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Political Change

F ollowing are overviews of the political evolution, in the postindep endence national period, of each of the independent Latin Am erican mainland nations and of the island nations of the Greater Antilles. Included also are discussions of French Guiana and Pue1to Rico, which are a part of France and the United States, resp ectively. These summaries are intended to increase our under- standing of each country's political geography and its impact on economic and social development. They will also enable us to evaluate the significance of new devel- opments in relation to th eir broader historical contexts .

MEXICO

Upon achieving independence in 1821, Mexico foun d itself physically devastated by the preceding decade of war and bitterly divided between cons ervative and lib- eral creole factions who fough t among thems elves for the chan ce to govern a nation consisting mostly of impoverished rural peasants. The first of th e caudillos to . gain power was a conservative latifunclista nam ed Augustin Iturbide. Iturbide adm ired grea tly th e auth oritarian monarchies of Europe and, as Emperor Augustin I , attempted to expand his dominion into Cen- tral America. Iturbide's reign lasted only until 1823 and ushered in a chaoti lmlf.._CflJlb.uy in which Mexico aver- aged one ruler a year. Th e most promin_ent of these was a flamboyant, self-s erving de magogue named Antonio Lopez de ~ant~Anna, who, as Parkes (1970, 198) noted, "succeeded in becoming, for thi1ty years, the curse of his

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native country." One of Santa Anna's sorriest disgraces was losing Texas through an inept military ca mpaign. The loss led directly to the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848, which concluded with Mexico's ceding the nmthern half of its tenitmy to the United States.

Santa Anna had somehow managed to represen t both the liberals and conservatives in the course of com- ing to power. After being deposed on four separate occa- sions, he fled the country for the last time in 1855. There followed a brief period of liberal refo!:.._n:!. highlighted by the preside~cyoTBen!_to Juarez, _a pure-blood~d Indian Y from the southern state of Oaxaca, who governed with a mo~al rectitude that has rarely been approached in sub- sequent Mexican history (Figure 6.1 ). Juarez died in 1872, and in 1876, Porfirio Dfaz began a ~ pt and re ressive dictatorial reign that was clominated by for- · eign economic interests .

~ In 1910, all of Mexico erupted into r~QD.. Out of the ferm ent and turmoil there e merged, in 1917,_ a new liberal an d, in so me respects , a radical cgnstit_µ tion th at h as govern ed Mexico to th e present (Be njamin 2000 ; Bre nn e r 1971 ). Among its prin cipal provisions were widespread agrarian reform, st~ t restrictions on th e eco n o mi c h oldings and po litical ac tiviti es of church es, and broad labor rights.

Yet anothe r outgrowth of the revolution was the e me rge nce of a domin ant political p arty that , since !._946 , has b ee n call ed th e Pf!:!!!:_ clo Revo lu cionario l1'!:Ej!udonal (PRI), meaning the Institutional Rev- olutionary Party (Figure 6.2). Its supporte rs we re

126 CHAPTER 6 Political C h ange

This mural shows the nineteenth-century Mexican liberal reformer Benito Juarez. The painting is found in Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City.

The PRI state headquarters building , Campeche City.

fond of calling Mexico a "one-~t).'. d e mocracy," since the party comprised thr~ major s~rs representing busin e ss , labor, and the peasantry. In theory, the pro- cess of selecting candidates for office-whether at the local, state, or national level-followe d d emocratic procedures govern in g th e political give-and-take between th e th ree principal interest sectors. Critics of

the system argued , however, that it was not fully open and that party leadership had frequently altered elec- tion results to avoid transferring power to one of th e minority parties of the left or right (Camp 2006 ).

A histolical turning point in the developm ent of a more open rnultiparty democracy occurred in the 1988 national elections, when official results showed that the PRI candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gmtaii, won the six-year presidential term of office with a mere 51 ercent of the vote. The remaining ballots were equally divided between the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Paity (PRD ) led by Cuauhternoc Cardenas Solorzano and the long-time con- servative, right-wing National Action Paity (PAN ). The reform process experienced another milestone in 1999 with the decision of the PRI to abandon its tim e-revered tradition of th e sitting president choosing his successor in favor of an open presidential plirnaiy election . This was followed, in Jul 2000, by the ele~on of the PAN__can_di- da~, Vicente Fox Quesada, as president of Mexico. The 200 election was also carlied by the PAN, whose candi- date , felipe Calderqn, defeate d his c arismatic PRD lival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, ]:>y less than 1 per: ,cent of the votes cast. Calderon's victmy was followed by midterm elections in .2008 in which the PRI reg§l.ined its status as the largest party in Corigress.

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Mexico thus appears to have evolved into a stable mu ltiparty d e mocracy. Great challenges, of course , remain. Perhaps the greatest of these is the dramatic rise . t:Q__fficent years of drug cartel-related violence,_ which has grown to include the kidnapping and killing of gov- E'u.ment officials and journalists as well as civilians. Anothe r significant challenge includes ext ending the newly won freedoms and opportunities to historically neglected sectors , such as the rural peasantiy. The sm all but much-pubhcized Za atista rebellion of a group of highland Maya Indians in the isolated southern state of Chiapas is but one manifestation of the pressing need for continuing reform (Colher and Collier 2005; Rus , Hernandez Castillo, and Mattiace 2003; Harvey 1998).

C ENTRAL AMERICA

With th e rise'•to power of a hberal governm ent in Spain in 1820 and the granting of independence to Mexico the following year, the Central Ameiican regions , forme rly tied to the Viceroyalty of New Spain by vi1tue of their belonging to the colonial Captaincy Gen eral of Guate- mala, declared their independence . Chiapas , Guate- mala, Honduras , El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica all joined Iturbide's Mexican e mpire. Its collapse led in 1823 to the formation of a fe deration nam ed the United Provinces of Central America. The fede ration faced almost insurmou ntab le challenges from th e beginnin g, the greatest being the isolation of th~gtonal ORula- tion centers. Severely restricted comm unication within tneunionrnagnified personal and regional 1ivalries and, together with deep conservative-liberal differences, led first to the loss of Chia Jas to Mexico in 1824 and finally, in the late 1830s , to the dissolution of the federatio!} itself (Figure 6.3 ). The remaining nations declared inde- pendence immediately thereafte r, but have st.DJggled ever since to overcome the disadvantages inherent in their small sizeand in their socially and culturally c!i~- united P.2.P..ulations (Booth, Wade , and Walker 2010; Walker and Armony 2000 ).

