2. Pueblo in Latin America

A. Pueblo

Most populations in Latin America forged their national identities much more as a pueblo than as a citizenry. At various times—and not only through the so-called populisms^[*]—sectors that previously were excluded from all forms of political participation (except as subordinated members of clientelistic systems) burst forth as a pueblo . They were recognized as members-of-the-nation through demands for substantive justice, which they posed not as dominated, exploited classes but as victims of poverty and governmental indifference. The disadvantaged sectors (los pobres ) who constituted the pueblo saw themselves (and were proclaimed by the political leaders who sought their support) as embodying what was most authentically national, and they contrasted these national orientations and aspirations to the "foreignness" of the ruling oligarchies and their international allies.

Los pobres were not the main protagonists in the process by which they themselves became members-of-the-nation. From Getúlio Vargas's image as the "father of the poor" to the more mobilizing discourse of Eva Perón, the pueblo emerged as both a part and a consequence of a broad alliance. This alliance, dominated by the urban middle sectors and that part of the urban bourgeoisie that seemed capable of playing a dynamic role in development, sought the liquidate the oligarchic states. The supposedly archaic character of the oligarchy and the conspicously foreign character of transnational capital linked to the export of primary products were set in contrast to the newly defined national-popular identity.

[*] I shall address the issue of populism here only in every general terms, partly because of space limitations and partly because there exist few comparative studies that examine in detail the political transformations that took place in Latin America following the rupture of the oligarchic state. A work that clarifies various aspects of the periods preceding the implantation, of the BAs is Marcelo Cavarozzi, " Populismos y 'partidos de clase media' (Notas comparativas)," Documento CEDES/G.E. CLACSO 3, Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (Buenos Aires, 1976). The main contributions to the analysis of Latin American populisms are those of Francisco Weffort; cf. esp. his collected essays in O populismo na política brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Paz e Terra, 1980). For important contributions to the comparative study of the populist periods and the BAs that succeeded them, see David Collier, "The Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Model: Synthesis and Priorities for Future Research," and Robert Kaufman, "Industrial Change and Authoritarian Rule in Latin America: A Concrete Review of the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Model," both in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, ed. Collier; and Ruth Berins Collier, "Popular Sector Incorporation and Regime Evolution in Brazil and Mexico," in Brazil and Mexico: Patterns in Late Development, ed. Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Richard Weinert (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1982).

Why did the previously excluded sectors in most Latin American countries form their collective identities more as pueblo than as a citizenry? First, in such countries the abstract ideas equality upon which citizenship is based were not well developed, basically owing to the incomplete diffusion of capitalist relations at the time when the national-popular identities began to crystallize.^[*] Even in relatively homogeneous countries like Argentina and Uruguay, the previously excluded became members-of-the-nation at the same time as a great wave of urbanization and industrialization was taking place. The clustering of these great social transformations in most Latin American countries contrasts with the longer, more sequential historical rhythms of the core capitalist countries, where capitalist relations expanded more gradually and came to predominate throughout society prior to the expansion of citizenship by the electoral enfranchisement of the whole (male) population. A second reason why the pueblo became the main locus of new national identities in Latin America is that in many cases these identities were formed at the same time as the urban economy was undergoing rapid expansion. This economic growth furnished resources that enabled governments to project an image of concern for, and to some extent to promote, the interests of the popular sectors.^[†] During such periods governments, together with key parties and movements, tended to orient their discourses in support of those whom incumbents of the state apparatus and members of the dominant classes had formerly viewed as nothing more than silent masses subject to occasional upheavals. To a degree and for a duration that varied according to the country, it seemed that the state really was a national-popular state. More than a few of those who had come to consider themselves members of the pueblo not only experienced improvements in their material conditions, but also took part in the nationalist rituals in which the populist governments

[*] During the oligarchic and populist periods, Latin American societies were not as fully articulated by capitalist relations as were the societies of the center countries when mass citizenship came upon the scene. Some consequences of these contrasting experiences are discussed by Marcelo Cavarozzi in "Elementos para una caracterización del capitalismo oligárquico," Documento CEDES/G.E. CLACSO 12, Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (Buenos Aires, 1979). I have borrowed from this work the concept of "cellular domination."

