From the Breakdown of Oligarchic Domination to Neoliberal Governance:
The Impact of the Shining Path on Peru’s Constitutional Democratic Order
Maxwell A. Cameron
Department of Political Science
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z1
Email: [email protected]
December 22, 2015
Author’s note: This is a revised version of a paper presented in a workshop at DRCLAS, Harvard
University, May 19-20, 2014. I am grateful to Hillel Soifer, Alberto Vergara, Teivo Teivainen
and Francisco Durand for advice and guidance in preparing this paper.
1
Introduction
What impact did the Partido Comunista del Perú-Sendero Luminoso—the Shining Path—have
on the development of Peru’s constitutional order? This chapter approaches the problem through
the lens of comparative constitutionalism. The Constitution of 1979 was written at the end of
military rule, just before the Shining Path’s “initiation of armed struggle.” The Constitution of
1993 was written in the aftermath of President Alberto Fujimori’s 1992 presidential self-coup, or
autogolpe, which was justified by the need for emergency measures to fight the counterinsurgency war. Whereas the first constitution preceded Peru’s internal conflict, the second
followed it. By comparing the two documents we can begin to assess the legacy of the internal
conflict.
Two central lessons emerge. The first is that the Shining Path crucially influenced the
development of Peru’s constitutional order. Analysts agree that the 1993 constitution was more
authoritarian and neoliberal than its 1979 predecessor (Mauceri 1996; Teivainen 2002; Planas
1999). It rolled back social features of the 1979 constitution, and facilitated the concentration of
power in the hands of the executive branch of government.1 It also proved remarkably enduring.
Specifically, Peru did not emulate other countries in the region that undertook constitutional
reforms (often called republican “refounding”) as part of a left turn.2 In this view, the Shining
Path foreclosed the possibility of a left turn by creating an emergency situation that resulted in a
constitution that locked in a neoliberal economic model and with a correspondingly limited
democracy. The argument exemplifies Naomi Klein’s (2009) “shock doctrine.”
There is another, perhaps more optimistic finding. The constitution of 1979 and 1993 are
actually quite similar in terms of their protection for fundamental rights and freedoms as well as
the organization of the political roles and offices of the state. The 1993 Constitution was written
2
under Fujimori, but it never sanctioned the kinds of abuses of power that occurred under his rule,
and indeed the President almost immediately found himself entangled in his own violations of it.
If we place both constitutions within a longer historical perspective, the 1979 constitution
appears to reflect a deeper process of societal democratization under military rule and thereafter;
and, although the 1993 constitution rolled back certain social democratic features of the 1979
constitution, it nonetheless retained other constitutional and democratic elements; moreover,
some of the authoritarian features were ultimately overturned. The role of the Shining Path
within this larger process of democratization was negative but insufficient to reverse the trend.
To support these arguments, this chapter is organized into six substantive sections. The
first examines the breakdown of oligarchic domination and the process of social democratization
that culminated in the 1978 Constituent Assembly. The second interprets the Shining Path within
the context of this transformation. The third section examines how the stresses imposed on the
newly democratized political regime, and the emergency situation, led to a rupture of the
constitutional order. The fourth section compares the 1979 and 1993 Constitutions. The fifth
section discusses the emergence of neoliberal governance techniques fostered by the 1993
Constitution. The sixth section places Peru in the comparative context of Latin America’s left
turns. The final section concludes.
I. The Breakdown of Oligarchic Domination
The initial crisis of the oligarchic state in the 1920s and 1930s did not result in the breakdown of
oligarchic domination, which remained particularly strong in the countryside. Conflict between
Peru’s military and the leader of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), Víctor
Raúl Haya de la Torre, led to a proscription of the latter from from holding public office and the
3
postponement of necessary social, political and economic reforms. When these reforms were
finally adopted, it was, paradoxically, under the tutelage of reformist military officers who seized
power in a coup in 1968. The rural oligarchy was finally destroyed by an extensive land reform,
the creation of peasant cooperatives, unionization, industrial communities, and corporatist
institutions. The aim of the military was to modernizing the nation while limiting class conflict.
Instead of avoiding class conflict, however, the reformist military officers exacerbated it, and
Peru entered a period of internal conflict that would ultimately cost tens of thousands of lives and
untold property damage.
Prior to the sweeping reforms undertaken by the military regime between 1968-1980,
Peruvian society was characterized by structural dualism between the coast and the sierra—a
source of cultural heterogeneity that dated to the colonial period (Cotler 1976: 35). The coast was
the seat of criollo culture; the highlands, of indigenous cultures. The urban areas along the coast
monopolized technologies of social communication, including newspapers and television, and
were integrated into global economic markets. The sierra, with its preindustrial economic
arrangements, was a sort of archipelago containing “vast pockets of isolation” in which
“traditional social forms of organization” coexisted with large landholdings (Cotler 1976: 36) or
haciendas.
On the haciendas the relationship between lord (or gamonal) and peasant (colono) were
particularly repressive and exploitative. Gamonal oppression relied on public spectacles of
savage punishment as a way of affirming superiority over the Indian.3 But it also rested on
manipulation which was “made possible, among other causes, by the monopoly exercised by the
dominant on knowledge of the Castilian tongue” (Degregori 1989: 10). Power and knowledge
were fused in the person of the landowner. Mestizos dominated the professions: lawyers, judges,
4
governors, police, merchants, mayors and tax collectors were recruited overwhelmingly from
among mestizos. They monopolized access to written texts and restricted literacy and education
to guarantee their domination. Only the literate could elect or be elected to public office in this
system. The hacienda system resembled a “triangle without a base.”4 It was a system of total and
despotic power.5
There was less oppression, but life was still precarious for those living in indigenous
communities. These communities were based on collective ownership of land, and internal
cohesion was based on kinship and particularistic networks. Indigenous communities relied on
ancestral norms and communal practices to coordinate the activities of their members. Small in
scale, their lives were organized around face-to-face communication, and anchored in
generational hierarchies; their collective knowledge was stored in biological memory and
transmitted orally; their connection to the larger division of labour was precarious and sporadic.
Yet they were cohesive collectivities, bound together in tightly-knit groups based on reciprocity
and mutual aid capable of surviving many external threats, both environmental and human.
There were constant tensions as large landlords sought to expand their holdings at the expense of
indigenous communities.