Guatemala Following the proclamation of Guatemalan inde~- dence in 1839, the country entered a period of conse1-va- ~ governance dominated by Raf~e! Carrer~ ~era

( was first elected president in 1844, designated "president for hfe" in 1854, and died in 1865. It was dming the Car- rera regime that Guatemala, in 1859, signed a tr~aty with, G[_eat B1itain that B1itain later used as legal justification for rej ~cting Guatemala's claim to B1itish Honduras. This claim was weakened fu1ther with Guatemala's formal rec- (2gnition in 1991 of Behzian independence. A hberal rev-_ lution, led in the 1870s and_ l880s by Justo Rufino

Banios, broke the power of the Church and the landed

CHAPTER 6 Political Change 127

A statue of Francisco Morazan in a San Jose, Costa Rica, park. Morazan was a champion of liberal causes and served as president of the United Provinces of Central America for eight years during the 1830s-the only period of political unity the region has ever known .

~hgarchy and promoted economic modernization~ - developm e nt, which by the turn of the century was funded to a significant degree by earnings from the exp01t of coffee. Liberal ovemments continued to <lorn- ,·<6. inate down to the election of J9 rge Ubico i.n_l93l . Ubico :i} imposed-a ruthl~s dictatorship that lasted until 1944.

- The post-World War II era has been a difficult one for Guat e malan d e mocracy, as th e n ation b eca me increasingly polarized berNeen the extre me left and the extreme right (Love! 20 10; Guzaro and McComb 2010; Afflito and Jesilow 2007; Jonas 2000; Carmack 1988). In 1954, a UnitecL_States Cen tral Intelligen ce Ag__ency- US, s onsored coup ove1thre"';'. a democratically e ected gov- e rnm ent which had enacted socioecono mic reforms. There then began, in 1960, a lon and dee ly divisive civil war that officially took an_estirnated 140 000 li_ves C.,.1 '11 t and left another 60,000 persons "missing'.' (F igure 6.4 ). tW- 1

~stuerrillas were arrayed against th e u_!!ra-rigl:!!_- wing milit ary, which threat e n ed to stage a coup

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128 CHAPTE R 6 Po li tica l Change

This plaque containing a partial list of the victims of Guatemala's recent civil war is mounted on the exterior wall of the national cathedral in Guatemala City.

whenever it became too uncomfmtable with the policies of the civilian government. Paramilita death s uads perpetuated the S.YE_le of violence. Tens of tho_usands of peaceful Maya Indians were caught in the crossfire.

By the earlx~s, G atemala was widely regarded as the w rst violator oLhurna ·ghtsJ.ILalL of atin An:ierica, and the country was facing a grave economic crisis. The 99 residential campaign brou ght the election ci,_b.lvaro Arzu Irigoyen, a cons ervative hus.i- ness rnan, and the peaceful resolution of the civil ~- T11is was followed in 999 y the victory of Arzu's rival, Alfon so Portillo, in the f} rst p eacetim e presidential election in nearly for!),' ye~. Two additional open elec- tions have since been held. In 2008 Alvaro Colo took office as Guate mala's first freely elected leftist resi- dent in over fifty years . It appears , then , that a fragile d e mocracy has once again b ee n es tablish ed in th e deeply divide d nation . Continuing hi_gh levels of civil

CUADERNO DE MAPAS y APU NTES DE GEOG RA F IA

F IGURE 6.5 A Guatemalan elementary school geography notebook with a cover map showing Belize as a province of Guatemala. Although Guatemala has officially recognized the independence of Belize, many of Guatemala's citizens continue to feel that Belize was unjustly taken from them.

Y!Qlence and the c9rruP.ting of prominent government officials by drug traffickers are grim reminders , how- ever, that the healing process is far from complete.

Belize Belize occupies a portion of the southeastern Yucatan Peninsula and for thousands of years was an integral pait of the Maya civilization. Although o~-ill}:'. falling un er Spanish authority d~1ing th e colonial pe1iod, the first Jer- man ent Europearuettlements were established b seven- t~ th-century British buccaneers andl.ater_by__Erig!igl loggers and escaped slaves from the Caiibbean Isl~ ds. It thus developed as a sparsely populated, predominantly English culture realm and was formally declare~sh co ony in 18~ Self-govern ce witltin the B1itish Com- monwealth was granted iJ 1964 d the official name was changed from British Hondw-as to Belize i.11 1973. I~

pendence followed in 19~l, at which time Great Britain promised to come to the country's militaiy defense in the event of an outbreak of armed hostilities with Guatemala (Figure 6.5). Belize functions today as a stable parliamen- tary democracy and is widely viewed as more Caribbean than Central Am e1ica_g,.in_c;_clture ..

Honduras The early political development of Honduras mirrored to a large degree that of its western neighbor, Guate- mala. Following its declaration of i.e nde nce in ~ eons e rvatives rul ti.L.1..8.:W , wh en a lib§ ra reform e ra was introduced by Marco Aurelio Soto. There followed anotp er p e riod of cons ervative do.mi- nance in the late; nineteenth ce ntury, during which tim e Honduras was subj ected to frequ ent intervention by its C entral Am e rican n eighbors , p articularly by more populous and prosperous Guate m~a. The estab- lishm ent of huge Am erican-o ed-eanana o ·a ·ons in the early 1900s brought to the northern Caribbean lowlands a degree of economic developm ent, but also resulted in foreign fruit inte rests exercising an inordi- nate amount of political influ e nce-a situation that critics maintain p ersists to som e degree to the present day (Soluri 2005; Langley 2002 ).

D espite its proble ms , which have included the 2009 coup d'etat (se Case Study 5.1), a democratic tradition has recently e merged in Honduras. After an ~end~ period of military_ dominance, ci\jJiai go em.m en: was reestablished ii) th e_ early 1980s. Since that tim e, th e country has held free and open presidential elections. Mu ch-n ee ded judicial and p e nal reforms have been imple mented, and civilian control over the military has been form alized . Widespread corrnption and rising levels of violent c1i me, however, threaten the newly won gains.

El Salvador settled nation whose ==:c..=.:...==~~==

leaders · torically have la ed promin~ oles in Central Am e1ican politiGs. The mid-nineteenth centmy was ominated by the usual conservative-liberal rival-, ries. Those rivalries cam e to be subsum ed in the late/ 1800s by the impact ofs_c offe cultivation, which~ the nation's landeg_aristoc ·a y into an extremely tightly knit oligarchy that has attempted to perpetuate itself in power to the present.

