Peru

Case notes

American Popular Revolutionary Alliance

The American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) has been Peru’s main leftist part party for most of the 20th Century. It was founded and headed by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, who was considered the prototype of a populist leader in Peru (Stein 2012, 101) and who presided over the constitutional assembly of Perú after the military government of General Velasco Alvarado. The first democratic elections were held in 1980 and Armando Villanueva was the candidate for APRA. In his campaign advertisements, there are references to the mobilization of the people such as “Armando will come, the people will triumph” (Villanueva 1980) or “we will take care of the poor people above all” (Villanueva 2013). Nevertheless, there is no explicit criticism of the elites, and his campaign should be understood as aligned with that of a leftist ideology. We have not found any references in the literature that treat him as a populist and in 1985, he supported Javier Valle in the primaries against Alan García when the former accused the latter of risking the “leftist position” of the party with his “Caesarist style” (Ortiz de Zárate 2023). This episode points to the fact that Villanueva was more a traditional left-wing politician than a populist and thus, we have not included him in the dataset.

Alan García won the presidency in 1985 as the candidate of APRA. García claimed that his aim was to “give the people back their government” (García 1984) so that it would “not be the loot of a few who share the membership of the party of the government” (García 1985). He based his campaign on criticizing the neoliberal economic model of President Belahúnde, proposing more state intervention in the economy, critiquing corruption in the public administration, and fighting the violence of the guerrilla group “Sendero Luminoso” (Ortiz de Zárate 2023). He also employed several methods to connect directly with the public such as the “balconazos”: spontaneous public appearances in the balcony government to make announcements and speak with the people (Stein 2012, 111). He also appeared unannounced at different places in the country to discuss and talk with the citizens. Despite his opposition to the political class and neoliberal policies “APRA’s 1985 presidential campaign never sought to vilify Peru’s business class. Indeed, traditionally, APRA's political message had never been 'anti-capitalist' (Crabtree 1992, 84). Moreover, he aimed to create a broad class interest, including the”business class” in the efforts to make the economy grow (Crabtree 1996, 576; Ortiz de Zárate 2023). We have coded 3 for OTH_POLCLASS, 1 for OTH_ECONOMIC and L for LRPOSITION.

The leader of APRA defended economic nationalism against international banking and the institutions directed by Washington (Crabtree 1996, 576) and said that “IMF’s hateful and damaging mediation only benefits those who wish to see more inequality” (Ortiz de Zárate 2023). His rhetoric has been described as “anti-imperialist and revolutionary” (Tanaka 2008). In the presidency, he later declared a restructuring of the debt and nationalized several industries. Therefore, OTH_FOREIGN has been coded as a 3.

Alan García developed a “personality cult” (Crabtree 1996, 576) around his figure. The APRA was established as a party long before García, but his personality greatly shaped it in 1985 (Crabtree 1992, 69) (CHARISMA = 2) and explains in part its success (Caño 1986). Although García’s government was characterised by “authoritarian tendencies” (Crabtree 1996, 566), massive corruption scandals and for allowing repressive counter-terrorist measures by the paramilitary group “Comando Rodrigo Franco” (Ortiz de Zárate 2023), we have not been able to find rhetorical evidence of a violation of Liberal-Demcratic norms during the campaign. Thus, we have coded 1 for LIBDEMNORMS. On the relationship with the army, Alan García declared a state of emergency in several areas in order to fight “Sendero Luminoso”, which gave the army considerable power for long periods of time (Caño 1986). We have found no reference in which he considers the military to be part of the elite (OTH_MILITARY = 1). García had never held office positions before (INSIDER = 1).

García’s government ended in very poor economic conditions, with inflation reaching very high levels and a raging conflict with “Sendero Luminoso”. His popularity plummeted and Luis Alva Castro was chosen as the candidate to run in the 1990 election for APRA. After the 1990 election, Alan García was persecuted by Fujimori and had to flee the country. He later moderated his discourse and neither in the 2001 nor in 2006 elections (when he won for the second time) should he be considered a populist (Levitsky 2011, 84). Luis Alva Castro, the APRA’s candidate in 1990 did not use the populist discourse that Alan García had employed in his 1985 election (Crabtree 1992, 164). As second Vice-president and Ministry of Economy, Alva Castro was seen as part of the establishment and could not shake-off the blame for the terrible economic situation of the country (Crabtree 1992, 160). Thus, we have not included him in the dataset because we find very little primary or secondary sources that treat him as populist.