The collapse of oligarchic domination began in the late 1950s. The expansion of literacy
and education in the countryside, combined with the spread of mass communications, especially
radio, diminished the power of mestizos and gamonales and enabled challenges to oligarchic
domination.6 Peasant unrest in La Convención near Cuzco in 1958-62 focused on the inequities
of a system of domination based on massive haciendas. Peasants began to organize into unions
and to undertake land invasions. Inspired by the example of the Cuban revolution, urban
intellectuals joined the struggle.7 In short order land invasions spread throughout the highlands,
5
involving hundreds of thousands of peasants. Although an incipient guerrilla movement was
quickly put down, it called attention to the ways in which Peru’s socioeconomic problems
stemmed from the backwardness of the rural oligarchy, the lack of national integration, and a
weak and dependent state.8
Military officers who fought against the guerrillas were able to directly observe the
oppression and misery created by the very order they were expected to defend; they decided it
was time for change (Cleaves and Pease García 1983: 216). One such officer was Juan Velasco
Alvarado, a junior officer who seized power in a coup on October 3, 1968. As the leader of the
self-styled revolutionary government of the armed forces he embarked on sweeping reforms to
break the domination of the rural oligarchy and lay the foundations for a new development
model based on the inclusion of workers and peasants, appreciation of indigenous culture, and
redistribution of land and income.9 “One of the major goals of antioligarchic and nationalist
revolution,” according to Julio Cotler (1975: 50), was “the homogenization of the social structure,
which facilitates the expansion of capitalist forms of production.”
The military introduced agrarian reform, peasant cooperatives, job stability, industrial
communities, educational reform, expansion of social security, and support for unionization.10 In
state corporatist style, the officers attempted to carry out reforms while minimizing class conflict
and guarantee the unity of the state (Stepan 1978).11 The opposite was achieved: the reforms
unleashed the kind of social forces that would call into question all constituted power, especially
the military. This transformation enabled pent-up demands for change to be expressed in diverse
forms of collective protest and unrest. The promotion of unions and industrial communities led
to unprecedented worker mobilization. Support for higher wages and better working conditions
increased militancy. One union leader said that if he could get the same increase in wages for his
6
members by striking or bargaining with the employer, he would always strike because this taught
workers the importance of militancy and solidarity.12 Such strategies encouraged clasismo—a
“class-oriented and confrontational political mentality,” in which “struggle” was seen as the most
appropriate means by which to achieve collective goals (Stokes 1991: 87, 91, 97).
The struggle fueled an uneven, incomplete, and precarious process of “social
democratization” (Lynch 1991: 72), that is to say, of emergent citizenship. That it occurred under
military rule makes it no less significant. Workers and peasants experienced the sense of dignity
that comes from recognition as fully human agents capable of collective action and the exercise
of political power.13 To a considerable extent, this process of social democratization would
continue in urban areas as waves of rural-urban migrants moved to the cities. As peasants and
indigenous peoples moved to the cities and founded new urban communities in the shantytowns
around Lima, they became pioneers of new settlements that, as agents of change, carried within
them the potential for democratization of the society.14
Massive general strikes in the late 1970s, and regional protest movements led by teachers
and other groups, and a process of radicalization of middle sector unions (most notably bank and
public employees). The union movement, long under the control of APRA, had fallen under the
control of the Community Party during the military regime, and the General Confederation of
Peruvian Workers (CGTP) emerged as a powerful voice for organized labor. Maoists radicals
controlled the teachers union; Trotskyists were influential within peasant confederations. These
groups formed the nuclei of an emergent “new left,” which would flex its muscle in the massive
general strikes and regional movements in the late 1970s.15
The military decided to extricate itself from government—but not power. Between 197780 an elite controlled process of transition was initiated. Unlike most other Latin American
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nations that would undertake transitions to democracy in the 1980s, the Peruvian transition
involved drafting a new constitution.16 The military government decided to convene a constituent
assembly which it insisted would write a constitution that enshrined the reforms it had
implemented during its decade in office (Mauceri 1996: 19; Lynch 1991: 135; Teivainen 2002:
59). To the surprise of nearly all concerned, the left captured about one third of the seats in the
Constituent Assembly (Bernales 1980: 70).17
The result was a remarkably progressive albeit aspirational constitution that recognized
popular sovereignty as the basis of government, stressed the dignity of all citizens as equals,
acknowledged the importance of the common good and life within community, and called for a
free, just, and educated society without exploitation in which the economy would be at the
service of the people, not vice versa. The right to vote was given to illiterates, enfranchizing an
estimated one million souls (Lynch 1991: 135). The constitution contained an expansive list of
human rights, including social and economic rights like the right to social security, health, and
work and negotiate collective agreements. Multiple forms of property, private and public, social
and individual, were recognized. “The new constitution...stated that the state could have
extensive direct intervention in the economy through public enterprise and other means.
According to its Article 110, the economic regime was primarily based on ‘principles of social
justice.’” (Teivainen 2002: 59).
The constitution captured the spirit of the political transformation that had begun and
which represented a significant step toward the democratization of Peruvian society. It outlined
a highly democratic political regime that enshrined the separation of powers, a bicameral
legislature with a senate to represent the regions, a five year presidential term without re-election,
and a non-deliberative military. New institutions were created, such as the Tribunal of
8
Constitutional Guarantees and National Magistrature Council. The Public Ministry and Senate
were redesigned (García Belaunde 1996: 37-38). With this progressive constitution in place, Peru
was able to move to elect a democratic government in May 1980. That election day would also
mark the start of a conflict that would ultimately take upward of 69,000 lives and inflict
extensive material and psychological damage on the nation.
II. The Shining Path
The Shining Path was part of the transformation of Peru that began with the breakdown of
oligarchic domination. It’s leaders exploited divisions within Peruvian rural society to construct
a powerful collective identify and mobilize deeply felt resentments against an unjust order; in so
doing, however, they reproduced and exacerbated the injustices of that order. Whereas land
reforms are often designed to prevent peasant rebellions, in Peru they triggered one. The land
reform broke the back of the rural oligarchy, but it also displaced mestizos, ending their
monopolies of knowledge, and creating a vacuum of power. This vacuum was filled by the
Shining Path. The violence instigated by the Shining Path, in turn, contributed to further erode
the division between coast and highlands as waves of migrants abandoned the countryside for the
cities, especially Lima.
The Shining Path reflected the provincial social order from whence it emerged, even as
that order passed into extinction.18 It was a despotic response to despotic power that fought fire
with fire in an effort to fundamentally remake the state and society. Unlike other revolutionary
movements in Peru and Latin America, the Shining Path sought to replace what was called a
corrupt, bureaucratic, corporatist and fascist state with an entirely new Maoist state; it set out to
destroy and replace the old order from the foundations up. The party would be the nucleus of an
9
entirely new political, social, and economic order. This meant that the party had to be everything
to its members—a total organization—and its leadership held absolute power. It set out to create
“a people of the book.”
The Shining Path can also be seen as a project by provincial mestizos to reestablish power
in an altered social landscape, as well as a channel for social mobility and political power for
ambitious, newly educated members of the indigenous population. The leaders of the Shining
Path were heavily drawn from among educated mestizos whose social status was undermined by
the agrarian reform (Degregori 1997: 182). The displaced middle strata sought new routes to
status and domination through the revolutionary party. Their most successful recruitment efforts
targeted young men and women from peasant communities who had achieved a level of
education sufficient to expect to occupy greater status and power than they could by remaining
within their families’ communities.
The Shining Path offered not only a recipe for change, but also a guide to objective truth.