Hi_gh opulation densities and the landed aristocra- cy's unwillin ness to voluntarily promote a program of substantive vagrmian reform have been the root caus e,,s of El Salvador's two most recent political c1ises,., The first, the so-called "Soccer Wm·" with Honduras in 1969, had its imm ediate provocation in a regional qualifying soccer match for the World Cup betwee n th e tv.ro countries,

CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e 129

which inflam ed passions to such a degree that the Salva- doran air force dropped a few bombs on Honduran air- ports and its army invaded Honduras at two points . Underlying the conflict, however, had been th e migra- tion in the previous decades of an estimated 300,000 landless Salvadoran easants into the_thinly popula!:_.e,d western Honduran borderlands, caused by the Salvador- ans ' inability to o tain an to work in their own nation.

The second, and far more serious , crisis was an arm ed conflict between the right-wing Salvadoran mili- tary and Marxist re bels of the Farabundo Marti ( 1~'4-v ,,1 National Liberation Front (FMLN wJ10 attempted ~ V.. 1 tQ._represent the interests of the growing rural landless f~ ( class. Th e civil wm; which broke out in 9 0, took an esti- Q • 1 ~ ;;ated 75,000 lives, most of them civilian, and displaced t,t Vl . approxii11ately 1 million persons before its negotiated set- t-.\0.( tlem ent in 1992 (Henriquez Consalvi 2010 ). Remarkable p;·ogress has been achieved in recent years in building democratic political structures within the nation (Dodson and Jackson 2004; Juhn 1998; Williams and Walter 1997; Brockett 1994). Electoral, judicial, and economic reforms have been implemented, and th e FMLN is now on e of, many political pmties functioning within an open, plural-

' ist governm ent. El Salvador is rapidly reassuming its his- tmic leadership role within the region.

Nicaragua Few people of Central Ame1ica have as tragic a histo1y as the long-suffe1ing Nicaraguans , who from the early colonial period to the present have seldom experienced a time when war m1d conflict did not prevail. One source of continuing tension within the country has been th e deep cultural differe betv een Mos uitia _tl~i-1.ed Ina.lan an ack Caribbean coastal plains region th.at un til 1860 fun ctioned as an autonomous kingdom under B;itish protection, a~he Spanish-Indian realm that came to focus on tl1e fertile western volcanic low El,~ bordering_!l1 e Pacific coast (Hale 1994).

In addition to Spanish-English antagonisms , Span- ish society its elf became bitterly divided during the colonial era bel:l;veen conservativ andJiheral elements. The form er cente red on tl1e interior agricultural city of Granada and the latte r on Leon, whose proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the world b eyond led to its selection as tl1e seat of the provincial governm ent. The · rivahy between the two factions b ecam e so intense fol- lowing Ni caragua's declaration of indep e nde_n ce in

83 " that the national papital was fin ally moved to tl1 e c<_? mprornis e site of Managua, the n a small town situ- ated rou ghly half".ray b etween Granada and Leon .

Frustrated by th eir inability to defeat tl1e conserva- tives, th e liberals next staged a bizarre episode, hJ!].ng_a. band of Am e rican filibust ers , led by an adventure r nam ed William Walke r, to e ngage th e cons e rvative

130 CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e

armies on their behalf. Walker ar1ived with his men in -1855, and the next year managed to et himself "elected" president of the republic. Walker's rule quickly became so offensive to liberals and conse1vatives alike that both parties enlisted the aid of their Central Ameiican neigh- bors to d1ive him from...th e__countzy_i_n~

There followed a period of conservativ ina- tion that__e r_1ckd. in 1J393. with the election of a young 'beral named Jose Santos Zelaya. Zelaya succeeded in ------- ~

< \0 bringing Mosquitia under effective control for the first J'-} tim e in Nicaraguan histo1y, but he also sowed the seeds

of his own de mis e by a,!!_em12ting to provoke revolutions in neighboiing countries. Wh en two Am e rican citizens were killed in the 1909 revolution against Zelaya, the Uni~ d States sent naval forces to patrol the Caribbean coastline of Nicaragu a and within three ye ars had m~rin~s station ed in _Man ag~, whe re th ey we re to

, remain 011· a "p eacekeeping" mission until 1933 . . \}. ~ The Am elican occupation was re~sted by the forc<;s V ~) · of Ge12_eral Augusto Cesar Sandino, who was assass~ated ~" in 1934 by th e U.S.-train ed National Guard commanded

by Anastacio Somoza Garcia (Walker and Wade 2011 ; Macaulay 1985). Somoza became president in 931 and proceeded to establish an e~ceptionally rrup and long- lived dynastic regim e. By the tim e that Somoza's youn- ges t so n , Anastasio Somo za D e bayle, gove rn ed as dictator in the ll):Z0s, it was estimated that the extended fa mily controlled fully half the wealth of the nation.

In 19790 a bro ad coalition of opposition groups drove Somoza into exile, leaving Nicaragua impover-

,,.,. ished and deeply divided. A l_eftist group , which called themselves the Sand inistas in honor of General Sand- ino, established the mselves in power, ans[ tl1eiijeader, Daniel Ortega, b ecame president (F igure 6.6). With

\ V ~oviet assistance they built up the milita1y to unprece- dented levels while atte mpting to discourage private e terprise . The United States, alarm ed at what it per-

"k- eived as the beginnings oftfi'e first Central American ~~ Marxist state, re spond e d by su orting the contra

counte rrevolutiO..!l,. which cost the nation over 55,D..Q0_ dead or woundeq and untold economic loss es. The counte rrevolution fail ed to gain th e support of the masses, partly because the c~r~ leadership wa~ com- po.,~ed largely of hated forrn e_r Somozista commande_!'s. In 990-» Violeta Banios de Chamorro, the widow of a fo rm er newsp aper editor who had been murdered in 1978 by presumed agents of Somoza, defe ated Ortega in a free election and took offlce. Subsequent elections have been tumultuous yet relatively open. Reflective of the political in stability of th e countiy is the fact that the national co nstitution of 1987 has been revis ed three times , in 1995, 2000 , and 2005. Ortega was again elected president in 2006 and has since consolidated his control of virtually eve1y aspect of national governance (Marti i Puig 2010 ). Th e nation re mains int e ns ely

This heroic-sized statue of an armed worker was erected by the Sandinistas in the older sector of Managua.

divided both politically and socially, and the placing of collective national good ahead of the pursuit of personal gain remains its greatest challenge .