Alberto Fujimori

Alberto Fujimori was a mathematics professor and university rector from Japanese descent who had never held elected office or had been part of a political party before 1990 (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 164). He was completely unknown to the public and neither him nor his newly created party, “Cambio 90”, were polling strongly until shortly before the 1990 election (INSIDER = 1). He was able to beat his opponent, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, due to his condition as an outsider and as an anti-politician figure (Stein, 1999: 115). The country suffered at the time a very severe economic crisis for which traditional parties were blamed (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 165). Moreover, the conflict with “Sendero Luminoso” was also at its peak and confidence in politicians was extremely low (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 165). Although his victory owes more to the terrible economic and social circumstances of the country at the time than to his figure, he was able to canalise that anger in his persona, his party would not have existed without him, and he founded a personalist movement that was able to attract significant support despite his significant ideological changes (CHARISMA = 3).

Fujimori is widely recognised as a populist in the literature (Ellner 2003) and ran a campaign based on the criticism of the establishment and looked for a direct connection with the people. He adopted the slogan “A President like you” (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 167) and defined the election as a “confrontation between the white elite … and the non-white common people” (De La Torre 2000, 124). He mobilized sectors of the population that were at the margins of politics, particularly evangelicals and the informal sector (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 166). On economic issues, Fujimori vehemently opposed the neoliberal shock doctrines that he attributed to Vargas Llosa. In the presidential debate, Fujimori told Vargas Llosa that state’s intervention had created “a complex system of incentives which are not in favor of the poorest but that respond to the power groups that, unfortunately Dr Vargas, lie behind you” (Fujimori 2022). Fujimori has been labelled a 3 in both OTH_POLCLASS and OTH_ECONOMIC in 1990.

Fujimori belongs to a small ethnic minority in Peru, a fact that he employed to depict himself as someone of the margins, someone who represented the Peru of the “the cholos”, that is, the darker-skinned poor majority that was looked down upon by the white elite (Panichi 1997). He actively embraced the nickname “el chino” and his party’s lists included several candidates that “spoke Quechua and worked in the informal economy” (Daeschner 1993, 261) (OTH_ETHNIC = 1). Regarding foreign actors, Fujimori travelled to the US before his inauguration and struggled to maintain good relations with foreign powers during his presidency (McClintock 2002), and we have seen no evidence to code above 1 on OTH_FOREIGN = 1.

Similar to the case of Menem in Argentina, shortly after winning, Fujimori took a turn to the right and embraced neoliberal reforms. Some authors (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 169; Weyland 1999) explain that he forged a tacit alliance with the power groups of Peruvian society, including the military, the internationally competitive industry and the financial sector. This, however, did not make him less populist. He simply “lost the class-based elements of his anti-elite discourse and stepped up his attacks on the political elite” (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 170). Thus, for the 1995 elections, we have changed OTH_ECONOMIC from 3 to 1 and LRPOSITION from L to R.

Since he was still constrained by a legislative chamber dominated by traditional parties, he argued that Peru was not a real democracy. In 1992, backed by the military, he carried out the “autogolpe”, a presidential coup which allowed him to close the Congress, dissolve the constitution and purge the judiciary (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 171). The “autogolpe” was widely supported by Peruvians and it was followed by elections for a constituent assembly, a referendum on the new constitution and another presidential elections in 1995, which Fujimori won by a landslide. Newspapers and television networks received large amounts of money by the government to assure their support (Levitsky y Loxton 2013, 176) and he declared a law of amnesty for the military. Fujimori’s own constitution banned him from running for a third re-election, but he refused to obey the constitutional tribunal, made the congress impeach the judges and ran in 2000 under the platform “Perú 2000” (Conaghan 2000, 126-300). His opponent, Álvaro Toledo, boycotted the election for considering it corrupt and Fujimori was elected again. Soon after, however, a video showing a close associate of Fujimori bribing politicians triggered the downfall of the regime. Fujimori fled the country and new elections were called in 2001. All the actions of Fujimori clearly deserve a 3 in the LIBDEMNORMS variable.

