Economic Crisis and the Demise of the Legal Left in Peru

Author(s): Kenneth M. Roberts

Source: Comparative Politics , Oct., 1996, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Oct., 1996), pp. 69-92
Published by: Comparative Politics, Ph.D. Programs in Political Science, City University
of New York

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 Economic Crisis and the Demise of the
Legal Left in Peru

Kenneth M. Roberts

Neoliberal reforms have swept across Latin America with seemingly inexorable
force in response to the collapse of state-led capitalist development in the 1980s.
The breadth and depth of the free market revolution remain puzzling, however. As
Przeworski has argued, the neoliberal prescription is neither so theoretically
compelling nor empirically successful as to warrant such irresistible force.' In fact,
it is not immediately apparent why the collapse of statist capitalism led to
neoliberal restructuring rather than a political shift to the Left. Numerous scholars
have proposed social democracy as an alternative to neoliberal restructuring,2 and
many have looked to social movements as the building blocks for a more inclusive
model of political and economic development.3 From the Democratic Revolution-
ary Party of Cardenas in Mexico to the Workers' Party of Lula in Brazil, links have
been forged between parties of the Left and social movements in order to expand
democratic participation and promote more egalitarian alternatives to neoliberal-
ism.

Although such links have produced significant changes in social and political
relations in local communities, they have yet to live up to the high hopes vested in
them nationally. Simply put, the Left has not been able to capitalize politically on
the crisis of capitalist development, as the notable defeats of Cardenas and Lula in
1994 demonstrate. Why, then, has the Left found it so difficult to construct a
compelling political and economic response to the collapse of state-led capitalist
development in Latin America? And why has it been unable to craft a "popular"
alternative to neoliberalism in societies with democratic political institutions and
large social majorities from subaltern sectors?
Perhaps no country is better suited to explore these questions than Peru. Peru
seemingly offered the best possibility for a successful Left in the 1980s. In the late
1960s and 1970s, when military regimes in neighboring countries waged war on
the partisan Left and deactivated popular movements in the name of national
security, Peru's reformist military government promoted social mobilization and
tolerated organizing by leftist parties. After a transition to civilian rule, Peru
boasted the strongest electoral Left in South America for most of the 1980s. The
Left won significant backing from lower class groups and developed strong
linkages to labor and popular organizations. Late in the decade, as Peru's fledgling
democracy staggered under the weight of political violence and an ever deepening

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Comparative Politics October 1996

economic crisis, leftist leader Alfonso Barrantes led public opinion polls for the
1990 presidential race, and the United Left (IU) coalition seemed poised to elect
Latin America's first Marxist government since Savador Allende's ill-fated
experiment in Chile.4
However, the IU split before the decisive 1990 elections, and it became
marginalized from the political process as Peru's democratic regime unraveled in
the early 1990s. Even before President Alberto Fujimori dissolved the
constitutional order in April 1992, the system of political representation which
undergirded the democratic regime was on the verge of collapse. Voters rejected
Peru's established parties and elected independent, "antipolitical" populists like
Fujimori and Lima mayor Ricardo Belmont, who appealed directly to an atomized
electorate. Fujimori ran especially well among urban and rural popular sectors, the
electoral backbone of the IU in the 1980s, thus indicating the fragile nature of
popular political identities.
A variety of factors contributed to the demise of the IU, ranging from exogenous
influences like the crisis in the Soviet bloc to internal problems such as autocratic
leadership and the lack of democratic participation in party organizations. Of
greater theoretical significance, however, was the impact of Peru's domestic crisis
on the political prospects of the IU. In theory, the IU could have benefited
politically from the nation's crisis through antiincumbent voting patterns after the
abysmal failure of both the conservative administration of Fernando Belaunde and
the populist one of Alan Garcifa to resolve the economic crisis in the 1980s. These
failures devastated Belaunde's Popular Action party and Garcia's APRA and
opened new political space for a leftist alternative. The IU might also have gained
the support of policy-oriented voters who were attracted to the priority its
program gave to the defense of popular living standards during a period of
economic hardship.
The Peruvian experience, however, defied such expectations. The multifaceted
Peruvian crisis had several corrosive effects which undermined the IU's base of
political support. Whereas the explosive growth of the Peruvian Left in the 1970s
was embedded in a broader process of social organization that spanned the labor,
peasant, student, and shantytown movements, the demise of the Left in the late
1980s paralled a process of social decomposition induced by political violence and
economic crisis. This crisis eroded the structural basis for class-based collective
action by creating a more heterogeneous and informal work force; it diminished the
centrality and strength of organized labor, while fragmenting civil society; and it
exacerbated strategic and ideological polarization within the IU, thus weakening its
capacity to articulate and aggregate social interests in the political arena. The crisis
culminated in the collapse of partisan-based interest representation and the
emergence of independent populist leaders who capitalized on the disillusionment
with representative institutions. It also weakened organized popular resistance to

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

the neoliberal "shock" program administered by Fujimori, even though this

program blatantly betrayed his campaign positions.5
The Peruvian experience is instructive in understanding the obstacles that
neoliberal structural adjustment poses for radical democratic alternatives and helps
to explain why political resistance to neoliberalism has been so muted in Latin
America. Social movements and the partisan Left in Latin America have been
linked in a shared vision of social transformation through the "radicalization" of
democracy achieved by grass-roots political activism. In contrast to traditional
conceptions of revolution as a top-down conquest of state power, they seek to
transform society by moving from micro to macro levels; popular collective
subjects find new methods of cultural and political expression and open channels to
contest power democratically in social, economic, and political spheres.6 Peru
demonstrates that this progression from micro to macro levels can be impeded by
structural factors as well as by failures of political agency. Economic crisis and
political violence undermined the structural bases of popular collective subjects,
while the integrating political agents were paralyzed by strategic indecisiveness.
Structural and agency problems were unusually severe but hardly unique in Peru,
and they illuminate the endogenous and exogenous obstacles faced by leftist
alternatives in an era of social dislocation.

The Rise and Fall of the Peruvian Left

A powerful Left emerged fairly recently in Peru. Despite the organizational eff
of Jose Carlos Mariategui, perhaps Latin America's most renowned Marx
theorist, the Peruvian Left lacked a mass political base until the 1970s. Mariate
founded the Peruvian Socialist Party in 1928, which spawned the Peruvi
Communist Party (PCP) after Maridtegui's early death in 1930. The PCP affilia
itself with the Soviet Union and competed for popular support with Victor Ra
Haya de la Torre's APRA party, which also developed antiimperialist and
antioligarchic positions. The PCP lost ground to the populist APRA in la
organization and failed to develop a mass electoral base, leaving the Marxist Le
politically marginal.
However, political space opened for the Left after the late 1950s. A serie
revolts in the 1930s and 1940s led to APRA's political exclusion, but in 1956 Ha
de la Torre made a pact with oligarchic president Mafiuel Prado to reenter
political system. APRA's growing conservatism coincided with the mobilization
one of the most powerful and radical peasant movements in Latin America in
wave of land seizures in the Andean highlands in the 1960s. Student grou
inspired by the Cuban and Chinese revolutions also flourished, while migration
urban areas created fertile terrain for political organizing in shantytow