[†] The appeal to lo popular was characteristic of governments established during the interval between the rupture of the oligarchic state and the implantation of the BA, regardless of whether these governments owed their existence to movements that actively promoted such appeals. During this era the discourse of the state apparatus was "popularized," even if on some occasions its popular content had a rather hollow ring.

celebrated their "victories" over the oligarchy and transnational capital.^[*]

B. Citizenship and Political Democracy

In the countries of Latin America, with the partial exception of Chile and Uruguay, citizenship never assumed a preponderant role in the forging of political identities. As noted above, the limited scope of ideas of citizenship in Latin America was due partly to the absence of fully and extensively capitalist societies that foster, and are nurtured by, other levels of abstract equality. Another reason for the secondary role of citizenship is that the periods in which the popular sector burst into the national political arenas were fraught with conflict over restricted and fraudulent forms of oligarchic democracy. Such "democracy" often was—and was perceived as—a sham concocted by conservative forces to stifle popular advances. During the popular irruptions, however, diverse factions of the oligarchy would frequently come out in support of a "democracy" they had seldom practiced in the past. Such democratic posturing was notoriously ambivalent. With the emerging populist alliances convinced that "democracy" was little more than a hoax designed to fetter the advance of the pueblo , and with conservatives and oligarchs fearful of the enormous electoral support upon which those who appealed to the pueblo could rely, democracy, and the ideas and institutions of citizenship with which it is associated, through the period appealed to very few political actors. With their shallow roots, citizenship and democracy proved unable to withstand the crises out of which the bureaucratic-authoritarian states emerged.

The initial political activation of the popular sector cannot be considered properly a class movement in any of the countries we are studying, since the previously excluded sectors did not recognize themselves as dominated classes and were unable to set their own goals or to determine the general direction of the process. The popular activation was channeled not into overt class struggle, but rather toward a recomposition of the dominant classes. This recomposition consisted on the one hand of the displacement of the agrarian-based oligarchies from their previously

[*] Such nationalist rituals were of immense symbolic importance. They ranged from expropriations to more moderate decisions, such as the purchase of British-owned railroads by the first Peronist government in Argentina, which was attended by an elaborate ceremony in which it was implied that with this act the state, identified with its pueblo, fully constituted the nation.

central position within the dominant classes, and on the other of the emergence as key social and economic actors of the newest and most dynamic appendages of the world capitalist center. In some cases (such as Mexico and Argentina, each in its own way and at its own time) the national-popular emergence had largely subsided when, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, the great surge toward the transnationalization of the urban productive structure took place. Elsewhere (as in Brazil and Chile, again each in its own way) the processes of popular activation and transnationalization largely overlapped. But in all of the cases with which we are here concerned, the popular activation, the displacement of the agrarian-based oligarchies, and the intense transnationalization of the economy and society led to a rapid expansion of capitalist relations. The advance of all of these processes was, however, subject to a key limitation. The democratic (in Chile and Uruguay) or populist (in Brazil and Argentina) "state of compromise"^[6] remained viable only so long as the pueblo 's demands for substantive justice did not collide with the constraints imposed by the way in which the economy was expanding and becoming extensively transnationalized.

As a result of this clash between popular sector demands and the requirements of the new mode of economic expansion, many actors, including some who had initially supported the popular activation, began to search for ways to drive a wedge between the pueblo and the nation and to ground the latter in an alternative referent. Such initiatives, which began well before the adoption of explicitly authoritarian solutions, were put forth in a situation where democracy and citizenship remained weakly rooted and where the pueblo had overcome, if only partially and in a subordinate fashion, its earlier political marginalization. The resulting presence and demands of the popular sector, even though they were not expressed in class terms and therefore posed no direct challenge to social domination, were perceived nonetheless as increasingly dangerous. For the dominant classes, new and old alike, this became the Gordian knot that had to be cut.^[*]

[*] My previous research has centered on the processes alluded to in this paragraph, especially on their elective affinities with the emergence of the BAs and—contrapuntally—with the tortuous ways in which Latin American societies have grappled with the problem of political democracy. No discussion of such themes can fail to recognize the contributions made by the analyses of Fernando Henrique Cardoso; cf. (with Enzo Faletto) Dependencia y Desarrollo en América Latina (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1969), and the postscript in the English edition, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979); and his essays collected in Estado y Sociedad en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión, 1973), and Autoritarismo e Democratiza ção (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Paz e Terra, 1975).