Costa Rica In contrast to the turbulence and political instability that have characteiized most Central Ameiican nations , Costa Rica has been a model of relative calm, with q_1ux occa- si~ sho1t interludes of auth01itaiian rule interrupting long p e1iods of peaceful , de mocratic government. The roots of Costa Rican de mocracy extend back into the colonial era, when the early Spanish settlers anived in the te mperate, volcanic uplands of the Meseta Central only to discover that the indigenous populations of the region were ve1y scarce. Unable to live off the labor of the Indi- ans as great latifundistas, as was generally the case else- where in Latin Am e1ica, the Costa Rican Spaniards were forced to divide the land into smaller family farm-type

CHAPTE R 6 Political C h a ng e 131

FIGURE 6.7

Costa Rica has long invested in the education of its people. Shown here is th e San Ramon campus of the University of Costa Rica.

u~ t the could work th~mselves. This, in turn, gave rise to a relatively egalitarian society that stressed democ- ~y and its sustaining value, universal education , and . that remained largely aloof1rom - the never-ending mili- tary intrigues that undermined the political development of neighboring regions (Booth 1998) (Figure 6.7).

This is not to suggest that Costa Rica has escaped authoritarian influences altogether. The country was ruled from 1870 to 1882 by the dictator General Tomas Guardia and~erwenta s h...91t-lived military coup iij l Q!L_Jhe father of modern Costa Rican democracy is widely considered to be Jose "Pepe" Figueres , who rose to national prominence in 11)48 as the leader of a popu- lar revolt (Lehoucq 1991). Elected president first in 1953 and later in 1970, Figueres's greatest achievem ent may have bee n the complete abolition of th e army, which he replaced with a civilian-led national police force. Many of Figueres's successors have taken leader- ship roles in pursuing regional solutions to Central America's numerous military conflicts. One of those . successors, Oscar Arias Sane served twice as presi- dent of Costa Rica, from 1986 to 1990 and again from 2006 to 2010, and was awarded the 1987 Nobel Peace Priz for his contributions to- th e peaceful resolution of Nicaragua's Sandinista-contra war.

Panama Panama's unique location , linking North and South America as well as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans , has

contributed since colonial tim es to making it a region where Jeople, goods , and ideas all seemed to gathe r and mix in a manner so fluid that long-term values and ..... - ____. t~ ons_fgi:_med extrem ely slowly. Its strategic loca- tion also has encouraged int.ervention by foreign inter- ests , which in th e post-World War II era has been CO..]J n!§red by a rising tide of nationalism.

Panama first achieved independence in 1821 fol- lowing Bolivar's conquest of loyalist forces stationed in the isthmus. Shortly thereafter, however, the .country rE:_ciuested union with Colombia, which governed the occasionally rebellious territory as a se_p1iautonomous region throughout the remainder of the nineteenth ce ntury. In 1903 , the United States , frustrated at Colombia's failure to ratify a treaty that would have allowed th e United States to build a canal linking tl1e \)\ Atlantic and Pacific Oceans , de loyed unbo ats _?.n d tvn--tC~ troo s to persuade the Colombian egislature to grant \/CYff' 0

Panama independence yet a second tim e. Within weeks of Anglo American recognition of tl1eir independence, the jubilant Panamanians, who knew full well the source of their n ewfound freedom , sign ed the treaty that ceded in perpetuity to the United States tl1e right to us;:-occupy, and control a strip of land now knm,vn as the ~anal Zone. The following year, in yet another extraordinary abrogation of sovereign power, Panama adopted a constitution that specific ally authorized American 'mi itary intervention in the countiy, if such inter~ention was necessary to maintain ordei;.

132 CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e

A ship passing through the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal. This view is fac ing westward toward the Pacific Ocean .

Having established near total control over Pana- manian internal affairs, the United States proceeded to dig the canal, which was comple ted and put into opera- tion in 1914. From that point until 1940, the count1y was rule d by a series of strongmen ,who, while not above profiting personally from their positions, were generally quick to do Am e rican b idding . The JJ.OSt- , World War II era brought attitudinal changes in many Panamanians . While recognizing that much good had resulted from American economic involve ment in the countiy, they came to r ent-U .S.... own.ershi of Pana- ma's heartland- the Canal Zone (Figure 6.8). This e merging a · alis was promoted, in part for p er- sonal political considerations, by several Panamanian caudillos, including the pro-Fascist Arnulfo Arias , who was elected president in 1940, 1950, and 1968-only to be ousted in coups that followed all three victories- and Colonel Omar Torrijos Herrera, who reigned as dictator from 1968 until 1981. In 1977, Torrijos and American President Jimm y Carter agreed on a new pair of tre a ties that called for th e canal to pass completely to Panamanian control on Januaiy 1, 2000, and for Panama to remain politically neutral thereafte r.

Torrijos was followed as military dictator of Panama by General Manuel Antonio oriega, who is widely believed- to have b ee n simultaneously em ploye d for years by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and by Colombia's drug warlords. Noriega, having been indicted on drug trafficking ch arges by two U.S. grand jmies, beca me increasingly an ti-Am erican in his behav- ior, and in th e fall of 1989 made the tactical mistake of

dedaiing war on the United States. The United States, which had been anxious to have the general deposed, then invaded the count1y (Perez 2000; Millett 1993).

Since Noriega's ouster, th e re has been considerable progress toward the creation of stable denwci:ac_y. The m~ was abolished in 1994_ by constitutional amend- ment and rep aced by a national police force, a coast guard, and an air service corps. D e mocratic elections are now the norm. However, the executive branch con- tinues to dominate , and the political party system is weak and candidate-rather than issue-centered. In the 1999 presidential elections, for instance, Mireya Moscoso, widow of form er President Arias, defeated Ma1tin Tonijos , the son of the late dictator. Torrijos, in turn, se1ved as president from 2004 to 2009 .

