#22 Perspectives on Development Policy and Mass Participation in the Peruvian Armed Forces

By Lisa North

This paper was presented at the November 2-4, 1978 Workshop on "The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered" organized by the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Summary

The paper analyzes the degree and nature of ideological diversity within the Peruvian military government from 1968 to 1976. The primary data based consists of the statements of officers who occupied cabinet-level positions in the government; however, those statements are not treated in isolation from the social context and the civilian political arena. Rather, the paper attempts to relate the officers' orientations to the central socio-political conflicts of contemporary Peru and the manner in which the reforms initiated by the military government, because of its high degree of autonomy, accentuated those conflicts. Thus, the first section of the work presents a brief chronological narration of the reform measures of the Velasco years, streeing the setting of increasing conflict in which both civilian and military actors defined and modified their positions. The narration highlights measures that raised fundamental questions of property relations and popular mobilization. The second section analyzes the statements of the officers, reconstructing their vision of: 1) the process of economic development- the fundamental problems, the desirable forms of organization of producition, and the goals; and 2) mass mobilizations- its desirability as such, and the organizational froms considered appropriate. The third section deals with the sources of the officers' orientations and their degree of conguence or conflict with politically organized civilian sectors.