|
Peru Rural Stagnation and Social Mobilization, 1948-68
Odría imposed a personalistic dictatorship on the
country and
returned public policy to the familiar pattern of
repression of
the left and free-market orthodoxy. Indicative of the new
regime's hostility toward APRA, Haya de la Torre, after
seeking
political asylum in the Embassy of Colombia in Lima in
1949, was
prevented by the government from leaving the country. He
remained
a virtual prisoner in the embassy until his release into
exile in
1954. However, along with such repression Odría cleverly
sought
to undermine APRA's popular support by establishing a
dependent,
paternalistic relationship with labor and the urban poor
through
a series of charity and social welfare measures.
At the same time, Odría's renewed emphasis on
export-led
growth coincided with a period of rising prices on the
world
market for the country's diverse commodities, engendered
by the
outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Also, greater
political
stability brought increased national and foreign
investment,
particularly in the manufacturing sector. Indeed, this
sector
grew almost 8 percent annually between 1950 and 1967,
increasing
from 14 to 20 percent of gross domestic product
(GDP--see Glossary).
Overall, the economy experienced a prolonged
period of
strong, export-led growth, amounting on average to 5
percent a
year during the same period
(see Historical Background
, ch. 3).
Not all Peruvians, however, benefited from this period
of
sustained capitalist development, which tended to be
regional and
confined mainly to the more modernized coast. This uneven
pattern
of growth served to intensify the dualistic structure of
the
country by widening the historical gap between the Sierra
and the
coast. In the Sierra, the living standard of the bottom
one-
quarter of the population stagnated or fell during the
twenty
years after 1950. In fact, the Sierra had been losing
ground
economically to the modernizing forces operative on the
coast
ever since the 1920s. With income distribution steadily
worsening, the Sierra experienced a period of intense
social
mobilization during the 1950s and 1960s.
This was manifested first in the intensification of
rural-
urban migration and then in a series of confrontations
between
peasants and landowners. The fundamental causes of these
confrontations were numerous. Population growth, which had
almost
doubled nationally between 1900 and 1940 (3.7 million to 7
million), increased rapidly to 13.6 million by 1970. This
turned
the labor market from a state of chronic historical
scarcity to
one of abundant surplus. With arable land constant and
locked
into the system of
latifundios (see Glossary),
ownership-to-area
ratios deteriorated sharply, increasing peasant pressures
on the
land.
Peru's land-tenure system remained one of the most
unequal in
Latin America. In 1958 the country had a high coefficient
of 0.88
on the Gini index, which measures land concentration on a
scale
of 0 to 1. Figures for the same year show that 2 percent
of the
country's landowners controlled 69 percent of arable land.
Conversely, 83 percent of landholders holding no more than
5
hectares controlled only 6 percent of arable land.
Finally, the Sierra's
terms of trade (see Glossary)
in agricultural foodstuffs
steadily declined because of the state's urban bias in
food
pricing policy, which kept farm prices artificially low
(see Employment and Wages, Poverty, and Income Distribution
, ch. 3).
Many peasants opted to migrate to the coast, where most
of
the economic and job growth was occurring. The population
of
metropolitan Lima, in particular, soared. While standing
at
slightly over 500,000 in 1940, it increased threefold to
over 1.6
million in 1961 and nearly doubled again by 1981 to more
than 4.1
million. The capital became increasingly ringed with
squalid
barriadas
(shantytowns--see Glossary) of urban
migrants,
putting pressure on the liberal state, long accustomed to
ignoring the funding of government services to the poor.
Those peasants who chose to remain in the Sierra did
not
remain passive in the face of their declining
circumstances but
became increasingly organized and militant. A wave of
strikes and
land invasions swept over the Sierra during the 1950s and
1960s
as campesinos demanded access to land. Tensions grew
especially
in the Convención and Lares region of the high jungle near
Cusco,
where Hugo Blanco, a Quechua-speaking Trotskyite and
former
student leader, mobilized peasants in a militant
confrontation
with local gamonales.
