>Populism: Latin America

If the term populism was initially borrowed from radical farmers' movements in the United States in the late nineteenth century to describe early-twentieth-century political developments in Latin America, since then it has certainly acquired a special relevance for understanding this region's politics. The golden era for Latin American populism is usually cited as the 1930s to the 1960s and identified with such preeminent populists as Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940) in Mexico, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre in Peru (though never president), and Juan and Eva "Evita" Perón in Argentina (1946–1955). If populism had a transformative impact on the region's politics, it was assumed that the series of military dictatorships beginning in the 1960s ended the populist phase. But since the 1980s Latin America has unexpectedly witnessed a round of neopopulism, with an expansion of the possibilities for popular political practice. Populism, it is clear, is a more enduring feature of the region's political landscape than once imagined.

Political analysts, however, have had great difficulty precisely defining populism. A wide selection of political goings-on have been called "populist." These include radical farmers' movements (Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution), or movements of radical intellectuals who valorize the "peasantry" (Luis Valcarcel's "Indianism" in Peru), and also spontaneous grassroots peasant movements (the populist Mexican Revolution's Zapatistas, but not the Cuban Revolution), dictatorships (Argentina's Perón, and more recently, Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela), as well as distinctly reactionary populisms (Rene Barrientos in Bolivia). Since the 1980s we can add neoliberal neopopulisms and the populist practices of the New Social Movements to more documented variations.

The Practice of Populism

If it is a distinctly Latin American way of conducting the people's business, what are the characteristics of populism as a political practice? Though diverse commentators emphasize different combinations of traits, generally populism has been associated with expansive electoral campaigning by a "charismatic" leader with special attributes (often a political outsider), the participation of the masses (that is, the "people," or the "popular" of populism), with strong appeals to nationalism or to cultural pride. Successful populist movements usually bypass traditional political institutions like the church, the oligarchy, political parties, newspapers, and elites. Given this, they are typically urban-centered and particularly court the working class but bring together a heterogeneous, if sometimes fleeting, coalition.

The career of Argentina's populist dictator Juan Perón is an oft cited archetypeal instance of Latin American populism. Ideologically eclectic and personally charismatic, though a career army officer, Colonel Perón won the loyalty of most of the nation's working class by 1944, at once facilitating the desires of labor unions, long socially and politically isolated, while repressing the uncooperative. The bond between Perón and the nation's worker's movement (called the "shirtless ones") won him the 1946 election, after which he became a caudillo, or personalistic leader, even as he oversaw economic growth and continued to expand his political base among workers, improving health care, pension plans, and more. The great popularity of his wife, the actress Eva Perón, among the poorest classes, and her role as his personal intercessor to the people, helped to cement Perón's image as a populist and to develop the political rituals of Peronism, which outlived the man himself.

To summarize, populism assumes a quasi-direct, emotionally charged relation between a personalistic leader and his devoted followers. If anything, "clientelism" is the experiential basis of populism. If populist leaders effectively redistribute material goods and other benefits among their loyal, poor constituency, the masses are incorporated into the political process only in a subordinated fashion, as the clients of a top-down, vertical process dependent on the patron's generosity. As pre-figured in Antonio Gramsci's concept of the "national-popular," and reworked by populist theorist Ernesto Laclau, populism can obscure class rule and inequality by provisionally absorbing the contradictory interests of civil society within the orbit of the state. For this reason, populism has sometimes been treated as incompatible with democracy. An accompanying nation-building strategy of populist, clientelistic, regimes in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil has been to identify national identity with (racial, cultural, and class) mixture in the figure of the "mestizo," or what José Vasconcelos lyrically called the "cosmic race." Recent work of such cultural critics as Nestor Garcia Canclini has given renewed attention to "cultural populism."

The wide application of the term populism begs the question: What might not be considered populist? Populism appears not in moments of stability, but as a condition of adjustment to periods of generalized political crisis. Historically it has been treated as a phase of political development in Latin America associated with the industrial period and the growth of cities, which made possible the political incorporation of the new urban masses. It has also been identified with the transition from oligarchic to modern politics, and with the condition of dependent capitalism. Populism is often located between the extremes of military dictatorship and political party democracy, though at times each has exhibited populist traits. Populism is also thought to spring up in the absence of both the gradual expansion of individual rights and self-governance. In contrast to liberalism or Marxism, populism conspicuously lacks an identifiable doctrine.

