s) and author-
itarian closures (1930s, 1960s, and 1970s). Another is evident in situations
of revolutionary socialism (insurrection, resistance, guerrilla warfare) and
evolutionary capitalism (peaceful reformism, nationalism). A further
contradiction is seen in perspectives that emphasize stable institutional
 Left Political Ideology and Practice 185

cohesion (church, military, bureaucracy, political parties) in contrast to

class interests based on a division of labor (financial, industrial, commer-
cial, agrarian bourgeois versus the proletariat and peasantry) or simply
the traditional contradictory relationships between capital and labor, cap-
italism and and dominant and popular social forces. The
social systems,
level of the productive forces and the seemingly insurmountable prob-
lems of external and internal debt, inflation, and unemployment also
hinder progress toward a different society In the face of these problems
today, part of the Left in Latin America is retreating from Marxism while
favoring a pluralism of interests extending beyond the vanguard party
and working class to other parties and social movements. In contrast,
other leftists continue to work within the categories and principles
of Marxism while searching for a socialism adapted to the changing
conditions of particular situations, without reliance on the stifling
model of centralist bureaucratic socialism that ignored autonomous
popular participation.

Notes
1. Donald Hodges, The Latin American Revolution: Politics and Strategy from Apro-Marxism
to Guevarism (New York: William Morrow, 1974).
2. William E. Ratliff, Communism in Latin America, 1959-1976: The Varieties of
Castroism and
DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
Marxist-Leninist Experience (Washington,
Research/Stanford: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1976), 85.
3. Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Exploring Revolution: Essays on Latin American Insurgency
and Revolutionary Theory (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991), 131.
4. Wickham-Crowley, Exploring Revolution, 138.
5. Theotonio dos Santos, "The Structure of Dependence," American Economic Review, 60
(May 1970):231-236.
6. Andre Gunder Frank, "The Development of Underdevelopment," Monthly Review, 18
(1966):17-31.
Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, "Internal Colonialism and National Development" in
7.

Irving Louis Horowitz, etal., Latin American Radicalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1969),

118-139; Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development (Berke-
ley: Ruy Mauro Marini, "World Capitalist Accumula-
University of California Press, 1979);
tion and Sub-Imperialism," Two Thirds, 1 (Fall 1978):29-39. Elsewhere I have characterized
Marini's view as revolutionary and socialist because of its assumption that radical change
was necessary to alter the exploitative conditions in Latin America, whereas I have described
the perspectives of Gonzalez Casanova and Cardoso as reformist, nationalist, and supportive
of capitalist development. Ronald H. Chilcote, Theories of Development and Underdevelopment
(Boulder:Westview Press, 1984).
8. Francisco Lopez Segrera, Cuba: Capitalismo dependiente y subdesarrollo (1510-1959)

(Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1972).

9. Ernesto Laclau, "Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America," New Left Review, 67

(May-June 1971):19-38.
10. Michael Lowy, "A New Type of Party: The Brazilian PT," Latin American
Perspectives, 14 (Fall 1987):454; David Lehmann, Democracy and Development in Latin America:
Economics, Politics, and Religion in the Post-War Period (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1990), 74.
186 Ronald H. Chilcote

11. Ruth Cardoso, "Movimentos sociais urbanos: Balanco critico," in Bernardo Sorj and

Maria de Almeida, eds., Sociedade e politica no Brasil pos-64 (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983).
12. Lehmann, Democracy and Development in Latin America.

13. Tilman Evers, "Labor-Force Reproduction and Urban Movements: Illegal Subdivision

of Landin Sao Paulo," Latin American Perspectives, 14 (Spring 1987):187-203.

14.Fernando Ignacio Leiva and James Petras, "Chile's Poor in the Struggle for Demo-
cracy," Latin American Perspectives, 13 (Fall 1986):5. See also Philip Oxhorn, "The Popular
Sector Response to an Authoritarian Regime: Shantytown Organization Since the Military
Coup," Latin American Perspectives, 18 (Winter 1991):66-91; and Cathy Schneider, "Mobiliza-
tion at the Grassroots: Shantytowns and Resistance in Authoritarianism," Latin American
Perspectives, 18 (Winter 1991):92-112.
15. Leiva and Petras, "Chile's Poor," 5.

16. Enrique Dussel, History and the Theology of Liberation: A Latin American Perspective
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1976), 137.
17. Manzar Foroohar, 'Liberation Theology: The Response of Latin American Catholi-
cism to Socioeconomic Problems," Latin American Perspectives, 13 (Summer 1986):55.
18. Steve Ellner, "The MAS Party in Venezuela," Latin American Perspectives, 13 (Spring
1986):81-107.
19. Marta Harnecker, "The Question of the Vanguard and the Present Crisis in Latin
America," Rethinking Marxism, 3 (Summer 1990):45.
20. Harnecker, "The Question of the Vanguard," 55.
21. Harnecker, "The Question of the Vanguard," 63.
Ronald H. Chilcote and Joel C. Edelstein, Latin America: Capitalist and Socialist Perspec-
22.
and Underdevelopment (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986).
tives of Development

23. Linda Fuller, "Changes in the Relationship among the Unions, Administration, and
the Party at the Cuban Workplace, 1959-1982," Latin American Perspectives, 13 (Spring
1986):28.
24. Marta Harnecker, Cuba: Dictatorship or Democracy? (Westport: Lawrence Hill, 1980).
25. Rafael Hernandez and Haroldo Dilla, "Political Culture and Popular Participation in
Cuba," Latin American Perspectives, 18 (Spring 1991):38-54.
Carranza Valdes, "The Current Situation in Cuba and the Process of Change,"
26. Julio
Latin American Perspectives, 17 (Spring 1991):10-17.
27. Doug Brown, "Sandinismo and the Problem of Democratic Hegemony," Latin Ameri-
can Perspectives, 17 (Spring 1990):57.
28. Illya Luciak, "Democracy in the Nicaraguan Countryside: A Comparative Analysis of
Sandinista Grassroots Movements," Latin American Perspectives, 17 (Summer 1990):72.
29. Steve Ellner, "The Latin American Left since Allende: Perspectives and New Direc-
tions," Latin American Research Review, 24, 2 (1989).T62.
30. Al Szymanski, "Crisis and Vitalization in Marxist Theory," Science and Society, 49
(Fall 1985):327-340.
 —

11
Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s

Richard Gillespie

During a decade that saw the Latin American Left taking diverse new
initiatives inresponse to changing domestic and international circum-
stances, guerrilla warfare in the 1980s remained an important aspect of
left-wing activity. The appeal of violence was by no means universal.
While in certain countries armed struggle acquired fresh support, else-
where there was an eschewal of violence by left-wing groups that had
taken up arms in the 1970s. In contrast to the 1960s, when virtually every
Latin American country saw some kind of attempt to implant a guerrilla
foco, no continental trend in political violence was visible two decades
later. Yet it would be a mistake not to attempt a continentally focused
analysis of the guerrilla phenomenon in the 1980s, for similarities did
exist at the supranational level, and the Left was collectively reacting to
various recent events and new circumstances.
By the start of the 1980s, there was substantial consensus on the Left
regarding the failure of foquismo, although there was disagreement
over its nature. While some groups criticized only the crude foquismo
presented in Regis Debray's Revolution in the Revolution? and sought to
dissociate Guevara from it, others condemned vanguardism, militarism,
1

and voluntarism more broadly. Since 1959 rural guerrillas had suffered
defeats or setbacks in Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Guatemala
to list just the best-documented cases —
and urban guerrillas had been
destroyed in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
The rural guerrillas of the 1960s had been thwarted by security forces
sensitized to the guerrilla " threat"by the Cuban success whose task was
facilitatedby the lack of preparation, sophistication, and unity of the guer-
rilla movements themselves and the irresolute involvement or hostility of

the traditional Left. In Venezuela and elsewhere the guerrillas had

187
188 Richard Gillespie

isolated themselves by declaring war on elected civilian governments that

possessed substantial popular legitimacy.
A new lease on life was given to armed insurgency by the appearance
toward the end of the decade, in countries with predominantly urban
populations, of the urban guerrilla. The general appeal of armed activity
was greatly reinforced by the early "Robin Hood" activity of the
Uruguayan and Argentine organizations; this renewed the romantic
image of guerrilla warfare derived from Guevara, which had become
somewhat tarnished by defeat. However, despite having attracted wide-
spread support among the youth of Uruguay and Argentina, the urban
guerrillas were eventually defeated. Their activities provoked forms and
levels of repression that made it impossible for insurgency to undergo the
envisaged transition from guerrilla foco to people's army in the cities.
Some guerrilla groups had always regarded this transition as unrealizable
and therefore saw urban warfare as merely preparatory to the establish-
ment of a rural front. But here they came up against many of the practical
problems that rural guerrillas had faced in the 1960s, such as being forced
into military confrontations before adequate logistical and political prep-
arations could be made and sometimes lacking a terrain suitable both
topographically and demographically for guerrilla warfare. Moreover,
moving into the countryside, while a way of evading intense urban
repression, also meant evading the reality of large urban populations for
whom rural guerrillas were of no great relevance.
Whereas urban guerrilla movements succumbed to repression without
having resolved their strategic problems, 2 predominantly rural guerrilla
movements managed to survive in Colombia and Central America.
Even here, however, the 1970s were generally a decade of reorganization,
adaptation, and careful preparation by insurgents who had suffered set-
backs in the 1960s. Meanwhile, in South America the early part of the
decade saw insurgents having to compete with the attractions of populist
and nonviolent alternatives, notably the "Chilean Road to Socialism," and
as the decade advanced the spread of military regimes increased the
hazards of involvement in guerrilla warfare and made recruitment
much more difficult. In several countries, guerrilla warfare had been
almost abandoned by 1979, when the Sandinista success in Nicaragua
provided a fresh vindication of armed struggle. As the 1980s commenced,
the Latin American Left was being pulled in different directions as it
responded to a series of damaging defeats but also to a recent and tangible
success.

Responses to Defeat
Whereas quite broad sectors of the Latin American Left, including
some Communist parties, became more committed to insurgency in
 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s 189

response to the Sandinista victory, other groups faced the 1980s with
greater caution and pragmatism than in the past. Those who had lived
under repressive military regimes in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina or
who had survived them in the loneliness of exile were reluctant to resume
activities that might offer the military a new pretext for intervention.
Many of them were ready to acknowledge that urban guerrilla activities
in the 1970s, although not the main or only reason for military interven-
tionism, had made some contribution to the destabilization of civilian
politicalregimes in addition to claiming the lives of thousands of revo-
lutionaries. 3Having been preoccupied in recent years with personal
survival rather than grand designs for radical social change, their political
ambitions remained circumscribed in the 1980s. Their appreciation of
political democracy had increased dramatically as a result of the experi-
ence of dictatorship; moreover, they were aware that Latin American
militaries retained substantial power even after the election of civilian
authorities. Proponents of further guerrilla violence in these countries
were extremely isolated.
The most prevalent 1980s tendency within the previously insurgent
Left involved attempts to enter or reenter the political arena. This took
two radically different forms, one peaceful, the other violent. The former,
pioneered by a sector of the Venezuelan Left, 4 involved the renunciation of
armed struggle and the establishment of new political parties or attempts
at accommodation with existing political forces. This occurred where
urban guerrilla movements had suffered a clear defeat in the past and
hoped to take advantage of liberalization to gain legal status and greater
legitimacy. The survivors of guerrilla experiences were by now middle-
aged, reluctant to risk all for a political objective, and conscious of the
emergence of a younger political generation with concerns and illusions
different from their own.
These forces had been so dramatically weakened by repression and
had suffered so badly that there was no great danger of further reprisals
by their enemies. The main problem faced by the ex-combatants was that
potential allies regarded them as political liabilities. Thus the Movimiento
de Liberacion Nacional-Tupamaros (National Liberation Movement-
—
Tupamaros MLN-T) in Uruguay, which renounced violence on condi-
tion that there be no reversion to military rule, found that the more
moderate components of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) initially barred
their entry Only after it split in 1989 was admission into a weakened
5

alliance granted, after which the Left's breakthrough in Montevideo in the

municipal elections later that year offered some vindication of the MLN-T
participationist strategy.
Meanwhile, in Argentina the few hundred Montonero survivors
sought reintegration into the Peronist movement by presenting a new
political face as Peronismo Revolucionario (Revolutionary Peronism)
190 Richard Gillespie

in 1985. In their pursuit of acceptance, former Montoneros renounced

violence, sought the forgiveness of the pope for their misdeeds, and even
proposed celebrating a "reconciliation mass" with the leaders of the last
military junta, but again they had to wait for political acceptance. Indeed,
their faction was formally expelled in 1988 by a Justicialist party that was
preoccupied with defeating Alfonsin's Radicals at the next election. The
former guerrillas' conciliatory behavior was influenced by the imprison-
ment of several dozen of their companions, yet this was arguably not the
only reason that "revolutionary Peronists" were heard calling for the
release of Videla and other dirty-war officers: the pronounced militarism
of the Montoneros in the late 1970s had led the guerrilla elite to resemble
6
its military counterpart in certain respects, and a degree of empathy

between the Montonero and army "commanders" must have existed by

this time. The Montoneros paid heavily for their conciliatory discourse,
earning condemnation from diverse sectors of the Left and the Mothers of
the Plaza de Mayo as well as losing dissident members.
7

Former guerrillas seeking to reenter the political arena are prone to

division. Differences surface after years in which political debate has been
severely constrained by strict military discipline and compartmental
organizational structures, and parts of the organization may be seduced
by the prospect of holding public office through an accommodation with
established political forces. The Montonero leadership split in 1990 after
two former guerrilla leaders pardoned by President Menem had come
out in forthright support of the government's radical break with tradi-
tional Peronist policies and declared themselves available for public
office despite the continuing imprisonment of Montonero leader Mario
Firmenich. Perhaps even more important in this case was a struggle
among former guerrilla leaders for control of the organization's tens of
millions of dollars. 8
The other way of seeking entry into the political arena has been by force
of arms. Much of the guerrilla violence in the 1980s has been "tactical"
rather than "strategic," in the sense of providing pressure for change
within the system rather than being designed to initiate a people's war
through which insurgents would seek a revolutionary seizure of power.
Tactical violence, aimed at securing a broadening of political participation
and other reforms, cannot always be clearly differentiated from strategic
guerrilla violence. A campaign of violence may commence with an un-
compromising strategy but become less ambitious when the guerrilla war
fails to realize its aims or a reformist government comes to power. Central

America offers two examples here, with both the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front "final offensive" in early 1981 and the contem-
poraneous guerrilla escalation in Guatemala aiming at victory in the
aftermath of the Sandinista triumph but with violence subsequently
 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s 191

being aimed at bringing opponents to the negotiating table. The FMLN's

pursuit of compromise has been seen in successive moderations of
9
its demands since 1981 and in periodic cease-fires and negotiations with

the authorities, although its offensive in October-November 1989 demon-

strated that major military initiatives could still be undertaken in the
face of governmental intransigence. The Union Revolucionaria Nacional
de Guatemala (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union URNG) —
showed its desire for compromise in 1986 by scaling down its military
activities for a year following the restoration of civilian government, but
guerrilla attempts to negotiate with President Vinicio Cerezo were re-
sisted by generals who thought they scented victory.
In South America, insurgents also showed flexibility when faced either
with new governments promising reform or with transitions from mili-
tary to civilian rule. After a campaign of urban violence against U.S.
targets, Peru's Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (Tupac Amaru
—
Revolutionary Movement MRTA) suspended armed activity when Alan
Garcia was elected in 1985 but recommenced it when he completely
ignored their gesture and members began deserting to join Sendero
Luminoso. 10 In neighboring Ecuador, the Alfaro Vive, jCarajo! group actu-
ally dissolved itself following negotiations with the newly elected Center-
Left government of Rodrigo Borja in 1989, amidst speculation that the
move, in addition to being a response to domestic developments, was
related to concurrent efforts by the group's Colombian mentor, the
Movimiento 19 de Abril, to abandon warfare for parliamentary politics. 11

Several of the Colombian guerrilla organizations, among them M-19

and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, reached agree-
ments with the successive governments of presidents Betancur and Barco
during the 1980s, but their political integration was shown to require
rather more than a pact between the government and guerrilla com-
manders. The most obvious problem was the existence of death squads
sponsored by right-wing military officers and drug barons, which had
claimed the lives of over a thousand members of the FARC-backed Union
Patriotica by the end of the decade and assassinated three of the candi-
dates for the 1990 presidential election, including the M-19 and UP
nominees. Although considerable electoral success was providing former
guerrillas with a fruitful, if hazardous, role in the political system by 1990,
the transformation of guerrillas into politicians was not an easy one.
Apart from the loss of security, it was impossible for integrationists to
provide some former rebels with the same standard of living they had
known as members of guerrilla movements, several of the Colombian
guerrilla organizations being renowned for multimillion-dollar budgets
financed by kidnap ransoms, other forms of extortion,, and in some cases
//
protection money from drug traffickers. 12 Moreover, many of the
,/
192 Richard Gillespie

former insurgents had abandoned their studies in order to join the

guerrillas and thus were lacking in the professional skills that could have
facilitated their economic integration.
Colombia experienced a combination of tactical and strategic guerrilla
violence in the 1980s, the most intransigent group being the Castroite
Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional, which even killed a bishop in 1989. There
was also this kind of mix in Chile, where a much weakened Movimiento
de Izquierda Revolucionaria maintained its traditional Guevarist faith in
strategic armed struggle while the Communist party announced the
"armed rebellion of the masses" with more tactical intentions in 1980.
When an evolutionary, electoral transition from authoritarian rule materi-
alized toward the end of the decade, armed activity gave way to broad
democratic collaboration under the leadership of the Christian Demo-
cratic party.

Responses to Success

The insurgent Left in the 1980s was reacting not only to past defeats
and experiences of authoritarian rule but also to the Sandinista triumph
in Nicaragua. The second successful Latin American revolution in
twenty years gave a new boost to armed struggle. Nicaragua became an
automatic point of reference for the Latin American Left, not least because
of the return of small contingents of guerrillas from other countries that
had served as "internationalists" in the anti-Somoza struggle. The lessons
they took back to their countries were several. The first of these was that
while the effectiveness of armed struggle had been confirmed, it should
not be regarded as an exclusive form of action: the "strategy of victory"
in Nicaragua had combined guerrilla activity with mass protest and
insurrection, and Sandinista plans had been adapted dextrously in
response to popular initiatives during the insurrection. 13 Second, the
Nicaraguan message echoed a more traditional call for revolutionary
unity and a policy of broad alliances. Third, the long-standing gulf sepa-
rating Marxists from Christians had been bridged by liberation theology,
which had helped a group of university origin to win support among the
peasantry and middle classes in particular. Finally, as had the Cuban
Revolution but much more patently, the recent revolution had shown the
value of revolutionaries' assuming the nationalist heritage of their coun-
try, with all the legitimation that this promised.

