While writing my dissertation, I began to study Abdalá Bucaram’s political style. I attended several of Bucaram’s mass meetings and those of his rival politicians in the 1992 presidential campaign and gathered their televised propaganda, flyers, and journalistic accounts. I returned to Ecuador in 1996 with Carmen Martínez to carry out ethnographic participant observation of Bucaram’s presidential campaign. Chapter 3 is based on this data and builds on my book ¡ Un sólo toque! Populismo y cultura política en Ecuador (1996). This chapter analyzes the interrelationship between daily life, populism, and political culture in present-day Ecuador. This chapter examines how the figure of populist politician Abdalá Bucaram has allowed modernizing political and intellectual elites to constitute themselves as the incarnation of the democratic ideal, while representing the populist leader as the embodiment of the rabble and a threat not only to democracy but to civility. I explore two moments of collective effervescence to illustrate how everyday forms of domination and resistance have produced particular political cultures: the electoral rituals that transformed Bucaram into “the leader of the poor” and the demonstrations demanding his resignation that made him the “repugnant other” who had to leave the presidency and the country.
Chapter 4 reviews the recent literature on neopopulism, showing how previously unresolved research questions have reappeared in the literature. It suggests new lines for future research, and the chapter concludes with a reflection on the specificity of Latin American democracies and the paradoxes of populist politics for strengthening those regimes.
I have benefited from the support of many people and institutions. My research on Velasquismo was financed by an Alvin Johnson dissertation fellowship from the New School for Social Research (1990–91), and by a doctoral fellowship of FLACSO-Ecuador (1990–92). My thanks to Amparo Menéndez-Carrión, former director of FLACSO-Ecuador, for her support. I did archival research at the Biblioteca de Autores Ecuatorianos Aurelio Espinosa Pólit. My gratitude to its director, Father Julián Bravo, and his staff—Wilson Vega, Martha Llumiquinga, and Elizabeth Villareal. I also thank Ramiro Ávila, curator of the Archivo Histórico del Banco Central. My research on Bucaram’s populism was generously funded by the Centro Andino de Acción Popular and by a faculty research grant from Drew University. My gratitude to Francisco Rhon, director of the Centro Andino de Acción Popular, and to Paolo Cucchi, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Drew University for their continued support. I also acknowledge Santiago Nieto Montoya, director of Informe Confidencial, for the public opinion surveys on Bucaram’s image and popularity.
My dissertation committee—William Roseberry, Andrew Arato, José Casanova, and Charles Tilly—has encouraged me and helped me for several years. Preliminary versions of my analysis of how Bucaram got to power were presented at FLACSO-Ecuador in September and November 1996. I delivered a paper on the relationship between Bucaram and the mass media at the conference Media and the Politics of Democracy at the New School for Social Research, 6 March 1998. A version of chapter 3 was presented at the Workshop of Contentious Politics, Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, Columbia University, 16 November 1998. I am grateful to the participants in these seminars and workshops, in particular Andrew Arato, Javier Auyero, Jeff Goldfarb, Margot Olavarría, and Charles Tilly. I also thank Robert Dash and Kristen Anderson for comments on earlier versions of chapter 3. Some of the arguments of chapter 4 were presented in papers at Ohio University in April 1998 and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, in June 1998. I thank Felipe Burbano, Carmen Martínez, César Montúfar, Ricardo Muratorio, and the anonymous reader of Ohio University Press for comments to earlier drafts of this book.
Finally, I express my gratitude to several people whose support continues to inspire me: my mother, Noemí Espinosa; my sister María Soledad; and my brother Felipe; Alberto Acosta, Francisco Rhon, and Felipe Burbano, with whom I published my first book on populism; José Álvarez Junco and Tom Walker, who encouraged me to organize this book. This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of Carmen Martínez. She postponed her dissertation research in 1996 to come to Ecuador to do the research of Bucaram with me and has been the most enthusiastic and critical reader. This book is for her and in memory of my father, whose passion for politics and intellectual work has always inspired me.
Abbreviations
| ADE | Alianza Democrática Ecuatoriana (Ecuadorian Democratic Alliance) |
| AP | Alliance for a Proud and Sovereign Homeland |
| APRA | Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana |
| BAEP | Biblioteca Aurelio Espinosa Pólit, Cotocollao |
| CEDOC | Confederación Ecuatoriana de Obreros Católicos (Ecuadorian Confederation of Catholic Workers) |
| CFP | Concentración de Fuerzas Populares |
| CONAIE | (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) |
| COPEI | Christina Political Electoral Independent Organization |
| CTE | Confederación de Trabajadores del Ecuador |
| FEINE | Federation of Indigenous Evangelicals of Ecuador |
| FEV | Frente Electoral Velasquista |
| FLACSO | Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales |
| ISI | Import Substitution Industrialization |
| PRE | Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano (Ecuadorian Roldosista Party) |
| PRIAN | Partido Renovador Institucional Acción Nacional |
| SIN | Servicio Nacional de Inteligencia |
Chapter l
The Ambiguity of Latin American “Classical” Populism
The study of Latin American populism has a long history. From the pioneering analyses of Gino Germani in the 1950s to the present, different paradigms have been proposed to explain these phenomena that simultaneously attract and repel social scientists. Certainly the main challenge in the study of populism lies in explaining the appeal of leaders for their followers, without reducing the latter’s behavior to either manipulation or irrational and anomic action or to a utilitarian rationalism, which supposedly explains everything.
Using a discussion of case studies, this chapter presents a multidimensional approach to the study of what is currently called “classical” Latin American populism. It stresses the analysis of those mechanisms that explain, on the one hand, the appeal of populist leaders and, on the other, the expectations and actions of followers. The selection of case studies is not intended to present an overview of all populist experiences in Latin America nor to analyze all the existing literature. My interest, rather, is to review innovative works on Latin American populism for their conceptual and methodological advances, while examining particular characteristics of populism. In the course of the analysis, I make suggestions for further research.
Before presenting a new approach to the study of Latin American populism, let us examine the different uses of this concept in the existing literature. The term populism has been used to refer to all the following phenomena:
—forms of sociopolitical mobilization in which “backward masses” are manipulated by “demagogic” and “charismatic” leaders (Germani 1971, 1978);
—multiclass social movements with middle- or upper-class leadership and popular (working-class or peasant) bases (di Tella 1973; Ianni 1973);
—a historical phase in the region’s dependent capitalist development or a stage in the transition to modernity (Germani 1978; Ianni 1975; Malloy 1977; O’Donnell 1973; Vilas 1992–93);
—redistributive, nationalist, and inclusionary state policies. These populist state policies are contrasted with exclusionary policies that benefit foreign capital, concentrate economic resources, and repress popular demands (Malloy