“Fujimorismo” – Martha Chávez and Keiko Fujimori

“Fujimorismo” survived after the downfall of its founder. New Majority and C90 created a coalition named “Alliance for the Future” and tried to present Alberto Fujimori as their candidate for the 2006 presidential election. However, since Fujimori was disqualified by the congress to run for office, Martha Chávez, former President of the Congress in the 1990s, was elected as the coalition’s candidate (INSIDER = 2). Her platform was explicitly framed in terms of a strategy to retrieve Alberto Fujimori (Press 2006). Thus, given that her candidacy has been perceived as representing a continuation of Fujimori’s actual rule instead of building on the narrative that he had created and using his legacy to promote herself, we have kept Fujimori’s CHARISMA = 3 coding. Her platform continued the populism of “Fujimorismo”, and she directed her criticism to the new political elite that had removed Fujimori from government: “people look for anyone who represents a different option to the political caste that shamelessly does whatever it pleases” (Press 2006). She also defended Fujimori’s actions in government (LIBDEMNORMS = 3).

In 2011, “Fujimorismo” presented Keiko Fujimori, Alberto’s daughter, as the presidential candidate of “Force 2011”. Keiko had become first lady of Peru after her parent’s divorce in 1994 and belonged to the inner circle of his father’s government (INSIDER = 2). Keiko made it to the second round in both the 2011 and 2016 elections but lost both times. Her right-wing populist campaign was based in means-targeted policies for the poor, a tough stance on crime and an opposition to LGBT rights (Jiménez 2011). Keiko continued to employ an anti-elitist discourse. After losing the 2016 election, for example, she said that “in the second round, our opposition included the political power of this outgoing government, the economic powers and the powers of the media” (Dube 2016). Moreover, she argued that her party would “defend the interest of the people against lobbies and the power of big business” (Dube 2016). Thus, we have coded her in a similar fashion as Alberto Fujimori’s 1995 and 2000 campaigns except for OTH_ECONOMIC, where the code is 2.

Ollanta Humala

Ollanta Humala was an army commander and son of Isaac Humala, founder of the ideology of “etnocaceriso”, a nationalist ideology in Peru reminiscent of the Inca empire which claims the superiority of the “raza cobriza” (darker-skinned race) over others and defends the creation of an authoritarian regime. Together with his brother, Ollanta carried out a failed coup d’état against the government of Fujimori in 2000 which made them win popularity. They were later pardoned by the Congress and Ollanta founded the Peruvian Nationalist Party in 2005. However, he did not register it on time for the elections and decided to run as the candidate of another party: Unión for Peru.

For the 2006 election, Humala moderated somewhat his discourse, he declared himself as nationalist but not “etnocacerista” and embraced democracy (Nesbet-Montecinos 2011, 85). He blamed the “traditional politicians” for the misery of Peru (Revesz 2006, 91) and in the presidential debate against Alan García, (Humala 2006) tried to depict his opponent as corrupt and as representative of an outdated elite (OTH_POLCLASS = 3). Huamala was catapulted by his “radical populist appeal” (Levitsky 2011, 84) and his platform was considered to be “left nationalist”. He was supported by both Chávez and Evo Morales and strongly opposed neoliberalism (Nesbet-Montecinos 2011, 86) (LRPOSITION = L). Humala made extensive use of the colors of the Peruvian flag in his campaign and used as motto the phrase “love for Peru” (Cabanillas García 2016, 183). Ollanta rejected the United States–Peru Trade Promotion Agreement and defended the nationalization of the energy industries (Nesbet-Montecinos 2011, 86) (3 for both OTH_ECONOMIC and OTH_FOREIGN in 2006).

Ollanta moderated considerably his anti-capitalist stance in the 2011 election (Cabanillas García 2016, 183). He stilled enjoyed the support of Chávez and Morales and criticized harshly the corruption of the politicians before him. Thus, we have lowered from a 3 to a 2 his OTH_ECONOMIC and OTH_FOREIGN variables in 2011.

Humala was accused of violation of human rights in 1991 (Revesz 2006, 91) and was linked to the assault on a police station perpetrated by his brother in 2004. Concerns over his democratic record were widespread among voters and many intellectuals showed their support to Humala arguing that Keiko Fujimori’s threat to democracy was worse (de la Jara 2011; Vargas Llosa 2011). Humala tried to distance itself from its authoritarian tendencies and, in 2011, he signed a “Declaration in favor of Democracy and Against the Dictatorship” in which he defended the independence of the judiciary, the respect for human rights and the rejection of corruption. One scholar described his platform as supporting “a liberal democratic system in which all ethnicities would be respected, what he later called ‘integrative nationalism’” (Nesbet-Montecinos 2011, 85). However, concerns on his “dubious democratic credentials” and “little commitment to liberal democracy” (Levitsky 2011, 85) were very common. We have labelled these mixed evidence as 2 in LIBDEMNORMS.

