Paul Cammack

Populism and Class Conflict

The “classical” account of Latin American populism sees it as a phenomenon combining a particular form of ideology with certain organizational and social structural features. For “classical” theorists, populism in Latin America is a loosely organized multiclass movement united by a charismatic leader behind an ideology and programme of social justice and nationalism. In their view this linkage of ideology and organization is the strength of the definition; it links ideology with a definite mode of political participation. There is an implicit or explicit contrast with the supposedly class-orientated nature of politics in the advanced industrial societies of Western Europe. Popular participation in populist movements, it is asserted, does not take on a “class” character. Either the subordinate strata compose a “mass” or the working class does not yet have its own autonomous organizations. It tends, therefore, to be organized and led by other social classes or political forces in a heteronomous manner. The absence or weakness of an autonomous working class is central to the classical definition of populism.

The Internationalization of Capital

The operations of TNCs should not be treated in isolation but seen as part of a wider process of internationalization of capital, of which they themselves are primary protagonists. The homogenization of production and consumption patterns is a characteristic of the internationalization of capital everywhere, but in the socioeconomic context of Latin America, it has effects which are very different from those in the advanced capitalist countries. Most of the so-called “distortions” which are identified in Latin America are the result of the internationalization of capital interacting with the specific, local socio-economic structure to generate patterns which are in significant ways different from those found in the advanced capitalist countries.

Dependency and Development

In 1969 Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto published a short interpretative account of Latin American history (Cardoso and Faletto, 1969). It should be noted that it is by no means clear whether the authors intend to develop a general theoretical model of Latin American development, or whether they are merely applying a particular kind of methodology to a series of concrete historical cases without any attempt to develop such a general theory. At the very minimum, however, Dependency and Development indicates the key variables which, according to the authors, enable the analyst to make sense of the multiplicity of developmental paths followed by Latin American countries. Their starting point is a differentiation of types of export economies in the nineteenth century into two basic types: (1) enclave economies and (2) economies with national control of the productive system. The enclaves which Cardoso and Faletto have in mind are mining or plantation enclaves. Although the image conjured up by the notion of an enclave is of a geographically separate entity, the key feature for these authors appears to be not the geographical situation of the productive enterprise but rather whether ownership is foreign or domestic.

Export-led Production

[It has been widely argued that the advancing of credit and the resulting indebtedness of rural labourers hashistorically been a key means of tying labour to the land. Bauer argues that this may sometimes have been the case, but that in general recent studies (Bazant, 1973; 1974; 1975; Brading, 1975; Deas, 1977; Katz, 1974; Martinez-Alier, 1977; Tutino, 1975; Warman, 1980) suggest that the bargaining power of workers may have been greater than has been appreciated.]

The Colonial Economy and Society

This essay describes in outline the colonial economic system and its spatial organization, taking as examples the two great silver-producing complexes, the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru.

The Poor in the City

The declining significance of locality for job recruitment means an increase in job mobility and a greater discontinuity in the occupational careers of these workers. This occurs partly because age and literacy are not qualifications that commit an individual to any particular type of job. Consequently, a worker can seek out better job opportunities, but lack of personal commitments also means that he is more easily replaceable. Also, with the proliferation of small enterprises the work situation itself becomes more unstable and sensitive to changes in the economic climate of Guatemala. Newly established enterprises do not have stable relationships with a clientele in city or countryside. In time of prosperity, the number of enterprises increases and established ones take on additional workers to meet the demand, but during economic depressions or those fluctuations occasioned by political events, enterprises fail and lay off workers.

Latin American Fiction

No cultural phenomenon of the 1960s did more than the apparent explosion of creativity in the Spanish American novel to bring Latin America to international attention. It is no exaggeration to state that if the Southern continent was known for two things above all others in the 1960s, these were, first and foremost, the Cuban Revolution and its impact both on Latin America and the Third World generally, and secondly, the boom in Latin American fiction, whose rise and fall coincided with the rise and fall of liberal perceptions of Cuba between 1959 and 1971. At a moment when such creativity was in short supply internationally, when the French nouveau roman was antagonizing ordinary readers and academics everywhere and critics repeatedly asked themselves whether the novel, in the age of the mass media, was now moribund, a succession of Latin American writers — above all, Cortazar, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa and Garcia Marquez — rose to international prominence, others from an earlier generation, like Borges and Carpentier, consolidated their status, and Asturias became the first Latin American novelist to win the Nobel Prize, in 1967.

Military Rule and Popular Resistance

Military intervention in the political life of Latin American nations has a long history, and almost certainly a long future. However, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw an apparently qualitative change in the type of regime that followed a successful coup. Moreover, the coups took place in the most developed Latin American countries, societies marked by complex social organizations and institutionalized political systems. On most indicators of modernity, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina would score high, though Argentina had a poor record of political stability, and Peru has many of the features of backwardness associated with developing countries. The military no longer intervened to correct the political system; it intervened to govern. Explanations for this new development stressed a number of factors, including internal changes in the military itself, the need to press on with a particularly difficult stage of economic development, the need to suppress the agitated politics of the praetorian state, and the need to adjust national development to changes in the international economic and political system.

The Logic of Disorder

Greater Sao Paulo is the dynamic centre of Brazil. Here, industrial production, the financial system, per capita income, in fact all indicators of vigorous economic growth, denote an area of great economic potential, especially in comparison with other areas of the country.

Peasant-Proletarian Transition

Before considering in detail the way that estates and peasant communities change under the impact of capitalist economic relations, we need to consider the factors which give rise to these relations. Among the most important are changes in demand for food, in part prompted by urbanization in the peripheral country and also, in some cases, by the necessity to produce foodstuffs at a price which will make them competitive with imported produce. These changes in demand reinforce, in turn, technological developments in agriculture — both biological technologies which are “land saving” and mechanical technologies which make savings in labour. In addition, according to the “unequal exchange” theorists, it is in the interest of the industrial bourgeoisie that wage costs are low, in order that they should derive advantage from their insertion within the international market, where (in more developed countries) they are higher.