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Comparative Politics October 1996

communities. Manufacturing growth expanded the industrial labor force, and

industrial workers became less bound to Aprista clientelism and more receptive to
class-based identities and organizing strategies.7
This social mobilization provided the foundation to strengthen the Left.
However, a confusing array of tendencies competed against each other (see Table
1). The most moderate party, the Moscow-line PCP, advocated multiclass alliances
for democratic reform and embraced the reformist military regime of General Juan
Velasco Alvarado between 1968 and 1975. The Velasco regime initially
encouraged the PCP's Confederacidn General de Trabajadores del Peru (CGTP),
a left-wing labor federation which overtook APRA's labor affiliate as the largest in
the country. The CGTP was the PCP's primary source of political influence,
although more radical leftist groups were represented in it as well.
Much of the new social mobilization was channeled politically by Maoist,
Trotskyist, and Guevarist organizations that challenged the PCP's reformism and
pro-Soviet position. The Maoists split off from the PCP over tactical differences and
the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1964. Maoist factions assumed control of Peru's largest
peasant federation, the Confederacidn Campesina del Peru (CCP), along with the
influential teachers' union SUTEP. Diverse Trotskyist groups wielded influence in
organizations of peasants and workers, especially in the mining sectors. The
Trotskyists boasted the most prominent figure on the Peruvian Left during this

Table 1 Origins of the United Left (IU)

Members of the United Left Political Origins

Peruvian Communist Party (PCP) Founded in 1930, origins in Mariategui's Peruvian

Socialist Party

Union of the Revolutionary Left (UNIR) Maoist coalition founded in 1980, origins in the
1960's divisions of PCP

Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) New Left party founded in 1974 through a rupture
of Revolutionary Vanguard (VR)

Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR) Founded by military and technocratic supporters of

the Velasco government, 1976

Workers, Peasants, Students and Popular Front Descendant of late 1970's Trotskyist coalition
(FOCEP)

Socialist Political Action (APS) Founded in 1980 by newspaper editor Gustavo

Mohme

Unified Mariateguista Party (PUM) Founded in 1984 through a merger of New Left
groups, primarily the Revolutionary Vanguard. the
Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), and a
faction of the PCR

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

period, Hugo Blanco, who organized the famous land seizures in La Convenci6n
valley in the early 1960s. Finally, a number of New Left Guevarist groups
advocated armed struggle as the path to social revolution. Two small groups were
defeated in the early stages of rural guerrilla warfare in 1965, while a third and
ultimately more important group known as Vanguardia Revolucionaria (VR)
emerged in the universities. The VR delayed armed struggle to concentrate on
social organization; it thereby gained influence among workers in mining and
fishing and captured control of the peasant federation CCP in 1973. Eventually,
VR factions joined with other small New Left and Christian Left groups to create
the Partido Unificado Mariateguista (PUM), which became the most radical and
powerful electoral force within the IU in the 1980s.
Velasco's reforms exacerbated the internecine disputes within in the Left. The
PCP was pleased that the new regime expropriated landed estates, nationalized
several multinational firms, established economic and military ties to the Soviet
Union, and weakened APRA's control over organized labor and opted for
collaboration. In contrast, more radical Maoist, Trotskyist, and New Left parties
split or expressed uncompromising opposition to "fascist" attempts to establish
corporatist controls over popular organizations. Despite these conflicts, the partisan
Left benefitted from the organizational space opened by Velasco's promotion of
popular mobilization. Indeed, the stengthening of leftist parties was an inadvertent
consequence of government efforts to mobilize workers, peasants, and urban
popular sectors. Under Velasco, a government agency known as SINAMOS was
created to encourage the formation, under government tutelage, of new labor
unions, peasant cooperatives, and industrial and shantytown communities.
SINAMOS, however, was unable to depoliticize popular organization,8 and many
staunchly defended their autonomy from government cooptation and control.9
Thus, while the number of labor unions nearly doubled under Velasco, they were
not the compliant, coopted organizations envisioned by government planners to
ameliorate class conflict through social reform. Their autonomy not only allowed
the Communist-led CGTP to expand, but also made it possible for the radical Left
to advocate militant class identities and confrontational tactics to break with
traditional clientelistic relations in the workplace.'o
As Peru's economy deteriorated, labor militancy grew, and serious intern
divisions emerged, the military regime entered a second, more conservative ph
under General Morales Berm~idez from 1975 to 1980. The new government halt
redistributive reforms, banned strikes, fired striking workers, and adopted an I
austerity package. Leftist parties and unions responded with a series of genera
strikes and mass protests in 1977-1978, which included many peasant an
shantytown groups as well. The military, in turn, held elections for a constitu
assembly and prepared for a transition to democracy in 1980.
The regime transition posed a serious challenge to revolutionary partie

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Comparative Politics October 1996

Nevertheless, most of the Left hoped to avoid political marginalization and thus
chose to participate in the 1978 constituent assembly elections to take advantage of
new arenas for political mobilization. From a previous high of 3.5 percent of the
vote in a national election, five leftist organizations jointly garnered 29.5 percent of
the vote. Trotskyist Hugo Blanco received the third highest vote total in the country
for a constituent assembly delegate (see Table 2). Heartened by this show of
support, even most of the Maoist groups, except Sendero Luminoso, opted to
participate in the 1980 general elections. However, partisan and ideological
divisions blocked efforts to unite behind one presidential candidate. The divided
Left jointly won only 13.9 percent of the presidential vote.
Electoral defeat prompted new efforts to form an alliance. The IU was founded
in September 1980. The new alliance paid immediate dividends. The IU received
23.9 percent of the vote nationally in the November 1980 municipal elections and
over 28 percent of the vote in Lima for its mayoral candidate and coalition
president, Alfonso Barrantes. For the first time in national history, the Left
assumed governmental responsibilities, as the IU elected thirteen of Peru's 188

Table 2 Peruvian Presidential and Municipal Election Results (percent of valid vote)

19619 198 1980 19.. 1923 1985 1986 1.98 19.909 19.95
Pres. C.A.* Pres. Mun. Mun. Pres. Mun. Mun. Pres. Pres.

Left
Multiple Parties 3.5 29.5 13.9
United Left 23.9 28.8 24.7 30.5 17.9 8.2 0.6
Acuerdo Socialista/
Izquierda Socialista** 2.3 4.8

Right/Center-Right
UNO 28.4 2.1
Acci6n Popular 32.1 - 45.4 35.9 17.4 7.3 - - - 1.6
Partido Popular
Cristiano 23.8 9.6 10.9 13.9 11.9 14.6 - - -
Fredemo*** 31.5 32.7

Center
APRA 33.0 35.3 27.4 22.7 33.1 53.1 47.1 18.7 22.6 4.1

Independent/Others
Cambio 90**** 29.1 64.4
Union por el
Peru***** 21.8
Others 2.9 9.3 3.8 6.7 6.8 3.1 7.8 29.5 2.6 7.5

* Constituent Assembly elections. ** The Acuerdo Socialista w

the IU to participate in the 1989 municipal elections. After inco
participated in the 1990 general elections as the Izquierda Soci
and the Movimiento Libertad of Marie Vargas Llosa. ****Cam
Fujimori. *****Union por el Peru was the coalition backing th

Sources: Richard Webb and Graciela Fernandez Baca de Valdez

1991), pp. 1015-1032. 1995 results from Jurado Nacional de E

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

provincial mayors. The lU quickly developed into the second largest electoral force
in Peru. In 1983 Barrantes was elected mayor of Lima. and the IU won thirty
provincial mayorships. Barrantes finished second to APRA's Alan Garcia in the
1985 presidential race, while the IU took fifteen of the sixty Senate seats and
forty-eight of the 180 seats in the lower house. The IU's electoral support was
strongly correlated with working or lower class social standing." It swept Lima's
twelve poorest districts in 1983. It was also geographically dispersed, ranging from
urban popular districts and mining complexes with high concentrations of workers
to the central and southern highlands where leftist parties had longstanding ties to
peasant communities. Thus, the 'red belt" of Lima's peripheral shantytowns was
matched by strong support in provincial communities outside the APRA-dorninated
north. 12