According to this vision, “traditional power, based not only on the monopoly of the means of
production, but also on the monopoly of knowledge and its deceitful manipulation, is brought
down by the dominated who break both monopolies” (Degregori 1989: 13). The guide to a new
objective Truth would be the leader, Abimael Guzmán. He sought to construct a new monopoly
of knowledge based on quasi-religious devotion to foundational texts and authors. Hence, the
insistence that Guzmán, a Doctor of Philosophy, was a major intellectual force not only in Peru
but in world history, comparable to Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Devotion to the leader was modelled
on Old Testament-style construction of a people of the book—that is, it captured the experience
of political awakening coincident with a collective process of acquisition of literacy guided by a
10
vanguard steeped in knowledge of profound and inaccessible texts.19 With the grandiloquence of
the parochial, its leader proclaimed Peru the epicentre of world-wide revolution.
III. Democratization Under Stress
Writing in the 1980s anthropologist José Matos Mar (1985) argued that “official Peru” had lost
its monopoly on power and could no longer exclude and marginalize the Andean majority (or
what he called the “marginal Peru”). “Popular overflow” (desborde popular) signaled the end of
despotic oligarchic power: Peru’s popular sectors could no longer be ignored or marginalized by
the nations social, economic, and political institutions. The revolution toward which the Shining
Path sought to direct the popular overflow was avoided only because there was a democratic
alternative. As precarious as Peru’s democracy seemed at the time, it was the decisive obstacle to
the Shining Path’s designs, as was implicitly recognized by that organizations leadership when
they initiated the armed struggle by burning ballot boxes on election day in May 1980. The
resiliency of democracy was not fully appreciated by the Peruvian left which was divided
between the kinds of commitments needed to participate in the democratic process and the desire
to build a mass movement with the potential option of seizing power by revolutionary means.
The various parties that created the United Left were attracted by the prospect of gaining
political power by electoral means, but they were not ready to abandon mass politics outside
democratic institutions. Their most promising democratic leader, Alfonso Barrantes, won the
mayoral race in Lima in 1984, which positioned him to run for president in 1985 and 1990. For
others, mass struggle included the possibility, eventually, of armed struggle. The suggestion that
Peru in the mid-1980s was in a pre-revolutionary phase was not wildly implausible. For some
activists, Shining Path militants were showing that revolutionary struggle was still possible,
11
while the United Left was caught up in decidedly unrevolutionary electoral politics. “If the
Shining Path had not existed,” speculates Gustavo Gorriti (1999: 11), “the left’s incorporation
into the system would have been more visible and complete, and today the Marxist left would be
a pillar of democratic stability, part of a lively and vibrant political process, and an entirely
peaceful one.”
The other stress on democracy was the economic crisis. Although the developmentalist
Popular Action party won the 1980 election under the leadership of Fernando Belaúnde Terry
(1980-1985), it quickly became apparent that the new democratic government was not up to the
twin challenges of insurgency and economic crisis. Monetarist policies adopted by industrialized
nations in the early 1980s increased Peru’s debt burden while competition among exporters
lowered the prices of commodities that were the primary source of hard currency. Peru was
forced to renegotiate its international debt obligations just as the country emerged from military
rule. President Belaúnde implemented orthodox economic policies which placed the burden of
adjustment on Peru, particularly the urban poor, many of whom were forced into the informal
economy in unprecedented numbers. He left the counter-insurgency strategy to the military and
seemed unaware of the extent of the violence and repression in Ayacucho. By the end of
Belaúnde’s term there was a pervasive sense of ungovernability and drift. Drastic measures to
restore economic growth and governability seemed in order.
The 1985 election brought APRA to power, and for about 18 months there was a renewed
sense of optimism among Peruvians. The youthful President Alan García Pérez promised to
place a ceiling on debt payments and stimulate growth through heterodox or populist economic
policies: deficit spending, price controls, and wage increases. For the right, these policies did not
seem too different from what the left had to offer, and so the term “Apro-Communism” re-
12
entered the political vocabulary after many dormant years, despite the fact that there was
certainly no alliance between APRA and the IU. After an initial spurt of economic growth,
heterodox policies generated the predictable evils of inflation, capital flight, and shortages, to
which García responded, in a fit of pique, by attempting to nationalize the banks. Armoured
vehicles broke down the doors of the Banco de Crédito and entered in a cloud of tear gas.
Conservative sectors rallied behind novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and his movement, Libertad.
Vargas Llosa teamed up with the author of The Other Path, Hernando de Soto, to propose a
radical reorientation of Peru’s economy, society, and politics. It was the inception of Peruvian
neoliberalism.20
De Soto spent his formative years in Switzerland, Canada, and the United States. He
studied in the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva which had recruited Ludwig
von Mises and Wilhelm Röpke, founding members of the Mont Pèlerin Society. Upon his return
to Peru, De Soto invited Friedrich von Hayek to a meeting in Lima and subsequently founded the
Instituto Libertad y Democracia to help create an intellectual climate in favorable to
neoliberalism (Mitchell 2009: 396). De Soto’s first contribution to public policy was working
under the García government in a project for property rights legislation and administrative
reform. In 1989, he published The Other Path, an ambitious effort to interpret the process of
migration of indigenous Peruvians to the cities, and their survival strategies, as reactions to a
state that failed to provide property rights to the poor. De Soto explicitly linked governance and
markets. Either Peru would carry out a capitalist revolution driven by the emerging entrepreneurs
of the informal economy, or there would be a violent revolution (De Soto 1989: 233).21
The final years of the García administration were so chaotic and destructive—
hyperinflation reached levels comparable to Weimar Germany, and a campaign of car bombs hit
13
Lima as Shining Path activists moved into the capital city—that a growing number of Peruvians
quietly began to accept that major sacrifices would be necessary to restore economic growth and
political order. Although Vargas Llosa lost the 1990 election to Alberto Fujimori, his ideas did
not. Vargas Llosa even offered his program and his team of neoliberal technocrats to the newly
elected president. De Soto quickly made the transition and began to work with Fujimori. He was
instrumental in providing international connections that would consolidate the new President’s
commitment to reforms.
Fujimori may have cast himself as a candidate who would not implement shock therapy,
but once in office he was quickly persuaded that economic austerity and aggressive
counterinsurgency measures were unavoidable. A hastily arranged trip to Washington and Tokyo
persuaded the president-elect that he would get little international support unless he adopted
what had come to be known as the “Washington Consensus”: privatization, liberalization of trade
and investment, deregulation, labour market flexibilization, monetary conservatism, fiscal
restraint, and, above all, limiting the role of the state in the economy. This was tough medicine to
swallow for a country already in a virtual state of economic collapse, but, as is so often the case,
the depth of the crisis created an opportunity to implement thorough-going reforms.