The "Nicaraguan effect" was strongest in parts of Central America for

reasons of propinquity and because groups from these countries were
able to establish secure headquarters in Managua after the revolution.
Indeed, in El Salvador in 1981 the so-called final offensive by the FMLN
saw guerrillas being swept along by a subsequently acknowledged
 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s 193

"triumphalism" and forgetting, as had the early emulators of Castro, that

" revolution revolutionizes the counter-revolution" — in this case in the
form of a major counterinsurgency effort by the United States. Sandinista
(and Cuban) influence was seen in 1980-1982 in the establishment of new
umbrella bodies designed to coordinate and eventually unify the guerrilla
forces of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Of these, the most
effective was the FMLN, whose component forces gradually adopted a
common strategy, mainly provided by Joaquin Villalobos's Ejercito Rev-
olucionario del Pueblo after the Fuerzas Populares de Liberation (Popular
—
Liberation Forces FPL) had declined through internal conflict. 14 There
was even progress toward the creation of an FMLN party, although the
political benefits of this were offset by the virtual break of the guerrilla
front with its erstwhile political ally, the Frente Democratico Revolucion-
ario on the eve of the 1989 election: an FMLN offensive was blamed by the
FDR and Democratic Convergence leader Guillermo Ungo for the coali-
15
tion's poor share of the vote (3 percent).
In Guatemala, there was less strategic cohesion within the URNG, as a
result of which its component forces continued to operate in different
parts of the country rather than jointly. Still less coordination was
achieved by the Unified National Directorate of the Honduran Revolu-
tionary Movement, which mainly acted as a negotiating body in peace
initiatives rather than a general staff for the guerrillas. Yet, if largely sym-
bolically, the Nicaraguan influence was present in Honduras in the way
that new groups adopted the names of national heroes and peasant
leaders such as Francisco Morazan, Lorenzo Zelaya, and "El Cinchonero"
(Serapio Romero) and substituted national liberation programs for
16
Marxist-Leninist pronouncements.
The Latin American Left in general was moved to take fresh initiatives
by the Sandinista victory. Nicaragua's experience had a major impact on
the behavior of a number of Communist parties, whose movement was
undergoing diversification even before the advent of perestroika. Com-
munists were confronted with a second Latin American social revolution
in which their party had conspicuously failed to play a vanguard role. The
fear of being marginalized as guerrilla forces advanced was particularly
strong in El Salvador, where Communists belatedly joined forces with
more established guerrillas, and in Guatemala, where new factions of the
Communist Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo joined the armed struggle.
In this process of unification, the Communists could point out that the
guerrillas had made some concessions by abandoning the crude foquismo
of the 1960s, but overall the process demanded serious Communist self-
17
criticism. More important than acknowledging that they had failed to
play a vanguard role in recent decades was the reason for this: the old
belief that a democratic, anti-imperialist revolution had to precede a
194 Richard Gillespie

socialist one. Referring to "two triumphant armed revolutions" and

two unsuccessful peaceful left-wing initiatives (Chile and Uruguay), the
Salvadorian Communist leader Schafik Handal influenced many Latin
American Communists with his criticism of the old conception of revolu-
tionary stages and his contention that the conditions for successful armed
struggle were now present. 18
Responding both to Handal's arguments and to the breadth of popular
sympathy for the Sandinistas, some Communist parties, as in the 1960s,
adopted a rhetorically positive line on violence without actually taking up
arms. This was the case of the Argentine party, which also found in com-
mon admiration for the Nicaraguan revolution one of the grounds for
electoral cooperation with parties influenced by Trotskyism (just as
shared sympathies for Cuba had facilitated bridge-building between
Trotskyists and Stalinists in Peru and Mexico somewhat earlier). In
South America Communist engagement in armed activity became a
reality in Chile only after the party's change of line in 1980, and here as in
Nicaragua a national hero was now invoked as a symbol of struggle,
the Communists' new guerrilla organization being called the Frente
Patriotico Manuel Rodriguez.
However, the "Nicaraguan effect" should not be exaggerated, espe-
cially in the South American cases, for a number of domestic factors were
also present. Other suggested reasons for the Chilean Communist party's
shift in 1980 were a degree of self-criticism of the party's behavior under
Allende following the 1973 coup; the replacement of cadres who had been
killed, imprisoned, or gone into exile by new, younger militants engaged
in clandestine activity; moves by the Pinochet regime to institutionalize
and perpetuate itself in 1980; and the changing social composition of the
party as high unemployment reduced its traditional working-class base
and as Communist militants acquired leading roles in the emergent move-
ment of pobladores (shanty town dwellers) in the early 1980s. 19
The potential advantages of Communist involvement in guerrilla
movements were a strengthening of Left unity, the expansion of the
guerrilla periphery into new areas such as industrial trade unionism, and
an extension of the international networks that the guerrillas could
Communist involvement in guerrilla movements
exploit. In practice,
seems to have provided only temporary reinforcement. The weighty
tradition of reformist activity in the party no doubt influenced the
behavior of some of the Chilean Communists who readapted to
at least
electoral practicesand cooperation with democratic forces in 1988-1989. 20
Moreover, from the mid-1980s on perestroika exercised a moderating
effect on or within a number of Communist parties, while Cuban moves
in the other direction (the "rectification process") and the Socialist Inter-
national's higher Central American profile helped to undermine much of
the early 1980s' strengthening of revolutionary unity 21
 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s 195

Particularly disorienting for the guerrilla Left was Cuban-Nicaraguan

divergence over perestroika, the Sandinistas' adoption of orthodox
economic policies (described by Castro as "the most right-wing in Central
America"), and the Cuban purge of General Arnaldo Ochoa and others
22
in mid-1989. At the same time, by 1990 elected civilian government was
a reality in virtually the whole of Latin America, leaving guerrillas ex-
tremely uncertain about their future role. They were aware that predeces-
sors who had ignored transitions from authoritarianism to democracy
had paid a heavy price in Venezuela after 1958 and in Argentina in 1973-
1976. On the other hand, given the fragility of civilian government in
places and the even more widespread state of economic calamity, a return
to military rule or increasing reliance by elected governments on repres-
sive methods could not be ruled out. Unfortunately, although Guevara
had warned against initiating guerrilla warfare against elected govern-
ments, he had left behind no advice on how to respond to democratiza-
tion once the guerrilla struggle was under way.

Guerrilla Activity in the 1980s

The 1980s saw important guerrilla campaigns in Peru, El Salvador,

Colombia, Guatemala, and Chile. 23 Of these, the only sustained urban
activity was in Chile, although M-19 in Colombia and the MRTA in Peru
began as urban guerrillas and in Peru and the Central American cases
rural guerrillas increasingly undertook urban attacks as the decade pro-
gressed in order to demonstrate regime vulnerability, undermine enemy
morale, and deploy urban sympathizers. The urban guerrillas in Chile
took care not to escalate their struggle into a full-scale military confronta-
tion with the security forces, as had occurred in Argentina and Uruguay a
decade earlier. Acts of resistance such as sabotage rather than military
assaults were the mainstay of FPMR activity, and perhaps even more than
the Montoneros had in the mid-1970s the Front used masked milicianos
belonging to mass organizations as opposed to well-trained guerrilleros
for its activities. There were some elite-level operations such as assassina-
tion attempts (including a nearly successful one on Pinochet) and kidnap-
pings of enemy officers to obtain intelligence and seek to sow disunity
among the military, but there was more persistent involvement in mass
protests and strikes. 24 Following Argentina in 1969-1973, the Chilean
experience confirmed that urban guerrilla tactics have some utility in a
resistance struggle, especially if applied at a time of growing popular
assertiveness, but they once again failed to lead up to the insurrectionary
finale that the guerrillas had envisaged.
The were primarily rural-based had much firmer roots
guerrillas that
than did the pioneers in the 1950s and 1960s. In Peru Sendero Luminoso's
founders had been preparing for armed struggle in the fertile conditions
196 Richard Gillespie

of Ayacucho since the mid-1960s, long before the first armed action was
undertaken in 1980. They had chosen their zone well: a remote, predomi-
nantly Indian region that had been so neglected by Lima that insurgency
could prosper regardless of the democratic credentials of the government
in the capital. Indeed, that neglect and the elite's contempt for the Indian
population were so great that the state initially responded to Sendero with
great lethargy and acted decisively (but clumsily) only when the insur-
gency was well advanced. 25
Although the guerrilla movements had their origins in the intelli-
gentsia (except in Colombia, where the movement was a peasant-based
descendant of the 1940s violencia), they were much more adept at rooting
themselves than were the earlier foquistas. In Peru Sendero was able to
use its influence and temporary control of the University of San Cristobal
de Huamanga to develop community action programs in Ayacucho, and
the teacher-training activities of the university provided a particularly
useful means of infiltrating Indian communities. Both here and in
Guatemala guerrilla organizations (Sendero, the Organizacion del Pueblo
—
en Armas [Organization of the People in Arms ORPA], and the Ejercito
—
Guerrillero de los Pobres [Guerrilla Army of the Poor EGP]) spent a
long time simply winning the confidence of the indigenous population,
learning its languages and customs, before attracting enemy attention by
commencing hostilities. 26 Sendero was particularly cautious and kept
its ideology and program largely secret until 1987. Moreover, it was com-

partmentalized in small cells in order to avoid the concentration of guer-

rillas thathad made the 1960s focos so visible and vulnerable.
Whereas the mass activity of some guerrillas was directly subordinated
to the development of people's war, others were prepared to concede con-
siderable autonomy to sympathetic mass organizations. In Guatemala
only the EGP adopted the latter approach, but in El Salvador it was
common practice. 27 This is one of the reasons the Salvadorian guerrillas
were able to mobilize so much urban support through movements such as
the Bloque Popular Revolucionario, which was linked to the FPL in the
late 1970s when it claimed a hundred thousand members and numerous
small union affiliations. The transfer of large numbers of urban militants
to the rural FMLN forces contributed to the Salvadorian rebels' capacity
to mount However, this transfer of militants,
their offensive in 1981.
together with increased repression, had the effect of weakening urban
popular movements over the next few years.
Enemy tactics were certainly a factor influencing the subsequent
course of events. The Guatemalan military had acquired considerable
counterinsurgency expertise since the 1954 coup, and in General Efrain
Rios Montt it found a commander and president sufficiently ruthless to
turn the tide against the guerrillas in the early 1980s. Repressive tactics—
 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s 197

aerialbombing of guerrilla zones, forcible concentration of the Indian

population and its —
involvement in civil patrols, etc. were particularly
effective here. With an atrocious record of human rights violations since
1954, the Guatemalan regime had less to lose from international condem-
nation than the others. However, the army campaign was not exclusively
based on slaughter: following a massive use of repressive violence in
1982-1983, the army's distribution of food and undertaking of limited
rural development programs in Quiche and Huehuetenango also helped
force the guerrillas onto the defensive by creating peasant dependency
28
upon the military.
In contrast, in Peru the initial counterinsurgency drive proved counter-
productive in that it not only came late but was entirely repressive in
—
nature considerable violence against the Indian population of Ayacucho
and attempts to organize civilian patrols, as in Guatemala, but no "beans"
to offset the "bullets."Colombia was a different case altogether, the insur-
gency being too deep-rooted and the terrain too difficult for the state to
contemplate swift and effective military action against the guerrillas,
who, moreover, were by this time acting on multiple fronts. 29 Indeed,
under presidents Betancur and Barco, much of the decade was devoted to
the difficult pursuit of a peace settlement that would persuade guerrillas
to renounce violence in return for being allowed to participate in the
political system.
Of movements discussed here, only Sendero managed
the guerrilla
ground throughout the 1980s. It spread first through the southern
to gain
Andean highland departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apuri-
mac before moving into the coca-cultivating Upper Huallaga Valley in the
mid-1980s, eventually coming out on top there in a conflict with the rival
MRTA. 30 Sendero's subsequent deals with drug traffickers, involving the
guerrilla protection of landing strips and processing laboratories, brought
them an estimated thousand dollars a day from a business that was
fifty

quite compatible with the objective of undermining U.S. strength. 31 The

second half of the 1980s saw Sendero become increasingly active in Lima
and begin to threaten the strategic Mantaro Valley, from where it could
severely disrupt Lima's food, energy, and mineral supplies. Signs of
increased U.S. intervention in Peru at the end of the decade indicated just
how far Sendero had progressed, while the split in the Izquierda Unida in
1989 and its electoral reverse in 1990 suggested that further recruitment
to Sendero and the MRTA would not be difficult.
At the same time, reports of disagreements within Sendero and deser-
tions from it were indicative of a real crisis in the organization arising
from a fundamental strategic failure. Despite its territorial expansion,
Sendero's vision of establishing liberated zones with people's committees
in the countryside from which a people's army could begin to encircle
198 Richard Gillespie

the towns has not materialized. Rather, its recruitment and activity in the
second half of the 1980s were predominantly urban. 32 It has been much
more pragmatic in the development of insurgency than the dogmatic and
33
strident tone of its few programmatic documents would suggest, but
by 1990 there was a deep division in the organization over whether the
classic Maoist revolutionary model was appropriate to Peru or whether a
major strategic reformulation was needed in response to the country's
predominantly urban character. Not helping the case of those favoring a
change was the 1989-1990 failure of Sendero's tactics of the "armed
strike" and boycott of elections when extended from rural strongholds
to Lima.
The fortunes of guerrilla wars elsewhere were rather more mixed, even
—
though on two occasions in El Salvador in 1981 and 1989 the FMLN —
seemed close to the seizure of power and U.S. backing for the regime was
absolutely crucial in withstanding rebel offensives. What is important
about the Salvadorian experience is that, despite very substantial U.S.
military aid, including the training of elite army batallions specially pre-
pared to fight guerrillas, access to modern technology failed to give the
military the advantage. For example, claims that the introduction of OV-1
Mohawk spy planes would make guerrilla warfare obsolete because
of their capacity to detect night-time movements by groups of just
twelve guerrillas proved wrong, while the bulk of the Salvadorian army
remained incompetent and very slow to respond to intelligence reports,
the FMLN perfected the art of subdividing its forces into small units that
could still be concentrated very quickly for major attacks.
Although on several occasions the Salvadorian guerrillas attacked
enemy strongholds, the more fragmented Colombian guerrillas had to be
militarily less ambitious. Yet the Colombian insurgents did attain greater
influence in their country's politics than during the 1970s. In part, this was
because of the greater potential for their reincorporation into the system, 34
but it was also because insurgents here used the classic guerrilla advan-
tages to the fullest. Militarily, there was no great increase in the size of
guerrilla forces. Indeed, the massacres carried outby the Frente Ricardo
Franco breakaway from the FARC) in the mid-1980s were symptomatic
(a
of crisis and enemy success: more than two hundred members of this
guerrilla force were "executed" by order of their own leaders, accused of
being enemy agents. 35
Nonetheless, Colombian guerrillas were able to exert political influ-
ence. When President Betancur's peace initiative broke down in 1985, the
rebels put greater pressure on the government for concessions by taking
unitary initiatives. In addition to announcing that most of the guerrilla
forces were forming a Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera (National
Guerrilla Coordinator— CNG), M-19 took the lead in launching a Batallon
 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s 199

America incorporating fighters from neighboring countries. In fact,

the CNGcoordinated only a handful of joint guerrilla attacks on army
patrols, and the Batallon had little more than symbolic participation by
Peruvian MRTA and Ecuadorian Alfaro Vive guerrillas, but this raising of
the ante may well have had some effect on a government that was clearly
incapable of confronting both the guerrillas and the drug cartels simulta-
neously. Under President Barco, the guerrilla kidnapping of establish-
ment figures and capture of enemy soldiers seems also to have encour-
aged new attempts at conciliation by the government. 36
Colombia saw nothing like the military offensives staged by the FMLN,
yet M-19's appreciation of the impact of symbolic violence and of the
propaganda value of displays of audacity and panache led this guerrilla
force to mount several assaults that made it seem far more important than
its numbers warranted(it being clearly smaller than the FARC). Both the

taking of diplomatic hostages during the occupation of the Dominican

Republic's embassy in 1980 and the less successful attack on the Palace
of Justice in 1985 captured world attention and highlighted the state's
inability to guarantee security. Meanwhile, even the smaller guerrilla
forces were able to take advantage of Colombia's lawlessness, whether to
extort money from landowners, take over the operation of remote gold
mines (said to be worth 2 to 3 million dollars a month), or cause major
damage (put at 450 million dollars for 1988) to the Cano Limon-Puerto
Covenas oil pipeline. 37 Thus, although in no way effectively challenging
state power, insurgents in Colombia did become a big enough problem to
make the government go beyond its original offer of mere amnesty for the
rebels; in the latter years of the 1980s positive ways of facilitating their
reintegration into the political system were sought.

Prospects

By the early 1990s the international crisis of communism had sown

doubts in many guerrilla minds about the viability of their activity. The
Nicaragua and the growing isolation
electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in

—
and economic problems of the Cuban regime points of reference for all
—
Latin American insurgents apart from perhaps the autarkic senderistas
created great uncertainty within the armed Left about what could be
done with political power even if it were attainable by means of armed
struggle. Whether the Colombian, Salvadorian, and Guatemalan peace
initiatives would succeed or not, their very existence suggested that the
Guevarist tradition was now in decline.
Although such a watershed may have been reached by 1991, it seems
highly improbable that armed rebellion of some variety will not persist.
Even the more optimistic prognoses about economic revival envisage
200 Richard Gillespie

widespread social deprivation throughout Latin America for years to

come, especially as the size of the state is drastically cut back in several
countries. Already there have been serious cases of rioting and looting in
the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Argentina as desperate people
have reacted against IMF-approved austerity packages. With such a vast
reservoir of social distress, it would be surprising if armed groups of left-
wing, populist, or even anarchic orientation were not to feature in the
politics of the 1990s.
Nonetheless, guerrilla movements will need to adapt if they are to
remain Although the extent and significance of external spon-
influential.
sorship have often been exaggerated, the international crisis of commu-
nism has clearly left several guerrilla movements with a need either to
find new international sources of support or to increase their domestic
sources of sustenance. Some guerrilla organizationshave still to absorb
the "lessons" of the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua and might benefit in
future from the adoption of more sophisticated "combined" strategies
and a more flexible approach to tactics and alliances. Others may be
tempted to resort to a more extreme approach. One possibility is that
terrorism may come to play a much more prominent role. Insurgents may
decide that their predecessors were simply not ruthless enough and
become far less discriminate in their use of violence. They may be encour-
aged here by the progress made by Sendero Luminoso, which (in contrast
to the foquistas of the 1960s) has attacked whole communities of peasants
that refused to cooperate. There have been occasional hints of Sendero-
type imitation in Bolivia, while in Argentina in 1978-1979 there were a
number of armed holdups by so-called gurkhas, ex-guerrillas who no
longer entertained hopes of winning over "workers in uniform" and who
commenced their assaults by killing police guards in cold blood. 38
The latter incidents could equally form part of a different trend, with
guerrilla veterans, finding no political function for themselves, turning
to common crime, whether bank raids, kidnappings, extortion, or the
cocaine business. The dividing line between political insurgency and rural
banditry has always been rather thin in the case of the long-standing
violence in Colombia. It is extremely doubtful whether all the guerrillas
who have become accustomed to financing multimillion-dollar organiza-
tional budgets by means of violence against landlords and, more recently,
"protecting" drug traffickers and their installations in Peru and Colombia
are going to lay down their arms for political reasons. 39
There is, however, a final scenario in which guerrillas might feature
within a more general state of anomie, and for the authorities this must be
the most alarming one. The rising rate of violence by youth gangs in Brazil
and Colombia cannot simply be identified as further criminal evidence of
the crisis of state authority, for there is at least an element of class war in
 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s 201

the way in which gangs

of unemployed youths have sought to appropri-
ate the wealth of rich (and not so rich) families by means of kidnappings.
It is hard to imagine how politicized such activity might become and

whether organized guerrilla groups might be able to intervene in it to

further their own purposes. However, these examples, together with that
of the FPMR in Chile and the composition of the assault group that took
over the La Tablada barracks outside Buenos Aires in 1989, 40 suggest that
the marginal sectors traditionally ignored by the Left could become an
important source of political violence in the 1990s. If the Left is to gain
influence among such sectors, it will have to dispense with any lingering
Leninist notions of mass organizations as subordinate bodies whose
development is secondary to the task of building the revolutionary
vanguard. To exert influence upon the marginal sectors, the Left will need
to respect their autonomy and personality and adopt strategies and
programs that accommodate their specific needs.

Notes
1. See Maria Isabel Rauber, Vanguardia y revolution (Reflexiones sobre la experiencia latino-
americana) (Havana: Centro de Estudios sobre America, 1989), written by a former member of
Argentina's Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo.
2. Richard Gillespie, "The Urban Guerrilla in Latin America," in Noel O'Sullivan, ed.,
Terrorism, Ideology, and Revolution (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1986).
3. See, for example, "Hablan los Montoneros," Somos, September 20, 1989.
4. Steve Ellner, Venezuela's Movimiento al Socialismo: From Guerrilla Defeat to Innovative
Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988).
5. Latin American Weekly Report, August 14, 1986, October 2, 1986, March 23, 1989.
6.Richard Gillespie, Soldiers of Peron: Argentina's Montoneros (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982),
Chapters 5 and 6.
7. Vagina 12 (Buenos Aires), October 11-13, 1989; Sur (Buenos Aires), November 1, 1989,
March 9, 1990.
8. "Hablan los Montoneros," Somos (Buenos Aires), September 20, 1989, Clarin (Buenos
Aires), March 5, 1990.
9. For successive programs, see the FDR-FMLN Boletin Informativo (Mexico), 22 (1981);
Communist Affairs (London), 1, 3 (1982); Granma Weekly Review, November 7, 1982, February
19, 1984.
10. Latin American Weekly Report, December 17, 1987.
11. Latin American Weekly Report, February 9, 1989.
12. Malcolm Deas, "The Colombian Peace Process, 1982-85," in Giuseppe Di Palma
and Laurence Whitehead, eds., The Central American Impasse (London: Croom Helm, 1986),
106-107.
13. —
Humberto Ortega, interview, "Nicaragua The Strategy of Victory," in Tomas Borge,
et al., SandinistasSpeak (New York: Pathfinder, 1986), 52-84; Jose Luis Coraggio, Nicaragua:
Revolution and Democracy (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986), 62.
14. Richard Gillespie, "Salvadoran Rebels Divide to Unite," Communist Affairs, 3, 3
(1984):313-315; James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central
America (London: Verso, 1988), 481-484.
15. Mexico and Central America Report (London), May 4, 1989.
202 Richard Gillespie

16. "The Honduran Revolutionary Movements/' Communist Affairs, 1, 3 (1982):655-662.

17. For a different view, see Antonio Ybarra-Rojas, "The Changing Role of Revolutionary
Violence in Nicaragua, 1959 to 1979," in Michael Radu, ed v Violence and the Latin American
Revolutionaries (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1988): here the FSLN victory is attributed to its
alleged final adoption of the position of the communist Nicaraguan Socialist party. The
problem with this view is that in practice that party had always been reformist. In the same
volume, Vladimir Tismaneanu, in "Communist Orthodoxy and Revolutionary Violence,"
sees Communist party involvement in guerrilla warfare as being mainly a result of Soviet-
—
Cuban initiatives and convergence a contention that ignores Soviet-Cuban differences in
1983 concerning the events in Grenada and the split in the Costa Rican party.
18. Schafik Jorge Handal, "Power, the Character and Path of the Revolution, and the

Unity of the Left," Communist Affairs, 2, 2 (1983):236-245.