Despite his nationalist stances, we have not found any indication of an opposition to immigrants or ethnic others. In fact, Ollanta’s platform emphasized the need to reinvigorate the countryside of Peru, particularly of its indigenous people. He launched TV advertisements, for instance, in which he appeared with indigenous children to show his proximity to the people (Cabanillas García 2016, 188) (1 in OTH_IMMIGRANTS and OTH_ETHNIC). On the military, Humala criticized the use of the military under Fujimori’s regime but, being himself a commander, he supported greatly the army during his years as President by investing heavily in them (Humala 2015) (OTH_MILITARY = 1).

Humala’s campaign was based entirely on his figure; in 2006 he ran as a candidate of another party and managed to reach the second round unexpectedly. The posters in the 2011 election emphasized the personal figure of Ollanta in a campaign in which he slightly moderated his views. The movement would not have existed without him (CHARISMA = 3). He had never held a governmental position or participated in party politics before 2005 (INSIDER and INC_PRES = 1). Humala ran in 2006 as the candidate of Unión por el Perú, which did not held any governmental position in previous years and in 2011 with his own Peruvian Nationalist Party which was founded by him in 2005 but could not run for elections until 2011 (INC_PARL = 1).

Verónika Mendoza

Verónika Mendoza represented the left-wing populist option in the 2016 election. She had been an MP of the Peruvian Nationalist Party but left the party in 2012 and joined the Broad Front (“Frente Amplio”).

In the Presidential debate she clearly employed a populist discourse when saying that “we face an election where, or we continue to have governments that are at the service of the very few or we have a government that is at the service of the people” (Mendoza 2016). Her criticism to the political elite was very clear: “The political system as it stands is no longer adequate, nor does it represent the demands of the citizens. Congress has been turning its back on the people and the political class is closed-minded” (Fowks 2016). She also stated that “we will be a government of the people” and that “in a government of the Broad Front, the priority will be you” (Mendoza 2016). Mendoza received the support of Pablo Iglesias, leader of Spain’s “Podemos”, and has linked ecology with an anti-elitist message: “government after government have consumed our resources without thinking about the people” (Mendoza 2015). The axes of her platform were “an economy that excludes nobody, a state without corruption, rights without discrimination and progress without contamination” (Mendoza 2015) and her campaign was decidedly leftist and very favourable to wealth redistribution (Ayala Richter 2017, 54). Thus, we have coded 3 for OTH_POLCLASS and OTH_ECONOMIC and FL for LRPOSITION.

Mendoza speaks Quechua and her manifesto proposed to make Peru a “plurinational” state and respect the rights to autonomy of indigenous people (Frente Amplio 2016) (OTH_ETHNIC = 1). We have not been able to find any negative references to the military nor any intended violation of liberal democratic norms (OTH_IMMIGRANTS and LIBDEMNORMS = 1). Mendoza argued for the need to “renegotiate contracts for the exploitation of natural resources, which have been auctioned off to transnational companies without benefiting the people” (Fowks 2016). The Broad Front’s manifesto emphasised the importance of national sovereignty and the ownership of natural resources but did not identify any explicit foreign threat to Peru (Frente Amplio 2016). Given that there is no evidence that she would argue that domestic opponents were wholly controlled by foreign interests, we have coded 2 for OTH_FOREIGN.

Neither her nor her party had held any governmental position before the 2016 elections (1 for INSIDER, INC_PARL and INC_PRES). The Broad Front was officially founded in 2010 at a moment when Mendoza was still part of the Peruvian Nationalist Party. Mendoza won the primaries of the party and ran as its candidate (Ayala Richter 2017, 53). Thus, the party would have existed without her. However, her youth and position as a critical figure of politicians was seen by many as fundamental for her campaign. Several journalistic sources (David Blanco Bonilla 2016; Fowks 2016) have cited the appeal of her persona to explain the good results of her party. An in-depth study of her campaign explains that it was more cantered around her personal figure than around programmatic points, particularly around the idea of “vero valiente” or “brave Verónika” (Ayala Richter 2017, 60). Thus, we have coded 2 in CHARISMA because despite the fact that the party would have existed without her, her figure was crucial in the running of the campaign.

References

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