The Soldier as Radical: the Peruvian Military Government, 1968–1975

1976 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Philip

Most recent literature on military government is extremely skeptical of the possibility of effective military reformism. This scepticism, encouraged by various behavioural hypotheses, has been further strengthened by a number of cross-sectional analyses, which seem to show that most military governments are unstable, conservative, and indifferent at economic management.1 The military government in Peru, therefore, appears to be something of an exception. Its first President, General Velasco, stayed in office for nearly seven years, and his successor, General Morales Bermúdez, has promised that the nature of the regime will not be drastically changed. Even more important, the Government claims to have carried out a comprehensive set of agrarian, industrial and social reforms that were aimed at bringing Peru out of its former underdevelopment. Moreover, the Government has claimed to have achieved all this during a seven-year period in which the conventional criteria of economic success – a substantial growth in real income per capita, a moderate rate of inflation and a reasonably stable exchange rate – also appear to have been met.

Author(s):  
Rodolfo Hoffmann

Income inequality in Brazil, already high, increased after the military coup of 1964 and remained very high even after democratization in the 1980s. It decreased substantially in the period 2001–2014, after inflation was controlled. The Gini index of the per capita household income dropped from 0.594 in 2001 to 0.513 in 2014. The determinants of this decline in inequality are analyzed considering the components of that income and how each one affected changes in inequality, showing the impact of changes in the remuneration of private sector employees and in pensions paid by the government, as well as federal transfer programs. Changes in education lie behind the first of these effects, and the increase of the minimum wage reinforced all three. The economic crises after 2014 interrupted the process of decline, and among economically active persons, inequality even increased from 2014 to 2015. Measures to further reduce inequality are suggested.


Author(s):  
Brian E. Loveman

Latin America’s armed forces have played a central role in the region’s political history. This selective annotated bibliography focuses on key sources, with varying theoretical, empirical, and normative treatments of the military governments in the region, from the Cuban Revolution (1959) until the end of the Cold War (1989–1990). The article is limited to those cases in which military governments or “civil-military” governments were in power. This excludes personalist dictatorships, party dictatorships, and civilian governments in which the armed forces exercised considerable influence but did not rule directly. No pretense is made of comprehensiveness or of treating the “causes” of military coups (a vast literature) and of civil-military relations under civilian governments. Likewise, the closely related topics of guerrilla movements during this period, human rights violations under the military governments, US policy and support for many of the military governments, and the transitions back to civilian government (including “transitional justice”) are not covered in depth, but some of the selections do treat these topics and direct the reader to a more extensive literature on these subjects. Long-term military governments, with changing leadership in most cases, controlled eleven Latin American nations for significant periods from 1964 to 1990: Ecuador, 1963–1966 and 1972–1978; Guatemala, 1963–1985 (with an interlude from 1966–1969); Brazil, 1964–1985; Bolivia, 1964–1970 and 1971–1982; Argentina, 1966–1973 and 1976–1983; Peru, 1968–1980; Panama, 1968–1989; Honduras, 1963–1966 and 1972–1982; Chile, 1973–1990; and Uruguay, 1973–1984. In El Salvador the military dominated the government from 1948 until 1984, but the last “episode” was from 1979 to 1984. Military governments, though inevitably authoritarian, implemented varying economic, social, and foreign policies. They had staunch supporters and intense opponents, and they were usually subject to internal factionalism and ideological as well as policy disagreements. The sources discussed in this article reflect that diversity.


1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pilar Vergara

The economic and social strategy developed by the democratic governments in Chile since 1990 has been based on the premise that free-market policies promoting growth and economic stability must continue, but should be combined with social policies designed to promote greater equality. This new set of policies produced quick and positive results in the context of strong economic growth. The reduction of poverty was its crowning achievement. However, not all the Concertación's redistributive efforts have enjoyed the same level of success. Inequalities in income distribution are again increasing. Significant segments of society, such as subsistence farmers, rural migrants to cities, women and youth who lack vocational training—as well as an important segment of the middle class that had been impoverished during the military regime—are being systematically marginalized from the benefits of economic growth and social policy. The fundamental problems of current Chilean social policy are rooted in the privatization of social sectors under the military government and the resulting dual model of social welfare.


Africa ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Hart

AbstractIn 1979 Nigeria's military government held the first general elections for fifteen years. The politicians then resumed power under a republican constitution. The National Party of Nigeria, a conservative coalition, narrowly won the elections from four other parties and virtually controlled the next elections in 1983. There were five election rounds: for the President, for nine-teen state governers, for the Senate, for the House of Representatives and for the state assemblies. Increases over the 1979 vote in the presidential round indicated some rigging. Results in the following rounds were incredible. The root cause was northern reluctance within the National Party to honour an agreement to a southern presidential candidate at the next elections in 1987 and southern competition for the 1987 nomination. After the elections the courts failed to redress the rigging and the President to purge corrupt Ministers. The military then overthrew the government and resumed control.


2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidya Atal

The Big Mac Index was introduced to (semi-humorously) test the theory of purchasing power parity and measure the disparity in currency values. Instead, in this paper, we consider this index to find out the per capita real-income disparity across 54 countries. We find that the per capita real-income can be very low in some countries even when Big Mac burgers are very cheap, like in India. Among these countries, Hong Kongs per capita Big Mac affordability is the highest with 47 burgers daily whereas Pakistans people could afford just one a day. Additionally, we find that Russia and Chinas Big Mac affordability has been significantly increasing over the last decade, Brazils has remained more or less constant, however USAs Big Mac affordability has been falling, indicating that per capita real-income of Americans has been decreasing over the last decade. Finally, we find that increased role of the government might be negatively correlated to per capita real-income. Czech Republic has been experiencing increased Big Mac affordability as the country has been reducing the governments role; whereas Argentina has been experiencing reduced Big Mac affordability as the country has been moving left and increasing the governments power.