19. Carmelo Furci, The Chilean Communist Party and the Road to Socialism (London: Zed,

1984), 165-168; idem, "The Chilean Communist Party (PCCh) and its Third Underground
Period, 1973-80," Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2, 1 (1982):87-92.
20. Violence against the state had never been broadly supported by the Chilean Left, and
the recent commitment to it has provoked debilitating divisions in both the PCC and the MIR.
On these, see Benny Pollack, "The Dilemmas Facing the Chilean Left Following the Plebiscite
of 1988," Journal of Communist Studies, 5, 2 (1989):222-227.
21. Richard Gillespie, Cuba after 30 Years: Rectification and the Revolution (London: Cass,
1990); Eusebeio M. Mujal-Leon, European Socialism and the Conflict in Central America (New
York: Praeger, 1989).
22. Mesoamerica (San Jose), February 1990, 4.

23. For information on all American guerrilla organizations, see my en-

the active Latin
tries in Roger East, ed., Communist and Marxist Parties of the World, 2nd ed. (London: Longman,
forthcoming).
24. For a critical account of FPMR activity, see Genaro Arriagada, Pinochet: The Politics of
Power (Boston: Unwin and Hyman, 1988), Chapter 8.
25. Raul Gonzalez, "Ayacucho: Por los caminos de Sendero," Quehacer, 19 (1982):19;
Lewis Taylor, Maoism in the Andes: Sendero Luminoso and the Contemporary Guerrilla Movement
in Peru, University of Liverpool, Centre for Latin American Studies, Working Paper 2, 1983;

David Scott Palmer, "Rebellion in Rural Peru: The Origins and Evolution of Sendero Lumino-
so," Comparative Politics, 18, 2 (1986):127-146; idem, "Terrorism as a Revolutionary Strategy:
Peru's Sendero Luminoso," in Barry Rubin, ed., The Politics of Terrorism (Washington, DC:
Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, 1989).
26. Eduardo Galeano, Jose Gonzalez, and Antonio Campos, Guatemala: Un pueblo en lucha
(Madrid: Revolution, 1983); George Black, Garrison Guatemala (London: Zed, 1984), Chapters
4 and 5; Richard Gillespie, "Anatomy of the Guatemalan Guerrilla," Communist Affairs, 2, 4
(1983); Rigoberta Menchu, interview, "The Indian Struggle Became a Class Struggle," Commu-
nist Affairs, 2, 2 (1983).
27. Dunkerley, Powerin the Isthmus, 368-400; The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in

El Salvador (London: Junction, 1982), Chapters 6 and 9; Richard Gillespie, "From Farabundo
Marti to FMLN," Communist Affairs, 1, 1 (1982); Jenny Pearce, Promised Land: Peasant Rebellion
in Chalatenango, El Salvador (London: Latin America Bureau, 1986).
28. Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus, 496.
29. Jorge P. Osterling, Democracy in Colombia: Clientelist Politics and Guerrilla Warfare (New
Brunswick: Transaction, 1989), Chapter 7.
30. Raul Gonzalez, "Sendero vs. MRTA," Quehacer, 46 (1987); Latin American Weekly
Report, December 17, 1987, March 2, 1989.
31. LatinAmerican Weekly Report, April 13, 1989.
32. Raul Gonzalez, "Sendero: Duro desgaste y crisis estrategica," Quehacer, 64 (1990).
 Guerrilla Warfare in the 1980s 203

33. Colin Harding, "Notes on Sendero Luminoso," Communist Affairs, 3, 1 (1984):46; idem,
"Antonio Diaz Martinez and the Ideology of Sendero Luminoso/' Bulletin of Latin American
Research, 7, 1 (1988), 71.
34. Deas, "The Colombian Peace Process," 108-109.
35. Osterling, Democracy in Colombia, 319-322; Latin American Weekly Report, January 10,
1986.
36. Latin American Weekly Report, June 23, 1988, September 15, 1988.
37. Latin American Weekly Report, May 25, 1989, June 29, 1989, July 6, 1989.
38. "El fantasma de la guerrilla," Somos, December 21, 1988.
39. Latin American Weekly Report, April 13, 1989, April 27, 1989; Osterling, Democracy in

Colombia, 325-332.
40. Latin American Weekly Report, April 20, 1989.
 12
Trade Union Struggle and
the Left in Latin America,
1973-1990
Dick Parker

In the early stages of trade union organization in Latin America, as

in the developed capitalist countries, most worker struggles were clearly
identified with the Left. As has been recognized by one most
of today's
prominent Christian trade union leaders, the initiators of trade union or-
ganization were anarchists, socialists, and communists. With the decline
1

of anarchism in the 1920s, Left influence in the unions was incorporated

into the Marxist tradition and, during several decades, dominated by the
Communist parties. 2 What most clearly distinguished Left presence in
organized labor was the attempt to promote a type of union activity that,
rather than limiting itself to the immediate demands and necessities of its
members or accommodating itself to the logic of capital, sought to subvert
that logic and open up the prospect of an alternative order based on
socialist principles.
The between
overall political objective inevitably placed the relationship
the party and the union very heart of the discussions over union
at the
strategy. Within the Marxist tradition, this relationship took on particular
importance once it became evident that trade union activity per se did not
generate revolutionary consciousness. 3 What came to be identified as a
Leninist model of subordination of trade union activity to party political
objectivesbecame a source of permanent tension. The Leninist model
was subject to an inherent contradiction between the natural "econ-
itself

omists" dynamic of trade union activity and long-term political goals.

The linkage of union activity and revolutionary strategy not only

205
206 Dick Parker

assumed the existence of capable political leadership but also required

class autonomy in the face of those political forces interested in the overall
stability of the system. To the extent that the Marxist Left identified itself
as the vanguard of the working class, the subordination of union activity
to its political strategy was conceived of as perfectly compatible with the
autonomy of the class. Nevertheless, there would be a permanent tension
between the "autonomous" impulse of trade union activity, whose
class base could hardly be questioned, and the political direction of Left
parties, whose class orientation could always be placed in doubt.
In Latin America, this classic dilemma of the Left was particularly
acute because union activity has traditionally been dominated by political
—
militants in part because of the structural weakness of the unions, in
part because the state assumed the supervision of labor relations in the
early stages of the development of the working class. 4 Labor relations
were to be based less on collective bargaining with the employer than on
state regulation and intervention, less on the organizational strength of
labor in the workplace than on the capacity of union leaders to influence
government policy. This situation not only accounted for the notorious
influence of party militants in the unions; it also reinforced the potential
weight of reformist or populist parties capable of negotiating with the
state on behalf of the unions without questioning the basic structures of
power. Furthermore, the import-substitution industrialization initiated in
the 1930s lent itself to government policies that not only sought the con-
solidation of an internal market for mass-produced products (on the basis
of a constant increase in the net income of the wage-earning population)
but also favored labor organization as a way of gaining political support.
In general, in those countries that were most advanced in the industri-
alization process in the 1940s and 1950s, reformist or populist influence
in the unions grew rapidly at the expense of the Left. In Mexico, the
Confederacion de Trabaj adores de Mexico, organically linked to the gov-
erning party, consolidated its control of the trade union movement to such
an extent that Left influence has not recovered even today. Peronist ascen-
dancy in the Argentine Confederacion General de Trabajo (General Con-
—
federation of Labor CGT) was also to have long-term implications that
would severely limit the possibilities of a recovery of the Left, although in
Argentina the unions would be much more militant and markedly more
autonomous vis-a-vis the state than in Mexico. In Brazil, state influence in
the unions was facilitated by the 1940 Labor Code (based on Mussolini's
Carta di Lavoro), but Getulio Vargas's need for labor as a source of polit-
ical support left open an important margin for labor mobilizations, and
during the populist period (1950-1964) the state even tolerated the union
activity of the illegal Brazilian Communist party. The reformist alternative
also triumphed in Peru and Venezuela in the 1940s, laying the basis for
 —

Trade Union Struggle and the Left 207

APRA control of the Confederation de Trabaj adores del Peru and a clear
predominance within the Confederation de Trabajadores de Venezuela of
the Action Democratica party.
The Colombian case was also characterized by a weakening of Left
influence in the unions, but instead of the establishment of a relatively
unified labor movement with the clear predominance of a single populist
or reformist party the postwar period saw the consolidation of two union
organizations at the national level, each identified with one of the tradi-
tional oligarchic parties. In the late 1940s, the majority Liberal party influ-
ence in the Confederation de Trabajadores de Colombia (Confederation
—
of Workers of Colombia CTC), together with a certain Communist pres-
ence within its ranks, led to a church-inspired initiative to create the
Union de Trabajadores de Colombia (Workers' Union of Colombia
UTC), identified with the Conservative party. The violent confrontation
between the two traditional oligarchic parties in the late 1940s and
1950s helped to consolidate this division within the Colombian labor
movement.
In all the above-mentioned cases, the drastic weakening of the Left in
the labor movement coincided with the Cold War offensive and the
concomitant U.S. pressure to root out left-wing influence in the hemi-
sphere. Nevertheless, there were a few countries in which the Left
managed to resist and succeeded in preserving its dominant position in
the unions. The most outstanding case was Chile, where, despite the
conflict between Socialists and Communists during the 1940s, the recov-
ery of trade union activity in the 1950s was achieved on the basis of a joint
Socialist-Communist hegemony within the Central Unica de Trabajadores
—
(Single Confederation of Workers CUT). The uniqueness of the Chilean
experience was that this hegemony within the labor movement was
accompanied by a solid and growing political presence that was to culmi-
nate with the 1970 electoral victory of the Unidad Popular candidate,
Salvador Allende.
In Uruguay, the Communist party succeeded in maintaining its influence
in the unions and in 1964 was able to promote the establishment of a unified
national organization, the Convention National de Trabajadores (National
—
Convention of Workers CNT), which it was to dominate from the outset.
But in contrast to its counterpart in Chile, the Uruguayan Communist party
lacked a significant presence in electoral politics. In both cases, however, the
left-wing trade union leaders were obliged, as a result of the relative organi-
zational weakness of the unions and the decisive weight of the state in labor
relations, to rely on the parties as vehicles for a "political bargaining" similar
to that employed by reformist parties in the continent. 5
Finally, the other important example of continued Left influence in
organized labor is importance of the tin
Bolivia. There, the strategic
208 Dick Parker

miners was reflected in the adoption of a specificallysocialist program in

the famous 1946 Thesis of Pulacayo, in their central role in the 1952 revo-
lution, and in their decisive weight within the Central Obrera Boliviana,
and of the COB in Bolivian politics in subsequent years. During the ad-
ministration of General Juan Jose Torres in 1971, the creation of a Popular
Assembly dominated by the COB even raised hopes of revolutionary
transformations spearheaded by the unions. The radicalized union move-
ment in Bolivia exercised direct political influence while the left-wing par-
ties were not only weak but fragmented and incapable of imposing any
coherent political direction.
Whereas in the 1950s the Latin American Left struggled to hold onto
its diminishing influence in politics and organized labor, the 1960s and
early 1970s witnessed a revival of revolutionary expectations. The Cuban
Revolution provoked important crises in many of the reformist and pop-
ulist parties and put the socialist revolution on the agenda of the Marxist
Left. At the same time, it placed in the forefront of debate the relationship
between trade union struggle and the radical political transformations
that appeared to be pending. This, in turn, intensified the clash between
the rival political forces within the labor movement, leading to the expul-
sion of Communists and other Marxists from the reformist-controlled
confederations: from the CTC in Colombia in 1960, leading to the
creation of the Confederacion Sindical de Trabajadores de Colombia
(Trade Union Confederation of Workers of Colombia —CSTC), from the
CTV in Venezuela in 1961, and from the CTP in Peru, with the subsequent
creation in 1967 of the Central General de Trabajadores del Peru at the
initiative of the Peruvian Communist party. These new organizations
would lay the basis for important Left advances in the 1970s and 1980s.
The hopes of revolutionary breakthroughs in this period were never-
theless to be rudely shattered as popular advances were successively cut
short by
the installation of repressive military regimes in Brazil (1964),
Argentina (1966, 1967), Bolivia (1971), and Uruguay and Chile (1973). The
proliferation and consolidation of these military regimes in the Southern
Cone placed on the defensive and radically trans-
the Left once again
formed trade union objectives. The working-class movements that had
traditionally been most influential were subject to implacable persecu-
tion, and with the return to constitutional rule in the course of the
1980s they would find that the trade union environment had undergone
fundamental changes.

An Overview of the Period 1973-1990

A discussion of the Left and the unions in Latin America since 1973 has
to take into account the different national experiences just summarized.
 Trade Union Struggle and the Left 209

At the same time, it needs to consider the ways in which the dynamics of
capitalist development during the last two decades and the constraints inher-
ent in the proliferation of repressive military regimes shaped the organiza-
tional capacity of the unions and influenced the priorities of the Left.
The prospects and the potential problems of the trade unions are inevita-
bly conditioned in a profound way by factors that affect labor's general bar-
gaining position in relation to capital and the state. Thus, for example, an
understanding of the organizational advances since the 1940s or of the real
gains that reformist unionism could claim during the period of populist pre-
dominance can hardly neglect the importance of the expansive dynamic that
characterized the world capitalist system during the decades following
World War n, the generally rapid growth of the Latin American economies,
the industrialization process, and the subsequent consolidation of an indus-
trial working class in the continent. Furthermore, it cannot fail to take into

account the implications for labor 's bargaining potential of a political context
in which the populist forms of domination opened up the possibility of com-
pensating for a structural weakness at the plant level by asserting political
influence in the government.
In the same way, the trade union struggles that have characterized the
1970s and 1980s have inevitably been influenced by the global changes in
the capitalist system: the so-called accumulation crisis in the developed
economies, the gradual reduction in importance within world commerce
of economies, such as those of Latin America, that are traditionally ex-
porters of primary products, the dramatic increase in the financial drain
aggravated by the debt, and, more recently, the overwhelming pressures
in favor of the application of neoliberal economic policies.
The overall impact of these changes has recently been documented by
the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America, which commented
that "at the end of 1989, the average Gross National Product per person in
the region was 8 percent lower than that registered in 1980 and equivalent
to that of 1977. If we take into account that this deterioration was accom-
panied by greater inequalities in the distribution of income, it can be ap-
preciated that, in terms of the general well-being of the . population, the
. .

eighties have been characterized by a deterioration of major propor-

tions." 6 This process has been accompanied by a reduction in the supply
of stable employment, increasing levels of unemployment, and a marked
expansion of the so-called informal economy These general tendencies
have inevitably undermined the basis of the unions' traditional bargain-
ing strength and are reflected in the falling rates of unionization in the
private sector and, in particular, among industrial workers.
Within this general context, there are important distinctions to be made
among individual Latin American countries in terms of both the moment
at which the new correlation of forces was established and the impact of
210 Dick Parker

the policies introduced. For instance, in the Southern Cone (Chile,

Argentina, and Uruguay) the neoliberal policies implemented by the mil-
itary regimes in the mid-1970s, implied a process of deindustrialization
that radically affected the potential recruiting base for the industrial
unions, whereas in Brazil the policies adopted by the military in the late
1960s favored industrial growth and resulted in an important expansion
of the industrial labor force, laying the basis for a reactivation of union
militancy beginning in the late 1970s. Again, in the 1980s, while the over-
whelming majority of Latin American countries stagnated or experienced
negative growth rates, largely as a result of their debt problems, the
Colombian economy continued to expand (thanks in part to the contribu-
tion of the illegal drug trade to its balance of payments), thus attenuating
the pressure on the Colombian workers' movement.
Despite these differences, the general weakness of the trade union bar-
gaining position undermined the mechanisms that had previously con-
tributed to the hegemony of reformist unionism and might have been
expected to favor a general radicalization of the union movement and a
corresponding increase in Left influence. Before examining to what extent
this was the case, we need to look at the way in which the changes we
have been observing affected the political vision and objectives of the Left.
Since the early 1980s, the political influence of the traditional Left and,
in particular, of the orthodox Communist parties, has clearly diminished.
Not only has their electoral appeal been reduced but several have suffered
internal divisions; the recent collapse of the Soviet bloc can only aggravate
what appears tobe a serious crisis of ideological identity. At the same
time, however, there has been a parallel growth of a noncommunist Left,
often clearly distinguishing itself from the Marxist-Leninist tradition.
Furthermore, there has been an evident shift from the expectation of
immediate revolutionary changes characteristic of the 1960s to a preoccu-
pation with the consolidation of democratic institutionality in the 1980s. 7
As a result, union strategy can no longer be infused with optimism about
the imminent modification of the global structure of society in a socialist
direction. Given the relatively reduced expectations of the Left of gaining
power and the general weakness of the unions, strategy is markedly more
defensive, and the central dilemma is whether to defend the interests
of the working class by signing pacts with employers and the state
(concertacion) or by resorting to militant, confrontationist tactics.

Contradictory Tendencies in the 1970s

During the middle and late 1970s, before the continent felt the full
weight of economic crisis, two clear but contrasting tendencies called into
question the traditional patterns of labor relations and presented a new
 Trade Union Struggle and the Left 211

series of challenges for the Left. On the one hand, the violently repressive
military regimes in the Southern Cone, while reducing the Left to impo-
tence, sought to extirpate once and for what were considered the
all

inherent vices of the populist heritage. The result was radical weakening
of precisely the most highly organized and politicized labor movements
in the continent. On the other hand, the decade witnessed the emergence
in other parts of the continent of an altogether different threat to reformist
hegemony in the labor movement: the development within the movement
itself of a new, militant unionism that identified itself as class-oriented
(clasista), was often more radical than the Communist-influenced unions,

and placed new emphasis on grass-roots organization and autonomy

vis-a-vis the state. This new phenomenon was not confined to the coun-
tries that had managed to maintain civilian rule. Indeed, its impact was
most notable in Peru and Brazil, where military regimes had been in
power since the 1960s, and in Central America, where the radicalization of
union activity formed part of a popular movement with revolutionary
overtones that would lead to the overthrow of the Somoza regime in
Nicaragua and the regional crisis of the 1980s.
The military offensive against the unions and the Left in the Southern
Cone hardly needs to be detailed here. For our purposes what should be
emphasized is those aspects of the new policies that led to long-term
modifications in the conditions for trade union struggle, anticipating
problems that were to characterize the 1980s even after the return to
civilian rule. These can be seen in their most dramatic form in the Chilean
experience. The impact of the military regime since 1973 was felt in a
sharp drop in unionization rates (from 27 percent in 1973 to less than 8
percent in 1983), a radical reduction of the unions' bargaining capacity,
and the elimination of their political influence. Apart from the direct
repression, the unions were affected by the imposition of an economic
model provoked high unemployment rates and cut industrial pro-
that
duction. Furthermore, modifications in labor legislation drastically
reduced the protection afforded to the union activist while a general ideo-
logical offensive sought to destroy the principle of collective solidarity in
favor of a strictly individualistic logic. 8 These general tendencies were
evident in the entire Southern Cone.
Although the emergence of a class-oriented unionism was most notice-
able in Peru and Brazil, its influence can nevertheless be detected else-
where in the region as the counterpart of the increasing difficulties that
reformist unionism was experiencing as the economic crisis set in. It is
reflected in the strengthening of independent unionism in Mexico in the
mid-1970s, in Colombia's 1977 national strike, which unified the different
union confederations behind a new radical tactic promoted by the Left,
and in the support of competing confederations for the general strikes of
212 Dick Parker

1975 and 1977 in Ecuador. The radicalization of union struggles in Central

America was particularly marked in Guatemala and El Salvador well
before the Sandinista Revolution had transformed the prospects of union
organization in Nicaragua. Even in Venezuela, where the windfall re-
sources from the oil boom helped consolidate AD control of the CTV, the
late 1970s saw the emergence of an independent class-oriented leadership
9
in the steel and textile industries.
Although in some cases, such as Mexico and Venezuela, the advances
were to be limited or ephemeral, there appeared to be clear indications of
a potential recovery of leftist or militant influence in the continent. This
impression was strengthened as the unions flexed their muscles in the
struggle against the de facto military regimes: in the general strikes in
Ecuador in 1975 and 1977 and in Peru in 1977 and 1978, in the overthrow
of Banzer in Bolivia in 1978, and, above all, when the 1978 strike wave in
Brazil added a new dimension to the liberalization process initiated by
General Ernesto Geisel.
Of all these experiences, those that promised most in terms of
a strengthening of trade union influence and of a genuine left-wing
direction were those of Peru and Brazil. The dramatic upsurge of
class-oriented unionism in Peru during the 1970s was clearly related to
the particular characteristics of the military regime installed in 1968.
During the period from 1968 to 1973, the Velasco government pursued a
policy that facilitated union activity, especially as a result of the introduc-
tion of the Industrial Community Law and the Work Stability Law. The
Communist-led CGTP, which supported government policy, experienced
a rapid growth that enabled it to replace the CTP as the major national
confederation. Identification with the regime proved a handicap for the
PCP with the emergence of authoritarian tendencies after 1973, and this
enabled other, more combative left-wing groups to increase their influ-
ence within the CGTP. With the overthrow of Velasco in 1975 and the
definitive reversal of the reformist impulse of the military government, a
hardening of labor policy, and a sustained fall in real wages, the CGTP
would lead a wave of mobilizations to back the demand for democratic
liberties and mechanisms for the resolution of labor problems. These mas-
sive popular protests, which culminated in the national strikes of 1977
and 1978, were led by the unions in repudiation of economic policies and
clearly contributed to the end of the military dictatorship in 1980. 10
The class-oriented unionism in Peru during these years placed new
emphasis on the fight for worker rights within the plant, including work
conditions and security. At the same time, it promoted active participa-
tion of the rank and file in the struggles and in union decisions in general,
thus radically breaking with the traditional reformist style that had
been imposed by the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana. This
 Trade Union Struggle and the Left 213

preoccupation was reflected in the custom of organizing periodic general

assemblies of workers and in the flowering of a worker press designed to
keep the rank and file permanently informed. It also relied frequently on
direct confrontational tactics, defending the necessity of radical policies
that went beyond the mechanisms contemplated in current legislation.
Union tactics were conditioned by a clear consciousness that the union
struggle was part of a wider worker-peasant alliance backed by new
socialmovements in the urban areas. 11