Nevertheless, the IU's electoral support proved fragile and contingent. With the
APRA government mired in crisis, and the Right still in disarray after Belaunde's
disastrous second administration from 1980 to 1985, Barrantes emerged as the
frontrunner in the 1990 presidential race. 3 However, the IU was badly damaged in
1989 by a schism between its moderate, pro-Barrantes wing and radicals
spearheaded by PUM and UNIR. In the November 1989 municipal elections, a
pared-down IU won only 11.2 percent of the vote in Lima, despite running a strong
ticket. Barrantes ran on the separate Izquierda Socialista (IS) ticket for the
presidency in 1990, finishing fifth with a disastrous 4.8 percent of the vote. The IU
candidate, Henry Pease, fared marginally better with 8.2 percent. Combined IU
and IS representation in congress fell to nine senators and twenty deputies.
The splintering of the IU plunged the Left's electoral support back to the level of
the early 1960s. After Fujimori's autogolpe in 1992, the main leftist parties
abstained from the constituent assembly and municipal elections. A new, more
moderate Left party led by Pease elected four deputies to the eighty seat constituent
assembly. Leftist parties combined won less than five percent of the national vote
in the 1993 municipal elections. The Left lost all but one of its district mayorships
in Lima and most of its provincial municipalities to new independent groups.' 1 In
the 1995 national elections, the IU won only 1.9 percent of the congressional vote
and .6 percent of the presidential vote.
The collapse of the Left as an electoral force was as precipitous as its rise had
been at the end of the 1970s. This collapse can not be attributed solely to the 1989
division of the IU. It coincided with a political and economic crisis that shattered
all the representative institutions associated with the democratic regime of the
1980s."5 Why was the Peruvian Left unable to develop a radical democratic
alternative during a period when social inequalities and poverty levels increased
dramatically? To what extent did the crisis itself contribute to the IU's demise?

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Comparative Politics October 1996

Determinants of the Political Strength of the Left

Although electoral support for the IU in the 1980s had a pronounced lower class
bias, it can not be derived automatically from objective class status. The sudden
rise and fall of the IU demonstrates that popular political identities are
considerably more fluid and contingent than class positions. As a social and
cultural construction, class solidarity is forged through collective experiences and
historical struggles which bond individuals around common interests and separate
them from other groups with different or opposed interests.16 Neither class
position nor economic conditions directly politicize individuals; both are
mediated by historical experiences and cultural constructions. Just as the working
classes do not vote automatically for the Left, neither can it be assumed that
political support for the Left will rise during periods of economic hardship. Such
an assumption ignores the subjective and organizational factors that shape
political identities and fails to specify the structural conditions that undergird
class-based collective action.
A more thorough understanding of leftist strength requires an analysis of the
interrelationships among three sets of variables: social structure, density of civil
society, and agents of political representation. Structural conditions are mos
important in aggregating and differentiating social forces; they determine the form
of concentration and relative homogeneity or heterogeneity of popular sectors. By
conditioning interests shared by popular sectors and separating them from
dominant sectors, social structure shapes the cleavages and conflicts that undergird
class solidarity and collective action. Structural conditions are most conducive to
class conscious collective action and leftist political strength where they
concentrate large numbers of workers in close interaction, establish a relativ
commonality of interests among popular sectors, and sharply differentiate the
interests of popular and dominant sectors. 7
Social structure, however, does not directly determine class consciousness or the
perception of collective interests, much less their political expression. The strength
and density of labor and other popular organizations are critical intervening
variables between structural conditions and political outcomes. Participation in
these organizations can be a socializing and politicizing experience. 18 It helps to
forge collective identities and ties of solidarity by intensifying interaction
facilitating communication, and engaging individuals in common struggles. It may
thus help popular sectors identify common interests and differentiate them from the
competing interests of elites. By creating forms of class-based, horizontal
integration, popular organizations can erode clientelistic forms of vertical
integration which link and subordinate the lower classes to dominant sectors
Leftist strength is thus likely to be enhanced the more popular organizations cover
a large percentage of the working and lower classes, control significant resources

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

or capabilities, and solidify horizontal linkages that provide a measure of autonomy

from state control and clientelist cooptation.
Finally, even where structural factors and a dense civil society provide favorable
conditions, the strength of the Left is contingent upon the capacity of party
organizations to articulate, synthesize, and channel diverse social interests within
the political arena. Effective political agency is complicated by the structural
differentiation of popular sectors and the diversity of popular organizations in Latin
America. The support of organized labor has been vital to the strength of the Left
in Peru, but labor remains only one of myriad popular movements which can
potentially nourish a radical democratic project. Indeed, the relatively small size of
the industrial labor force in Latin American societies has made it difficult
historically to construct mass, class-based parties of the Left as in Europe. Inste
Latin America has had a predilection for multiclass, ideologically diffuse catch
or populist parties. 19 Thus, leftist parties face a major challenge in creating un
out of social diversity by transforming often isolated and localized groups in
horizontally integrated networks with political weight at the national level.
The explosive growth of the Peruvian Left during the 1960s and 1970s occur
when conditions were relatively favorable on all three of these levels. Structura
rapid industrialization expanded the manufacturing labor force from 428,700
1961 to 643,900 in 1971.20 Industrial conflicts over wages and demands such a
labor rights and union autonomy also increased The reforms of Velasco h
politicizing effect. Contrary to Marx's analysis of the structural isolatio
peasants, in Peru even the agricultural sector was prone to radical mobilizatio
Indigenous communities provided large aggregations of agricultural producers w
were starved for land in Peru's highly concentrated agrarian structure. Agricult
commercialization in the postwar era helped spawn peasant mobilizations from
late 1950s and accentuated conflicts over land and loosened clientelistic
dependence upon landlords.2' Agrarian reforms under Velasco elimin
landed oligarchy but did not fully meet peasants' demands for land;
cooperatives typically excluded independent indigenous communities and
who did not reside on the old haciendas. Thus, reforms swept away
constraints on peasant organization but failed to eliminate the incen
Likewise, rampant urban migration created new concentrations of the po
peripheral zones of Peru's largest cities. Linked territorially rathe
functionally, residents of shantytowns shared common interests in acquir
to urban property and public services.
Organizationally, the scope, density, and variety of popular association
rapidly. Clientelistic relationships lost ground to more class-based, h
organizations in the 1970s which resisted cooptation and corporatist
Organized labor played a leading role in social mobilization, peaking in th
strike of 1977-78. With its organizational experience, national direc

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Comparative Politics October 1996

political ties, the labor movement served as a practical school for the diffusion of
political identities and organizational skills. Labor activists frequently participated
in community organizations and helped coordinate regional protest activities,
helping to socialize and politicize broader urban popular sectors in confrontational
political tactics.23
Politically, leftist parties took advantage of the closure of the electoral arena to
cultivate support in civil society. They organized popular movements and created
local and regional networks known as frentes to coordinate strike and protest
activities. The political fragmentation of the partisan Left limited its capacity to
centralize popular demands, but partisan social cooperation was greater and created
momentum for the founding of the IU in 1980. Moreover, the absence of serious
political competitors enabled the Left to advance socially during this period.
APRA's shift to the right weakened it among popular sectors, while the military
government's top-down, bureaucratic, paternalistic approach to reform clashed
with grass-roots initiatives and autonomy.
The crisis of the 1980s modified these structural, organizational, and political
factors. It weakened the foundations of radical democracy and made it increasingly
difficult for the IU to capitalize on the failures of the Belaunde and Garcia
administrations. Ultimately, the crisis exacerbated the contradictions within the IU
itself, thus contributing to its political demise.