The perception—ill-informed, perhaps, but widespread—that the Shining Path was
reaching a strategic equilibrium with the armed forces created the conditions for an interruption
of the democratic order. Important sectors within the armed forces concluded that Peru needed a
period of prolonged political stability that could only be achieved by hardline (mano dura)
measures. Although they initially plotted to topple Fujimori, their scheme (the plan verde,22 as it
was known) fell into the hands of Fujimori’s security advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, who then
adapted the strategy to build a civil-military coalition that would support the April 1992
14
presidential self-coup (or autogolpe): congress was closed, the courts purged, and the
constitution suspended.
The autogolpe was a moment of de-institutionalization. It is far from clear that the
autogolpe was necessary to arrest the deteriorating security situation. The congress appeared to
be quite prepared to concede extraordinary powers to the president, and the counterinsurgency
strategy was actually begining to work. Within a few months a meticulous police investigation
that had started before the autogolpe would result in the capture of Guzmán in a safehouse in
Lima, but that only seemed to vindicate Fujimori’s mano dura. Moreover, although it was less
clear at the time, Fujimori and Montesinos had implicated themselves and others within the
armed forces in human rights crimes.
Whatever the logic of power was that led to the autogolpe decision, the public was
clearly prepared to support it and this Fujimori intuited by the way in which his attacks on
congress and the political establishment played with public opinion. Following the autogolpe,
opinion polls showed Fujimori had most Peruvians behind his authoritarian measures. The
support was neither capricious nor unreasonable; it was rooted in profound and widespread fear
(Schulte-Bockholt 2013: 97). The fear was not limited to the business community and the armed
forces. It extended to virtually the entire middle class, and even in working class and poor rural
communities there was a sense of respect for Fujimori because he seemed to be pointing to the
way out of the crisis.
There was opposition from lawmakers, lawyers, judges, constitutional law experts, as
well as other defenders of the rule of law, and this opposition would wind up expressing itself in
extremely important ways as legal professionals within the courts and in lawyers guilds
challenged the erosion of constitutional protections throughout Fujimori’s tenure in power, but
15
the defence of the rule of law had few echos among the public. Privileged groups like the
business community and technocrats were willing to surrender legal guarantees in return for
order and stability; underpriviledged groups were never protected by the rule of law in the first
place.
Tepid opposition came from the international community, particularly the Organization
of American States (OAS). Such opposition was molified when Fujimori traveled to a General
Assembly of the OAS in Bahamas and, at the advice of Hernando de Soto, agreed to convene a
“pretentiously—and redundantly—named” Democratic Constituent Congress to re-write Peru’s
constitution, and call new elections in 1995 (García Belaunde 1996: 39). Elected on 22
November 1992, it did not have any members from the parties Acción Popular, APRA, and
Libertad which abstained. The CCD met between January to September 1993, and produced a
text that was submitted to referendum October 31,1993. 52 percent of the public gave it their
approbation, but third of electorate abstained and 9 percent cast blank or void ballots.23
Peru was, of course, facing an institutional crisis, but “the constitution had little or
nothing to do with this crisis” (García Belaunde 1996: 39). Fujimori did not announce the need
for a new constitution on April 5, 1992. The idea of changing the constitution came about in
response to criticism of the autogolpe – it was not part of Fujimori’s initial intention, which was
to govern by plebiscitarian means and for longer than a single term. It was a fallback position to
salvage a course of action that faced unexpected obstacles. But Fujimori must have felt
emboldened by the outpouring of popular support for his hardline measures. He quickly realized
that he could re-write the constitution to his advantage. He approached the task not in a spirit of
constitutionalism, however, so much as a desire do perpetuate himself in power.
16
IV. Comparing the 1979 and 1993 Constitutions
Despite the more centralist and neoliberal character of the Constitutions of 1993 relative to the
1979 Constitution, the two documents are otherwise quite similar. There were those who, like the
Andean Commission of Jurists,24 argued that a change in the constitution was not really
necessary. Instead, the CCD should have simply modified the 1979 Constitution. This is
probably correct: in reality, there are very strong similarities between the two in both structure
and content. “However, the regime’s ‘jurists’ warned that it would be dangerous to leave the
1979 Constitution in force, even with important reforms. Article 307 drastically sanctioned all
authors of coups. This was the Sword of Damocles that could be used in the future against the
current government” (García Belaunde 1996: 40).25
Fundamental questions for any constitution is who is the author, and, with what right
does that author claim the power to create a new order? The framers of the 1979 Constitution
described themselves as “We, representatives to the Constituent Assembly,” who, exercising the
“sovereign power of the people” (“ejercicio de la potestad soberana del pueblo”), that the people
“have conferred upon us,” promulgate the constitution. The language is active and inclusive. The
appeal to popular sovereignty places the constitution within the Enlightenment tradition of the
French and American revolutions. It suggests revolutionary as well as electoral legitimacy,
which was certainly consistent with the thinking of the military regime.
The 1993 constitution made no reference to popular sovereignty. The “Democratic
Constituent Congress,” it says, shifting to the third person rather than the first person plural,
“obeying the mandate of the Peruvian people” (“obediciendo el mandato del pueblo peruano”)
has “resolved to give the following constitution” (“ha resuelto dar la siguiente constitución”).
17
The term “representative” is not used. The image conjures a delegation of power to a third party
which returns to the people in the form of a gift.
There is no hint of revolutionary legitimacy or popular sovereignty in the 1993
Constitution, and the omission must have been deliberate. The framers of the 1993 Constitution
feared popular sovereignty and sought to order society from above. They also dropped the
reference to the integration of Latin American peoples and independence from imperialism,
which in the Latin American context are also important features of popular sovereignty, as well
as to historic and revolutionary leaders like Túpac Amaru and Bolívar. The 1993 Constitution
created a unicameral legislatures of 120 members with a single electoral district, which can be
dissolved by the executive if lacks confidence in two consecutive cabinets. Constitutional
Tribunal. Participatory innovations, including the use of referendum to approve the constitution,
adoption of referenda and recall within the constitution (García Belaunde 1996: 42).
The neoliberal cast of the 1993 Constitution has been widely noted by observers (Rubio
2012; Teivainen 2002). Domingo García Belaunde agrees, saying “the state practically
disappears from the economic sphere taking on a modest subsidiary role” 1996: 36). Whereas
the 1979 Constitution described the state in interventionist terms, the Constitution of 1993 sought
to minimize state involvemnent in the economy and give space to private enterprise. It extended
national treatment to foreign enterprises, and reinforced private property rights. Article 70 made
the right to property inviolable, and there can be no expropriation unless justified by national
security or public necessity and only then with full compensation. “Social interest” or “public
utility” were no longer sufficient reasons, as in the 1979 Constitution. Article 58 enshrined free
enterprise. The role of state is defined to prevent monopolies and ensure competition. Public
enterprises are not to be given special treatment relative to the private sector, and the state should
18
only play an entrepreneurial role in cases of “high public interest or manifest national
convenience.” The right to strike is regulated “so that it will be exercised in harmony with the
social interest” (Teivainen 2002: 157-158).
Certain contract laws (involving agreements between the state and investor) cannot be
modified subsequently. Otherwise, conflicts over contracts are to be resolved in the courts.