The revolutionary perspective that informed union activity during

these years meant that there was little temptation to enter into negotia-
tions with the government. Indeed, in questioning the validity of "bour-
geois legality" the union leadership paid little attention to the possibility
of promoting legal reforms and did not concern itself with strengthening
the central organisms of a notoriously atomized movement. For these rea-
sons, the bargaining position of the unions was structurally weak. Finally,
there was another characteristic of the class-oriented unionism that
would prove a liability in the radically different context of the 1980s: the
noncommunist Left, composed of a multiplicity of Marxist-Leninist
groups, was marked by a particular way of participating in the union
struggles. The formed in the universities, concen-
militants, generally
trated their activities in themost important industrial centers and dis-
puted the direction of the movement on the basis of a highly politicized
discourse that, while reflecting the militancy of the rank and file, could
hardly be said to represent its level of consciousness. 12
As the influence of class-oriented unionism in Peru reached a peak
decade of continual advances, Brazil in the same year wit-
in 1978 after a
nessed an unexpected and explosive strike wave that would lay the basis
for a new unionism after well over a decade of forced quiescence. Despite
the markedly repressive nature of the Brazilian regime, there had already
been some indications of the emergence of new union demands in
1973-1974, especially in the metallurgical industry. In the "Declaration of
Sao Bernardo" in 1974 the automobile workers demanded the recognition
of union freedom, the elimination of the restrictions imposed by the labor
law, and total freedom to negotiate collective contracts with the employ-
ers. As can be appreciated, the initial concern of discontented Brazilian
union leaders was to escape the straitjacket imposed by corporatist labor
13
legislation.
Nevertheless, when the automobile workers of Sao Bernardo, led by
Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva, initiated the strike wave in May 1978, they did
and the movement assumed a
so in defiance of existing legal restrictions,
dynamic that rapidly altered the general conditions for trade union strug-
gle. In the face of worker militancy, the employers began to recognize the
union's insistence on negotiating directly with the firm. At the same time,
224 Dick Parker

the government's failure to contain the walkouts led to a de facto achieve-

ment of the right to strike. The prominence of the metalworkers in the
strike movement immediately raised a central question that had been
absent in Peru: To what extent could the new unionism be characterized
as class-oriented? In 1975 the new demands of the metalworkers of Sao
Bernardo seemed to presage a style of unionism akin to that of business
unionism: aggressive in the struggle for economic advantages but apolit-
ical, firmly rooted in the plant but indifferent to the concerns of other

sectors of the working class, capable of confronting the employer but

without questioning the prevailing capitalist development model. Others,
however, were to argue that the automobile workers, rather than consti-
tuting a labor aristocracy, were emerging as an effective vanguard of the
working-class movement precisely because their location in the most
dynamic sector of Brazilian industry offered optimum conditions for
questioning the general wage policy of the state. Developments in the
1980s suggest that the emergent unionism would correspond more to this
second vision. 14

Confronting the Crisis in the 1980s

During the 1980s, the Left and the unions faced two fundamental chal-
lenges: first, to promote a return to civilian rule along with a restoration of

basic democratic guarantees (whose importance for the Left had been
sufficiently underlined by the experience of military rule); and second,
once the basic guarantees had been restored, to respond to the deepening
crisis and the neoliberal offensive. Cutting across the debates, of course,
were the controversies inherited from the 1970s, especially with respect to
the tactics most appropriate for furthering working-class interests.
We have seen in the case of Peru and Brazil how the struggle against the
military regimes had favored the emergence and consolidation of a class-
oriented unionism. Nevertheless, the implications for the Left were not
the same in the two countries. In Peru, the class-oriented CGTP had been
founded on the initiative of the local Communist party, which continued
to dominate it during its period of rapid expansion in the 1970s and itself
experienced a parallel growth in political influence. At the same time, the
noncommunist presence in the CGTP was fundamentally influenced by a
variety of Marxist-Leninist groups whose ideology was as traditional and
orthodox as that of the PCP. In contrast, the emergence of class-oriented
unionism in Brazil was not only not led by the Brazilian Communists but
marked from the outset by a radical repudiation of the parties that had
traditionally exercised influence on the Brazilian working class, including
the two Communist parties (the Partido Comunista Brasileiro [PCB] and
the Partido Comunista do Brasil [PCdoB]). The renovation movement
 Trade Union Struggle and the Left 215

initiated in 1978 evidenced strong "workerist" overtones, although it

quickly recognized the need for a political party. But in this case it would
be a new political party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores, clearly conceived
as an alternative to the traditional Left and promising a new way of
relating the tradeunion struggle to the complementary political struggle.
The Brazilian Communists, who were seriously weakened as a result of
the military repression, questioned the class orientation of the new trade
union leaders and suggested that the new militancy, especially among the
metalworkers, reflected the interests of a labor aristocracy. 15 When the
attempt to construct a single national trade union confederation
broke down and the PT promoted the creation of the Central Unica
—
dos Trabalhadores (Single Confederation of Workers CUT) in 1983,
the Communists refused to join it, preferring to work within the rival
Confederacao Geral do Trabalho (General Labor Confederation CGT), —
dominated by the more traditional leaders and still in control of a majority
of the unions in the country. Not surprisingly, the Brazilian Communists
had also repudiated the creation of the PT.
This clear polarization within the Left in Brazil occurred in the early
1980s, when the military regimehad been liberalized enough to permit
the Left an appreciable margin for —
maneuver well before civilian rule
was restored and basic democratic rights fully recognized. It is perhaps
for this reason that the contrast between the positions of the PT and the
Communists could be so clearly expressed. It appears that the Commu-
nists assigned priority to the task of fully restoring the democratic system.
As were suspicious of the militancy of the relatively well-
a result, they
organized workers, fearing that it would provoke another wave of repres-
sion, and insisted on the necessity of a policy reflecting the interests of
wage earners in general. Apart from opting to work within the CGT, the
Communists also insisted on preserving the broad umbrella opposition
movement grouped in the Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro
—
(Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement PMDB), resisting the
PT proposal to create a class party. The PT, whose rapid growth was
undoubtedly stimulated by its militant confrontations with the military
regime, nevertheless refused to consider the return to democratic institu-
were defined much more in
tionality as the strategic aim. Its priorities
terms of the necessary response of the working class to the crisis and to
government that systematically passed on the economic costs to the
workers. 16
In Uruguay, the antidictatorial struggle was accompanied by similar
confrontations involving the local Communist party, although the circum-
stances and the outcome were different. As in the rest of the Southern
Cone, the intensity of the repression, which was directed above all at
political militants, transformed the unions into privileged actors in the
216 Dick Parker

same time, it loosened the political-party

antidictatorial fight while, at the
tutelage towhich unions had traditionally been subject. These circum-
stances seemed to be leading to a long-term modification in the relations
between the unions and the Left parties similar to that which was taking
place in Brazil.
The Uruguayan experience illustrates with particular clarity both the
expectations that emerged in trade union circles and the difficulties
encountered once civilian rule had been restored. The debates that had
characterized the early 1970s had already led to a questioning of Commu-
nist party policy.While the Partido Comunista de Uruguay (Communist
Party of Uruguay —
PCU) apparently viewed the trade union struggle
in classic Leninist terms and was careful to moderate conflicts in order
to safeguard the democratic institutional framework, the Tendencia
Combativa (Combative Tendency), many of whose members were influ-
enced by the Tupamaros, rejected the tutelage of the PCU and considered
the unions an instrument for promoting the economic and social changes
announced in the CNT program. The different sectoral struggles were
viewed as a direct contribution to the political transformations sought by
the Left. 17
With the weakening of the Communist presence in the unions during
the military regime, a revival of union activity in the early 1980s was
accompanied by an increased weight of the sectors that questioned
Communist party strategy, although there was a clear consensus with
regard to the desirability of an accelerated return to civilian rule.
When the Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores (Interunion Plenum of
—
Workers PIT) was founded in 1983, it was dominated by the noncom-
munist Left, which placed particular emphasis on union autonomy and
on promoting ongoing contacts with the rank and file. Nevertheless,
expectations of a profound reorientation of the Uruguayan union move-
ment proved ephemeral.
Once civilian rule was restored and the CNT leaders had returned from
exile, the Communist party managed to reassert its predominance in the
central union organization, although its new denomination, "PIT-CNT,"
reflected the increased weight of the noncommunist Left within it. Never-
theless, the notion of a simple return to the predictatorial situation is
misleading. The Left continued to control the labor movement and
the Communists reasserted their hegemony, but the movement itself has
been considerably weakened. The changes in the industrial structure of
the country have visibly undermined the industrial unions and, in
general, the mobilization capacity of the movement. An observer has
commented that soon after the return to civilian rule "it became clear that
the two rival tactics which had divided the Uruguayan union movement
were proving equally incapable of achieving the central objective of
 Trade Union Struggle and the Left 217

restoring wage levels." 18 Indeed, President Julio Sanguinetti could rightly

claim that he had successfully confronted the continuous strikes during
his administration without making concessions and without losing the
support of public opinion. Recently Left union militants have recognized
that the union movement has been enormously weakened, has lost its
former mobilizing capacity, and faces serious difficulties in its search for
solutions to new challenges such as the introduction of new technologies
and the growth of the informal sector. 19
In the Peruvian case, the return to civilian rule in 1980 had already
suggested that the military was no longer the most appropriate instru-
ment for an antiunion offensive. The recessive policies introduced by the
Belaunde administration quickly revealed the fragility of the class union-
ism that had appeared so formidable in the later stages of the military
regime. According to Jorge Parodi, "contrary to certain political predic-
tions that a deepening of the economic crisis would lead to a greater soli-
darity between workers and a radicalization of their struggles, what hap-
pened is that the crisis tended rather to demoralize the workers, diminish
their class identity, and promote a desperate search for individual solu-
20
tions/' Furthermore, the requirements of parliamentary politics drained
Left militants from the union front, especially in the case of the more
21
radical noncommunist Left.
As the economic crisis in Peru deepened during the course of the
decade and wage and salary levels plummeted, trade union tactics
became increasingly defensive. Accepting as inevitable the consequences
of the crisis, many union leaders became concerned with preserving jobs
on the basis of negotiations with the employers. In general, there was a
return to the defense of sectoral interests as major structural changes,
especially the dramatic expansion of the informal sector, robbed union
struggles of their key role in the general popular movement. The general
strikes that were organized lacked the political impact of those of the pre-
vious decade and became largely symbolic expressions of protest against
22
a situation that the unions were increasingly incapable of influencing.
The CGTP continued to dominate the union scene, but its relative
importance for Left strategy had clearly diminished. During the latter
years of the administration of Alan Garcia, as hyperinflation threatened a
collapse of the economy, certain sectors of the Left placed their hopes
once again in the guerrilla movement; others looked increasingly toward
—
the new social movements in the shantytowns; and many among others
—
the CGTP leaders expected to achieve important changes following the
1990 elections. Disillusionment with the disastrous results of the elections
for the Left was expressed by Valentin Pacho, secretary-general of the
CGTP: "The CGTP has also been affected by the [electoral] repudiation of
the Izquierda Unida because we supported this front. The leadership has
 "

218 Dick Parker

always determined the line, and the masses have always respected it.
We thought that despite the division [of the Left] the masses would not
abandon the Izquierda Unida, but we miscalculated. .Nevertheless the
. .

union movement continues to support the CGTP, [as] it considers it the

only remaining instrument. 23
Perhaps the most dramatic reversal for the Latin American Left in
recent years has been the COB's loss of political clout in Bolivia. With the
return to civilian rule in 1978, the COB reemerged apparently with its
traditional influence intact. It played a central role in frustrating the
Natusch coup in 1979 and during the administration of Hernan Siles exer-
cised a virtual veto over government policies. Between November 1983
and March 1985 it attempted to force the adoption of its own emergency
plan for confronting the economic crisis, declaring seven general strikes
during the period. But when Victor Paz Estenssoro introduced radical
neoliberal policies in 1985, the COB proved unable to block them and
entered into a prolonged crisis that has markedly reduced its weight in
the nation's politics. 24
Several of the measures weakened the COB. The introduction of
7
Decree No. 21060 limited important workers rights: labor stability was
suppressed, those with more than forty years of service were pensioned
off, the workday was prolonged, and real wages were substantially

reduced. The dictatorship exercised by the boss in the factory was reestab-
lished by police vigilance within the plant; dismissals increased, union
leaders were relocated, and, in general, the unions were disarticulated.
The two general strikes called in 1985 to resist the measures were a failure,
and the COB was subsequently wary of calling fresh strikes, particularly
25
in the productive sector.
Fundamental to the weakening of the COB, however, were the structural
changes that had preceded the 1985 crisis, above all the dramatic
fall of tin prices in the international market. The dismantling of the state

mining company and a reduction by two-thirds of the mining work force

over a period of two years forced the miners' union into a defensive posture
concerned mainly with survival. This weakening of the working-class sector
that had traditionally formed the backbone of the COB was accompanied by
the development of alternative foci for popular organization, terminating its
virtual monopoly of popular representation. With the emergence of other
—
opposition organizations such as the peasants, the regional movements,
—
and the civic committees the COB not only became just one of various
channels of popular protest but also appeared to be no longer the most effec-
tive. It has even been argued that the working-class movement has become

isolated from the other popular forces and, as a result of its internal decompo-
sition, has totally lost the initiative. 26
 Trade Union Struggle and the Left 219

Colombia, despite the relative buoyancy of its economy during the

period under study, by no means escaped the general tendencies that
affected the other Latin American countries. Since the mid-1970s, govern-
ment policies designed to adapt the Colombian economy to the new char-
acteristics of the external market have accelerated changes in the structure
of employment (diminishing the opportunities for stable employment,
bloating the informal sector, and aggravating income inequalities) and,
in general, led to a serious erosion of the living standards of the wage-
earning population, despite a brief recovery in 1978-1979. The decline in
unionization rates accelerated markedly in the early 1980s, rates falling
from 14.5 percent of the economically active population in 1980 to 9.1
percent in 1984. This trend provoked an evident crisis of representation
for the unions, which were increasingly exposed to an employer offensive
and unable to respond through the traditional mechanisms of collective
bargaining. 27
In the face of this crisis, the traditional reformist confederations began
to suffer defections; the pressure for the unified national movement that
the CSTC had promoted in vain in the 1960s and 1970s culminated in the
formation of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores in 1986. This new orga-
nization immediately attracted unions that together represented about 65
percent of the organized working-class movement, notably increasing
overall Left influence in spite of the heterogeneity of the affiliated unions.
The prospects of the restructured movement are not yet altogether clear,
but in recent years the militancy of the CUT has been reflected in its strike
participation (84.5 percent of the total number) and in the remarkable
ascendancy of political strikes (43 percent of the total for teachers, 56
percent in manufacturing, and 77 percent in agriculture). There has also
been an upsurge of joint actions with other national labor organizations,
including the 1988 general strike. 28
While the working class was suffering the impact of the economic crisis
and the unions were being forced onto the defensive in the Southern
Cone, in Peru, and in Bolivia, the Brazilian unions were apparently more
successful in defending worker interests. During the economic recession
in Brazil from 1980 to 1983 the union movement was restructured on the
basis of the two previously mentioned national confederations. The CUT,
although the smaller of the two, grew at the expense of the CGT in the
course of the decade and was consolidated as the primary point of refer-
ence for the Left. At the same time, the CUT attracted the more militant
sectors of the Brazilian working class and was clearly distinguished from
the CGT by its readiness to resort to strike tactics. Furthermore, it
assumed an ideological definition clearly distinct from that of the political
forces identified with the CGT.
220 Dick Parker

The political posture of the CUT was expressed in its 1988 program:

The CUT represents a class unionism, combative, democratic, and an ex-

pression of the rank and file. ... It represents a rupture with a populism that

manipulates the masses on the basis of demagogic promises of social mea-

sures in order to support government policy. It represents a break with a

reformism that contained demands and advances within the limits per-
mitted by the government and the bosses. It represents a rupture with
peleguismo [corrupt leadership] that lived at the expense of the government
and of the working class. . . .

The alliance involving the reformism of the PCB and the PCdoB, the
historic peleguismo and neopeleguismo, is sustained on the basis of a common
interest in the maintenance of the union tax, the antidemocratic, bureaucrat-
ic union structure, and state control over union organization as the final

card to stem the growing advances of the CUT in its struggle for union
liberty and autonomy. . . .

The CUT, from the outset, is class-oriented and committed to articula-

ting the immediate aims and the historic objectives of the working class . . .

and encompasses socialism in its general perspective, continually attempt-

ing to incorporate the workers in general, including those who are not yet
unionized. . . P

At least until 1987, union struggle had proved relatively successful in

defending wage levels. 30 Nevertheless, the hyperinflation of recent years
has had a negative effect on the unions. It has also dampened somewhat
the optimism of CUT leaders. Indeed, in a recent internal debate it has
been argued that the CUT is reproducing the practices of the CGT, the
7
PCB, and even Getulio Vargas's workers movement: "We introduce some
changes in that we still issue bulletins and organize more assemblies, but
in general our practice has not changed much." 31 Another leader main-
tained, "We are adapting our practice to the institutional union apparatus.
. . . When we were we were oriented by the necessity
in the opposition,
and overthrow the dictatorship.
to get rid of the pelego The dictator- . . .

ship has ended and we have lost our sense of direction. ... we have
become paralyzed and in effect are holding back the class struggle." 32

Conclusions
The dilemmas that confronted the Brazilian CUT at the end of the 1980s
illustrate the general difficulties faced by the Latin American Left in the
field of trade union activity. Its influence within the union movement had
grown, in countries such as Brazil, Peru, and Colombia dramatically,
during the course of the economic crisis. At the same time, the 1980s
had witnessed an unprecedented level of militancy, if measured by the
 Trade Union Struggle and the Left 221

impressive number of general strikes in the region. 33 Nevertheless,

the crisis has undermined the traditional basis of union recruiting in the
private sector and, in most cases, led to a weakening of the industrial
unionism that has traditionally been the heart of the labor movement. The
growth of union recruitment has been limited largely to the nonproduc-
tive sectors —
among public employees and workers in the service sector
(especially bank employees). This has inevitably strengthened the role of
the state in labor conflicts.
As anchoring union organization within the plant and promoting rank-
and-file participation became increasingly difficult, there were growing
pressures to defend workers' interests by negotiating with the state.
In some cases this has meant seeking to improve the union's bargaining
position on the basis of reforms that would facilitate the organization of
industrywide unions. In others it has involved backing reforms of existing
labor legislation or even a new labor law. More generally, there has been a
shift toward some form of "social pact" that might minimize losses. How-
ever, any attempt to negotiate the defense of workers' interests with the
state aggravates a classic Left dilemma: To the extent that the national
union leadership becomes involved in political negotiations without real
bargaining strength, it runs the risk of losing contact with its rank and file.
Finally, the weakening of the unions, the dramatic increase in the size of
the informal economy, and the emergence of new social movements have
raised doubts as to whether the unions can be expected to continue to play
as important a role in popular mobilizations or in Left strategy as they
have up until now. What is all too clear is that as a result of the profound
changes of the past two decades the unions and the Left are confronted
with new challenges for which there are no ready-made answers.