Crisis and Decline: Structural and Organizational Factors

Peru's economic crisis began in the mid 1970s when structural imbalances led Mo-
rales Bermuidez to adopt more orthodox policies and an IMF stabilization plan in
1976. It deepened during the regional debt trauma of the early 1980s, causing a severe
contraction of the Peruvian economy. Garcia's heterodox program of economic stim-
ulation produced a temporary rebound in 1986-87 but rapidly depleted foreign re-
serves and generated inflationary pressures. With the onset of hyperinflation in 1988,
a series of shock programs produced the most violent economic contraction in Peru-
vian history. One-third of Peru's industrial production was wiped out, and per capita
gross domestic product fell to the level of 1960 (see Table 3).
Several effects of the economic crisis might have been expected to increase
support for the Left. Official poverty rates surpassed 50 percent of the population,
and wages covered only a fraction of basic needs. The crisis exacerbated
inequalities. While the share of profits in national income rose from 42.1 percent in
1980 to 60.6 percent in 1989, the share of wages and salaries fell from 35.2 to 19.8
percent.24 Workers bore the brunt of efforts to stabilize the economy. Real wages
plunged by 1991 to only 38.7 percent of their 1980 level (see Table 3), and the
minimum wage to a meager 16.8 percent. Wage cuts in the public sector were even

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

Table 3 Economic Indicators

198 1983 184 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 9M 1291

GDP Growth* 0.2 -12.6 4.8 2.3 9.2 8.5 -8.3 -11.7 -5.1 2.4

Manufacturing
Growth* -1.2 -18.1 5.7 4.5 15.6 12.8 -11.2 -15.7 -6.9 5.8

Rate of
Inflation** 64.4 111.2 111.5 158.3 62.9 114.5 1722.6 2776.6 7657.8 185.4

Index of Real
Wages**
(1980=100) 110.2 93.4 87.2 77.6 97.5 101.3 76.1 41.3 42.7 38.7

Sources: *Peru: Compendio Estadistico 1991-92, Vol. 2 (Lima: Direcci6n T6cnica d

p. 428. **Comisi6n Econ6mico para Ame6ica Latina y el Caribe, Balance Prelimin
Latina y el Caribe (Santiago: United Nations, 1991).

more dramatic: by 1991 real wages were a mere 9.9 percen

An astounding 87.3 percent of the economically active pop
unemployed or underemployed (mostly by reason of low i
However, rather than benefiting the partisan Left,
undermined the structural conditions for class-based collective action. First,
deindustrialization and huge cuts in public sector employment dramatically
informalized the work force. The percentage of the economically active population
in the informal sector grew from 32.8 in 1981 to 47.6 in 1991.27 Layoffs were
concentrated in the most heavily unionized sectors of the economy, industry and
public services. The industrial work force in Lima shrank from 744,000 in 1976 to
430,100 in 1989.28 Second, industrial restructuring deconcentrated industry. Large,
labor-intensive enterprises declined, and smaller specialized, more capital intensive
and less heavily unionized firms grew. Third, firms that survived the crisis relied
more on temporary contract labor instead of permanent employees, who are more
unionized and better protected by labor laws. By the early 1990s one-half of
salaried workers were engaged in precarious and unprotected forms of temporary
labor. 29

These structural changes fragmented and dispersed the work force, created less
stable working relations, and differentiated structurally among permanent,
temporary, and informal workers. While unions catered to the increasingly narrow
interests of permanent workers, temporary and informal workers pursued more
individualistic strategies for survival. The diversity of interests complicated
collective action and undermined collective identities. Without a stable network of
organizational ties and common struggles against capitalists to forge collective
identities, the political orientation of the informal sectors proved to be volatile and
undependable.30 Although urban popular sectors voted heavily for the IU in 1983,
many supported Garcia in 1985, then turned en masse to independent candidates
at the end of the decade.

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Comparative Politics October 1996

The Left had difficulty relating to individualistic informal workers. Informal

workers tended to be ambiguous in their class positions and identities because they
combined both proletarian and petit bourgeois characteristics. Ideological
discourse and political tactics oriented toward class solidarity were increasingly
incongruent with their personal experiences. With weak partisan and ideological
commitments, they tended to relate to politics flexibly, pragmatically, and
instrumentally in terms of immediate needs. Hence urban popular sectors
comprised a floating and largely centrist mass of voters available to a broad range
of political candidates depending upon appeals and calculations.-3
The fragmentation of the work force also severely weakened organized labor, a
critical social base of the Left and an integrative force in the popular mobilizations
of the 1970s. The level of unionization declined from 18 percent of the work force
in the mid 1980s to 7 percent in 1994.32 Labor militancy also declined from its
peak in the late 1970s to its meek response to Fujimori's shock program. Although
strikes in the public sector increased as Garcfa's short-lived economic boom
deflated in 1988, labor militancy fell off dramatically as the crisis deepened and
Fujimori implemented structural adjustment (see Table 4). The CGTP and other
federations declared three general strikes between 1990 and 1992 to protest
government policies, but they were poorly heeded by the rank and file.
Organized labor is less central to and less representative of Peru's fragmented
and heterogeneous work force in the 1990s than it was in the 1970s. Employment
has declined in highly unionized sectors of the economy, while rising in the
informal and temporary contract sectors that are notoriously difficult to organize.
When strike tactics lost their effectiveness in extracting economic or political
concessions because the government ceased to defend job security and the pool of
surplus labor grew, militancy waned. New cleavages emerged between labor
leaders, who remained wedded to the IU and the confrontational tactics of the
1970s, and rank-and-file workers, who retreated from militant tactics or opted for
economic independence.33 Cleavages also deepened between workers in unionized,
large-scale enterprises who were protected by labor laws and the growing number
of unorganized temporary and informal workers without legal protection. Union
efforts to guarantee job tenure helped protect relatively privileged sectors of the
work force but did not alleviate the precarious position of unorganized workers.
Government policies have also openly attempted to weaken and fragment
organized labor. Post-Velasco reforms reestablished the disciplinary mechanisms
of employers and markets. Morales Bermuidez slashed Velasco-era labor
protections in response to business complaints and recessionary pressures but also
as a strategy to weaken unions in a period of intense government-labor conflict.
Morales Bermutdez banned strikes under a state of emergency declared to counter
antigovernment protests; collective bargaining and union recognition were
restricted; criteria for job dismissals were relaxed; the probationary period to

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

Table 4 Labor Militancy in Peru

Year Strikes Man-Hours Lost Workers Involved
(Thousands)

1972 409 6,331 130,643

1973 788 15,688 416,251
1974 570 13,413 362,737
1975 779 20,269 617,120
1976 440 6,822 258,101
1977 234 6,543 406,461
1978 364 36,145 1,398,387
1979 653 13,411 841,144
1980 739 17,919 481,484
1981 871 19,974 856,915
1982 809 22,751 572,263
1983 643 20,300 785,545
1984 509 13,816 702,859
1985 579 12,228 237,695
1986 642 16,867 248,851
1987 720 9,068 309,407
1988 814 38,275 693,252
1989 667 15,223 224,430
1990 613 15.068 268,570
1.991 315 8,881 180,728
1992 219 2,319 114,656
1993 140 2,127 39,451

Sources: Evelyn Huber Stephens

Political Strength of the Left,"
Estadistico 1993-1994, Vol. 1 (L

qualify for job security w

legislative decree fired 5,0
strike.34 Fujimori sought
decrees that deregulated t
business costs and enhance
dismissals, limited the rig
encouraged competing un
Structural changes in the
democratic project. In the post-Velasco era land parcelization and the
differentiation of the agricultural population have increased. Diverse small and
medium producers have coexisted with landless laborers and comuneros from
indigenous communities. These processes have dampened the intense confronta-
tions over land that in the 1960s and 1970s provided opportunities for the Left to
organize among the rural poor. As the salience of the land issue has declined in most
regions, market and commercial issues, such as crop prices, input costs, and access
to credit and rural public services, have risen in prominence.35 The heterogeneous