Author(s):  
Lee J. Alston ◽  
Marcus André Melo ◽  
Bernardo Mueller ◽  
Carlos Pereira

This chapter discusses the military government and the belief in “developmentalism” which motivated the institutions put in place by the regime. Developmentalism rested on top-down technocratic planning and was a coalition between the military and the business community, both domestic and foreign. Import substitution policies along with state-led industrialization brought economic growth in the late 1960s and into the mid-1970s. But, the Brazilian miracle of the late 1960s and early 1970s began to sputter out, and, moreover, political rights became more constrained. The years of censorship and a closed political system sowed the seeds for a more open political order. Above all, the failure of the expansionist strategy of growth through import substitution accompanied by inflation and external debt became self-evident. Citizens also began to blame the government for not reducing economic and social inequality. The dominant belief that economic growth should precede social inclusion started losing political support.


1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhoda Rabkin

The Literature on democratic transitions suggests two opposite sorts of dangers that the successful democratizer must avoid: too much uncertainty on the one hand, and too little on the other. The first can lead to conflict, violence, and abortive transitions (Karl and Schmitter, 199D; while the second means there is no democracy at all, but leads to something less which has been variously called: "tutelary democracy," "electoralism," or "democradura."Before the government of Patricio Aylwin took office in Chile in March 1990, most observers anticipated that the return to democracy would bring considerable social conflict and political instability. Expressing a widely held view, one expert wrote: "Any return to democracy in Chile would entail vocal demands, from a variety of social groups and movements, to reverse the policies instituted by the regime since 1973" (Loveman 1986-87:29). The need to confront human rights abuses during the military government was another potentially explosive political issue.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-143
Author(s):  
Sanjay Ramesh

Fiji’s history is interspersed with ethnic conflict, military coups, new constitutions and democratic elections. Ethnic tensions started to increase in the 1960s and reached its peak with violent indigenous Fijian ethnic assertion in the form of military coups in 1987. Following the coup, the constitution adopted at independence was abrogated and a constitution that provided indigenous political hegemony was promulgated in 1990. However, by 1993, there were serious and irreparable divisions within the indigenous Fijian community, forcing coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka to spearhead a constitution review. The result of the review was the multiracial 1997 Constitution which failed to resolve deep seated ethnic tensions, resulting in another nationalist coup in 2000 and a mutiny at the military barracks in December of that year. Following the failed mutiny, the Commander of the Republic of the Fiji Military Forces, Voreqe Bainimarama, publicly criticised nationalist policies of the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, culminating in another military coup in 2006. The new military government started plans to de-ethnise the Fijian state and promulgated a constitution that promoted ethnic equality.Post independence Fiji is characterised by these conflicts over ethnocracy. The ethnic hegemony of indigenous Fijian chiefs is set against inter-ethnic counter hegemony. While democratic politics encourages inter-ethic alliance-building, the ethnic hegemony of the chiefs has been asserted by force. Latterly, the fragmentation of the ethnic hegemony has reconfigured inter-ethnic alliances, and the military has emerged as a vehicle for de-ethnicisation. The article analyses this cyclical pattern of ethnic hegemony and multiethnic counter hegemony as a struggle over (and against) Fijian ethnocracy. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 231-249
Author(s):  
A. J. Ogbole ◽  
J. S. Bisji ◽  
S. J. Umar ◽  
I. M. Jallo ◽  
S. O. Ezeh ◽  
...  

The study assessed the knowledge, attitudes and perception of Nigerian Military population towards the coronavirus outbreak. A web-based cross-sectional survey was used to collect from 216 data from military officers from the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Air Force and the Nigerian Navy. Majority of the study sample were males, 88.4% (n = 191) and more than half the respondents were between 21 to 30 years old (50.5%). Also, 82.4% of the sample were graduates and 54.2% married. 82.9% were from Nigerian Army and 57.9% were commissioned officers with 6-10 years’ work experience 49.5 (n=107). Results show that there was no significant correlation between demographic factors of gender, age, military type, religion, education and marital status and knowledge of COVID-19 (p>.05). Results further show that there was no significant correlation between demographic factors and perception of COVID-19 (p>.05), meaning there was no significant difference in perception of COVID-19 based on demographic factors. Finally, the results showed that there was no significant correlation between demographic factors and attitude to COVID-19 (p>.05).  Irrespective of gender or age for example, knowledge, attitude, and perception of COVID-19 was good among the military population. Despites high level of awareness among the study population, it was recommended that the military authorities in Nigeria further strengthen their health systems, as well as the knowledge of infectious diseases and pandemics which will help them to assist the government and in educating the general populace through their military-civilian interface.


1971 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 456-474
Author(s):  
John Stephen Gitlitz

On 24 June 1969 the military government of Peru, exercising its de facto power to issue legislation by decree, promulgated a law of agrarian reform. In Latin America legal norms—even radical ones—are not necessarily to be feared. Many countries have agrarian reform laws and in most of these agrarian structures have not been changing rapidly. Indeed, the previous administration in Peru had passed a mild law in 1964, but the hacienda structure of the Peruvian Andes remained virtually intact. Few feared that the new code enacted by the military would present a strong challenge to tradition.Forty-eight hours after its promulgation opinions began to change. The government announced that interventors were being sent to eight of the largest sugar estates on the northern coast. Intervention is the first step toward expropriation. The sugar estates lie at the heart of the Peruvian oligarchy: they were exempt from the 1964 legislation.


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