THE GREATER A NTILLES

Cuba The failure of Cuba and Pue1to Rico to seek indepen- de nce in the early nin e tee nth century dramatically increased Cuba's geopolitical importance. Spain, which had just lost its poss essions on the mainland , de ter- mined to hold on to its remaining Caribbean colonies at all cos ts and impos ed repress ive milita1y rule on th e islan d. Me,mwhile, Ame1ican politicians from southern slaveholding states, locked in battle \ivith representatives of th e north ern states for control of Congress, began to lobby for U.S. annexation of Cuba, ostensibly to bring lib erty and freedom to the island. The Cubans tl1ern- se lves remained deeply divid ed among thos e who

favored independence, those who wanted to seek union with the United States, and those who preferred to see Cuba contin ue as part of the Spanish empire.

The animosity between the revolutionary an d royal- ist forces became so intense that a bitter, rnilitaiily incon- clusive civil war empted in 1868, lasting ten years and costing over 200,000 lives. Upon th e conclusion of the war, Cuba was granted representation in the Spanish Par- liam ent, or Cortes, and vaiious reforms were enacted on the island that were intended to appease those who had fought for independence. The changes were too little and came too late, however, to ste rn the growing indepen- dence move ment that coalesced around a young poet liv- ing in exile in the United States nam ed Jose Marti. The invasion of th e revolutionary forces in 1895 marked the stait of yet anoth er bloody civil war, one that took Marti's own life and that was still raging three yeai·s later when the U.S. ·battleship Main e exploded in H avana harbor. The United States' subsequent declaration of war on Spain brought about Spain's expulsion from its remainjng Caribbean colonies, but it failed to free Cuba from for- eign domination (Smith and D avila-Cox 1999). This took the form first of direct Arneiican military rnle and sec- ondly, from 1902 to 1934, of limited self-gove rnm e nt (Dur and Gilcrease 2002; Perez 1991) . Dming the latter pe1iod, Arne1ican-Cuban relations were governed by the Platt Amendment, which granted to the United States tl1e use of Cuban military bases, including the naval base that tl1e United States still holds at Guantanamo, and the right to intervene militaiily in Cuba for the "protection of life, property, and individual liberty."

In reality, the protection of property, especially Ame ri can sugar and gambli ng inte res ts , was of fa r greate r concern to Am erican politicians than was the pres ervation of individual Cuban libe rties, which lan- guished throughout the early 1900s unde r a series of corrupt governments chosen from both the liberal and co ns ervative sect ors. Th e abro gation of th e P latt Amendme nt was acco mpani ed by th e asce nsion to power of an army sergeant named F ulgencio Batista, who, except during a de mocratic interlude from the mid-1940s to th e early 1950s, controlled a country whose economy continued to be bound closely to that of tl1e United States (Moreno 2007).

It was the political repression of the Batista regime, together witl1 widening socioeconomic inequalities .fed by American investments on th e island, that inspired a band of youthful revolutionmies led by Fide l Castro to attack in 1953 the Moncada rnilitmy barracks in Santi- ago de Cuba (Figure 6.9). The initial re bellion, staged on th e 100th annivers ary of Mmtf's birth, was put down. However, Castro and his followers late r regrouped in Mexico and from there returned to Cuba in 1956. In Janumy 1959, Castro assum ed power in what to many appeared to be simply another Latin American co-up .

CHAPTER 6 Political C han ge 133

The Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, where Fidel Castro first attempted to overthrow the Batista regime . The bui lding is now used as a school.

Witl1in a few years, however, he had outlawed all politi- cal opposition and publicly declared himself a Marx.ist- Leninist. In April 1961, Castro weatl1ered tl1e abortive U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Matanzas province and, in October 1962, the Am erican-Soviet missile crisis (Blight and Brenn er 2002 ).

In 1965, all political paities other than the Commu- nist were outlawed, and in 1968, private prope1ty was declared illegal. By that time, Cuba's economy was heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union, and its foreign policy mir- rored that of the USSR and its allies, much to the conster- nation of the United States. Political and economic refonns within tl1 e Soviet Union and its former eastern European satellite nations in the late 1980s were greeted with disdain by Castro, who continued to enjoy a degree of suppmt from many of Cuba's elderly and the agrariai1 poor who had benefited from improvements in education and health cm·e enacted by the regime. But by the eai·ly 1990s, the loss of Soviet economic subsidies had forced Castro to declare the existence of a "special period" that required the implementation of many of tl1e reforms for which he had previously criticized the Ru ssians (Susman 1998) . These and subsequent modifications have included autho- rization for certain fonm of p1ivate busin ess, encourage- ment of p1ivate farmers to produce their own food on idle state land, legalization of the holding of American dollm·s, ai1d promotion of foreign in vestment and tomism. These concession s to capitalism have resulted in growing num- bers of highly educated professionals, such as doctors and engineers, leaving their peso-paid government jobs, which offer an average salaiy of U.S.$ 20.00 per month, to work as dollar-paid restaurant workers and taxi diivers. otwith- standing this limited economic restruchuing, th e govern - ment continu es to control 90 percent of the economy. Substantive political reform has not been implemented,

134 CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e

and Cuba remains a highly militarized state that criminal- izes free speech and association and represses dissent (Weinreb 2009; Moses 2000; Jatar-Hausmann 1999) . Meanwhile, the aging Castro brothers continue to attrib- ute the country's ills to American imperialism and its pun- ishing economic embargo.

Jamaica The English conquest of Jamaica in 1655 spared the island the horrors of the wars of independence that swept Spain's American colonies, but otherwise continued the pe1vasive underdevelopm ent common to the plantation- dominated peoples of the Caribbean. The political begin- nings of modern Jamaica date to 1944, wh en Great Britain granted the islanders limited self-government. This was followed in 1958 by membership in the ill-fated Federation of the West Indies, which lasted until 1962 when the nation was given its full independence as a par- liamentary democracy within the Commonwealth.

Jamaican foreign and economic policy has fluctuated widely since independence, further complicating attempts to achieve long-term development. Dming the 1970s, the dominant political force was the People's National Party (PNP) led by Michael Manley. Manley attempted to develop a modified socialist welfare state and to politically align Jamaica closer to Castro's Cuba-both to the detii- ment of the country's all-important tourist industry. Man- ley was followed as prime minister in the 1980s by Edward Seaga, whose Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) advo- cated a return to private enterp1ise and close ties with the United States. Needless to say, tourism increased, but widespread poverty and social unrest persisted. In 1990, an ideologically reformed Manley was again elected to office, this time on a platform of reinvigorating the private economic sector. Manley resigned from office in 1992 for reasons of health, and Jamaica was governed for fifteen years by Percival J. Patterson of the PNP. Bmce Golding of the JLP was elected p1ime minister in 2007.

Haiti The beginnings of Haitian independence from France date to the 1790s through a great slave uprising led ini- tially by Pierre-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture. From the conclu sion of that conflict to the present, Haiti has experienced consistently violent and repres - sive government. The cruelty and suffering have con - tinued for so long tl1at, to many, the nation has come to symbolize hatred and poverty-a horrifying exam ple of the depths to which human society can descend when subjected to unchecked prejudice and p ersonal ambi- tion. What makes the situation all the more tragic is that, p1ior to the uprising, Saint-Domingue was one of the most prosperous regions in Latin America.

As was often the case in Latin America's other wars of independence, the early leaders of Haiti's rebellion were moderate visionaries who were determined to redress the evils of colonialism , including slavery, and whose character prevented them from participating in the tyrannical excesses of those who followed tl1em in power. Toussaint L'Ouverture was willing for Haiti to become a self-governing part of the French empire if Napoleon would only abolish slavery in the colony. Napoleon's refusal to do so, and Toussaint L'Ouverture's subsequent kidnapping and death in France, resulted in Haiti's declaration of independence in 1804. There fol- lowed an attempt, under Haiti's first president-emperor, Jean-Jacques D ess alines, to e radicate eve1y vestige of despised European influence, including the ]dlling of all white people and the destruction of tl1eir material pos- sessions. In the process , the economic infrastructure of the young country was devastated, and the majority of the p eople reve rted to a subsistence existe nce from which most of the population has yet to emerge.

From the fall of President Jean-Pierre Boyer in 1843 to tl1e mid-twentieth century, Haiti alternated between dictatmial mulatto mle emanating from the capital city of P01t-au-P1ince and periods in which the national govern- ment, whose influence in tl1e rural interior districts was never great, virtually ceased to function. United States Marines occupied the countiy from 1915 to 1934.

In 1957, a black physician nam ed Frarn;:ois Duvalier was elected president. Duvalier, or "Papa Doc" as he came to be called, quickly established one of tl1e most brutal dictatorships in modern history, one sustained by inciting the black masses to violence toward middle- and upper-class mulattoes (Heinl and Heinl 2005). Those whom Duvalier perceived as threats to himself were sys- tematically hunted down and killed by his personal secu- rity force , called the Tontons Macoutes. After previously having declared, "I am the state," Duvalier had the con- stitution rew1itten in 1964 to make him "President for Life," a title he held until his death in 1971.

Papa Doc was succeeded by his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as "Baby Doc," who fled the count1y in 1986 after having transferred much of the national treasury to personal overseas bank accounts. In Decem- ber 1990, a leftist Catholic priest nam ed Jean-Ber- trand Aristide was chosen president in the first fully de mocratic voting in Haiti's history. Aristide was over- thrown the following year by th e Haitian militmy and took refuge in th e United States, which restored him to power in 1994. Haiti's first peaceful transfer of power from one popularly elected leader to another occurred in 1996 with the inauguration of Rene Preval, Aristide's hand-picked successor. Preval's t erm was marked by international allegations of widespread corruption and electoral fraud and the consequent withholding of most multilateral and bilateral economic assistance . In 2000,

Aristide won a second term in an election boycotted by the political opposition and widely condemned as fraud- ulent by inte rnational obs ervers. In early 2004, Aris- tide's continued opposition to democratic reforms and the deepening poverty of the environm entally degraded country led to an armed rebellion that forced Aristide's resignation and exile abroad. Preval was subsequently elect ed to a second term as preside nt in 2006. The political and econo mic reconstruction of Haiti will doubtless be long and difficult.

Dominican Republic In contrast to the almost continual turmoil of Haiti, the political development of the Dominican Republic, Haiti's weste rn neighbor, has proceeded along the fairly commqp Latin American patte rn of caudillismo followed more recently by democracy. Independence was achieved initially in 1821 but was temporarily lost wh en Haiti, and late r Spain, governed the country. Th e later nin eteenth centmy and early twe ntieth we re a tim e of ge n e rally sho rt-live d dictatorships that brought mod est economic developm ent to the elites but little change in the lives of the poor masses . An internal power vacuum , together with growing Am eri- can finan cial investments within the country, led to United States milita1y occupation from 1916 to 1924 (C alder 1984) . This was followed in 1930 by the begin- ning of the long, harsh dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, who , nohvithstanding his callous disregard for civil lib- erties, did much to mode rnize the economy (Derby 2009; Hall 2006 ).

Trujillo's assassination in 1961 led to a p e riod of political instability that brought about a b1ief Ame1ican occupation in 1965. The post-Trujillo era was dominated until 1996 by Joaquin Balaguer, a classic sb·ongman who pillaged the national b·easmy in order to reward his sup- porters and who employed a variety of self~serving strate- gies to weaken his political opposition (Ha1tlyn 1998) (Figure 6.10 ). Under Balague r, the country acquired many symbols of modernity and prosp e rity while the masses continued to live, for the most pait, under condi- tions of severe economic p1ivation. In 1994, the 87-year- old, nearly blind Balaguer found himself trailing in the electoral count of an election he thought he was ce1tain to win; panicked, he stopped tl1e count and shortly there- · after announ ced that he had won. Domestic and interna- tional outrage to the ploy was so strong that Balaguer agreed during subsequent negotiations to shorten his term to two years . In 1996, Leonel Fernandez Reyna, a probusin ess attorney who grew up in ew York City, was chosen president in open, peaceful elections. Fernandez Reyna was defeated in the 2000 presidential election by Hipolito Mejfa but regained th e presidency in 2004 and was reelected in 2008.

CHAPTER 6 Politica l Chang e 135

Joaqufn Balaguer, served part or all of seven terms as president of the Dominican Republic from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Puerto Rico Pue1to Rico, tl1 e second of the Am erican colonies that re mained loyal to Spain dming the revolutionaiy wars, was , like Cuba, rewarded thereafter with libe ralized trade privileges and representation in the Cortes. How- ever, these co ncessions failed to prevent th e growth of a lib e ral proindep ende n ce party that had achieved significant concessions prior to the outbreak of the Spanish-American Wm·. Although many Pue1to Ricans res ented the island's becoming a United States posses- sion, opposition to the American occupation gradually diminished, owing largely to an impressive expansion of roads , schoo ls, and public health se1vices.

Unlike most other Ame1ican tenitorial acquisitions that ultimately were granted eitl1er statehood or inde- p endence, Pu erto Rico's political standing has evolved ove r th e twentieth century in a som ewhat haphazard fashion that may yet be modified still furth er. Follow- ing tl1e Spanish-Ame1ican War, the island was initially classified as a "territory." That status was changed in the Jones Act of 1917 t o on e of an "organized but unincorporated" part of the United States, and in 1952, th e island was officially d es ignate d an Am e rican "commonwealth" or, in th e Spanish , Estado Libre Asociaclo (Free Associated State) .

Und e r th e provisions of th e commonwealth agree me nt , Puerto Rico 's relationship to the United States federal government is similar, but not identical, to that of the Am erican states, with local hom e rule through popular election of a governor and membe rs

136 CHAPTER 6 Political Change

of a senate and a house of represe ntatives. Puerto Ricans are considered full American citizens , eligible for fede ral employment, military service, and welfare assistance. Th ey are free to travel to and from , and to seek e mploymen t on , the United Stat es mainland . Virtually the only p rivileges withheld from th em are those of voting in American presidential elections and of having voting representatives in the United States Congress . Those limitations are tempered , however, by their having the opportu nity to vote in national pri- mary elections , representation by an elected (but non - voting) resident commissioner in the U.S. House of Re pre se ntative s , and exe mption from all federa l in co me taxes , except taxes on income earn ed through employmen t with the federal gove rnm e nt or while residing on the mainland. The islanders also ben efit coll ective ly from approximate ly U.S.$10 billion in ann ual federal spending.

Not surprisingly, many Puerto Ricans are relatively conte nt with the curre nt commonwealth status, but oth- ers are seeking eithe r full statehood or full indepe n- dence. In a 1993 plebiscite, 48.4 percent of those voting favored continu ed commonwealth status, 46.2 percent statehood, and 4.4 pe rcent indep endence . In 1998, yet anoth e r nonbinding referendum resulted in 50.2 p er- cen t of voters favoring th e existing commonwealth arrangeme nt and 46.5 p erce nt state hood. One addi- tional disadvantage of statehood would be th e possible loss of Spanish as th e official language and th e resultant dilution of the island's predominantly Hispanic culture.

The procommonwe alth pos ition is represented today by the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) , which was founded in 1938 by Luis Munoz Marin; tl1e pro- statehood by th e New Progressive Party (PNP ); and the proindep endence by a variety of smaller parties (Figure 6.11 ). The American Congress has generally tried to assume a neutral position.

ANDEAN S OUTH A MERICA

After Simon Bolivar's final defeat of the Spaniards at Carabobo in 1821, creole leaders from th roughout the northe rn Andes gathered at Cucuta and form ed a oos e_ fede ration that came to be_known as La Gran Colom- bia. The new nation comprised much of present-day Venezuela, Colom bia, Panama, and Ecuador and was administered from Bogota. It was largely th e creation of Bolf var, who dream ed of uniting all of Spain 's form er New World colonies into a voluntary association of free and enlightened states.

Bolivar's idealism was far ah ead of his tim e. La Gran Colombia n ever function ed effectively, owing to tl1 e isolation and separatist sentim e nts of the regional popu lation cen t ers , to the p e rsonal ambitions of its leadership , and to th e extended absences of th e great

F IGURE 6.1 1 Lu is Munoz Marin , the father of modern Puerto Rico.

liberator himself, who immediately turned his attention to freeing Peru and Bolivia from th e Spanish grip. In 1828, Bolfvar resigned as president amid an outbreak of regional re be llions , and in Decembe r 1830 , he passed away from tube rculosis. Bolfvar had played a prominent role in the liberation of five of Soutl1 Ameri- ca's modern nations , yet he died saddened by the col- lapse of his dream of he mispheric unity-an ideal that has largely eluded Latin Am erica to the pres ent day.

Venez uela Venezuela's secession from La Gran Colombia was led by Jose Antonio Paez, a llanero from the Orinoco plains , who broke with Bolivar and ruled either openly or behind th e scenes from 1830 until his exile som e eightee n years later. Although Paez derived his support from the conservative oligarchy and was reluctant to relinquish control of the country, he proved hims elf a capabl e administrator whos e moderate policies pro - moted regional reconciliation and the economic devel- opm ent of th e fl edgling republic.

With the fall of Paez and tl1e conservatives, Venezu- ela was dominated throughout the remainde r of th e nin eteenth century by a series of dict~ s whose avowed

liberalism was masked b their stron ties to the milita1y, Chief among th ese was Ge neral Antonio Guzman Blanco, who ruled directly or indirectly from 1873 until his exile to his beloved Paris in 1888. Guzman Blanco reduced still further the power of the already weak Vene- zuelan Catholic Church, promoted e ducation , and attempted to build up Caracas as a .showcase of his great- ness. Thus, despite Guzman Blanco's legenda1y capacity for embezzlement, Venezuela advanced under his reign.

The same was tru e, in many respects, of the rule of {)<::, J an Vicente Gomez, who from 1J 08 to !-_935 CEushe4

h~ ppon e!lts wi_!:h a cru~lty unmatched in Venezuelan hi story and tr eat e d th e nation al t re asury as if it were his personal spending account (Yarrington 2003 ). Ironically, Gomez also laid the foundations of modem Venezuela through his e ncouragem e nt of foreigQ., investment , particularly in the petroleum sector, which financed the ··country's development throughout the twentie th ce ntury. E ve n the progressive democratic tradition of the post-Gom ez era may be traced in part to th e revulsion felt by most Venezuelans to the tyran - nical excesses of the illiterate caudillo.

Gomez was succeeded as pres ide nt by Eleazar Lo ez Contreras , who used the proceeds of the expand- ing petroleum industry to fund much-needed schools, highways, and hospitals-a policy known as sembrar el petr6leo (sow th e oil). Welcom~ as the e nsuing eco- nomic growth was , Lopez Contreras made his greatest contribution in the political sphere, allowing th e return of num erous exiles and voluntarily relinquishing power at the completion of his term of office (Figure 6.12 ).