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Comparative Politics October 1996

demands that arise from such issues are less likely to spawn radical forms of
collective action like land seizures than conflicts over property ownership.
Facing these structural and organizational changes, the Peruvian Left could hardly
construct a radical democratic project based on collective class actors. Its dilemma
was not novel. Scholars have long recognized that the proletariat can not fulfill its
theoretically predicted role of central protagonist in socialist transformation.36 What
makes the Peruvian case especially instructive is the failure of the IU to compensate
for the decline of class-based actors by effectively articulating the interests of other
popular organizations. This strategy has been central in most contemporary efforts to
reconstruct the Left. Although the IU was well-represented in territorially based
associations in both urban and rural areas, it could not fund a national, radical
democratic project on shantytown organizations and rondas campesinas.37 Many
popular organizations jealously guarded their autonomy; fear of manipulation made
them resist parties and IU-controlled municipal governments. Others continued cli-
entelistic relationships with government authorities to secure selective benefits; they
thus eschewed the more confrontational tactics promoted by leftist parties.38 Still
others looked to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to support their activities;
NGOs frequently had more financial resources than parties and made fewer political
demands. The radicalized core of the IU remained a minority among popular sec-
tors.39 The popular sectors tended to be pragmatic, flexible, pluralistic, and instru-
mental. They supported the Left when militant tactics or IU power offered concrete
gains but abandoned it when the IU failed to deliver or other political forces made
more convincing appeals.
Although IU rhetoric emphasized base level groups as organs of popular power,
many responded to economic hardship with defensive, locally oriented survival
tactics. Particularism and localism circumscribed the horizontal integration of
popular organizations. Their emphasis on immediate needs distanced them from
the IU's ideological discourse and political objectives, and their "segmented
collectivism" did not cumulatively increase the IU's political power.40 Indeed,
their self-help orientation reflected a justifiable skepticism about the efficacy of
political institutions in addressing urgent economic needs. Thus, the crisis
weakened the integrative capacity of large-scale secondary associations like unions
and peasant federations that were linked to the IU, while it encouraged the retreat
to more segmented and insulated primary groups with fluid political identities.
Political violence compounded the disintegrative effects of economic crisis.
Labor and popular organizations faced not only repression from security forces, but
also systematic efforts by Sendero Luminoso to penetrate, divide, capture, and
decapitate them. This guerrilla movement viewed independent groups as
representatives of "revisionism." It created parallel, competing organizations and
infiltrated existing ones in order to divide or capture them. It also spread rumors of
corruption to discredit grass-roots leaders and selectively assassinated community

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

organizers who could not be intimidated. It often targeted activists linked to the IU
to create a political vacuum and eliminate competition. Although an organized civil
society was widely viewed as the most effective bulwark against Sendero, by the
1990s it succeeded in penetrating even Villa El Salvador, the crown jewel of the
IU's urban political strategy, and in neutralizing the popular organizations that
nurtured this community's innovative experiment in political and economic
self-management.4 With over 27,000 killed and 600,00 forced from their homes,
Sendero disrupted communities, popular organizations lost valuable leaders, and
countless individuals were silenced.

In sum, economic crisis and political violence tore Peru's social fabric an
fragmented it socially. Fragmentation undermined class-based collective action b
fracturing horizontal networks and spawning individual or "segmented collectiv
ist" strategies for survival. It also frayed established channels of politica
representation and eroded the linkages by which parties mediated between civil
society and state institutions. The IU could not articulate the interests of such
fragmented and heterogeneous popular sectors. Far from responding with
coherent, cohesive, viable political alternative, the IU itself was polarized by and
thus contributed to the national crisis.

Crisis and Polarization in the Peruvian Left

From the outset, serious internal contradictions plagued the IU. Despite repea
efforts to create a unified "mass revolutionary front," the IU remained a loo
electoral coalition of small parties that continued to compete among themselv
In part, the different party organizations competed for leadership and
maneuvered for relative advantages in social organizations and election
campaigns. Tactical differences reinforced competition between moderates and
radicals, and international and ideological positions divided the PCP, Maoists,
and Trotskyists.
Nevertheless, the strategic environment helped moderate these differences during
the IU's early years. The declining salience of the Sino-Soviet conflict and new
political opportunities in congress and municipalities diverted attention from
competing international loyalties. Likewise, the failure of guerrilla movements,
achievements of popular organizing in the 1970s, and transition to democracy in
1980 narrowed practical alternatives. Although New Left, Maoist, and Trotskyist
groups still denied the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism, by 1980 all
but Sendero Luminoso accepted electoral democracy as an arena in which the Left
could agitate for change and mobilize support for a more "advanced" form of
participatory democracy.
There remained, however, a basic contradiction between the ideology of the

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Comparative Politics October 1996

radical parties, which emphasized the limitations of "bourgeois" democracy and

the inevitability of revolution, and the daily practice of the coalition, which
reflected a tactical need to participate in elections and parliament. The economic
and security policies of Belaunde reinforced the tactical convergence of the Left
and helped unify it in an opposition role that used newly won institutional space to
defend human rights, criticize orthodox economics, and support popular
organizations in their conflicts with the state. Strategic and ideological cleavages
within the Left reemerged, however, as this oppositional role gradually changed.
The IU won thirty municipal races in 1983, including metropolitan Lima, giving
the coalition important governmental responsibilities. Its success posed novel
challenges to the Left. Success forced the IU to consider the possibility of
assuming governmental responsibility nationally within the institutional confines of
the "bourgeois" state. This prospect proved to be highly divisive. Success also
required leftist parties that had specialized in conspiratorial organization, social
protest, and demands to assume positions of authority and implement public
policies under severe fiscal and administrative constraints.
IU officials viewed municipal governance as a practical laboratory to gain
administrative experience and develop grass-roots forms of participatory
democracy.42 However, municipal responsibilities often exposed the gaps between
the IU's participatory discourse and its daily practice. Mayors clashed with local IU
committees over the exploitation of public office for partisan interests, the
instrumentalization of social organizations, and widespread populist and
clientelistic practices.43 Such "traditional" conflicts were especially debilitating for
an alliance that claimed to represent a new style of politics. Municipal governments
led by the IU were driven by partisan disputes and overburdened by popular
demands they could not fulfill in Peru's highly centralized and virtually bankrupt
state. The IU's widespread loss of municipal offices in the late 1980s and the early
1990s demonstrated that local governance did not necessarily result in cumulative
growth, much less serve as a springboard to national political prominence. The IU
could not broaden its base of support either by responding effectively to
community needs or by creating new channels for popular participation.
Likewise, parliamentary representation proved to be a mixed blessing. It
reinforced party hierarchies and shifted the IU's focus from social organization to
elections. The IU parties were generally led by dominant personalities who easily
acquired congressional seats by negotiating high positions on the coalition's
parliamentary list. The PSR, APS, FOCEP, and PCR were little more than
personal vehicles of their respective leaders, with only the shell of an organization
and no mass constituency. Preoccupied by congressional tasks, parties became
increasingly disengaged from popular social struggles. The IU not only was tainted
by the general disillusionment with parties and congress but also lost much of its
capacity for social mobilization. As stated by former IU senator Rolando Ames:

