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The Peruvian Experiment in Retrospect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

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NO country in Latin America, and few anywhere in the third world, was the subject of more social science writing during the late 1970s and early 1980s than Peru. Books, monographs, articles, and dissertations poured forth from Peru itself, from elsewhere in Latin America, and from the United States, Western Europe, and even the Soviet Union and Japan.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

1 The Peruvian literature on this period is too abundant to be reviewed here. An entire generation of Peruvian social scientists cut its teeth on the effort to make sense of this period, a watershed in their own lives.

2 Cotler's, Julio work, Clase, estadoy natión en el Peró [Class, state, and nation in Peru] (Lima, 1978)Google Scholar, is essential for a grasp of the historical and political context in which the military government acted. The best-informed analysis of factional struggles within the Peruvian military goverment is Garcia, Henry Pease, El ocaso delpoder oligárquico: lucha política en la escena ofitial, 1968–1975 [The decline of oligarchical power: political struggle on the official stage, 19681975] (Lima, 1979).Google Scholar

A worthwhile review of the economy is Portacarrero, Felipe, Crisis y recuperation: la economia peruana de los yo a los 80 [Crisis and recovery: the Peruvian economy from the 70s to the 80s] (Lima, 1980)Google Scholar. Other important contributions on the economy include y Leon, Carlos Amat, La economia de la crisis peruana [The economics of the Peruvian crisis] (Lima, 1978)Google Scholar; Schydlowsky, Daniel and Wicht, Juan, Anatomia de un fracaso economico: Perú, 1968–1978 [Anatomy of an economic failure: Peru 1968–1978] (Lima, 1979)Google Scholar; and Cabieses, H. and Otero, C., Economia peruana: un ensayo de interpretation [The Peruvian economy: an essay in interpretation] (Lima, 1978).Google Scholar

Many useful sectoral analyses have been published in Lima. Among these are Alberti, Giorgio, Santistevan, Jorge, and Pásara, Luis, Estado y clase: la comunidad industrial en el Perú [State and class: The industrial community in Perú] (Lima, 1977)Google Scholar; Sulmont, Denis, Historia del movimiento obrero peruano, 1890–1977 [History of the Peruvian labor movement, 1890–1977] (Lima, 1977)Google Scholar; Caballero, Jose Maria, Agricultura, reforma agraria, y pobreza campesina [Agriculture, agrarian reform, and rural poverty] (Lima, 1980)Google Scholar; Pasara, Luis, Reforma agraria: derecho y conflkto [Agrarian reform: law and conflict] (Lima, 1978)Google Scholar; Quijano, Anibal, Problema agrario y movimientos campesinos [The rural question and peasant movements] (Lima, 1979)Google Scholar; and Wils, Fritz, Los industrials, la industrialization y el estado-nacion en el Peru [Industrialistsindustrialization, and the nation-state in Peru] (Lima, 1979).Google Scholar

There is also an extensive literature by participants in the Peruvian experiment. The best inside account, by a journalist who joined the government for a time, is Thorndike, Guillermo, No, mi General [Sorry, general] (Lima, 1978)Google Scholar. Others worth consulting include Teustua, Alfonso Baella, El poder invisible: los primeros mil dias de la revolution peruana [Invisiblpower: the first thousand days of the Peruvian revolution] (Lima, 1976)Google Scholar; Bejar, Hector, Larevolution en la trampa [The trapped revolution] (Lima, 1976)Google Scholar; Delgado, Carlos, Larevolution peruana, autonomia y deslindes [The Peruvian revolution: autonomy and limits] (Lima, 1975)Google ScholarFranco, Carlos, La revolution participatoria [The participatory revolution] (Lima, 1975)Google Scholar; Garcia, Francisco Guerra, El peruano: un proceso abierto [The Peruvian: an open process] (Lima, 1975)Google Scholar; and Zimmerman Z., Augusto, El Plan Inca: objectivo: revolution peruana [Plan Incaobjective: Peruvian revolution] (Lima, 1975).Google Scholar

The major Peruvian works focusing on the military itself are those by Victor Villanueva, especially Nueva mentalidad militar en el Perú [The new military mentality in Peru] (Lima 1969)Google Scholar and Ejèrcito Peruano: del caudillo andrquico al militarismo reformista [The Peruviaarmy: from anarchic caudillo to reformist militarism] (Lima, 1973).Google Scholar

3 Each of us published an early interim assessment of the first years of the Peruvian experiment. See Jaquette, Jane S., “Revolution by Fiat: The Context of Policy-Making in Peru,” Western Political Quarterly 25 (December 1972), 648–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lowenthal, Abraham F., “Peru's Ambiguous Revolution,”; Foreign Affairs 52 (July 1974), 799817.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 For a more complete discussion of the economic failures of the military regime, see Palmer, David Scott, “The Changing Political Economy of Peru under Military and Civilian Rule,” Inter-American Economic Affairs 37 (Spring 1984), 50.Google Scholar

5 See Figueroa, Adolfo, Capital, Development and the Peasant Economy in Peru (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Webb, Richard, Government Policy and the Distribution of Income in Peru, 1963–1973 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

6 The points in this paragraph and the next are developed at greater length in Lowenthal, Abraham F., “The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered,” in McClintock, Cynthia and Lowenthal, Abraham F., eds., The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 415–30.Google Scholar

Compare Angell, Alan, “The Peruvian Military Government 1968–1980: The Failure of the Revolution from Above,” Occasional Paper No. 44 (Bologna: The Johns Hopkins University, Bologna Center), February 1984Google Scholar.

7 For a discussion and an extensive debate of the Quijano thesis, see Booth, David andSorj, Bernardo, eds., Military Reformism and Social Classes: The Peruvian Experience, 1968–1980 (London: MacMillan, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Julio Cotler, “Democracy and National Integration in Peru,” in McClintock and Lowenthal (fn. 5), 72.

9 For an earlier and parallel argument, see Collier, David, Squatters and Oligarchs: Authoritarian Rule and Policy Change in Peru (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

10 For preliminary data on Peru in the early 1980s, see Gorman, Stephen M., ed., Post Revolutionary Peru: The Politics of Transformation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982).Google Scholar

11 For the view that more radical officers were genuinely committed to political mobilization, see Pease Garcia (fn. 1), 51–59, and Liisa L. North, “Ideological Orientations of Peru's Military Rulers,” in McClintock and Lowenthal (fn. 5), 245–74.

12 Cleaves, Peter S. and Scurrah, Martin J., Agriculture, Bureaucracy and Military Government in Peru (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

13 Luis Pasara, “When the Military Dreams,” in McClintock and Lowenthal (fn. 5), 340.

14 Coder (fn. 7), 36.

15 Ibid., 33.

16 McClintock, Cynthia, “Self-Management and Political Participation in Peru, 1969–1975: The Corporatist Illusion,” Sage Professional Papers in Contemporary Political Sociology, Vol. 2 (1977)Google Scholar, Series/No. 06–022, 47.

17 Angell, Alan, “The Difficulties of Policy-Making and Implementation in Peru,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 3 (January 1984), 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar