The Paradoxes of Authoritarianism: Army, Peasantry and Ethnicity in Peru, 19th to 20th Centuries

Drawing on recent political processes in Peru — including a civil war and the emergence of a pro-indigenous, ultra-nationalist militarist movement — this essay examines the historical relationship between the peasantry and the army from the 19th to the 21st centuries. It speculates on the changes produced in the transition from a caudillo-based army to a professional army. The essay notes that as the army professionalizes, the relationship between the armed institutions and the peasantry becomes more hierarchical and vertical. This process runs parallel to the consolidation of the first civilian constitutional regimes of the 20th century, in which, paradoxically, the exclusion of the peasantry increases. Ultimately, it was the dictatorships (both civilian and military) that gave greater voice to the interests of the peasantry than the constitutional democratic governments did.