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

"We were carried into parliament by the people, but we did not know how to tie
parliamentary struggle to daily struggle and to the economic-union struggle,"'44
The burgeoning conflict between Barrantes and the radical wing of the IU,
anchored by the PUM after 1984, exacerbated these problems. Initially, Barrantes'
political independence enabled him to act as a consensus figure within the IU,
shielding the coalition's presidency from intramural partisan squabbles. However,
his relative autonomy led to conflict with the parties and made the IU leadership
prone to personalist and populist tendencies. Barrantes' supporters hailed his
common touch and popular appeal, which enabled him to attract electoral support
far beyond the organized constituencies of the IU parties. They feared that the
radicalism and dogmatism of party "vanguards" would alienate voters and prevent
the IU from broadening its base of support. In contrast, the PUM and its allies
believed that Barrantes' personalism and electoralism hindered the development of
party institutions and social organizations as agents of change.
Alliance questions and strategic disputes also fueled the IU's leadership conflict.
Barrantes wanted to collaborate with APRA after Alan Garcia rejuvenated its
reformist legacy in the mid 1980s, and IU moderates believed an APRA-Left
political bloc could isolate the Right and establish a popular majority capable of
dominating Peru's democratic institutions. After Garcia's election in 1985,
Barrantes, himself a former Aprista, met frequently with the president, advocated
a "national accord" with APRA and the military to buttress Peru's democratic
regime, and entered negotiations for joint IU-APRA candidacies in the 1986
municipal elections. As Barrantes stated:

United Left and APRA can reach agreement-as they have in the past-on some
issues which are necessary to insure constitutional government in Peru. APRA and
United Left have differences in ideology and method, but this does not prevent us
from reaching a consensus that could prevent Peru from returning to dictatorship.45

This flirtation with APRA, the Left's historic enemy, infuriated the IU's radical
wing, which believed that APRA's top-down, clientelistic program of reform was
incompatible with grass-roots empowerment for revolutionary transformation. The
PUM, for example, argued that an alliance with APRA would not help the Left
broaden support but would instead drag it into a repressive counterinsurgency war
and open political space for Sendero Luminoso.46
The cleavage within the IU deepened in the late 1980s when the contending
camps responded to the national crisis in polarized ways. Moderates feared that the
economic crisis and spreading insurgency would threaten the democratic regime,
either through a military coup or a Sendero victory. Either denouement would
reverse the IU's institutional gains and prevent its electoral ascension to power.
The moderates preferred a national accord, envisioned as a pact among parties, the

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Comparative Politics October 1996

military, business, and labor, as the instrument of political and economic

stabilization and made it the centerpiece of Barrantes' presidential campaign in
1990.

For IU moderates the crisis offered tantalizing opportunities. It seriously

weakened both APRA and Belaunde's Popular Action party. But the IU could fill
the political void they left only if it reached beyond its customary third of the
electorate to attract centrist and independent voters who were alienated from
APRA. The moderates believed the IU could appeal to centrists only if it softened
its image and clearly committed itself to a resolution of the crisis within the
constitutional order. A national accord was central to this strategy, for it would
demonstrate the IU's commitment to the regime and its willingness to compromise
its radical objectives in the interests of stability. International events such as
perestroika and the crisis in the Soviet bloc reinforced the moderates by
undermining traditional revolutionary positions.
Barrantes viewed the PUM and UNIR as obstacles to this strategy. As he stated,
"the United Left has very rapidly become the country's second most powerful
force. Yet some people do not act with the level of responsibility appropriate to that
position."'47 Barrantes feared that the radical parties would drive away centrist and
independent voters and seriously disrupt the policymaking process if they were
included in an IU agreement. Arguing that the radical Left lacked a commitment to
democracy and was unprepared to govern, moderates sought to marginalize the
most powerful parties in the IU.48 They trusted that a campaign that emphasized
economic relief and Barrantes' charisma would attract new voters beyond partisan
IU loyalists.
The PUM and UNIR responded very differently to Peru's deepening crisis. A
national accord, they argued, was an opportunistic attempt to gain access to
government by liquidating the Left's commitment to radical change. They feared
that an electoral victory by Barrantes would bring the Left into office without
providing the institutional power to transform social and economic relationships.
Far from accumulating forces for revolutionary change, it would likely elicit a
violent reaction from the Right that could destroy the Left's project. As stated by
PUM senator Javier Diez Canseco:

A major difference we have with Barrantes is that he takes the present state of affa
the existing institutions, as given. We base our program on a counter state, rooted
popular organizations. . . . The Left should not even contemplate trying to be t
government if it lacks a power base. .... Just getting there could do a disservice to t
Left. It would be political suicide. One does not get to the government in order to f
One goes there with a strategy for victory, which means with the intention and t
means to transform the country.49

The PUM believed the crisis had discredited the democratic regime and cre

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

a potential revolutionary situation. Rather than a national accord to stabilize the

regime, the PUM wanted to take the political offensive against the APRA
government in a national strike. It promoted the Asamblea Nacional Popular, a
representative body of social organizations, as the core of an alternative set of
governing institutions. According to the PUM, "the only way to enter the
revolutionary situation with the possibility of victory is to develop the mass
struggle in an insurrectionary sense.5" The PUM thus defended the right of
peasant communities and popular organizations to arm themselves for
self-defense where they confronted both state repression and the violence of
Sendero Luminoso.
The insistent support of IU radicals for a revolutionary alternative prevented
Barrantes from making the compromises and building the coalitions needed for his
strategy. Indeed, the moderate and radical programs were mutually negating; by
polarizing the IU they undermined its political coherence and attractiveness.
However, both sides misunderstood the implications of schism. Barrantes grossly
underestimated the political costs of provoking a rupture in the IU and
overestimated the loyalty of leftist voters to him. The PUM miscalculated its
strength and its capacity to reconstitute the Left following Barrantes' exit. Only
the IU's "neutral" bloc, composed primarily of the Communist Party and
independent Left Christians, seemed to recognize the dangers of schism, but
moderates and radicals perceived them as organizationally weak and political
dispensable. To marginalize the PUM and UNIR, Barrantes needed the support of
this neutral bloc. But while the neutral bloc preferred Barrantes' candidacy and
generally supported his moderate positions, it refused to break with the IU's
radical wing because of its stronger organizational base in social movements.51
Insisting that the unity of the Left was paramount, the neutral bloc refused to
support Barrantes unless he accepted the resolutions of the IU's 1989 congress and
legitimized his candidacy through primary elections.
Unwilling to submit his candidacy to such a test, Barrantes and his supporters,
grouped together in the Acuerdo Socialista (AS), decided in September 1989 to run
a separate ticket in upcoming municipal elections. The AS candidate Enrique
Bernales received only 2.2 percent of the vote for Lima's mayorship. In 1990
Barrantes won a dismal 4.8 percent of the vote for the presidency. The moderates
rightly believed the elections would be decided by a huge bloc of unattached
voters, but they failed to see that these voters would opt for independent
newcomers rather than traditional leaders of the Left.