Under Article 79, the Congress cannot increase spending, depriving the legislature one of its
biggest levers—the power of the purse. Art 89 deals with the agrarian regime: native lands are
imprescriptible which means they cannot be acquired through possession due to occupany or
other requisites. However, the constitution does not say these lands are unimbargable or
inalienable, as in the previous constitution, which means they can be bought and sold or
foreclosed. This was a key reform to enable the breakup of peasant cooperatives in favour of
parceleros (small private ownership of land).
Perhaps the most authoritarian features of the 1993 Constitution are its emergency
provisions: Under chapter VII, constitutionally guaranteed rights can be suspended during a
regime of exception. In these periods the executive has extraordinary powers. Rubio (2012: 224)
refers to this as the constitutionalization of temporary dictatorship. However, after 45 days the
suspension of constitutional guarantees must be approved by congress. Under Article 200, no
judge can challenge the decision to impose a state of exception. The Constitution of 1993 also
recognizes the rondas campesinas (peasant self-defense organizations).
As sooner was the constitution adopted than Fujimori began to seek to find ways around
it. Fujimori’s style of leadership—chaotic, criminal, and unpredictable—was incompatible with
basic principles of constitutionalism. For example, he insisted that he had the right to run for
three terms in office.26 Accordingly, shortly after his first re-election, Congress introduced the
19
so-called “Law of Authentic Interpretation of the Constitution” which stated, in effect, that the
President was elegible for another term.27 Since the law had the clear intent of benefiting a single
individual, it violated the principle of generality, as well as the hierarchy of laws, by imposing a
particular interpretation of the constitution by means of ordinary legislation. The Lima Bar
Association challenged the constitutionality of the law in the newly constituted Tribunal
Constitucional. The government passed an “organic law” requiring an extraordinary majority of
six out of seven votes in order to declare a law unconstitutional. This meant only two votes were
necessary to veto any decision, and two members of the Tribunal had close ties with the
intelligence service. They upheld the law while the rest rejected it. When majority declared the
law inapplicable to Fujimori, the majority in Congress fired the members of the Tribunal who
had ruled against re-election, leaving the Constitutional Tribunal inoperative for the remainder of
Fujimori’s term and opening the way for Fujimori’s unconstitutional attempt to run for a third
term.
And yet, despite Fujimori’s contempt for his own constitution, the non-democratic
manner in which it was contrived, the absence of a compelling necessity to re-write the entire
constitution, and above all, the fact that the constitution was conceived an implemented in the
middle of an emergency situation, the 1993 Constitution stands as a remarkably enduring
document. It survived Fujimori and the Shining Path. The process of social democratization in
Peru since the 1950s was to some extent irreversible. But the neoliberal tenets of the constitution
have become irreversible as well. The 1993 Constitution established a clear neoliberal policy
framework that has remained untouched, even as reforms have modified important political
features of the constitution.
20
V. Neoliberal Governance
The pro-market policies adopted by Fujimori, which remained in tact after he fled the country in
2000, fundamentally reordered Peruvian politics by linking political and economic stability to
the success of market-led development. Four successive governments (led by Presidents
Paniagua, Toledo, García, and Humala), each of which is difficult to classify in ideological terms,
insisted on preserving the stability of the economic model implemented by Fujimori. Any
departure implied a risk of returning to the past. Peru became more like Chile, which, after the
Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), elected left-wing governments (Presidents Lagos and
Bachelet) that did not tamper with the pro-market economic model of the military regime
although they modified political features of that regime and introduced compensatory social
programs. The constitutions of Peru and Chile were adopted by referenda under authoritarian
governments in circumstances that were neither revolutionary nor democratic, yet both have
endured.
Neoliberalism fundamentally reconstructed the Peruvian body politic. By neoliberalism I
mean not merely a list of policies (for example, the “Washington Consensus”) designed to
encourage competitiveness and growth, but more basically the rules and incentives that
encourage competition throughout society. The goal of neoliberalism has never been simply to
change policies and institutions, but to do so in order to shape the behavior of individuals and
organizations. Although the purpose of getting incentives (and policies, or institutions) right is
often framed in terms the need for growth and competitiveness, these goals are normatively
desirable above all because they enable public officials to employ techniques of governance
grounded in economic rationality. The neoliberal project in Peru as elsewhere has been about the
constitution of social order around a specific set of freedoms—above all, those associated with
21
property, competition, and entrepreneurship. It is not, however, a constitutional project that
involves any notion of collective sovereignty. Neoliberalism is designed to be a guarantee
against collectivist efforts at social engineering, as well as forms of rationality that transcend the
individual’s pursuit of his or her own ends. The threat to individual liberty and rationality was,
above all, what the Shining Path represented to neoliberals. In few countries around the world
can the link between neoliberalism and governance be seen more clearly.
Teivo Teivainen sees as a defining feature of the 1993 Constitution as what he calls
“economism.” “The neutrality and autonomy of the economic sphere vis-à-vis the political
organs of the state was in various ways enshrined in the constitution of 1993, which made it a
clearly example of the constitutional politics of economism, one of the central elements of which
is the attempt to make an economistic social order persist through the creation of constitutional
constraints. The new constitution had various such constraints designed to ‘bind the future’ so
that neo-liberal policies could not be easily reversed” (Teivainen 2002: 157). Teivainen draws
upon the work of Gramscian scholar Stephen Gill28 to argue that in the “new constitutionalism”
associated with neoliberalism, “the scope of democracy is restricted by defining various
governance institutions and the issues they deal with as ‘economic’ and using the doctrine of
economic neutrality to produce a dichotomy between the economic and political spheres.”
(Teivainen 2002: 17).
Drawing on Michel Foucault (2004), however, I argue that the “economism” of
neoliberal governance is accompanied by a political dimension. It is not merely destructive, but
also creative. Neoliberalism was not just a set of policy prescriptions, or even prohibitions, but
rather a technique of governance based on the use of rules and incentives to promote selfinterested utility maximizing in all spheres of life (Foucault 2004: 118-121). These measures also
22
serve to discourage collective action and collective identification, and in fact they may be more
important in this respect than any legal or constitutional limitations imposed by the constitution.
By fostering competition and entrepreneurship, they encourage the active pursuit of growth,
investment, and competition. This pattern has persisted under all governments under the 1993
Constitution.
It is important make a distinction that was not sufficiently emphasized by Foucault:
neoliberalism operates through a micro politics of competition which is entirely compatible with
oligopolies, cartels, price fixing, predatory practices, lobbying, influence peddling and other
noncompetitive arrangements within and among major corporations. These arrangements are
anything but competitive.29 In the case of Peru, a small handful of major corporate groups
dominate much of the productive and financial activity in the country, and these groups exert
enormous lobbying and direct influence over policy as well as the market.30 These de facto
corporate powers enjoy what I call negative power which rests on the purposeful destruction of
those forms of infrastructural power that might enable collective action threatening property,
market competition, and corporate power.