While economic stagnation prodded peasant mobilization
in the
Sierra, economic growth along the coast produced other
important
social changes. The postwar period of industrialization,
urbanization, and general economic growth created a new
middle
and professional class that altered the prevailing
political
panorama. These new middle sectors formed the social base
for two
new political parties--Popular Action (Acción Popular--AP)
and
the Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata
Cristiano--
PDC)--that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s to challenge the
oligarchy with a moderate, democratic reform program.
Emphasizing
modernization and development within a somewhat more
activist
state framework, they posed a new challenge to the old
left,
particularly APRA.
For its part, APRA accelerated its rightward tendency.
It
entered into what many saw as an unholy alliance (dubbed
the
convivencia, or living together) with its old
enemy, the
oligarchy, by agreeing to support the candidacy of
conservative
Manuel Prado y Ugarteche in the 1956 elections, in return
for
legal recognition. As a result, many new voters became
disillusioned with APRA and flocked to support the
charismatic
reformer Fernando Belaúnde Terry (1963-68, 1980-85), the
founder
of the AP. Although Prado won, six years later the army
intervened when its old enemy, Haya de la Torre (back from
six
years of exile), still managed, if barely, to defeat the
upstart
Belaúnde by less than one percentage point in the 1962
elections.
A surprisingly reform-minded junta of the armed forces
headed by
General Ricardo Pérez Godoy held power for a year
(1962-63) and
then convoked new elections. This time Belaúnde, in
alliance with
the Christian Democrats, defeated Haya de la Torre and
became
president.
Belaúnde's government, riding the crest of the social
and
political discontent of the period, ushered in a period of
reform
at a time when United States president John F. Kennedy's
Alliance for Progress (see Glossary)
was also awakening widespread
expectations for reform throughout Latin America. Belaúnde
tried
to diffuse the growing unrest in the highlands through a
three-
pronged approach: modest agrarian reform, colonization
projects
in the high jungle or montaña, and the construction of the
north-
south Jungle Border Highway (la carretera marginal de
la
selva or la marginal), running the entire
length of
the country along the jungle fringe. The basic thrust of
the
Agrarian Reform Law of 1969, which was substantially
watered down
by a conservative coalition in Congress between the APRA
and the
National Odriist Union (Unión Nacional Odriísta--UNO), was
to
open access to new lands and production opportunities,
rather
than dismantle the traditional latifundio system. However,
this
plan failed to quiet peasant discontent, which by 1965
helped
fuel a Castroite guerrilla movement, the Movement of the
Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de la Izquierda
Revolucionaria--
MIR), led by rebellious Apristas on the left who were
unhappy
with the party's alliance with the country's most
conservative
forces.
In this context of increasing mobilization and
radicalization, Belaúnde lost his reformist zeal and
called on
the army to put down the guerrilla movement with force.
Opting
for a more technocratic orientation palatable to his urban
middle
class base, Belaúnde, an architect and urban planner by
training,
embarked on a large number of construction projects,
including
irrigation, transportation, and housing, while also
investing
heavily in education. Such initiatives were made possible,
in
part, by the economic boost provided by the dramatic
expansion of
the fishmeal industry. Aided by new technologies and the
abundant
fishing grounds off the coast, fishmeal production soared.
By
1962 Peru became the leading fishing nation in the world,
and
fishmeal accounted for fully one-third of the country's
exports
(see Structures of Production
, ch. 3).
Belaúnde's educational expansion dramatically increased
the
number of universities and graduates. But, however
laudable, this
policy tended over time to swell recruits for the growing
number
of left-wing parties, as economic opportunities diminished
in the
face of an end, in the late 1960s, of the long cycle of
export-
led economic expansion. Indeed, economic problems spelled
trouble
for Belaúnde as he approached the end of his term. Faced
with a
growing balance-of-payments problem, he was forced to
devalue the
sol
(for value--see Glossary) in 1967. He also seemed to
many
nationalists to capitulate to foreign capital in a final
settlement in 1968 of a controversial and long-festering
dispute
with the International Petroleum Company (IPC) over La
Brea y
Pariñas oil fields in northern Peru. With public
discontent
growing, the armed forces, led by General Velasco
Alvarado,
overthrew the Belaúnde government in 1968 and proceeded to
undertake an unexpected and unprecedented series of
reforms.
Data as of September 1992
|