Notes
1. Emilio Maspero, America Latina: Hora cero (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nuevas Estructuras,
1962), 31.
2. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, the only important noncommunist Marxist influences
in the Latin American unions were Trotskyism in Bolivia and the Socialist party in Chile.
3. Dick Parker, El sindicalismo cristiano latinoamericano en busca de un perfil propio,
1954-1971 (Caracas: UCV, 1988), 22-24.
4. Ruben Katzmann and Jose Luis Reyna, Fuerza de trabajo y movimientos laborales en
America Latina (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1979), 2-3: Enso Faletto, cited in Katzmann
and Reyna, Fuerza de trabajo, 270, 280.
5. The concept of "political bargaining" was coined by James Payne in relation to the style
of APRA unionism between 1956 and 1962.
6. CEPAL, Transformacion productiva con equidad (Santiago de Chile: CEPAL, May 1990),
21, my translation.
7. Norbert Lechner, "De la revolucion a la democracia: El debdte intelectual en America
del Sur," Opciones, 6 (May-August 1985):57-72.
222 Dick Parker

8. Rene Cortazar, "Movimiento sindical y democracia," in Ignacio Walker et al., Democ-

racia en Chile: Doce conferencias (Santiago de Chile: CIEPLAN, 1986), 231-232.
9. Ivan Bisberg, "Politica laboral y accion sindical en Mexico (1976-1982)," Foro Inter-

national, 25, 2 (October-December 1984):169-171; Arturo Alape, Un dia de septiembre: Testimo-

nies del Paro Civico, 1977 (Bogota: Ediciones Armadillo, 1980); Oswaldo Albornoz Peralta,
Historia del movimiento obrero ecuatoriano (Quito: Editorial Letra Nueva, 1983), 96-101; Dick
Parker, "Las organizaciones no-gubernamentales en la crisis centroamericana: El caso de los
sindicatos," Relaciones Internationales, 27 (segundo trimestre), 65-80; Steve Ellner, Venezuela's
Movimiento al Socialismo: From Guerrilla Defeat to Innovative Politics (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1988), 158-165.
10. Carmen Rosa Balbi, Identidad clasista en el sindicalismo: Su impacto en lasfdbricas (Lima:

DESCO, 1989), 131-132; Nigel Haworth, "Political Transition and the Peruvian Labor Move-
ment," in Edward C. Epstein, ed., Labor Autonomy and the State in Latin America (Boston: Unwin
Hyman, 1989), 199-200.
11. Balbi, Identidad, 87-94, 113-115.
12. Jorge Parodi, "La desmovilizacion del sindicalismo industrial en el segundo belaund-
ismo," in Comision de Movimientos Laborales, Sindicalismo latinoamericano en los ochenta
(Santiago de Chile: CLASCO, 1986), 329.
13. Maria Herminia Tavares de Almeida, "Desarrollo capitalista y accion social," Revista
Mexicana de Sociologia, 140, 2 (April-June 1978):468.
14. Tavares de Almeida, "Desarrollo capitalista," 489-491.
15. Hercules Correa, O ABC de 1980 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1980), 29-30.
16. Maria Helena Moreira Alves, "Trade Unions in Brazil: A Search for Autonomy and
Organization," in Epstein, Labor Autonomy, 49-62.
17. Martin Gargiulo, "El movimiento sindical uruguayo en los 80: ^Concertacion o con-

frontacion?", in Comision de Movimientos Laborales, Sindicalismo latinoamericano, 170-172. In

general on Uruguay see Martin Gargiulo, "The Uruguayan Labor Movement in the Post- Au-
thoritarian Period," in Epstein, Labor Autonomy, 219-246.
18. Luis Alberto Quevedo, "Los nuevos desafios del movimiento sindical en Uruguay,"

paper presented to the colloquium "La crisis del movimiento sindical de America Latina y las
repuestas/propuestas alternativas," San Antonio de los Altos, Venezuela, November 27-
December 3, 1988, 32, my translation.
19. Quevedo, "Los nuevos desafios," 29; Emilio Mancilla and Osvaldo Melesi, comps., El
movimiento sindical en Uruguay postdictatorial (Montevideo: IFIS-CAAS, 1990), vii.
el

20. Quevedo, "Los nuevos desafios," 27; Balbi, Identidad, 48; Haworth, "Political Transi-
tion," 209-216; Parodi, "La desmovilizacion," 332, my translation.
21. Balbi, Identidad, 167.
22. Carmen Rosa Balbi, "La crisis del sindicalismo en el Peru," paper presented to the
colloquium "Crisis del sindicalismo en la sub-region Andina," Bogota, October 22-28, 1989,
11, 48-51.
23. ALAI, 28, Quito, June 1990, 7, my translation.
24. Rene Antonio Mayorga, "La crisis del sistema democratico y la Central Obrera Boliv-
iana (COB)," in Comision de Movimientos Laborales, Sindicalismo latinoamericano, 199.
25. Francisco Zapata, "Crisis del sindicalismo," Estado y Sociedad, 4, 2 (1988):105, 107; Jorge
Lazarte, "El movimiento obrero: Crisis y opcion de futuro de la COB," in FLACSO-ILDIS, Crisis
del sindicalismo en Bolivia (La Paz: FLACSO-ILDIS, 1987), 262.
26. Lazarte, "El movimiento obrero," 265; "El caso de la Central Obrera Boliviana," paper
presented to the colloquium "Crisis del sindicalismo en la sub-region Andina," Bogota,
October 22-28, 1989, 16.
27. Alejandro Bernal, "La consolidacion del crecimiento dependiente, sus impactos en la
estructura del empleo y sus efectos en el sindicalismo: El caso colombiano," paper presented
 Trade Union Struggle and the Left 223

to the colloquium "Crisis del sindicalismo en la sub-region Andina/' Bogota, October 22-28,
1989, 2, 54.
28. See Fernando Lopez Alves, "Explaining Confederation: Colombian Unions in the
1980s," Latin American Research Review, 25, 2 (1990):115-133; RocioLondono Botero, "Los
problemas laborales y la situacion del sindicalismo en Colombia," Revista de Planeacion y
Desarrollo, 1-2 (January-June 1989); "Trade Unions and Labor Policy in Colombia," in Ep-
stein, Labor Autonomy, 101-132.
29. CUT, "Pela CUT classista, de massas, democratica, de luta e pela base," Notisur, 13, 34
(December 1988):64-69, my translation.
30. Paul Singer, "La clase obrera frente a la crisis inflacionaria y la democratizacion en el

Brasil," Economia de America Latina, 18-19 (1989):30-33.

31. Novo Hamburgo and of the CUT
Milton Rosa [president of the shoe workers' union in
in Valedo Sinos], DisCUT, 1, 1 (November 1989-January 1990): 18, my translation.
32. Miguel Rossetto [president of Sindipole and secretary for union policy, CUT-Rio
Grande do Sur], DisCUT, 1, 1 (November 1989-January 1990):16, 19, my translation.
33. For an overview of the general strikes in Latin America during the past decade, see
Latin American Labor News, 2/3, (1990).
 13
Something Old, Something New:
f
Brazil s Partido dos Trabalhadores

Maria Helena Moreira Alves

To understand the debates about strategy, power, and government that

have characterized Brazilian politics for the past two decades, it is neces-
sary to examine the historical experiences that form the collective political
consciousness of the Brazilian people. The events of two periods in partic-
ular have left an indelible mark on current politics: the populist period
between 1946 and 1964, when labor politics was influenced by Getulio
Vargas's model of corporatism, and the period of the institutionalization
of a national security state after the military coup of 1964.

The Legacy of Vargas

Getulio Vargas first came to power through a military coup followed by

indirect elections in 1934. A charismatic and able leader, Vargas was a
nationalist who was determined to carry out rapid economic develop-
ment based on state ownership of basic industry, in particular steel pro-
duction and raw materials such as petroleum. An admirer of Mussolini,
he used his power to institutionalize mechanisms of corporative partici-
pation to bring order into class relations. His Estado Novo was to leave a
lasting mark on labor: a labor code copied from Mussolini's and trade
unions tied directly to the state through the Ministry of Labor and special
labor courts. The corporative nature of the Brazilian state and of state-
civil society relationships was well established by the time the Estado
Novo was overthrown by new democratic forces in 1945.

Maria Helena Moreira Alves is a founding member of the Partido Trabalhista.

225
226 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

The second important legacy of Getiilio Vargas was the Partido

Trabalhista Brasileiro.The PTB was the symbol of populism: a political
party controlled by leaders who exercised charismatic influence on the
popular classes, organized vertically from the top down, and character-
ized by an effective strategy of mass mobilization. It won many benefits
for workers —
a legal work contract, an eight-hour day, paid vacations,
pension funds, maternity leave, protection for women workers and child
—
laborers and because of this could count on the support of workers
organized in the trade unions it largely controlled. Besides Vargas himself,
whom workers referred to as the "father of the poor," the PTB was the
party of two other historical leaders: Joao Goulart (who was deposed as
president by the military coup of 1964) and Leonel Brizola (governor of
Rio Grande do Sul in 1962-1964 and twice governor of Rio de Janeiro in
the 1980s). In short, the period of bourgeois democracy that followed the
end of the Estado Novo (1945-1964) was characterized by populist poli-
tics in which working-class organizations were used to provide political

support for charismatic political leaders who championed nationalist eco-

nomics and socioeconomic reforms as opposed to socialism.

The Legacy of the Partido Comunista Brasileiro

The Brazilian Communist party, one of the first founded in South

America (1919), had the historical distinction of having organized an
armed uprising in 1935. Prior to that, the PCB's secretary-general Luis
Carlos Prestes had led a column of soldiers, workers, and peasants in a
march from the south to the northeast of Brazil (close to three thousand
miles), spreading revolt and gathering support along the way. These two
events strongly grounded the PCB's reputation as a working-class van-
guard party and established the legendary image of Prestes as the
Cavaleiro da Esperanca (Horseman of Hope). The PCB was for many
years the main river into which various Left groups flowed. It competed
with Vargas's PTB for working-class support, although in reality it often
tended to establish electoral alliances with that party during pivotal elec-
tions. The PCB enjoyed only a brief period of legality after the overthrow
of Vargas's Estado Novo and suffered considerable persecution through-
out the populist period. The military in Brazil always considered the PCB
—
dangerously marked by its early armed rebellion a subversive force to
be controlled or if possible eliminated.
Because of this history of clandestine action the PCB developed a
highly centralized form of organization with strict internal discipline. Its
decision making was similarly characterized by a rigid top-down struc-
ture of democratic centralism, with decisions being made
only by a
handful of members of the central committee. This verticalism has been
 Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores 227

a long-standing influence in the Brazilian Left. Most groups that broke

from the PCB maintained its organizational design.
In 1964 a civil-military coalition took power in Brazil with the explicit
agenda of deepening a dependent-capitalist model of economic develop-
ment and institutionalizing state structures for central planning and gov-
ernmental control of the population. The new power holders began the
most widespread wave of repression against trade unions, community
organizations, and political parties ever to be carried out in the country.
Because members of left-leaning or progressive political parties were con-
sidered potential enemies, the clean-up operations targeted them most
specifically.
Hurt by the violence of the repression, political parties began to discuss
the alternatives available to them at that historical juncture. The debate
over nonviolent versus armed-struggle strategies for bringing down
the military government took place within Catholic social-action student
—
organizations such as the Ac^ao Popular (Popular Action AP), and in the
working-class Pastoral Operaria (Workers' Pastoral). In 1968 AP opted for
armed struggle and was joined by many Catholic militants citing the doc-
trine of the just war against torture and repression. The PCB supported
nonviolence, and its central committee ordered members to join the bour-
geois nonviolent opposition. In 1968 Carlos Marighela, one of the most
important members of the PCB's central committee, openly broke with
the policy and founded the Alianc,a de Libertac,ao Nacional (National
—
Liberation Alliance ALN). Led by Marighela, the ALN developed the
strategy of urban guerrilla warfare and rapidly became the most impor-
tant organization of armed resistance. The PCB suffered several further
divisions, and all of the emerging groups espoused armed struggle as the
only possible route to the overthrow of the military dictatorship. Because
of the Chinese-Soviet split, some of these splinter organizations became

tied to the Soviet Union and others to China. 1

The Negotiated Transition

By 1974 the Brazilian "economic miracle" was over. The results of the
economic model were more and more evident: growing inequality in
income and wealth, with large sectors of the population marginalized
from the economy altogether. In addition, the military's borrowing policy
had led to a rapidly increasing debt burden that suffocated the potential
for investment. The bourgeois opposition grew stronger, and a class alli-
ance was formed between the working class and the bourgeoisie for the /
purpose of delegitimating the military government and forcing a political
e
opening. 2 This class alliancewas based on two strategic points: First, the
'
opposition would organize a widespread nonviolent mass movement
 <y
228 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

focusing on violations of human rights, poverty and inequality, lack of

electoral freedoms, and censorship of the press and calling for political
amnesty. Second, the route to power would be electoral, working within
the limited political system set up by the military and accumulating
strength in time through electoral victories. There was only one legal
political party, the Movimento Democratico Brasileiro (Brazilian Demo-
cratic Movement —
MDB), and all efforts would be channeled through it. 3
This consensual nonviolent position caused a resurgence of the armed
struggle debate within the Left. Many militants argued that the armed-
struggle organizations had made a major mistake in isolating themselves
from the social movements, particularly the working-class ones that —
their lack of rank-and-file worker support distanced their activities from
the realities of the working class. Some militants also began to question
the vertical and military organization of the armed-struggle groups.
Finally, their defeat in the war against the national security state weighed
heavily in the consideration of alternatives. Most of the organizations that
had engaged in the armed struggle (such as the ALN) dissolved them-
selves during the liberalization period. Others, such as the pro-Chinese
Partido Comunista do Brasil, maintained their organizational framework
intact and joined the legally recognized opposition MDB, within which
they worked as separate groups and even elected some of their members
to local or congressional office.
The PCB continued to argue for the strengthening of the alliance with
the bourgeoisie: not only should workers support nonviolence and an
change but they should refrain from organizing strikes
electoral route to
that might undermine their class alliance with the national sector of the
Brazilian bourgeoisie. The PCB believed that the Brazilian mode of pro-
duction referred to as the "economic miracle" had developed a tripartite
character, consisting of state-controlled companies largely concerned
with building the necessary infrastructure for modern industry (roads,
dams, electricity, telecommunications, ports, etc.), mining, and petroleum
production; international capital concentrated in the more profitable
durable goods sector, the most dynamic part of the economy; and national
capital, dominating consumer goods production and a variety of smaller
linkage industries that produced for multinational corporations. Hence,
for example, the automobile industry's large assembly plants were
dominated entirely by foreign capital, whereas automobile parts manu-
facturing was by law nationally owned. Because of this tripartite nature of
dependent development, the PCB argued, there was at least a latent con-
tradiction between national and international capital. Many important
members of the Brazilian bourgeoisie felt displaced from political and
economic decisions in the military government and were joining the
opposition. Politically and strategically, therefore, it was important for
 Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores 229

workers themselves with these national sectors in order to defeat

to ally
their common enemy, the military and its international allies. For the
PCB it followed that the correct practice was to avoid major strikes that
affected national capital and support the bourgeoisie's effort to dialogue
and negotiate a gradual opening in the transition to democracy
Others argued for the resurgence of a social democratic and populist
line. European-style social democracy had been espoused by many \
leaders of the opposition in exile. They argued that the class alliance being yL
established naturally opened up the possibility of interclass negotiation of
salary benefits, welfare policies of education and health, and other impor-
tant social democratic gains for the working class. For them experience of
European bourgeois democracy, including parliamentarism, seemed a
viable alternative route for the Left in Brazil. Leonel Brizola, from exile in
Portugal, began to organize a new PTB, reborn from the ashes of the out-
lawed traditional populist labor party created by Vargas. This new PTB
would be populist, capable of mobilizing masses of workers by recalling
the memory of the "father of the poor." It would also build into its pro-
gram many concepts taken from European social democracy. Thus, in the
conception of the resurgent populists, the new party would benefit elec-
torallyfrom the PTB's tradition while including modernizing social
democratic and even socialist ideas. Brizola established a solid connection
with European social democratic parties and with the Democratic party
of the United States, and the new PTB immediately became a recognized
member of the Socialist International. When Brizola returned from exile
after the amnesty of August 1979, however, he found his party divided:
Getulio Vargas's niece, Ivete Vargas, had also decided to build upon the
A-55
legacy but in a more corporatist vein. Calling the social democratic
ideology into question, she gathered supporters, and eventually split the
party in two, between corporatists and social democrats. In addition, she
petitioned in the Supreme Electoral Court for the right to use the tradi-
tional name of the party, Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro. It was assumed
that the name itself would recall the image of the "father of the poor" and
naive workers would vote for the name of the party rather than for a
particular program. Because Ivete Vargas's proposal fitted much better
with the plans of the military government for the transition, she easily
won the suit.
In 1980, therefore, Brizola renamed his party the Partido Democratico
Trabalhista and continued to organize support for a populist-social
democratic alternative. The charismatic Brizola succeeded in gaining im-
pressive working-class support in the two states that had been most his-
torically bound to populism and Getulio Vargas: Rio de Janeiro and Rio
Grande do Sul. In other states populism was questioned and the image of
Vargas himself had been erased by time. The PDT, in keeping with the
 230 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

historical framework was organized vertically, with the ob-

of populism,
jective of mobilizing working-class movements rather than organizing
workers autonomously. The PDT was also marked by the personality of
its main leader. It was clearly Brizola's political party, dependent upon

charismatic leadership to gain support and to govern. Brizola gave his

image, his name, and his political expertise to the party and exerted un-
questioned influence over its members, some of whom followed his direc-
tives with almost fanatical devotion.

The Emergence of the Partido dos Trabalhadores

In 1979, a large congress of trade unions was held in Rio de Janeiro

to discuss strategies for building an autonSmous workers' movement
capable of breaking the tight regulations imposed by the military gov-
ernments since 1964. The congress of the Confederacao Nacional
dos Trabalhadores na Industria (National Confederation of Industrial
—
Workers CNTI) met in the wake of the huge strikes that had begun with
the automobile workers of Sao Bernardo do Campo, in the state of Sao
Paulo, and spread throughout the entire country in 1978 and 1979. 4
Tensions rose as workers were divided into three distinct groups: those
who supported the military, those who led the nascent antigovernment
"new trade union movement, " and those who opposed the military but
argued for a soft line on strikes because of the need to build interclass
alliances with elite groups. At a certain point, expressing a multitude of
frustrations, Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva, the charismatic leader of the
metalworkers of Sao Bernardo do Campo, shouted, "What we really need
!"
in this country is a Party of the Workers
Trade unionists who were connected to the Communist party (PCB)
had been the major proponents of the interclass alliance with the national
bourgeoisie aimed at defeating the military government. They believed
that the traditional PCB was the one and only true "workers' party" and
rejected Lula's plea. At the same time, Brizola, having just returned from
exile, was concerned with reorganizing the populist-social-democratic
alternative. Along with the Communists, he sought to persuade Lula and
^the "new trade unionists" to join in his effort to adapt social democracy
to Brazil.
However, the plea Workers" was deeply rooted in
for "a Party of the
the desire of workers to move primary actors
to the center of politics as
rather than simply backstage organizers. Many workers were newly em-
—
powered by their decisive participation in social movements in the new
trade union movement, the grass-roots neighborhood associations, and
the peasant movements. They were frustrated by the traditional Left
parties' rigid disciplinary regulations, which left little room for internal
 —

Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores 231

debate. They increasingly insisted on participation in the development of

political platforms and were blocked by established party bureaucrats.
Having learned through their involvement in the grass-roots social
movements to coordinate political action collectively, to make decisions
collectively, to organize in a decentralized way, and to rotate leadership,
workers now regarded the limitations of the traditional Left parties as
political straitjackets thatcurbed their potential participation. The new
'Tarty of the Workers " had to channel politically all of the experience
gained in the years of organization of the grass-roots social resistance to
the military governments. It would have to be a mass organization
flexible, dynamic, shifting, dialectically related to the grass-roots move-
ments, and capable of changing with historical contexts without losing its
crucial connection to those movements. It would also have to be deeply
embedded in the workers' movements and to link levels of organization
so as to remain strongly rooted in and never lose touch with the rank
and file. At the same time it would have to maintain a separateness from
the social movements so that their autonomy could be maintained and
preserved.
Many working-class leaders felt one of the lessons learned from
that
the populist period was that grass-roots movements die when they
become simply a base of support for politicians, easily manipulated
through the co-optation of their leadership. Ultimately, as Lula told
Brizola, "it was time for the people to learn where and how to swim by
themselves." This is what the Partido dos Trabalhadores was meant to be
from its founding. 5
The PT has grown to be one of the most important parties in Brazil,
having won mayoral races in Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre, and other key cities.
That Lula, as the PT's candidate in the elections of December of 1989,
came close to winning the presidency and received more than thirty-one
million votes is an indication of how deeply its proposals have affected
Brazilian society. Worker organizations and leaders have been catapulted
to the front lines of politics and have achieved a hegemonic position
within the Left. That this is a historic event is no longer denied even by the
PT's most persistent opponents. Likewise, that the PT represents some-
thing new in Latin American politics is evident in the growing interest it
now elicits.