Negative power is the opposite of the kind of power that mobilizes society’s resources for
collective purposes: it is the power to dissolve, to obstruct, to discourage, to undo or not do
things. This is power that primarily operates through the micro-level effects of competition, but it
also comes in the form of direct (but almost always invisible) interventions in politics in which
major corporations exercise their veto over almost any area of public policy that affects their
interests. The 1993 Constitution guarantees that even if an elected official promises to do
something or has a mandate to implement a policy, it does not happen unless it is consistent with
the logic of the market. It discourages elected officials who may wish to deviate from
23
neoliberalism. It guarantees freedom in the marketplace, market-led growth, and macroeconomic
stability. This freedom purchased at the expense of collective action or public policy initiatives
that would achieve ends beyond what is permissible within a neoliberal model of development.
In short, neoliberal governance presents itself as a solution to both economic
backwardness and collectivist threats to individual and entrepreneurial liberty, and it does so by
promoting competition and incentives to get ahead at the micro level while preserving the macro
level corporate power of oligopolies. The neoliberal state is not the night watchman state of
classical liberalism—a state that regulates competition and ensures people freely express their
natural inclination to save and invest. The neoliberal state actively establishes competitive
economic rationality through demobilization, deregulation, depoliticization, privatization,
surveillance, targeting, and a culture of entrepreneurship and consumerism.
Demobilization, or breaking up non-market “guilds and combines” in De Soto’s (1989:
208) terms, is achieved by promoting flexibility and the deregulation of certain spheres of
economic activity, particularly in relation to the labour market. The prohibition against guilds
and combines does not apply to major corporations. Deregulation means “increasing the
responsibilities and opportunities of private individuals and reducing those of the state.” The
objective is to “depoliticize the economy in order to protect the state from the manipulation of
redistributive combines...” (1989: 249). The state should focus on enforcing efficient rules rather
than managing production or allocating resources.
Demobilization and reregulation aimed to undermine union activity; to reduce the density
of unionization and discourage the use of strikes and other forms of collective bargaining and
struggle by making such action useless. The Ministry of Labor ceased to facilitate collective
bargaining or uphold workers’ rights, and began to do just the opposite—it worked to promote a
24
flexible workforce and a labor market with minimal regulations and safeguards. Private service
contracts proliferated at the expense of stable work. In the rural areas, efforts were made to
continue to promote the parcelization of land, and the breakup of peasant cooperatives. The
ongoing power of the teachers union was used to justify the slow progress of educational reform.
Privatization was vigorously pursued not just in the sphere of production but in a wide
range of critical social services like education, healthcare, and pensions. The process of
privatization has been somewhat by stealth. Rather than denying access to free public education,
successive governments have failed to make improvements and have allowed the educational
system to fall into such a state of disrepair that private schools have proliferated and have
become the norm even among the poor. The same is true of the health care system. Private
pension plans following the Chilean model have been introduced.
Even coercive authority was deregulated (De Soto 1989: 251). Policing has become
reliant on para-police organizations (like Seranazgos in certain neighborhoods of Lima), the use
of informal urban police (or “cops for hire”), gangs deployed for protection, reservists, and
private security forces (Schulte-Bockholt 2013: 60-66). At the same time, the media whips up a
climate of fear through a grotesque focus on violent criminal activity. Spying and monitoring
have become normalized as by the surveilance functions of the state. Successive governments
have exhibited intense hostility toward non-governmental organizations and have criminalized
the activities of protest movements.
Public policy making has focused on targetted spending, rather than policies aimed at
achieving universality. Government spending has focused heavily on infrastructure projects,
which have helped link rural communities, facilitate commercialization of agricultural goods,
and promote internal trade. Social programs have been financed through special funds (with
25
organizations like FONCODES devoted to the disbursements of such funds). As a result, a
patchwork quilt of channels and mechanisms earmarks particular resources for specific
communities and purposes. The use of special funds to channel resources is justified by the need
to avoid redistributive pressures from legislative appropriations (Barrantes 2009).
A cultural shift is apparent in the rise of entrepreneurship. De Soto’s glorification of the
small entrepreneur is widely accepted in mainstream media. The clasismo of the 1970-80 period
was replaced with a new ethic of getting ahead: todo se consigue por la lucha (“all is achieved
through struggle”) was replaced with hay que competir para ganar (“one must compete to get
ahead”). A substantial market for self-help books for budding entrepreneurs has arisen, and the
media celebrates the success stories of provincial entrepreneurs and merchants. A whole section
of El Comercio is devoted to emprendedores.31 The pioneering TV program Promoviendo,
hosted by Guido Pennano—Minister of Industry under Fujimori (1990-91) before he was
imprisoned for fraud—is devoted to success stories of small-scale entrepreneurship.32 Business
gurus like Nano Guerra García provide models for budding capitalists.33 Yet despite the spread
of emprendedorismo, there are no collective associations of emprendedores.34
Consumerism is another dimension of this culture shift. Alberto Vergara (2015) uses the
phrase compar y calla (“buy and be quiet”) to capture the mix of conspicuous consumption and
political quiescence that characterizes contemporary Peru.
Neoliberalism as a technique of governance has advantages: it is easier go govern a
nation of entrepreneurs than one of class warriors. Yet neoliberalism has been beset by internal
contradictions. Despite very high rates of growth—due in large measure to favorable
international commodity prices and foreign investment in extractive industries—Peru continues
to be a mediocre performer in international rankings of competitiveness. In part, this is because
26
competitiveness requires robust institutions and substantial public investments; it also requires
planning and coordination; and it assumes an interest in the wellbeing and productive capacity of
the working population.
In the great roulette of life chances, the deck remains heavily stacked against small
entrepreneurs. Strong legal institutions and the rule of law are vital to ensure that informal
entrepreneurs can compete, and to ensure that deregulation does not produce chaos, bad
externalities, and a host of other adverse effects. And yet Peru has lagged in the implementation
of these sorts of institutional reforms. The bad externalities that proliferate—disease, pollution,
congestion, violent crime—affect the poor disproportionately.
Peru has underperformed in terms of redistribution. It is entirely consistent with the
strictures of neoliberalism to spend money on poverty alleviation programs. De Soto (1989: 251)
wrote that “to redistribute to the poorest and least fortunate members of society” is an important
function of the state provided it does not discourage production or distort markets. Yet the
various programs devoted to poverty alleviation in Peru have been modest in impact compared
with similar programs in other countries.35 Part of the problem appears to be a technocratic
orientation in the implementation of the programs which inhibits their massive and rapid delivery.
Some recent institutional innovations have had perverse effects. The canon minero is a
program for redistributing royalties from mining operations that has the unintended effect of
generating conflict. Regional and local governments compete for resources disbursed by the
central government (the Ministry of Finance). There are hundreds of flashpoints of conflict
throughout Peru. This is largely because extractive industries tend to be located precisely in these
poor rural areas. These projects generate enormous wealth for industry, but they impose huge
27
social, economic and environmental costs on impoverished regions. The canon minero
exacerbates these tensions.