The radicals fared little better. For all their talk of building alternative
institutions, they had little choice but to participate within established ones, where
they lost considerable ground. The radicals had very little political space in which
to maneuver. Ideologically committed to a revolutionary alternative, they could not
fully embrace Peru's embattled "bourgeois" regime. But the revolutionary terrain

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Comparative Politics October 1996

was already occupied by Sendero Luminoso. The crisis reinforced radical

tendencies within the PUM and UNIR. The PUM interpreted the crisis as evidence
that the democratic regime was "exhausted" and was preparing the way for the
preliminary stage of revolutionary confrontation. It thus saw no reason to prop up
the regime with political pacts; the decay of the regime eroded the legitimacy and
strength of all the political forces associated with it. Rather than commit itself to
the democratic regime and risk being destroyed with it, the PUM sought to
mobilize support for a popular alternative.
Although the relentless advance of Sendero Luminoso encouraged moderation
among supporters of Barrantes, it increased grass-roots competition for groups like
the PUM. This competition discouraged any shift toward the center that could open
a political void for Sendero.52 The PUM, in fact, was torn apart by these
conflicting pressures: moderate leaders abandoned it in 1988 when it refused to
support Barrantes, while many radicalized peasants in the Puno region left it in
1993. IU leaders, many of whom came out of student movements in the 1960s and
1970s, were especially concerned that their parties had ceased to attract Peruvian
youth, who comprised most of Sendero's recruits.53
Indeed, the only left-wing alternative that grew stronger in the 1980s was
Sendero Luminoso. Sendero's insurgency developed on the margins of and in
opposition to the organizational networks in civil society that nourished the IU. It
thus did not suffer when the crisis dissolved these networks. On the contrary,
Sendero fed off this crisis; it thrived from the social fragmentation and despair that
led many individuals to lose hope in nonviolent collective action. Sendero thus
represented a radically different movement. But it competed directly with the IU.
Its advance before 1992 both caused and benefited from the erosion of the
sociopolitical foundations of the IU's radical democratic project.
Ultimately, neither PUM's revolutionary nor Barrantes' electoral alternativ
provided a compelling answer to the national crisis. Although IU radicals trie
distinguish their vision of a radical democratic order from Soviet-sty
bureaucratic collectivism, they were clearly tainted by the collapse of
Communism and were unable to craft a viable socialist economic alternative to
hyperinflation and a bankrupt, discredited state. Furthermore, their program to
radicalize democracy clashed with their parties' own hierarchical and vanguardist
tendencies. On the other hand, Barrantes was hard pressed to differentiate his
position from Garcfa's ill-fated populism. It could not achieve consensus even
within the Left, let alone promote national accord. Moderates and radicals both
assumed the Left could broaden support by integrating diverse interests. Instead,
the polarization of the Left further fragmented civil society and ruptured links
between the IU and Popular groups. The Left was thus unable to take politica
advantage of the crisis. The stage was clear for the antipolitical populism of the
early 1990s.

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

Conclusion

The collapse of the IU provides instructive lessons for social movements and the
Left in Latin America and helps to explain why the collapse of state-led capitalis
development resulted in neoliberalism rather than a swing to the Left. The Peruvia
Left was exceptionally strong both electorally and socially when Peru returned t
democracy, but it could not capitalize on the failures of its competitors and
rendered only token resistance to Fujimori's neoliberal revolution. The IU
experience demonstrates that political gains are not necessarily cumulative, despite
rhetoric about "accumulating forces." While enhancing its parliamentary visibility
the IU lost much of its capacity for social mobilization. By acquiring municipal
authority, it demonstrated how little it differed from traditional parties. After
helping to generate base-level organizations, it learned how hard it can be t
transform them into a national political force.
In fact, the Left's base-level units were highly contingent and subject to erosion
This finding buttresses other recent studies, which have discovered that social mo
bilization tends to ebb and flow according to changes in the "political opportunit
structure."54 In democratic transitions in other Latin American societies politica
parties consciously displaced social movements, and local governments coopted them.55
In Peru political opportunities and constraints also heavily influenced social mobili
zation. It was facilitated, albeit inadvertently, by state efforts under Velasco to or
ganize popular sectors. It subsequently weakened when state policies sought to frag
ment the labor movement and the IU became increasingly fractious.
However, Peru also suggests that opportunity structures for social movements
are economic as well as political and institutional. Social mobilization declined as
prolonged economic crisis eroded class solidarity, undermined collective action,
and severed horizontal linkages. The IU as a political agent was far too polarized t
overcome this social fragmentation. Peru's pragmatic popular sectors abandoned a
nonviable political force; personality rather than partisanship or ideology becam
the basis for political aggregation. Ultimately, informalization in the political an
economic spheres became mutually reinforcing. Formal representative institutions
like parties and labor unions declined, and antipolitical personalist leaders emerged
from outside established parties.
Peru's experience lends credence to Castafieda's contention that socioeconomic
crises erode the social constituencies of reformist democratic projects. Likewise,
Sendero Luminoso's advance supports his assertion that radical forces will flourish a
crises expand the ranks of the urban poor.56 However, the dominant response of
Peru's urban poor to the economic crisis was neither social democratic reform no
Maoist revolution. Rather, they turned to the informal economy and attached them
selves politically to a new variant of autocratic populism, both of which proved to b
remarkably congruent with the requirements of neoliberal restructuring.57

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Comparative Politics October 1996

This new variant of populism, which has found parallels in the rise of Menem in
Argentina and Collor in Brazil, was predicted upon the deinstitutionalization of the
political arena. Its direct, unmediated relationship between individual voters and
populist figures became the political correlate to the market individualism of
neoliberalism. Less dependent upon redistributive politics than the populism of the
past, indeed, associated in Peru with austerity and market discipline, this new form
of populism arose in the political void left by the IU and APRA and rejects partisan
representation. It captured the sociopolitical constituency of the Peruvian Left,
while harnessing it to a radically different social project. Fujimori's landslide
reelection in 1995 attests to its potency. The rise of this new populism signified the
passing of the era of partisan representation in Peru. As the Left tries to regroup
and renovate itself in the neoliberal era, it confronts a thoroughly transformed
social order from the one that spawned its vision of radical democracy in the 1970s.

NOTES

1. Adam Przeworski, "'The Neoliberal Fallacy," in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, e
talism, Socialism, and Democracy Revtisited (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2. See, for example, Jorge Castafieda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the C
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1993); Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Jose Maria Maravall,
Przeworski, Economic Reforms in New Democracies: A Social-Democratic Approach (C
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
3. Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez, eds., The Making of Social Movements in Latin
Identity', Strategy, and Democracy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992).
4. See Debate, 10 (March-April 1988), 10.
5. A centerpiece of Fujimori's campaign was opposition to the economic shock program prom
conservative rival Mario Vargas Llosa. After taking office, Fujimori imposed a shock prog
own, with sharp price increases, cuts in government subsidies, tariffs, and real wa
privatizations. See Efrain Gonzales de Olarte, "Peru's Economiic Program under Fujimori,"
Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. 35 (Summer 1993), 51-80.
6. Orlando Fals Borda. "Social Movements and Political Power in Latin America," in Escobar and
Alvarez, eds.
7. See Denis Sulmont, El Movimiento Obrero Peruano (1890-1980) (Lima: Tarea, 1980).
8. See Evelyne Huber Stephens, "The Peruvian Military Government, Labor Mobilization, and the
Political Strength of the Left," Latin American Research Revtiew, 28 (1983), 57-93; Alfred Stepan, The
State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
9. Henry A. Dietz, Povertry and Problem-Solhing under Military Rule: The Urban Poor in Limra,
Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), esp. ch. 8.
10. Carmen Rosa Balbi, Identidad Clasista en el Sindicalismo: Su Impacto en las Fdbricas (Lima:
DESCO, 1989).
11. Maxwell A. Cameron, Democracy and Authoritarianism in Peru: Political Coalitions and Social
Change (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). ch. 2.
12. See Fernando Tuesta Soldevilla, Pobreza Urbana v Cambios Electorales en Lima (Lima: DESCO,
1989).
13. The Belaunde administration was badly shaken by the regional debt crisis, which caused a 12

