|
Peru The Left
The 1990 results also demonstrated that the population
was
unwilling to vote for the nation's hopelessly divided
left. Split
into Leninist, Maoist, Marxist, Trotskyite, and Socialist
camps,
the left in Peru had been severely fragmented since its
origins.
It had its first experience as a legally recognized
electoral
force in the 1978-80 Constituent Assembly, in which the
left made
up approximately one-third of the delegates. Despite its
relative
strength at the grassroots level, the left was unable to
unite
behind one political front in the 1980 elections, and it
contested the elections as nine separate political
factions. This
limited its potential in those elections and played into
the
hands of Belaúnde. The left together attained a total of
16.7
percent of the vote; APRA, divided and leaderless after
the death
of Haya de la Torre, garnered 27.4 percent; Belaúnde won
45.4
percent.
Shortly after the 1981 elections, the majority of the
factions of the Socialist, Marxist, and Maoist left (with
the
obvious exception of the SL, which had gone underground in
the
early 1970s), formed the United Left (IU) coalition. By
1986,
under the leadership of Alfonso Barrantes Lingán, the IU
was
strong enough to take the municipality of Lima, as well as
to
become the major opposition force to the APRA government.
Barrantes had been the runner-up in the 1985 national
elections,
winning 22.2 percent of the vote.
Yet, there were irreparable divisions from the outset
between
the moderate Barrantes faction, which remained committed,
first
and foremost, to democracy, and the more militant
factions, which
were sympathetic to, if not overtly supportive of, "armed
struggle" as a potential route. The existence of two
active
guerrilla movements made this a debate of overriding
importance.
Although much of the militant left condemned the brutal
tactics
of the SL, they remained sympathetic with and indeed often
had
ties to the more "conventional" tactics of the MRTA.
This breach came to a head in 1989, when Barrantes, the
most
popular politician the left had in its ranks, and the bulk
of the
moderates split off and formed the Leftist Socialist
Accord
(Acuerdo Socialista Izquierdista--ASI). The larger and
bestorganized parties, including the radical Mariateguist
Unified
Party (Partido Unificado Mariateguista--PUM) and the
Peruvian
Communist Party (Partido Comunista Peruano--PCP), remained
in the
IU. A divided left quarrelling over ideological
differences
hardly seemed the solution to Peru's quagmire in 1990. In
the
1990 elections, the left had its poorest showing since the
formation of the IU, with the ASI and IU together
garnering less
than 12 percent of the vote.
Data as of September 1992
|