Public services have been allowed to deteriorate despite macroeconomic growth and
stability. Public education, especially in rural areas, is of extremely poor quality. In Lima half of
all school aged children go to inexpensive and poor quality private schools because the public
schools are so bad. There have been improvements in health, as well as public infrastructure, but
the contrast between public and private services remains like night and day. Public insecurity
caused by everyday crime and violence is another persistent social ill.
Despite the many limitations of neoliberalism in Peru, changing this policy orientation
and mode of governance has, to date, proven been impossible. On the one hand, opposition to
neoliberalism has been undermined by the policies of demobilization, deregulation,
depoliticization, privatization, surveillance, social targeting, and the culture of entrepreneurship
and consumerism. On the other hand, legacies of violence and conflict have made it particularly
difficult to develop collective capacity for popular mobilization, including the construction of
political parties and movements of the left. In the absence of collective pressures for change, the
urgency to undertake comprehensive efforts to address Peru’s social deficits is lost, and the
capacity to hold governments accountable for their failures is minimized. In this respect, Peru
stands in stark contrast with its neighbours.
VI. Peru in the Light of Latin America’s Left Turns
At the dawn of the 21st century many Latin American democracies made “left turns.”36 This was
an unexpected reversal of two decades of neoliberalism. The end of the Cold War had seemed to
promise an end of history and politics. Latin America’s left turns, however, marked the return of
28
politics and history. This was part of a larger and more diffuse movement of opinion against
neoliberalism born of globalization, financial and monetary crises, and rising inequality.37 Latin
America’s left turns were not a repudiation of liberalism so much as a desire to overcome its
insufficiencies in the Latin American context—whether the lack of human development, the low
capacity of public institutions, or the absence of effective legal institutions.38 The alternative was
not illiberalism but post-liberalism.39
Peru’s democracy was impervious to the regional trend.40 Given Peru’s history of
radicalism and political instability, it seemed strange that when the tide turned Peru missed the
current. Peru was the kind of country in which liberalism had always proven most inadequate
due to the weakness of the state and social exclusion. As constitutional scholar Pedro Planas
(1999: 327) put it, “the idea of ‘citizen’ suffered in our lands a systematic oblivian” (“la noción
de ‘ciudadano’ sufrió en nuestras tierras un olvido sistemático”). He linked the idea of
citizenship to the ability to demand recognition of rights from the state: the absense of a rule of
law-based state is a fundamental weakness of citizenship in Peru. Calls for a limited state and
free market economy meant one thing in the context of countries with robust welfare states and
another in countries like Peru, which not only lacked welfare programs but also faced preexisting
problems of social exclusion that demanded attention (Planas 1999: 343-349).
The imperviousness to the regional trend to the left seemed particularly curious because
the two Andean nations most similar to Peru in terms of inequality, long-standing histories of
social exclusion, and persistent political instability, Bolivia and Ecuador, both elected (and reelected) left-wing governments. They achieved high levels of economic performance and
improvements in social indicators. Bolivia is a far poorer country than Peru, but it has invested
more than twice as much in education and now has rates of educational attainment higher than
29
Peru. It has also invested more in healthcare. Ecuador has also invested substantially more in
healthcare and education.41
The experience of internal conflict appears to be a powerful deterrent to “left turns.”
Bolivia today faces many of the same challenges as Peru, but the national revolution of 1952
gave it an earlier start on a reformist project which has many similarities to the current reforms
under Evo Morales. The revolution was a remarkably peaceful affair, and Bolivia did not
experience heavy-handed repression in the subsequent decades. The Bolivian military is
relatively weak and has a history of corruption. As a result, powerful social movements have
emerged and have been unafraid to push their case to the point of winning power by electoral
means. “In Peru,” as Eduardo Silva (2009: 231) notes, “significant insurrectionary movements
and a turn to authoritarianism that closed political space during Fujimori’s presidency inhibited
the formation of associational power and horizontal linkages across social movement
organizations.” Colombia is the only other country in Latin America that has been forced to
grapple with a comparably powerful insurgency—the FARC—and, like Peru, it has avoided a
left turn.
The election of President Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) is instructive. Humala appeared to
represent a left-wing alternative yet, significantly, he was a former military officer who fought
against the Shining Path in Tingo María, Huánuco. He ran on a program of moderate reforms
called “La gran transformación.” Even before taking office Humala was compelled to commit
himself to follow a “road map” in which he agreed to focus on promoting economic growth,
macroeconomic stability, and avoidance of any destabilizing measures—a perfect example of
negative power.42 After taking office, he was constrained by a hostile business community,
critical media, and powerful right-wing adversaries in the congress and the courts. The strategy
30
of the right consisted in ensuring that Humala would stick to his “road map,” and avoid any
chavista temptations. They expressed outrage when he appeared to be considering the
nationalization of the Spanish multinational Repsol, which would have provided resources for
redistributive programs; they fought hard against efforts to require prior consultation of
indigenous peoples; and they lobbied to ensure that major mining projects like Conga would be
approved. There was no countervailing force against these pressures. Humala lacked a strong
party organization or social base to hold him accountable. The result was that he was able to
accomplish little of what he promised, leading to disappointment in the ranks of his electoral
base and defections of allies in congress.
Conclusion
I began this paper by suggesting two different lessons that can be drawn from an analysis of the
impact of the Shining Path on Peru’s constitutional evolution. The first was a version of Naomi
Klein’s shock doctrine: the Shining Path had a major impact on Peru by creating the emergency
situation within which it was possible to adopt a more neoliberal and authoritarian constitution.
The second lesson is that the Shining Path failed to revolutionize Peruvian society and politics.
The inability of criollo republican institutions to contain the pressures of popular mobilization,
and the inevitable pressures for redistribution in an extremely unequal society, led to a process of
social democratization that was arrested but not reversed by neoliberal governance in the 1990s.
There is evidence for both claims.
The perception of an existential threat allowed a pro-market economic model could be
implemented not just as a solution to the effect of populism and economic crisis, but as an
technique of government. Not only would the 1993 Constitution enshrine a neoliberal economic
31
model and reconstitute political power around its inviolability, it would lock-in an approach to
governing that would direct the power of the state to neutralizing collective movements through
a combination of demobilization, privatization, surveillance, targeting, and entrepreneurial
culture. As a result, two decades later, Peru did not follow its Andean neighbors Venezuela,
Bolivia, and Ecuador in adopting post-neoliberal constitutional reforms.
But it is also important to recognize that the Shining Path failed in large measure because
there was a democratic alternative to revolution. Not an incrementalist or reformist movement,
the Shining Path presented itself as a harbinger of wholesale transformation of state and society.
It threatened constituted power by exploiting its greatest vulnerability in Peru’s social order: the
unequal and colonial nature of social and political institutions, and the enduring and ongoing
cultural legacies of colonialism, including political centralism, social exclusion, and denial of
cultural recognition. The challenge for Peru’s democracy is to show that these problems can be
addressed within the framework of a democratic regime and state.