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 Kenneth M. Roberts

percent decline in the Peruvian economy in 1983. Belaunde also responded passively to Sendero
Luminoso's insurgency in the southern highlands from 1980 to 1982, then put the region under a state
of emergency, ceded political authority to military officials, and tolerated human rights violations. See
Americas Watch, Abdicating Democratic Authority: Human Rights in Peru (New York: 1984).
14. Some individual leftists, such as Cuzco mayor Daniel Estrada, ran successfully as independents.
All the traditional parties did poorly in these elections- Fujimori encouraged the proliferation of
independent candidates by relaxing requirements.
15. Julio Cotler, Descomposicidn Politica Y Autoritarismo en el Peru (Lima: Instituto de Estudios
Peruanos, 1993).
16. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon, 1964), p. 9.
17. These variables, initially identified by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party',
have been stressed by more contemporary scholars as well; see for example, Charles Bergquist, Labor
in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), ch. 1.
18. Susan C. Stokes, for example, has found that exposure to labor unions is a powerful indicator of
radicalism in Lima's shantytowns. Susan C. Stokes, Cultures in Coinflict: Social Movements and the
State in Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press), ch. 5.
19. Robert Dix, "Cleavage Structures and Party Systems in Latin America," Comparative Politics, 22
(October 1989), 25-37.
20. Balbi, p. 44.
21. Jeffrey Paige, Agrarian Revolution (New York: Free Press, 1975), ch. 3.
22. These conditions helped Sendero Luminoso in Ayacucho. Cynthia McClintock, "Peru's Sendero
Luminoso Rebellion: Origins and Trajectories," in Susan Eckstein, ed., Power and Popular Protest:
Latin American Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
23. See Stokes, ch. 5; and Teresa Tovar Samanez, Movimiento Popular y Paros Nacionales (Lima:
DESCO, 1982), p. 33.
24. Carlos Ivan Degregori, "El Aprendiz de Brujo y el Curandero Chino: Etnicidad, Modernidad, y
Ciudadania," in Carlos Ivan Degregori and Romeo Grompone, Elecciones 1990: Demonios y
Redentores en el Nuevo Peru (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1991), p. 87.
25. Peru: Compendio Estddistico 1991-92, vol. 1 (Lima: Direcci6n Tecnica de Indicadores
Econ6micos, 1992), p. 584.
26. Peru: Compendio Estadistico 1993-1994, vol. 1 (Lima: Direcci6n Thcnica de Indicadores
Econ6micos, 1994), p. 430.
27. Eliana Chavez O'Brien, "El Mercado de Trabajo y las Nuevas Tendencias en la Estructura del
Empleo en el Perui," Socialismo v Participacidn, 60 (December 1992), 20.
28. James W. Wilkie and Carlos Alberto Contreras, eds., Statistical Abstract of Latin America, vol.
29 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin America Center, 1992), p. 373.
29. See Chisvez O'Brien, pp. 15-20.
30. See Henry Dietz, "Electoral Politics in Peru, 1978-1986," Journal of Inter-American Studies and
World Affairs, 28 (Winter 1986-1987), 139-163; Cameron, ch. 2.
31. See Cameron, ch. 2, 3; Carlos Franco, Inmagenes de la Sociedad Peruana: La Otra Modernidad
(Lima: Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Participaci6n, 1991).
32. Department of State, Country' Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1994 (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), p. 495.
33. See Jorge Parodi, Ser Obrero Es Algo Relativo: Obreros, Clasismo, Y Politica (Lima: Instituto de
Estudios Peruanos, 1986).
34. Balbi, Identidad Clasista en el Sindicalismo, pp. 111-122.
35. Exceptions include the southern department of Puno, where peasant federations clashed with
cooperatives over land rights in the 1980s. Jos6 Luis Renique, "La Batalla por Puno: Violencia Politica
en la Sierra del Peru," Columbia/NYU Consortium Conference Paper No. 36, 1990.

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Comparative Politics October /996

36. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso. 1985).
37. The rondas began as community-based peasant patrols to guard against cattle rustling but
"evolved into an entire alternative justice system with open community assemblies" to resolve diverse
problems. Orin Starn, "'I Dreamed of Foxes and Hawks': Reflections on Peasant Protest, New Social
Movements. and the Rondas Campesinas of Northern Peru," in Escobar and Alvarez. eds., p. 90. The
original rondas were highly autonomous: more recently. the term has also been applied to patrols
organized by the army as part of the counterinsurgency campaign against Sendero Luminoso.
38. See Stokes, Cultures in Conflict.
39. See the spatial model of political identities in Cameron. ch. 6.
40. See Luis Paisara, Nena Delpino, Rocio Valdeavellano. and Alonso Zarzar, La Otra Cara de la
Luna:. Nuevos Actores Sociales en el Peru (Buenos Aires: Manantial, 1991), p. 198.
41. In 1992 Sendero assassinated community leader Maria Elena Moyano in Villa El Salvador. It also
infiltrated and captured the small business federation, the women's federation, and the main
neighborhood association. See Jo-Marie Burt. "Poverty, Violence and Grassroots Organizing in Peru."
in Carlos Vilas. Katherine Roberts-Hite. and Monique Segarra, Rethinking Participation in Latin
America (forthcoming); Tom Marks, "Making Revolution with Shining Path," in David Scott Palmer,
ed. Shinining Path of Peru (New York: St. Martin's Press. 1992).
42. Henry Pease Garcia. Democracia Local.: Refle.iones y Eperiencias (Lima: DESCO, 1989).
43. See Julio Calder6n and Rocio Valdeavellano, l-quierda v Demnocracia: Entre la Utopia i la
Realidad (Lima: Instituto de Desarrollo Urbano, 1991). ch. 2.
44. Cited in Restimnen Semanal. Mar. 2-8. 1990, p. 4.
45. Interview with Alfonso Barrantes," NACLA Report on the Americas, 20 (September-December
1986), 60.
46. See Raul A. Wiener, (El Antizorro): El Debate Sobre el "Acuerdo Nacional" (Lima: Ediciones
Debate Mariateguista. 1987), chs. 4, 5.
47. "Interview with Alfonso Barrantes," p. 59.
48. The PUM and UNIR dominated the IU's congressional delegation and together with the PCP led
Peru's major labor, peasant. and shantytown organizations. The two small IU parties which strongly
backed Barrantes. the PSR and the PCR. were weakly represented in social organizations..
49. The Peru Report, 3 (May 1989). B3-4.
50. Partido Unificado Mariateguista. Per i 1989; Crisis v Salida Politica (Lima: 1989).
51. In an interview with the author in Lima on September 19. 1990, former senator Rolando Ames, a
leader of the Christian Left, admitted that the PUM represented a "different political project" but thought
it was important not to break with it because of the organizational weakness of the moderate Left in civil
society and the PUM's greater strength as a bulwark against Sendero Lumninoso in popular movements.
52. In an interview with the author in Lima on September 12, 1990, PUM secretary general Eduardo
Ciceres expressed concern about the grass-roots competition of Sendero. "'At the base level, especially
in the countryside in regions like Puno. our only real competitor is Sendero. The other groups often
don't exist. It is just the PUM against Sendero."
53. In a 1991 poll only 13 percent of youth between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four sympathized
with political parties, whereas 25 percent justified participation in armed groups. Luis Fernrin
Cisneros C., "Entre la Ira y la Paz," Debate, 15 (September-October 1992), 36.
54. See Sidney Tarrow, Power and Movement.: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
55. See Philip Oxhorn. "Where Did All the Protesters Go? Popular Mobilization and the Transition to
Democracy in Chile." Latin American Perspectives. 21 (Summer 1994), 49-68.
56. Castafieda, p. 172.
57. Kenneth M. Roberts, "Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: The
Peruvian Case," World Politics. 48 (October 1995), 82-116.

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