The Novelty of the PT

The novelty of the PT lies in the nature of its relationship to social
movements at the grass roots. Born of these movements, the PT interfaces
with all kinds of organizations: in the urban areas it organizes in the trade
unions, the neighborhood associations, 6 and the favela (shantytown)
232 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

7
associations. It is present in the struggles of the homeless for housing and
of street children for recognition of their rights and in the mobilization for
better health and education. In the countryside, it is the moving force of
the rural unions of agricultural and migrant workers and those of the
marginalized daily laborers (known as boiasfrias) of the coffee and sugar
plantations. The PT has also backed the struggle of landless peasants for
land and of the rubber tappers of the Amazon to preserve the forest.
Although it is not the only party of the Left to support the struggles of
working people in Brazil for better living conditions, it has become the
largest one movements. In addition, it is active in the organi-
in the social
zation of women, in the black consciousness movement, and in the native
people's organizations. What is of particular interest, however, is the
manner in which it relates to these movements.
The PT does not have traditional "departments" or "party committees"
for women, blacks, rural workers, rubber tappers, trade unionists, etc.
Activists and militants are members of the different social movements
and organizations as well as of the PT. Their militancy is from that
different
of the parties of the traditional Left. The PT does not decide the "party
line" that willbe imposed upon a particular trade union, for example, or
in thewomen's movement. The militants are also not "party delegates"
within social movements. They have a double militancy and are encour-
aged to keep the two separate as much as possible. Although members'
connections to grass-roots bases are important for their standing in the
party (in membership in a grass-roots movement is a require-
fact, active
ment PT membership), there are no formal mechanisms for molding
for
militancy in the social movement to the positions of the party. The influ-
ence is from the grass roots to the PT and not the other way around. For
example, militants of the black consciousness movement have been
extremely important in shaping the PT's platform, in electing black people
to public office, and in developing and coordinating concrete programs of
government. Similarly, women permeate the PT, shape the platform on
women's issues, exert considerable influence on the party, and are elected
throughout the country. In the brief period of
to a variety of public offices
its existence, the PT has elected women as mayors of three major cities

(Fortaleza, Santos, and Sao Paulo), a black woman from a favela organiza-
tion as Brazil's first elected black congresswoman, and a number of other
members of the black consciousness movement to state and municipal
chambers. They represent their social movements within the PT but have no
disciplinary mechanisms built into their militancy in the grass roots. In
congresses and meetings PT members do not have to vote according to
predetermined party directives in a formal manner, although naturally
they tend to reflect the PT's platforms in their struggles at the grass-
roots level.
 Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores 233

Examples of this special relationship between the PT and the social

movements abound. In 1986 the PT elected Congresswoman Benedita da
Silva, of the Associagao dos Moradores da Rocinha (Rocinha Residents'
Association), as a state representative from Rio de Janeiro. Lula was also
elected as representative from Sao Paulo, with more than hundred
eight
thousand votes, the most ever cast for a congressman in Brazil. The influ-
ence of social movements on the party was demonstrated by the laws and
amendments proposed by the PT representatives. The law against racial
discrimination introduced by Benedita da Silva was drafted in discus-
sions with the black consciousness movement. The different constitution-
al articles relating to women's rights and the rights of women workers
were drafted, in a similar manner, by groups active in the women's
movement. Through the work of PT's representatives the nascent move-
ment of the People of the Forest found an echo in Congress. The PT's
defense of agrarian reform and the changes in the labor code were also the
result of active participation of trade unionists, both urban and rural.
The autonomy of the social movements is considered too important to
be threatened by the direct regulation of them by political parties. In the
past, the experience of the grass-roots movements in Brazil with political
parties had been largely negative. When parties worked in an organized
manner within social movements they tended to become divided and
debilitated. Party members would meet before regular meetings of the
social movement to decide upon key issues. This practice was conducive
to bitter political and even ideological divisions and to rigid positions that
were often nonnegotiable within the movement because decision making
came from outside. In addition, decisions were sometimes profoundly
disconnected from the rank and file and the real needs of the organization.
This blocked growth and effectiveness and, in the worst of cases, crushed
the organization entirely. The imposition of party lines has divided and
dissolved many important movements, particularly during the period of
armed struggle, when the competing viewpoints were at times irreconcil-
able. As a corrective, the PT consciously encourages the autonomy of
social movements vis-a-vis political parties. It does not want to become
isolated from social movements, but it attempts to avoid co-opting
leaders by tying them directly to party directives.
The preservation of the autonomy of social movements is intended to
avoid an old problem: the co-optation of rank-and-file leadership to polit-
ical posts to subordinate their organizations to the government. One
of the criticisms put forward by members of the PT about the populist
period was that co-optation and clientelism frequently characterized rela-
tions between reformist governments and the social movements. Co-
optation increases the potential for clientelism and encourages dependent
relationships that incorporate workers' organizations into a corporatist
234 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

state. Since the PT was born out of a social movement deeply influenced
by resistance to corporatism and widespread concern
clientelism, there is

within the party over the possibility of co-optation. In fact, the PT has
often erred in the opposite direction. In virtually all of the experiences
of government with a mayor elected by the PT, the social movements
quickly became active critics, not even hesitating, as in Porto Alegre in
8
1989, to call a strike against the municipal authorities.
Avoidance of the co-optation of leaders is difficult and complex. The
PT has not always been successful in preventing a renewal of traditional
forms of clientelism. Its first experiences in public administration in city
governments were characterized by internal battles particularly over
clientelist practices. In Diadema, where the PT was first elected to govern-
ment in 1982, the problem was particularly acute. A plan to hire many
leaders of the neighborhood and favela associations as civil servants 9
made the mayor and his staff the target of severe party criticism for
clientelism that eventually led to their collective resignation. The chief
concern was that, insofar as leaders became civil servants, especially
when personally appointed by a politician in power, the line between
autonomy and co-optation was inevitably blurred.
The Partido dos Trabalhadores is committed to preserving the role played
by the organizations of civil society in keeping the government on its toes.
One of its most cherished concepts is that power often turns the oppressed
into the oppressor. Those who vote people into office should not simply relin-
quish power to them but remain watchful, suspicious, and critical. It is most
important that a revolutionary government not co-opt its organizations and
thereby deprive them of their primordial watchdog function.
The question that is difficult to resolve, however, is how to create mech-
anisms for preventing patron-client relationships, nepotism, and other
improper forms of public conduct from developing. Because so many
militants are critical and wary of "democratic centralism," concerned
about guaranteeing internal debate, and anxious to avoid the dangers of
"purge committees," mechanisms to sanction party members are always
regarded with great suspicion. This has resulted in a high degree of ineffi-
ciency in all of the PT's "ethics committees." There have only been a few
cases in which representatives have been expelled for unethical behavior
or to enforce party discipline, and each such case has been a traumatic
experience for the party. In fact, enforcing party discipline and keeping
representatives faithful to the PT's program remains one of its most
serious unresolved problems.

The PT's Internal Structure

The decision of the party founders to build a democratic and socialist

mass party different from other experiences of the Left in Brazil had
 Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores 235

certain implications. First of all, it meant the abandonment of revolution-

ary theories of foquismo and strategies of armed struggle. The PT was not
to be another clandestine party, with a secret and military organizational
structure. It was also not to be a vanguard party based on the principle
that a few people could ignite the revolution. Secondly, the PT was
designed to be a legal party organized on a mass scale and capable of
competing with bourgeois parties for electoral office. Consequently, it had
to comply with the electoral laws enacted by military governments. The
difficulty lay in building a party that was both within the system and in
opposition to it.

The Political Party Law of 1979 established a series of strict limitations

on~party~organization. For example, it required that all members of a
political party register with the Supreme Electoral Court. It also required
a party to have a "top-down" structure in which the national executive
committee (in which politicians already holding office were automatically
included) named the members of all other party committees at regional
and local levels. Similarly, candidates had to be chosen from lists named
by the executive committees, and incumbents could run irrespective
of party approval. Finally, local, regional, and national meetings and
conventions had to be registered in writing and held in the presence of an
officer of the Supreme Electoral Court. Records of meetings were to be per-
manently filed with the court. The entire body of legislation was designed to
impede free political party organization and facilitate state control.
To exist as a political party and at the same time build a mass-based
democratic party, the PT has developed two interrelated forms of organi-
zation. The first strictly complies with the law. The second, a parallel
structure, allows the party to institutionalize mechanisms of rank-and-file
participation and to establish its characteristic "bottom up" style. All
aspects of the law are carefully fulfilled. Those who can withstand the
political and job pressure sign the required membership forms issued by
the court. Others, an equally active membership, sign mainly internal
party records and participate in all committees, conventions, and meet-
ings with equal rights. These are the militantes, some of whom are chosen
as delegates for the preconventions. A third, more numerous group is
connected to the party in more informal ways, providing financial support,
working in electoral campaigns, distributing educational materials, etc.,
without participating in meetings, conventions, or committees. These are
known in the PT as "sympathizers." By the 1989 elections the PT had approx-
imately four hundred thousand officially registered members, slightly more
than one million militantes, and more than four million sympathizers.
The PT regularly holds local, regional, and national conventions that
comply strictly with the law and are overseen by the court. Members of
executive committees and boards are named, and candidates for political
office are chosen. In reality, however, these official conventions simply
236 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

sanction decisions previously made at preconventions held at local,

regional, and national levels. They are the culmination of a democratic
internal party decision-making process that is alive with membership
participation. The preconventions are part of the other, parallel structure
of the PT.
The PT is made up of units known as the nucleos (nuclei) established
either in neighborhoods or in the workplace. People organize wherever
they work, much in the same manner as the factory committees described
by Gramsci in his Or dine Nuovo articles. They also organize nucleos in
their neighborhoods, streets, and then electoral districts. As a militante of
the PT, for example, I belong both to the nucleo of the University of the
State of Rio de Janeiro, where I teach, and to the nucleo of Laranjeiras,
where I live. In turn, the neighborhood nucleo of Laranjeiras is part of the
sixteenth Electoral Zone, which includes other nuclei as well. A prerequi-
site for joining the PT is membership in at least one nucleo, although it is
unnecessary to belong to both a workplace and a neighborhood organiza-
tion. The requirement is meant to ensure that only those who are in fact
involved in social movements become members of the PT. Those who
apply must have the support of their workmates or most immediate
neighbors.
The voting system of the PT from tradi-
also establishes its difference
democracy is exercised through a
tional political parties in Brazil. Internal
complex system of proportional voting in all the preconventions. The
membership of the PT includes members of the progressive Catholic
church, progressive Protestants, members of Marxist-Leninist groups,
including those that had engaged in the armed struggle, independent
socialists,and Trotskyists. In order that their ideas may be properly
debated and their positions reflected in the party, the PT has institutional-
ized a mechanism whereby each group may form an organized sector in
the party (known as a tendencia) and advance proposals and field candi-
dates for party posts and electoral office. The proposals that receive
majority backing at the preconventions are approved. 10 For party posts a
tendencia may organize a slate and will receive seats in proportion to its
voting strength. For example, if a Trotskyist tendencia gets 10 percent of
the votes in a municipal preconvention, it will have the right to name 10
percent of the members of the municipal executive committee. The same
holds true in choosing candidates for political office.
The proportional system of voting encourages internal party debate
and maximizes representation of the rank-and-file membership at all
levels of the organization. It also allows for a much greater degree of
control by the rank and file over the choosing of candidates for political

office. On many occasions the rank-and-file vote in the preconvention

goes against the desires of the top PT leadership. Two recent examples
 Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores 237

illustrate this point. The Executiva Estadual of Sao Paulo as a whole

supported the candidacy of Congressman Plinio de Arruda Sampaio
for mayor. However, when the preconvention was held in 1988, the rank-
and-file groups supported the candidacy of Luiza Erundina, who was
deeply involved in the homeless movement and the struggle for housing
in the city, and she became the candidate and was elected mayor. Another
example of decision making from below occurred at the national precon-
vention with the selection of the vice-presidential candidate on Lula's
slate for the presidential election of 1989. Lula himself campaigned within
the PT for the president of the Green party with a view to forging an
alliance. The rank and file, however, eventually chose Senator Joao Paulo
Bisol, of Rio Grande do Sul, as the candidate in recognition of his work in
favor of workers' rights in the Constituent Assembly.
There is an enormous amount of rivalry among tendencias, and the
unwary visitor to a PT convention may be surprised by the off-the-record
negotiation between groups, shouting debates in the plenary sessions,
and even organized cheering at the time of voting. Once it is all over,
however, rivalries are set aside, and militantes cheer and wave the PT's
flags. At campaign time all work together "taking to the streets" (in the
PT's terminology). This element of campaign militancy is what makes
political analysts say that the PT is a "party of arrival" —
meaning that
the PT has won surprising victories at the last minute through the zeal of
the millions of militantes who flood the streets everywhere to talk
individually with voters.

The PT's Program

The PT defends national sovereignty with a program of control of
multinational investment according to guidelines aimed at limiting profit
remittance and over- and underpricing, eliminating tax subsidies, regu-
lating working conditions, maintaining standards with regard to health
and occupational safety, monitoring salary levels, and guaranteeing job
security. Because the PT sees Brazil as immersed in the international
capitalist economy, it attaches much importance to problems stemming
from the investment patterns of multinational corporations, taking into
account their different standards of salary and benefits for workers in rich
nations versus Third World ones. The program therefore seeks to ensure
that similar benefits be provided to workers in the Brazilian affiliates of
multinationals. Workers' control in the form of factory committees with
representation in the negotiation of workplace conditions and eventual
provisions for joint management and profit sharing is also proposed.
Because the Brazilian economy is approximately 40 percent state-owned,
the PT has developed a detailed program for the rehabilitation and
238 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

democratization of the state companies. The program is based on an

analysis of the state sector's economic difficulties that suggests that
privatization is no solution. Instead it calls for joint management and
workers' control of public companies.
The defense of national sovereignty also involves the postponement of
interest payments on the foreign debt. The PT advocates the immediate
suspension of payments coupled with an auditing of the debt itself to
determine its makeup. It would deduct that part of the debt that has
already been paid as a consequence of unilateral floating interest rates
that rose from 6 percent in 1974 to 14 percent by 1984 and then renegotiate
the rest in terms adapted to the needs of the Brazilian people.
In the long run, the PT strives to build socialism from the day-to-day
struggles of working people in Brazil. Democratic socialism, in its view,
is necessarily historically rooted, dialectically related to the ongoing
requirements of social movements. The incorporation of workers into the
— —
decision-making apparatus of the state at all levels must be coupled
with the institutionalization of mechanisms of worker participation in the
workplace. Democratic socialism involves the democratizing of economic
and political life not simply in the distribution of production but also in
the redistribution of political, social, and economic power. Within the con-
ception of planting the seeds of socialism in the day-to-day struggles of
the workers, the PT organizes factory committees, workers' councils in
the workplace, neighborhood committees, health, education, and trans-
portation councils, and other citizen committees to develop collective
programs and find solutions to problems.
In the political sphere the PT has been the backbone of the Movement
for Popular Amendments, which organizes group discussions to present
formal amendments to the Constituent Assembly. Some of these popular
amendments, such as the agrarian reform, have been supported
by more than six million voters' signatures. As have other social and eco-
nomic reforms put forward by the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the party's
agrarian program has been drafted with the participation of representa-
tives from social movements in the countryside and the Amazon region,
and therefore it reflects the priorities of those most directly concerned
with the issues. For example, the PT defends different solutions for
agrarian reforms that take into account the diversity of the regions of
Brazil. A rural estate of more than five hundred hectares that is left largely
idle in the south and southeast would be considered unproductive for
purposes of redistribution, but rural property of up to fifteen hundred
hectares left idle in the Amazon region would not be considered unpro-
ductive because the People of the Forest Movement, the rubber tapper
unions, and other peasant movements have argued that idleness should
be encouraged in forest areas. Productivity of land would similarly vary,
 Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores 239

with very specific regulations for the preservation of the Amazon forests
of the central and northern parts of Brazil. All of the detailed economic
and social proposals of the PT were drafted in a similar manner and
reflect the day-to-day participation of those directly concerned with the
issues being addressed.

The Presidential Elections of 1989: Building Alliances

The Left and popular movements have traditionally been

in Brazil
limited in presidential elections to opting for the lesser oftwo evils, none
of the candidates having ever defended far-reaching socioeconomic
change. All of this came to an end with the military coup of 1964, in which
the class alliance that supported the national security state became appar-
ent. Then in 1989, for the first time in Brazilian history, the country's
eighty- three million voters had before them real choices. Political parties
that embraced widely different ideologies presented distinctly class-
based programs, from the extreme Right, both rural (Ronaldo Caiado)
and urban (Paulo Maluf), to the Left (Lula), the new Right (Fernando
Collor de Mello), the social democrats (Mario Covas), and the populists
(Leonel Brizola). The differentiation of candidates and political programs
was evidenced in the debates as well as in the free political-party spots
aired on television and the radio. For the entire three months preceding
the first round of the presidential elections of November 15, citizens
watched the parties present their proposals on television and avidly dis-
cussed the different approaches. The results of the first round showed a
nation divided: Collor received the most votes; right-leaning voters had
rejected the more extreme positions of Caiado and Maluf. On the opposite
side, the votes were divided between the prosocialist PT (Lula), the popu-
list PDT (Brizola), and the social democrats (Covas).

The runoff elections were to be held on December 17. This was the first
time that citizens freely considered the question of class relations in
politics —
not simply through the debates but in terms of the possibility of
choosing for president a leader who came from the working class and
presented a clear program for socioeconomic transformation. For the first
time, the Left was capable of taking over state power on its own rather
than being reduced to choosing among candidates of the bourgeoisie. The
forging of an interparty alliance to support Lula for president became the
most important point on the political agenda of all leftist and progressive
parties. The Frente Brasil Popular (Brazilian Popular Front —
FBP), which
had supported Lula/Bisol in the first round, was committed to the
concept of an interparty alliance that refrained from assigning hegemony
to any party This was the first successful experience of the tactical unity
11

of the Left and was based upon an explicit programmatic recognition of

240 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

the different positions of each party. For the second round it was nec-
essary to broaden the Frente's appeal to include the populists, the social
democrats, the PCB, the Center (represented by the MDB), and
the Greens. The decision to join the alliance was made by the rank-and-
filememberships of the various parties in conventions organized immedi-
ately after the first round. The experience of discussing political programs
and electoral unity in a public convention held in the midst of the most
important presidential campaign in Brazilian history forged a practical
unity of effort. Having temporarily laid aside the Left's characteristic
intense rivalry, militants covered the streets of the nation with the
campaign slogan that emphasized the alliance: "Now it is Lula."
Discussions among the various parties were aimed at synthesizing
diverse proposals. The PDT, represented largely by Brizola, argued that
the program should include its concept of public education, based on the
Centro Integral de Educagao Psico-Social, which had been a trademark of
Brizola's government in Rio de Janeiro. The Partido Social Democrata
Brasileiro of Mario Covas insisted that the program be more moderate in
terms of the foreign debt and the agrarian reform so as to conform to the
social democratic ideas it had advanced in the first round of the elections.
Thus the program of the alliance to support Lula for the second round
was substantially toned down and modified to incorporate social demo-
cratic and populist ideas.
The PCB, which had become legal in 1979, had fielded its own candi-
date for the first round, Congressman Roberto Freire of Pernambuco. In
the conversations about the alliance to support Lula in the second round
the PCB made no particular programmatic demands. The very small per-
centage of votes received by the traditional Communist party had led
members to consider joining the efforts of the PT and even to move
toward dissolution in the postelection period.
The nonhegemonic character of the Frente was embodied in the in-
structions it passed on to its affiliates: militants should always campaign
in the shirts of their own parties; they should carry the flags of their
parties in all demonstrations and in door-to-door canvassing; the political
programs of the Frente on television and radio would be produced by
representatives of all the parties in the campaign; leaflets and other mate-
rials would carry the names, colors, and symbols of all the parties; artists,
actors, and other well-known public persons of each party would always
appear in their own party clothing and carrying their party's flags; and
the differences between the parties that composed the Frente would be
accepted by campaign workers at all times.
all

These directives were strictly and willingly followed by the militants.

Clearly, people felt free to demonstrate their support for Lula in the
 —

Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores 241

second round because their own political beliefs had been preserved by
the nonhegemonic character of the Frente. The campaign came to be char-
acterized by a multitude of colors, symbols, and flags. The last rally, in Rio
de Janeiro, drew close to one million people waving their parties' flags
and applauding the speeches of their main leaders. When Lula appeared
flanked by Brizola, Mario Covas, and Miguel Arraes symbols of the —
PDT, the PSDB, and the PMDB— the crowd exploded with joy. Clearly,
the policy of building alliances based upon the recognition of differences
struck a responsive chord among voters. The second round of the elec-
tions ended with Collor, leading an alliance of Right and Center-Right
parties, receiving 35,089,998 votes (53.03 percent), and Lula 31,076,364
(46.97 percent).
In the gubernatorial elections of November 1990, the policy of building
alliances based on programmatic points was applied in each state. Much
as in the year before, not all parties joined the alliance for the first round,
some preferring to field their own candidates. For the second round,
however, progressive parties formed coalitions to support the candidate
with the most votes among them. Thus a broad-based alliance of Left and
Center-Left parties was built to endorse candidates of the different parties
in each state where a progressive ran against a right-wing candidate
among others Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais,
Bahia, Amazonas, and Acre. Affiliation with the Frente meant not a loss of
the party's distinctiveness but rather a reinforcement of the most impor-
tant common points for campaign purposes. Leftists are thus beginning to
learn to build upon common programs in order to acquire sufficient
strength to counter the Right's economic and political control. This policy
of alliance formation is feasible not only during periods of national elec-
tions but also in Congress, particularly in order to prepare for the next
presidential race in 1994.