Those who advocate progressive change could do worse than return to the path of reform
and social democratization initiated before the Shining Path scorched the earth, while at the same
time learning from more recent experiences with constitutional change that have flourished in the
region. The 1979 Constitution is likely to remain a point of reference for such an agenda, which
might start by recognizing popular sovereignty and the right to self-determination of indigenous
people within their ancestral territories. It would seek a new balance between the rights of
workers and the rights of employers, as well as the elimination of labor services and support for
unionization. Gender equality and recognition of LGBTQ rights deserve constitutional
guarantees, as do the right to public pensions and high quality public education. The right to
renegotiate contracts with foreign investors would be restored. Reforms might also include the
32
democratization of political parties, as well as participatory budgeting and popular consultations
around major policy decisions. Finally, a reformed constitution might include buen vivir as a
principle to guide public policy and an alternative to the neoliberal focus on growth.43
Endnotes
1
On the meaning of neoliberalism see Foucault (2004); Brown (2015); Jones (2012). See
discussion in Section V. See Peck (2010: 26) on roll back versus roll out neoliberalism.
2
See Cameron & Hershberg, (2010); Levitsky & Roberts (2011); Elner (2014).
3
In this sense, it involved the kind of punishment of the body that Foucault (1979) identifies
with pre-modern sovereignty.
4
This term was first used by Cotler (1976), and subsequently by others including Handelman
(1975: 45) and McClintock (1981: 65).
5
Michael Mann (1986: 169-170) makes a useful distinction between despotic power, which
involve actions that are implemented by rulers without routine, institutionalized negotiation with
opposition groups, while infrastructural power is the capacity to penetrate society to implement
political decisions. For a discussion see Soifer (2008).
6
See Handelman (1976: 55-58). For a particularly vivid description of the politics of literacy and
education in Ayacucho, see Heilman (2010: 96-119).
7
See Blanco (1972).
8
For an account of the 1965 guerrilla experience, see Béjar (1970).
9
See Lowenthal (1976); Chaplin (1976); McClintock and Lowenthal (1983).
10
See Alberti et al. (1977); Balbi (1989); Eckstein (1983); Huber Stephens (1980); McClintock
(1981).
33
11
“We [represented] the Aristotelian Mean,” said one officer, “we wanted the law to be
upheld—as it has to be—but with liberty.” Cited in Pásara (1983: 329).
12
For an excellent and thorough discussion of clasista unionism, see Balbi (1989: 79-90). See
also Tovar (1985).
13
Parodi (1986).
14
Consider the eloquent words of Carlos Iván Degregori, Cecilia Blondet and Nicolás Lynch
(1986: 21), writing about the Cruz de Mayo barrio in Rímac: “De ser siervos, waqchas, clientes o
plebeyos, a lo largo de su periplo los fundadores de Cruz de Mayo se convierten en parte del
contigente de pioneros que, al invadir tierras y construir nuevos asentamientos llevan (o traen) el
proceso de democratización social al corazón mismo de dominio oligárquico y burguéz
dependiente, a Lima” (italics in original).
15
On the emergence of the left, see Huber Stephens (1983); Bernales (1987).
16
Brazil also adopted a new constitution as part of its transition to democracy.
17
The major groups were FOCEP, PSR, PCP, UDP.
18
Given inevitable social change, the Shining Path was in a “race against time” (Degregori 1992:
35).
19
Guzmán professed to be influenced by Thomas Mann’s account of the story of Moses in The
Tables of the Law.
20
See Vargas Llosa, M. (1991) and Vargas Llosa, A. (1991, 1994).
21
In his own mind, De Soto appears to have concluded that his advocacy of informal
entrepreneurs actually contributed to the defeat of the Shining Path (Dargent 2014).
22
See Schulte-Bockholt (2013: 91-92).
34
23
By contrast, there was only 16 percent abstention in the Constituent Assembly elections
(Bernales 1980: 44).
24
See the essays in Del Golpe de Estado a la Nueva Constitución. Serie: Lecturas sobre Temas
Constitucionales 9. Lima: Comisión Andina de Juristas.
25
Similar deliberations occurred within the Chilean military junta after the 1973 coup. See
Barros (2002).
26
Article 112 read: “The presidential term is for five years. The president can be re-elected
immediately for one additional term. After another constitutional period has transpired, the expresident can run again, subject to the same conditions.”
27
The law stated: “interpreted in an authentic manner, the re-election to which Article 112 of the
Constitution refers is limited to presidential terms initiated after the date of promulgation of the
text of the constitution. In consequence, interpreted authentically, in the calculation one does not
retroactively include presidential periods initiated prior to the entry into force of the Constitution.”
28
See Gill and Cutler (2015).
29
I am grateful to Teivo Teivainen for this point.
30
See Durand (2004).
31
See http://elcomercio.pe/noticias/emprendedores-516839
32
See http://www.promoviendo.tv
33
See http://aeg.pucp.edu.pe/boletinaeg/notaegresados/189_egresados.htm
34
I am grateful to Francisco Durand for this point.
35
Peru’s Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion is involved in a number of projects
aimed at poverty alleviation. These programs include PRONAA (prevents malnutrition affecting
3 million kids); FONCODES (offers temporary job creation for 400,000 people); CUNA MAS
35
(supports early child development in the first 3 years of life, benefiting 80,000 children);
JUNTOS (a conditional cash transfer program with 700,000 users); PENSION 65 (supports
170,000 elderly people over 65 years of age in highlands).
36
See Cameron & Hershberg, (2010); Levitsky & Roberts (2011).
37
Rosanvallon (2006: 147).
38
The sense of disappointment with market reforms could be read in the subtitles of the two
major books written by Hernando de Soto. His first book, The Other Path, written in 1989, and a
play on the name of Peru’s revolutionary movement, the Shining Path, heralded an “invisible
revolution in the Third World” as an alternative to underdevelopment and “Marxist-Leninist
fundamentalism” (Mario Vargas Llosa’s words, p. xx). His second book, The Mystery of Capital,
written in 2000, promised to explain “Why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere
else.”
39
Scholars like Yashar (1999) and Arditi (2010) wrote of “post-liberal” democracy.
40
Roughly a dozen countries (including Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay,
Argentina, Uruguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica), encompassing most of the population
of the region. Latin American nations often move in packs: shifts in policy from export-oriented
growth to substitution industrialization and then to neoliberalism have often seen the region
move in tandem. Peru has occasionally been an outlier—it was a “late adopter” of populist
reforms, and it adopted them under military rule. Nevertheless, there are broad similarities in the
patterns and sequences of national development trajectories across the region, to which Peru is
no exception.
41
See http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/PER and
http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/BOL
36
42
http://elcomercio.pe/politica/gobierno/ollanta-humala-presento-hoja-ruta-que-buscacambio-
rumbo-noticia-756721
43
See Gudynas (2011).
37
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