Features of Populism

It has been easier to cite examples of populist leaders than to clearly demarcate the features of populism. To begin with, as a macro-explanatory framework, populism is often applied in a too general, and therefore vague, fashion. Attempted definitions, such as the formula: Populism = leader √ charismatic bond + elections √ followers, are imprecise and explain little, obscuring most of what deserves debate. Part of the problem has to do with the conditions of most populist movements: specific in time and place, associated with crisis and with political transition. Another error directly equates populism with a "leadership style." This leads to a plethora of biographies of outstanding populists, where "charisma," another slippery term, becomes a sufficient explanation for the phenomenon of populism, not in the sociologist Max Weber's sense of an attributed social authority, but as an essentially psychic fact. This ignores the collective nature of all such populist movements.

A further temptation when defining populism is the almost tautological appeal to the "popular," which at once makes a virtue of "the people" and mystifies what it should explain. Locating a given movement in "the people" (as a collective national-popular will) fails to differentiate between politics as social and cultural practice (the work of politicians) and a given constituency, particularly in terms of the idioms, exchanges, and representations that produce and maintain relationships between leaders and followers, along with their contingent relation to social and historical context. In fact, simplified moral narratives of "the people" typically characterize political (and some scholarly) backlashes against populist regimes, where the lack of a doctrine and the demagoguery of an irresponsible leader are assumed to ignite a disorganized explosion of the masses, thus destabilizing the state. These arguments justified military coups in Argentina in 1955, in Brazil in 1964, in Panama in 1968, in Peru in 1968, and in Bolivia in 1964, among others.

For the many reasons cited above, it is less constructive to insist upon populism as an identifiable political type, philosophy, doctrine, or style, in short, any "ism" succinctly defined. Rather, populism, the term, is itself implicated in the history and struggles of Latin America, a charged point of reference for diverse political relationships, practices, strategies, and sets of representations, in specific times and places, where new political constituencies are introduced. Called both "premodern" and "progressive," populism is a relational rather than categorical fact of Latin American politics.

Neopopulisms in Latin America since the 1980s, both in government and as effective opposition movements, have surprised many. Neopopulists like Argentina's Carlos Saúl Menem (1989–1999), Brazil's Fernando Collor (1990–1992), and Peru's Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) all combined populist charisma and neoliberal structural adjustment policies to address their nations' economic stagnation, demonstrating unexpected affinities between neopopulism and neoliberalism. Both rely on mass support of the poor, distance from intermediary organizations (like political parties), attacks on the "political class," strengthening of the state, winning of support through bold reform, and targeted benefit programs. Neoliberal neopopulism has been criticized, however, for confusing "consumer" with "citizen," where collective demands are articulated primarily through individual cost-benefit analyses, the market, voting, and the sale of labor.

Further populist developments deserving mention are the region's many New Social Movements, primarily in nations with significant indigenous populations such as Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Brazil, and for which Mexico's EZLN (1994–present)—also called the Zapatistas—has been a model. These movements often rely on grassroots agrarian unionism, frequently combine antineoliberalism (such as rejection of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement) with defense of national sovereignty, the call to expand citizenship rights, and the use of spectacular direct-action protests. Less preoccupied with charismatic leadership than with a new locus for "the people," these movements have switched the emphasis from "peasant" to "Indian" and from "class" to "culture," while embracing a plebiscite or assembly-style democracy to critique the exclusionary state. La Confederación de Nacionalidades Indigenas in Ecuador and MAS (Movement toward Socialism) in Bolivia are current examples. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (1998–) is a hybrid exception, mixing an authoritarian caudillismo with effective use of the popular referendum. These movements demonstrate the symbolic power of populist tactics, as an opposition dedicated to the region's political renewal.

See also Authoritarianism: Latin America ; Capitalism ; Communism: Latin America ; Democracy ; Dictatorship in Latin America ; Nationalism .

bibliography

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Torre, Carlos de la. Populist Seduction in Latin America: The Ecuadorian Experience. Athens: Ohio University's Center for International Studies, 2000.

Robert Albro