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By Cynthia McClintock

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

This paper has two main concerns: to understand how, from inauspicious beginnings, the Velasco government was able to go as far as it did with leftist reforms; and to understand why, despite these reforms, the Velasco government failed to win popular support, even among those groups gaining the most from the government's policies. The paper suggests that the key to both the government's successful movement toward a Third Way and its inability to win popular support was ambiguity. By ambiguity, I mean that the ultimate designs of the government were unclear, and that specific policies were confused, and changed frequently.

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Latin America Program

The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action.  Read more