Notes
1. Of these organizations, perhaps the most important was the Vanguardia Popular Rev-
olucionaria (Popular Revolutionary —
Vanguard VPR), which was led by Captain Carlos
Lamarca and carried out the most effective rural guerrilla operation in the Amazon area of
the Araguaia River.
2. See my "Interclass Alliances in the Brazilian Opposition," in Susan Eckstein, ed., Power
and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989).
3. In 1965 the military government abolished all political parties and created two new
ones, the Alianqa de Renovacao Nacional (Alliance of National Renewal —ARENA), which
represented the military government, and the MDB, which became the officially recognized
opposition party. The MDB became an "umbrella" organization for a variety of opposition
parties which had been driven underground. Only in 1979, with a newly promulgated party
law, did other political parties receive legal recognition.
242 Maria Helena Moreira Alves

4. For more information on the strikes and the development of the "new unionism" in
Brazil see my State and Opposition in Military Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986)
and "Trade Unions in Brazil: A Search for Autonomy and Organization," in Edward Epstein,
ed., Labor Autonomy and the State in Latin America (Winchester: Mass: Unwin Hyman, 1989).
5. Partido dos Trabalhadores, "Declaraqao Politica," Sao Bernardo do Campo, October 13,

1979, cited in Margaret Keck, Change from Below: The Workers' Party in Brazil's Transition to

Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press forthcoming), 151.

6. Neighborhood associations are registered as nonprofit organizations by specific dis-
tricts or areas of cities. Residents organize to defend community interests, pressure govern-
ment agencies for the delivery of services, and develop cooperative self-help projects. They
became particularly important during the period of military rule, when residents of poor
neighborhoods banded together for protection. In some major cities there are thousands of
such associations, and they are joined by federations at city and even state levels.
7. Favela associations organize collective self-help projects among shantytown residents.

They maintain a strong community identity and exercise considerable political influence.
8. The mayor, Olivio Dutra, had been president of that city's bank workers' union and a

member of the executive committee of the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores, which represents
eighteen million workers in Brazil. The majority of the members of the CUT are also members
of the PT. In spite of this interconnectedness, when Dutra decided that local owners of public
buses deserved an increase in fares the CUT, of which the bank workers' union is one of the
most important affiliates, called a protest strike against the city government to force a change.
9. For a more detailed discussion of events in Diadema, see Keck, Change from Below,

337-341.
10. The tendencias have more recently become associated with the different Trotskyist

groups within the PT that have organized themselves as political parties. They view the PT as
an umbrella organization, maintain their individual, usually highly centralized, political-
party organizations, and act as pressure groups to get their positions accepted and to occupy
political-party posts. This has created deep divisions in the PT and provoked an internal de-
bate on how to prevent tendencias from working as "parties within the party" or, in the —
terminology of the PT, "wearing two shirts, one on top of the other."
11. The Frente Brasil Popular was composed of the PT, the PCdoB, and the Partido So-
cialista Brasileiro (Brazilian Socialist Party —PSB).
 About the Book

Recent developments in Europe, including the collapse of communist

governments in Eastern Europe, the electoral decline of most Western Eu-
ropean communist parties, and a pronounced rightward shift in social
democratic movements, have elicited assertions that the historical evolu-
tion of the Left is at a standstill. The evidence from Latin America, how-
ever, suggests that the Left is far from being marginalized. Gains on the
electoral front and in labor movements, for example, indicate there exists
a close connection between a new unity within the Left and its greater
emphasis on the struggle to achieve and deepen democracy.
In eight country studies, contributors examine the lessons drawn from
the failure of guerrilla strategies in the 1960s, the challenge to the tradi-
tional Left posed by the emergence of new social movements, and the new
emphasis on democratic reforms over socioeconomic change. They also
analyze how the Left has responded to the erosion of U.S. influence in the
region and discuss whether the Left has benefited from the mobilizations
and protests generated by IMF-imposed austerity programs. In a final
section contributors explore issues of regional significance, including the
trade union struggle and guerrilla warfare, and evaluate prospects for
the future.

243
 About the Editors
and Contributors

Barry Carr is Reader in History at La Trobe University Melbourne,

7
Australia. His research has dealt with the history of the workers move-
ment and the Left in Mexico. He is the author of El movimiento obrero y la

politica en Mexico 1910-1929 (1979), and Marxism and Communism in

Twentieth-Century Mexico (1992). He is currently researching the impact of
the Great Depression (1928-1935) on worker and peasant mobilizations in
Cuba and Central America.
Marc W. Chernick is Assistant Director of the Institute of Latin Amer-
ican and Iberian Studies and teaches in the Political Science Department at
Columbia University. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia and
Visiting Professor at the University of The Andes in Bogota and the
National University of Colombia. He is the author of several articles in
English and Spanish on Colombian politics and violence, including a
forthcoming book on the Colombian peace process.
Ronald H. Chilcote is Professor of Political Science and Economics at
the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of and editor of
nine books, including Theories of Development and Underdevelopment (West-
view, 1984), (with Joel C. Edelstein) Latin America: Capitalist and Socialist
Perspectives of Development and Underdevelopment (Westview, 1986), and
Power and the Ruling Classes in Northeast Brazil (1990). He is a founder and
currently managing editor of Latin American Perspectives. His research has
focused on Portuguese-speaking Africa, Brazil, and Portugal.
James Dunkerley is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary and Westfield
College, University of London. His books include The Long War: Dictator-
ship and Revolution in El Salvador (1984), Rebellion in the Veins: Political
Struggle in Bolivia, 1952-1982 (1984), Power in the Isthmus: A Political His-

245
246 About the Contributors

tory of Central America (1988), and Political Suicide in Latin America and
Other Essays (1992). He is currently preparing a historical monograph on
the Bolivian Revolution of 1952.
Steve Ellner is Professor at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La
Cruz, Venezuela, where he has been teaching economic history and labor
studies since 1977. He is the author of Venezuela's Movimiento al Socialismo:
From Guerrilla Defeat to Innovative Politics (1988) and the short mono-
graphs The Venezuelan Petroleum Corporation and the Debate over Government
Policy in Basic Industry, 1960-1976 (1987) and Generational Identification and
Political Fragmentation in Venezuelan Politics in the Late 1960s (1989).
Richard Gillespie is Senior Lecturer at the University of Warwick and
coeditor of The Journal of Communist Studies. His publications include
Soldiers of Per on: Argentina's Montoneros (1982), The Spanish Socialist Party
(1989), and Cuba After Thirty Years: Rectification and the Revolution (1990).
Nigel Haworth teaches in the Department of Management Studies and
Labor Relations at the University of Auckland. He is the author of numer-
ous articles on twentieth-century Peruvian labor history and politics and
has edited (with Jean Carriere and Jacqueline Roddick) The State, Industri-
al Relations, and the Labor Movement in Latin America (1989). Recent articles

include "Political Transition and the Peruvian Labour Movement 1968-

1985," in E. Epstein, ed., Labor Autonomy and the State in Latin America
(1989).
Donald C. Hodges was schooled in Argentina from 1919 to 1942 and
returned there for several months each in 1971, 1976, and 1985. A profes-
sor of philosophy and former chairman of the Department of Philosophy
at Florida State University, he is also an affiliate professor of political
science at FSU. Amongdozen books on Latin American politics are
his
two on Argentina: Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and
Resistance (1988) and Argentina's "Dirty War": An Intellectual Biography
(1991).
Michael F. Jimenez received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in
1985 and currently teaches in the Department of History at the University
of Pittsburgh. He has written extensively on social movements, class pol-
itics, and peasant resistance and is the author of the forthcoming book Red
Viotd: Power, Authority, and Rebellion in the Colombian Andes.
Brian Loveman is Professor of History at San Diego State University.
He is the author of numerous books on Chilean and Latin American his-
tory, including Struggle and Rural Labor in Chile
in the Countryside: Politics

(1976), Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism (1979), and The Politics of
Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America (1989, 2nd ed.).
Tommie Sue Montgomery is Associate Professor of Latin American
Studies at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to Revolu-
tion in El Salvador: Origins and Evolution (Westview, 1982), she is author of
 About the Contributors 247

numerous scholarly and popular articles on El Salvador, the church in

Central America, and U.S. policy in El Salvador. In 1991 she carried out
research on Salvadorian refugees in Belize under a Fulbright Research
Grant.
Maria Helena Moreira Alves holds a Ph.D. in political science from
M.I.T. She is Professor of Political Economy at theUniversidade do
Estado do Rio de Janeiro. One of the founders of the Workers' Party (PT),
since 1985 she has been a member of the Union Education Department
of the CUT, which represents eighteen million Brazilian workers. She
organizes courses for trade union members in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Dick Parker has been teaching in the Department of Sociology of the
Universidad Central de Venezuela since 1975 and is the director of its
workshop "Movimiento Obrero Latinoamericano." Among his several
books is El sindicalismo cristiano latinoamericano en busca de un perfil propio
(1954r-1971) (1988).
 Index

Abos, Alvaro, 157-158 51, 174, 207, 212; relations with the
AD (Accion Democratica) (Venezuela), 18, Left, 43, 49, 50-51, 53, 56
140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 148, 150, 153, Aquino, Anastacio, 104
207 Aranibar, Antonio, 135
ADN (Alianza Democratica Nacionalista) ARCO (Asamblea de Renovacion
(Bolivia), 137 n.18 Comunista) (Chile), 36
Aguilar Talamantes, Rafael, 98 n.4 ARENA (Alianca de Renovacao Nacional)
Aguilar Zinser, Adolfo, 99 n.28 (Brazil), 241 n.3
Aguinada Carranza, Sonia, 120 n.16 ARENA (El Salvador), 103, 111, 112, 114,
Alas, Higinio, 106, 107 116, 118, 120 n.25
Alas, Jose, 106, 107, 108 Arraes, Miguel, 241
Alcocer, Jorge, 93 Aylwin, Patricio, 6, 32, 36, 38
Alfaro Vive (Ecuador), 191, 199 Aymara, 131, 132-133
Alfonsin, Raul, 159, 190
Alianza Democratica (Chile), 30 Baker, James, 116
Allende, Salvador, 4, 17, 19 n.4, 24, 128, 174, Ballon, Eduardo, 44
175, 207. See also U.P. (Unidad Popular) Banzer, Hugo, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135
Almeyda, Clodomiro, 30, 39 n.17 Baran, Paul, 176
Almirales, Andres, 74 Barco Vargas, Virgilio, 14, 71, 72, 73, 75
ALN (Alianca de Libertacao Nacional) Barrantes, Alfonso, 17, 49, 51, 52, 56
(Brazil), 227, 228 Barrientos, Rene, 128, 130
Altamirano, Carlos, 29 Barrios de Chungara, Domitila, 138 n.25
Ama, Jose Feliciano, 104 Batallon America (Colombia), 198-199
Americas Watch, 13 Bateman, Jaime, 70
Ampuero, Raul, 30 Batista, Fulgencio, 180
ANAPO (Alianza Nacional Popular) Belaunde, Fernando, 41, 49, 55
(Colombia), 64, 69, 74, 76 Bessmertnykh, Alexander, 116
Anaya Montes, Melida, 112 Betancur, Belisario, 71, 73, 74, 198
ANUC (Asociacion Nacional de Usuarios Bisol, Joao Paulo, 237
Campesinos) (Colombia), 66, 69 Blanco, Hugo, 174
AP (Acao Popular) (Brazil), 227 Bobbio, Norberto, 38 n.4
AP (Accion Popular) (Peru), 41, 45, 46, 58 Borja, Rodrigo, 191
n.16 Bosch, Juan, 3, 5, 6
API (Accion Popular Independiente) BPR (Bloque Popular Revolucionario) (El
(Chile), 25 Salvador), 108
APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Brezhnev, Leonid, 27
Americana) (Peru), 3, 8, 42, 45, 46, 48, Briones, Carlos, 30

249
250 Index

Brizola, Leonel, 3, 176, 226, 229, 230, 239, CNC (Confederacion Nacional Campesina)
241 (Mexico), 95
Brown, Doug, 182 CNG (Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera)
BS (Bloque Socialista) (Chile), 30 (Colombia), 198
Bush, George (administration), 5, 84, 103, CNPA (Coordinadora Nacional "Plan de
116, 118, 145 Ayala"), 86
CNR (Coordinadora Nacional de
Caiado, Ronaldo, 239 Regionales) (Chile), 29
Caldera, Rafael, 6, 144 CNS (Consejo Nacional Sindical) (Chile), 68
Campa, Valentin, 99 n.21 CNT (Convention Nacional de
Canache Mata, Carlos, 148 Trabaj adores) (Uruguay), 207, 216
Canada, 6, 98, 99 n.28 CNTE (Coordinadora Nacional de
Canas, Roberto, 102, 108, 117 Trabaj adores de la Education), 86, 87
Carapintadas (Argentina), 163 CNTI (Confederacao Nacional dos
Cardenas, Cuauhtemoc, 3, 5, 6, 83, 90-91, 92, Trabalhadores na Industria) (Brazil),
93, 94, 96; leadership style of, 92 230
Cardenas, Lazaro, 6 COB (Central Obrera Boliviana), 9, 122, 123,
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 176, 178 125, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 134, 135, 137
Cardoso, Ruth, 178 n.20, 208, 218; opposition to UDP
Carpio, Slavador Cayetano, 105, 107, 112, government, 125, 134; political role of,
119 n.6 125, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134
Carranza Valdes, Julio, 181 Cocaine trade. See Drugs
Carrasquel, Jose Manuel, 152 COCEI (Coalition Obrera-Campesina-
Carter, Jimmy, 44 Estudiantil del Istmo), 87, 88
Castaneda, Jorge, 99 n.28 Cockcroft, James, 10
Castillo, Heberto, 89 Collor de Mello, Fernando, 239
Castro, Fidel, 7, 173, 195. See also Cuba Comintern, 175
Catholic Church, 26, 29, 32, 33, 69, 106, 108, CONAMUP (Coordinadora Nacional del
165 Movimiento Urbano Popular), 85-86
Catholic Left, 10, 23, 24, 31-32, 64, 107, 179, CONDEPA (Conciencia de Patria) (Bolivia),
227 132-133, 135
Catholic radicals and grass-roots Constituent Assembly (Colombia), 3, 14, 16,
organizations, 10, 26, 27, 31, 61, 106- 75
107, 108, 174, 192. See also Social Cooke, John William, 155
movements COPEI (Comite de Organization Politica
Causa R (Venezuela), 141, 145, 150, 152 Electoral Independiente) (Venezuela),
Cerezo, Vinicio, 191 143, 144, 148-149, 150, 152, 153
CD (Convergencia Democratica) (El Corporatism, 11, 20 n.15, 86, 225
Salvador), 112, 116, 118, 193 Cortez, Roger, 131
CD (Corriente Democratica) (Mexico), 89 Corvalan, Luis, 27
n.6, 90, 91 Cotler, Julio, 44
CDP (Comite de Defensa Popular) Covas, Mario, 239, 240, 241
(Mexico), 88 CRIC (Consejo Regional Indigena del
CEP (Comite Permanente de Enlace) Cauca) (Colombia), 68-69
(Chile), 30 Cristiani, Alfredo, 103, 113, 114, 117, 118,
CGT (Confederacion General de Trabajo) 120 n.25
(Argentina), 6, 155, 166, 167, 206 CRM (Coordinadora Revolucionaria de las
CGT (Confederacao Geral do Trabalho) Masas), 110, 111
(Brazil), 215, 216, 220 CSTC (Confederacion Sindical de
CGTP (Confederacion General de Trabaj adores de Colombia), 208, 219
Trabaj adores del Peru), 3, 42, 43, 49, CSUTCB (Confederacion Sindical Unica de
208, 212, 214, 217-218 Trabaj adores Campesinos de Bolivia),
Chamorro, Violeta, 116, 183 131
Charrazos (Mexico), 96, 99 n.20 CTC (Confederacion de Trabaj adores de
China, 61. See also Maoism Colombia), 207, 208
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 26 CTM (Confederacion de Trabaj adores de
Clements, Charles, 106, 109 Mexico), 95
 Index 251

CTP (Confederacion de Trabajadores del ELN (Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional)

Peru), 43, 207, 208, 212 (Colombia), 63, 65, 70, 73, 80 n.5, 129,
CTRP (Confederacion de Trabajadores de la 192; support for, 74, 77
Revolution Peruana), 8 Entre Todos, 162-165
CTV (Confederacion de Trabajadores de EPL (Ejercito Popular de Liberacion)
Venezuela), 141, 144, 151, 152, 208, 212 (Colombia), 63, 64, 75, 80 n.5, 81 n.23;
Cuba, 7, 14, 16, 36, 64, 66, 70, 127, 144, 156, influence of, 70, 74, 75
172, 180-182, 187, 192, 195, 199; support ERP (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo)
by, for guerrillas, 61. See also Castro, (Argentina), 156, 162, 164
Fidel ERP (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo)
CUD (Coordinadora Unica de (El Salvador), 105, 106, 193

Damnificados), 86 Erundina, Luiza, 237

CUT (Central Unica de Trabajadores) Escobar Toledo, Saul, 93
(Chile), 207, 215
Eurocommunism, 37
Europe, 11, 20 n.20
CUT (Central Unica dos Trabalhadores
Evers, Tilman, 178
(Brazil), 219, 220, 242 n.8
CUT (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores)
(Colombia), 72, 219
FAL (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion) (El
Salvador), 105, 109
CUTV (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de
FAP (Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas)
Venezuela), 149, 152
(Argentina), 169 n. 16
CVG (Corporacion Venezolana de
FAPU (Frente de Accion Popular
Guayana), 150
Unificado), 107, 108
Farabundo Marti, Augustin, 104
Dalton, Roque, 106
FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias
D'Aubuisson, Roberto, 112
de Colombia), 14, 67, 69, 73, 74, 76, 77,
DC (Democracia Cristiana), 45 78, 81 n.23, 191, 198, 199; influence of,
De Soto, Alvaro, 116 63, 67, 69, 73, 78
DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), 2 FAS (Frente Anticomunista Salvadreho),
Debray, Regis, 187 117
Delgadillo, Walter, 134 FBP (Frente Brasil Popular), 239
Democratic Party (United States), 229 FDN (Frente Democratico Nacional)
Diaz, Nidia, 120 n.16 (Mexico), 3, 91, 92, 93,96
Diaz Ordaz, Gustavo, 84 FDR (Frente Democratico Revolucionario)
Diniz, Abdilio, 163 (El Salvador), 193
Dos Santos, Theotonio, 176 Feinmann, 157-158
Jose,

D'Paola, Victor Hugo, 147, 148 FENASTRAS (Federacion Nacional Sindical

DRU (Direccion Revolucionaria Unificada) de Trabajadores Salvadorenos), 114
(El Salvador), 110
Fernandez, Eduardo, 144
FIP (Frente de Izquierda Popular)
Drugs, cultivation and trade of, 2, 12-13,
(Argentina), 156, 158
200; in Bolivia, 12-13, 124, 131; in
Firmenich, Mario, 190
Colombia, 13, 62, 68, 71, 72, 73, 75, 77;
Firmes (Colombia), 69
in Peru, 13, 197
FIU (Frente de Izquierda Unida)
Duarte, Jose Napoleon, 103, 105, 112
(Argentina), 160, 162
Dussel, Enrique, 179
FMLN (Frente Farabundo Marti para la
Dutra, Olivio, 242 n.8
Liberacion Nacional), 70, 101-119, 156,
190, 192, 193, 196, 198
Earthquake (Mexico), 86 FOCEP (Frente Obrero Campesino
East Germany, 26 Estudiantil y Popular) (Peru), 45, 49
Echeverria, Luis, 85 Foroohar, Manzar, 179
Economic Commission for Latin America FPL (Fuerzas Populares de Liberacion) (El
(ECLA), 169 n.40, 176, 209 Salvador), 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 112,
EGP (Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres) 193
(Guatemala), 196 FPMR (Frente Patriotico Manuel
ELN (Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional) Rodriguez) (Chile), 28, 29, 33, 175, 194,
(Bolivia), 129 195
252 Index

FRAL (Frente Amplio de Liberacion) Guevara, Che, 64, 128, 163, 173, 175, 181,
(Argentina), 159, 160, 162 187, 188, 195, 199
France, 111; socialists in, 24, 38 n.4 Gutierrez, Nelson, 39 n.25
Frank, Andre Gunder, 176 Guzman, Abimael, 54
Frei, Eduardo, 26, 36, 175 Guzman, Jaime, 38
Freire, Roberto, 240
FREJULI (Frente Justicialista de Liberacion) Handal, Shafik, 105, 119 n.9, 194
(Argentina), 157 Harnecker, Marta, 179
Frente Amplio (Uruguay), 3, 189 Hartlyn, Jonathan, 62
Frente Brasil Popular, 239-240, 242 n.ll Hellman, Judith Adler, 20 n.20
FREPU (Frente del Pueblo) (Argentina), Hernandez Galicia, Joaquin, 96
158, 159, 162 Hernandez Martinez, Maximiliano, 107
Frias, Ismael, 174 Herrera Campins, Luis, 143
Frondizi, Silvio, 176 Huntington, Samuel, 62, 79-80 n.2
FRP (Frente de Resistencia Popular)
(Argentina), 165 IC (Izquierda Cristiana) (Chile), 23, 30, 31
FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion IMF (International Monetary Fund), 6, 9, 30,
Nacional) (Nicaragua). See Sandinistas 37, 43, 144, 151, 200
FSTMB (Federacion Sindical de Intransigent Party (Argentina), 158, 159, 162
Trabaj adores Mineros de Bolivia), 123, IS (Izquierda Socialista) (Peru), 50, 56
127, 129 Italy, 26; Communists in, 24, 143
Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion-Zarate IU (Izquierda Unida) (Peru), 17, 43, 45, 49,
Willka (Bolivia), 133 50, 51-54, 55, 56, 217-218
Fujimori, Alberto, 50
Fuller, Linda, 181 Jilberto, Alejandro, 30
Junco, Sandalio, 174
Garcia, Alan, 50, 51, 53, 55, 217
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, 13 Katarismo (Bolivia), 123, 131-132, 136
Gaviria, Cesar, 71, 75
Geisel, Ernesto, 212 La Tablada (Argentina), 162-165, 201
Gil Yepez, Jose Antonio, 153 n.8 Labor movements, 4-5, 205-223; in
Glucksmann, Andre, 16 Argentina, 206; in Bolivia, 122, 207-208,
Gomez, "Superbarrio," 86 212, 218, 219; in Brazil, 206, 212, 213,
Gonzalez Casanova, Pablo, 176, 185 n.7 214-215, 219-220; in Chile, 207; in
Goulart, Joao, 226 Colombia, 68, 69, 72, 207, 208, 211, 219;
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 7, 18, 144. See also in Ecuador, 212; in El Salvador, 212; in
Perestroika Mexico, 85, 86, 95, 96, 206, 211; in Peru,
Gorriaran Merlo, Enrique, 162-165 43, 48-49, 206-207, 208, 212, 213, 214,
Gramsci, Antonio, 19, 38 n.4, 137 n.19, 171, 217-218, 219; in Uruguay, 207, 215-217;
182, 236 in Venezuela, 145-146, 149, 151, 152,
Granados Aponte, Manuel, 59 n.40 206-207, 208, 212
Green Party, in Argentina, 159; in Brazil, Laclau, Ernesto, 2, 19 n.3, 177
237, 240; in Mexico, 94 Lagos, Ricardo, 31
Groth, Terrie R., 20 n.15 Lamarca, Carlos, 241 n.l
Grove, Marmaduke, 175 Laya, Argelia, 148
Gueiler, Lydia, 135 Leal Buitrago, Francisco, 62
Guerrilla movements, 10, 13-15, 187-203; in Lechin Oquendo, Juan, 127, 129
Argentina, 188, 189-190, 200; in Bolivia, Lehmann, David, 178
200; in Chile, 192, 194; in Colombia, 65, Leiva, Fernando Ignacio, 179
67-71, 73, 78, 188, 191-192, 196, 197, Letona, Mercedes del Carmen, 120 n.16
198-199, 200; in Ecuador, 191, 199; in El Lleras Restrepo, Carlos, 66, 68
Salvador, 101-120, 190-191, 193, 194, Lowy, Michael, 178
196, 198; in Guatemala, 191, 193, 196- Lopez, Hector Alonso, 153 n.8
197; in Honduras, 193; in Nicaragua, Lopez Michelsen, Alfonso, 64, 67, 68
192; in Peru, 54-55, 191, 195-196, 197- Lopez Portillo, Jose, 85
198, 200; in Uruguay, 188, 189; in Lopez Segrera, Francisco, 176
Venezuela, 139 Lora, Guillermo, 174
 Index 253

Lorca, Carlos, 29 130, 134, 137 n.10; participation in Siles

Low-intensity warfare, 14, 21 n.29, 119 n.3 government, 8, 125, 129
LP (Linea Proletaria) (Mexico), 86 MIR (Movimiento de la Izquierda
Luciak, Illya, 182 Revolucionaria) (Venezuela), 142, 149
Lusinchi, Jaime, 143, 149 MIR- Bolivia Libre, 135, 137 n. 12
Lutheran Church, 114 MIR-Masas (Bolivia), 134, 135
Luxemburg, Rosa, 15 MIR-Nueva Mayoria (Bolivia), 134
Luzardo, Alexander, 146 MLN-T (Movimiento de Liberacion
Nacional-Tupamaros) (Uruguay), 19
M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abril) (Colombia), n.9, 163, 189, 216
19 n.9, 63, 64, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76,
3, 14, 16, MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista
77, 81 n.23, 191, 195, 199;middle-class Revolucionario) (Bolivia), 124, 126, 127,
background of, 63, 64, 78 128, 129, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137 n.18
Maluf, Paulo, 239 MNRI (MNR Izquierda) (Bolivia), 129, 130,
Maoism, 45, 66, 70, 87, 127, 133, 171, 173, 131
183, 198 Montoneros, 19 n.9, 189, 190, 195
MAPU (Movimiento de Accion Popular Morales Bermudez, Francisco, 8, 41, 42, 43,
Unitaria) (Chile), 23, 30, 31 44, 45, 46
MAPU MOC (MAPU Obrero-Campesino) Morazan, Francisco, 193
(Chile), 23, 31 Moreno, Nahuel, 174
Mariategui, Jose Carlos, 46, 171-172 Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Argentina),
Marighela, Carlos, 163, 227 162, 165, 190
Marini, Ruy Mauro, 176, 185 n.7 Mouffe, Chantal, 2, 19 n.14
Marquez, Pompeyo, 147 MPSC (Movimiento Popular Social
Martinez, Ana Guadalupe, 109, 120 n.16 Cristiano), 110
Marulanda Velez, Manuel, 76 MR-13 (Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de
MAS Movimiento al Socialismo Noviembre) (Guatemala), 174
(Argentina), 156, 158; relations with MRL (Movimiento Revolucionario Liberal)
Communists, 159, 160, 162, 166 (Colombia), 64, 65, 67
MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) MRP (Movimiento Revolucionario del
(Venezuela), 5, 15, 16, 17, 141, 142, 143, Pueblo), 86
144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 179; MRTA (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac
economic positions, 144, 145; electoral Amaru) (Peru), 191, 195, 197, 199
performance, 140, 142; internal MRTKL (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupaj
reforms, 147-148; party alliances, 149, Katari de Liberacion) (Bolivia), 123,
152; support for democracy, 141, 143, 131, 136
147 MTP (Movimiento Todos por la Patria)
MDB (Movimiento Democratico Brasileiro), (Argentina), 162, 163, 164, 165
228, 240, 241 n.3 Mujica, Hector, 149
MDP (Movimiento Democratico Popular) Munoz, Freddy, 143, 145, 147, 148
(Chile), 28, 30, 39 n. 17 Mufioz Ledo, Porfirio, 90, 98 ns.6 and 7
Mella, Julio Antonio, 171-172 Mussolini, Benito, 206, 225
Menem, Carlos Saul, 6, 166, 167, 190
MEP (Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo) NAFTA (North American Free Trade
(Venezuela), 141, 142, 145, 150, 152 Agreement), 6, 84, 94, 97, 98, 99 n.28
Michels, Robert, 21 n.32 Natusch, Alberto, 134, 218
Ministry of Labor (Brazil), 225 Nava, Salvador, 93
MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Navarro Wolff, Antonio, 3, 75
Revolucionaria) (Chile), 23, 25, 29, 30, Neighborhoods Assembly (Mexico), 86
31, 35, 39 n.17, 163, 202 n.20; Neoliberalism and privatization, 4-6, 18,
factionalism in, 39 n.25; relations with 210; in Argentina, 6, 18, 166; in Bolivia,
Communists, 26, 27, 28, 30, 35, 175 123, 134, 135, 136, 218; in Brazil, 5, 238;
MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Colombia, 68;
in Chile, 25, 26, 27, 33; in
Revolucionaria) (Peru), 45, 47 in Dominican Republic, 5; in Mexico, 5,
MIR (Movimiento de la Izquierda 6, 92, 97; in Venezuela, 6, 18, 144
Revolucionaria (Bolivia), 123, 128, 129, Nicaragua, 61. See also Sandinistas
254 Index

Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), PDC (Partido Democrata Cristiana) (Chile),

32-33 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37
PDT (Partido Democratico Trabalhista)
Ochoa, Arnaldo, 195 229-230, 240, 241
(Brazil), 176,
OIR-LM (Organizacion de Izquierda Peasant movements: in Bolivia, 15, 122, 123,
Revolucionaria-Linea de Masas) 131-132, 218; in Brazil, 232, 238; in
(Mexico), 86 Colombia, 65, 66, 76; in El Salvador,
ORPA (Organizacion del Pueblo en Armas) 101, 104, 107; in Mexico, 85, 86, 95; in
(Guatemala), 196 Peru, 56
Ortega, Daniel, 111 Pease, Henry, 50, 52, 56
Ortega Diaz, Pedro, 149 Pedrosa, Mario, 174
Osorio, Oscar, 119 n.6 Pena, Alfredo, 153 n.8
Perestroika. 4, 7, 18, 140, 152, 160-162, 195
Pacho, Valentin, 217 Perez, Carlos Andres, 6, 140, 143, 146, 148
PAIS (Partido Amplio de Izquierda
la Perez de Cuellar, Javier, 117, 118
35
Socialista) (Chile), 31,
Peron, Isabel, 159, 166
PAN (Partido de Accion Nacional) Peron, Juan Domingo, 6, 155, 158, 167-168
(Mexico), 83, 93, 94
Peronism, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 162, 167
Pardo Leal, Jaime, 73
Peronismo Revolucionario (Argentina),
Parodi, Jorge, 217
189-190
Partido Conservador (Colombia), 63
Petkoff, Teodoro, 5, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148
Partido Liberal (Colombia), 63, 65, 68
Petras, James, 10, 179
Payne, James, 221 n.5
PFCRN (Partido Frente Cardenista para la
Paz, Jaime, 134
Reconstruccion Nacional) (Mexico), 89,
Paz Estenssoro, Victor, 6, 9, 124, 131, 218
92
PCA (Partido Comunista de Argentina), 9, PGT (Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo),
160, 161-162, 166; united frontism and,
172, 193
158, 159, 160, 162
Pinochet, Augusto, 4, 12, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34,
PCB (Partido Comunista Brasileiro), 9, 172,
38, 175
206, 220, 226, 227, 228, 229, 240;
PIT (Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores)
relations with PT, 214-215, 230, 240
(Uruguay), 216
PCB (Partido Comunista de Bolivia), 8-9,
Pizarro, Carlos, 75
123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 134,
PLD (Partido para la Liberacion
135, 136, 138 n.23; interparty relations
Dominicana) (Dominican Republic), 3
and, 126, 127, 128, 130
PCB-V Congreso (Bolivia), 138 n.23
PMDB (Partido do Movimiento
Democratico Brasileiro), 215, 241
PCBM-L Comunista de Bolivia
(Partido
Marxista-Leninista), 127, 128
PMS (Partido Mexicano Socialista), 85, 88,
89, 91, 92, 99 n.9
PCC (Partido Comunista de Colombia), 66,
69,76
PO (Pastoral Operaria) (Brazil), 176, 227
PCCh (Partido Comunista de Chile), 4, 24,
Political Party Law of 1979 (Argentina), 235

25, 26-29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39 n.17,

Ponce, Ezequiel, 29
172, 175, 194, 202 n.20 POR (Partido Obrero Revolucionario)
PCCM-L (Partido Comunista de Colombia, (Bolivia), 126, 127, 128, 130, 133, 136

Marxista-Leninista), 64 Posadas, Juan, 174

PCdoB (Partido Comunista do Brasil), 214, PPD (Partido por la Democracia) (Chile), 31
220 PPS (Partido Popular Socialista) (Mexico),
PCM (Partido Comunista Mexicano), 3, 85, 89,92
87, 88, 176 PR (Patria Roja) (Peru), 45, 49, 54
PCP (Partido Comunista Peruano), 8, 9, 43, PRD (Partido de la Revolucion
on the Left,
46, 49, 214; relations of, 8, Democratica) (Mexico), 83, 89, 92, 93-
43,49 96, 97, 98; electoral performance, 93-94
PCS (Partido Comunista de El Salvador), Prebisch, Raul, 176
104, 105, 106, 110 Prestes, Luis Carlos, 226
PCU (Partido Comunista de Uruguay), 216 PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional)
PCV (Partido Comunista de Venezuela), (Mexico), 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94,
140, 142, 144, 149, 152, 179 95, 96, 98 n.4
 Index 255

Primaries, internal party, 16; in Brazil, 16, Ruiz, Henry, 174

236-237; in Chile, 16; in Mexico, 89, 94;
in Venezuela, 16, 141, 147-148 Saenz, Miguel, 104, 113, 119 n.5
Privatization. See Neoliberalism and Sales, Luis, 163
privatization Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 83, 84, 93, 97
Provenzano, Francisco, 163-164 Sampaio, Plinio de Arruda, 237
PRT (Partido Revolucionario de los Sandino, Augusto Cesar, 182. See also
Trabaj adores) (Argentina), 156, 159, 166 Sandinistas
PRT (Partido Revolucionario de los Sandinistas, 5, 7, 27, 70, 143, 162, 174, 182-
Trabaj adores) (Mexico), 88, 91, 94, 97 183, 192, 193, 195, 199, 202 n.17
PRT (Partido Revolucionario de los Sanguinetti, Julio, 217
Trabaj adores) (Peru), 47 Sarney, Jose, 12
PRT (Partido Revolucionario de Schnake, Erich, 30
Trabaj adores) (Colombia), 74, 75 Sendic, Raul, 164
PRTC (Partido Revolucionario de Sepulveda, Adonis, 30
Trabaj adores Centroamericanos), 106 SIDOR (Sidenirgica del Orinoco)
PS-1 (Partido Socialista-Uno) (Bolivia), 123, (Venezuela), 142, 145-146
130, 135 Siles Zuazo, Hernan, 8, 122, 126, 129, 218
PSB (Partido Socialista Brasileiro), 242 n.ll Silva, Benedita da, 233
PSD (Partido Social Democratico) (El Silva, Luis Inacio (Lula) da, 3, 5, 178, 213,
Salvador), 112 230, 231, 239, 240, 241
PSDB (Partido Social Democrata Brasileiro), SINAMOS (Sistema Nacional de Apoyo a la
176, 178, 241 Movilizacion Social) (Peru), 48
PSR (Partido Socialista Revolucionario) SL (Sendero Luminoso) (Peru), 42, 46, 48,
(Peru), 44, 45, 49 51, 53, 54, 59 n.40, 173-174, 191, 195-
PST (Partido Socialista de los Trabaj adores), 196, 198, 200; and cocaine, 13, 197; the
158 legal Left and, 54-55
PSUM (Partido Socialista Unificado de SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabaj adores
Mexico), 85, 87, 88 de la Educacion) (Mexico), 86
PT (Partidos dos Trabalhadores) (Brazil), 3, Social movements, 9-13, 32-33, 47-49, 51,
9, 11, 16,20 n.14, 72, 178, 215, 230-241; 54, 61, 63, 66, 69, 72, 73, 85-86, 87, 90,
economic positions, 237-238; internal 95, 96, 134, 152, 162, 178-179, 183, 213,
organization, 232, 234-237; interparty 218, 231-234, 236, 242 ns.6 and 7; black
relations, 229-241; participation in consciousness movement, 232;
social movements, 232-233 ecological movements, 10, 12, 33, 135,
PTB (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro), 226, 146, 159, 232, 233, 238-239, 242 ns.6 and
229 7; women's movements, 20 n.20, 48,
10,
Pulacayo, Thesis of, 137 n.5, 208 49, 51, 61, 97, 135, 138 n.25, 152-153,
232, 233. See also Catholic Church;
Quechua, 131, 173 Labor movements; Mothers of the
Quintin Lame (Colombia), 74, 75 Plaza de Mayo; Peasant movements
Quiroga Santa Cruz, Marcelo, 130 Socialism, transition to, in Cuba, 180-182
Socialist International, 93, 176, 196, 229
Ramirez Tobon, William, 69 Socialists (Chilean), 16, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29-31,
Ramos, Jorge Abelardo, 156, 174 35, 36, 37, 221 n.2
Rangel, Jose Vicente, 142 Somoza, Anastasio, 14
Reagan, Ronald (administration), 111 Soviet Union, 7, 9, 26, 27, 61, 116, 143, 144,
Recabarren, Luis Emilio, 171-172 149, 181. See also Gorbachev;
Rios Montt, Efrain, 196 Perestroika
RN (Resistencia Nacional) (El Salvador), Spain, 117; socialists in, 24, 38 n.4
105, 107, 108, 110 Stalinism, 35, 89, 173, 194
Roldan, Mario Reni, 112 Stokes, Susan, 48
Rodriguez, Aniceto, 30 STPRM (Sindicato de Trabaj adores
Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo, 64 Petroleros Mexicanos), 96
Romero, Carlos Humberto, 108 SUTISS (Sindicato Unico de Trabaj adores
Romero, Oscar, 102, 110 de la Industria Sidenirgica)

Romero, Serapio ("El Cinchonero"), 193 (Venezuela), 145

 4

256 Index

Szymanski, Al, 184 UP (Unidad Popular) (Chile), 24, 25, 26, 36,
156, 172, 174-175
Tablante, Carlos, 149, 150 URNG (Union Revolucionaria Nacional de
Tarre, Gustavo, 149 Guatemala), 191, 193
Thatcher, Margaret, 166 UTC (Union de Trabaj adores de Colombia),
Torres, Camilo, 64
207
Torres, Juan Jose, 127, 129, 208
Valladares, Maria Marta, 120 n. 16
Touraine, Alain, 10, 11
Vargas, Gehilio, 7, 206, 220, 225-226
Tricontinental Congress, 175
Vargas, Ivete, 229
Trotskyism, 45, 47, 49, 88, 91, 94, 126, 130,
Vasquez, Genaro, 91
137 n.5, 156, 157, 171, 173, 174, 176, 183,
Velasco Alvarado, Juan, 8, 42, 43, 45, 212
194, 221 n.2, 236, 242 n. 10
Velasquez, Andres, 145, 146, 149, 150
Turbay, Julio Cesar, 67, 68, 69, 72 Velasquez, Febe Elizabeth, 114
Tupaj Katari, 131. See also katarismo Videla, Jorge, 9, 190
Villaflor, Jose Osvaldo, 169
UDN (Union Democratica Nacional) (El Villalobos, Joaquin, 21 n.31, 103, 193
Salvador), 105 Vitale, Luis, 174
UDP (Unidad Democratica Popular) (Peru), Volski, Victor, 161-162
44-15,49 VPR (Vanguardia Popular Revolucionaria)
UDP (Union Democratica y Popular) (Brazil), 241 n.l
(Bolivia), 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, VR (Vanguardia Revolucionaria) (Peru), 45,
129, 131, 133, 134, 136 n.3; faces labor 47
strife, 125, 134
Ulloa, Manuel, 49 Weffort, Francisco, 20 n.l
Ungo, Guillermo Manuel, 112, 113, 193 Wickham-Crowley, Timothy P., 174

Unified National Directorate of the Women, 108-109, 135, 148, 232. See also
Honduran Revolutionary Movement, Social movements
Workers' self-management, 16; in
193
Argentina, 156, 166; in Bolivia, 125, 126,
UNIR (Union Nacional de la Izquierda
127, 134; in Brazil, 237, 238; in
Revolucionaria) (Peru), 49
Venezuela, 140, 144
United Nations, 115, 116, 117, 118, 144
World Bank, 52, 145
United States, 6, 14, 84, 89, 98, 103, 111, 112,
114, 115, 117, 120 n.25, 122, 123, 132,
Zamora, Luis, 160
143, 145, 147, 182, 197, 198, 207. See also Zamora, Mario, 110
Bush; CIA; DEA; Democratic Party; Zamora, Oscar, 137 n.18
Reagan Zamora, Ruben, 110, 112, 114, 116
UNO (Union Nacional de Oposicion) Zamosc, Leon, 80 n.5, 81 n.23
(Colombia), 69 Zapata, Mateo, 86
UP (Union Patriotica) (Colombia), 14, 15, Zavaleta, Rene, 137 ns.lO and 19
73, 76, 191 Zelaya, Lorenzo, 193
 Praise
THE LATIN AMERICAN LEFT

"This an important and comprehensive study of the recent Latin Ameri-

is

can The chapters maintain a high level of analysis. The volume is all
left.

the more necessary in view of the collapse of the Soviet bloc."

—Timothy F. Harding
California State University-Los Angeles

Recent developments in Europe have elicited assertions that the histori-

cal movement of the The evidence from Latin America,
Left is at a standstill.
however, suggests that the Left is from being marginalized. In eight coun-
far
try studies, contributors examine the lessons drawn from the failure of guer-
strategies in the 1 960s, the challenge to the traditional Left posed by the
rilla

emergence of new social movements, and the new emphasis on democratic

reforms over socioeconomic change. They also analyze how the Left has re-
sponded to the erosion of U. S. influence in the region and discuss whether
the Left has benefited from the mobilizations and protests generated by
IMF-imposed austerity programs. In a final section contributors explore is-
sues of regional significance, including the trade union struggle and guer-
rilla warfare, and evaluate prospects for the future.

Barry Carr is reader in history at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

Steve Ellner is professor of economic history and labor studies at the Uni-
versidad de Oriente in Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela.

WESTVIEW PRESS
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03/30/95

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ISBND-TDblSb-TE-b-CU.K.}