Among th e re turnin g exiles was Romu lo Be tan- court, whose D emocratic Action (AD ) Party was placed in power by the military in 1945. Betancourt and his suc- cessor, Romulo Gallegos , imp lemented widespr~ad social and a rarian re orm , whicl1 triggered a conserva- tive militruy coup and a sJ.ecade of corrupt dictatorship by Marcos Perez Jim e n~ . Following Perez Jimenez' ouster in 1958, Venezuela established a democratic tra- dition, with presidents from the elite-dominated Demo- cra ti c Action and Ch risti an D e mo c rati c (C OPE i -Committee for Independent Political Electoral Orga- nization ) parties guiding the country,on a slightly left-of- center course.

Frustrated by what h e p erceived to be mounting corruption and declining income levels for tl1e middle and lower socioeconomic classes of tl1e oil-rich country, a young army colonel nam ed 1;:!Qgo Chav_ez tried ~ ce in 1992 to or anize military coup.s to \ierthrow Presi- dent Carl os Andres P erez. C havez failed in both attempts and was imprisoned for two years , but P , ·ez was im eached on corruption charges. Chavez then determinedto seek tl1e presidencyon a platform of far- reaching structural reform. Following his election i 1998, Ch avez directed the formation of a constitutional ----

CHAPTER 6 Politica l Change 137

Eleazar Lopez Contreras who, as president of Venezuela from 1935 to 1940, did much to promote the development of democracy by allowing the return of political exiles and by relinquishing power at the completion of his term in office.

assembly, which wrote a new constitution in 1999 The constitution enabled Chavez, as president, to ~ the opeosition-.9.Q!D inated Co gress and replace it with . a unicameral legislature called tl1e National Assembly tl-iat was controlled by Chavez's politiZaf party. Chavez also gaJ:ned control of the judicial branch of gove:r;n- lllfill.t. In addition, the new constitution extended the p reside nt's te rm of office from five years to six and per- mitted the president to seek imm ediate reelection , which Chavez realized in 2000 and again in 2006. In a 2009 national_referendtt vote:r;s appi:oved tl1e elimi- nation of term limits on all el~ed officials, thereby clearing the way for Chavez to attempt to re main in office for life.

In recent years , Chavez has endeavored to consoli- date his power by arresting or otl1erwise attempting to intimidate his oppon ents , by closing down or restricting the operations of indep ende nt media, by selectively nationalizing private companies whose existence he has viewed as an impedim ent to the building of a socialist state, and by bypassing ilie legislature in order to enact laws by decree . H e has also established "communal assemblies," which are new local administrative bodies whose intended function is to circumvent and th ereby redu ce the power and auiliority of municipal govern- mental officials, many of whom have opposed Chavez. In short, in the tradition of a lassie caudil/Q, Chavez has systematically endeavored to e radicate his opposition

138 CHAPTER 6 Political Change

and to p e rp etuat e hims e lf in power in d efinitely. Simultaneously, he has become a strident clitic of capi- talism in general and of the United States in particular. His foreign policy has centered on channeling financial support to leftist candidates and officeholders through- out Latin America, on purchasing armaments to expand his military capacity, and on building closer ties to lead- ers of nations whose views are similar to his. Chavez's plimmy base of support is the lower socioeconomic clas- ses , who view him as their best hope for justice and opportunity.

Colombia Colombia, or New Granada as it was officially known until 1863, ,has long shuggled, with only limited success, to achieve th e political unity and stability necessmy to develop fully its rich natural resource base. Liberal m1d

,,:_(' conservative parties had formed as early as the 1830s,

1v> , and the first of the nation's pe1iodic civil wars was fought _:J ...p <. from 1840 to 1842. Both liberals and conse1vatives ilti-

tially favored a weak cen tral governm ent with power con- centrated in the states, whose isolation pe1p etuated the strong regional economic and cultural differences that had evolved dming the colonial era. However, the failure of federalism to eradicate the endemic poverty and vio- lence finally led to the passage of a Constitution of 1886, which created a s_trong central government headquar- tered at Bogota. The new constitution laid the foundation of the modem Colombian state but failed to prevent a second liberal-cons ervative civil war. This "War of a Tl1ousand Days" raged froml899 until 1901 and left the counhy vi1tually powerless to oppose the U.S .-supported secession of Panama. So unstable was the national gov- ernment throughout this early republican peliod that the first peaceful transfer of presidential power from on~ political party to another did not occur until 1930. _,

In the midst of the never-ending political turbulence, tl1e Colombian RO ulation contilmed to grow, and millions upon millions of rural peasants found themselves reduced to a nem·-hopeless existence, shuggling to sustain life on tiny subsistence plots of lm1d owned but scarcely used by the uilian-based alistocracy. In an effort to assist these

b, fmnilies , the Colombian Congress ill 1936 passed Law 200. "f;..,t.. f::· ( Law 200 promised title to the rural colonos --=--most of ~ whom were either squatting on or renting lands that would

-<- never be used by the latifundistas-of properties that they could show they had brought under "economic exploita- tion." Conh·my to tl1e legislature's intent however, the law had the ~ t of spurring the previously indiffer~nt ~en- tee landlords to oust the peasants before they could ilnprove the land. This, in tum, led to the dm·k years o~ _ Violencia, an m:a of.almost indisc1iminate rural violence, ~ch produced the ~assination in~of Jorge El.fecer Gaitan, tl1e leader of the Liberal Party. Gaitan's death

spm·ked a Jiot in Bogota now refen-ed to as the Bogotaw, . ·,\ and Colombia was plunged for a third tilne into bloodyGjo,--1 civil war. By .!_957, the war had resulted in a uarter of a million deaths m1d over 750,000 refugees-mostly rur 1 folk fleeing the lawlessness in the co'mitiyside (Braun 2009; Sanchez and Meertens 2001; Bushnell 1993). Those --{ A

\ peasants who remained in tlie villages cmne to forrn a vast 0 jff, l discontented, landless rural proletmiat whose children, las ;:_J,t f hijos de la vwlenpia, have formed the nuclei of the numer- 1J ous leftist guerrilla groups tl1at have persisted to tl1e pre- sent (Denissen 2010; Bergquist, Peiiaranda, and Sanchez 2001; Violence in Colombia 2000).

La Violencia was brought to an end by tlie National Front Constitutional Reform of 1957, in which liberals and conservatives agreed to form a coalition government wherein the presidency alternated and governors ·ps and mayoral offices were divided ill proportion to tl1e number of votes obtained by each party. This arrangement was abandoned by mutual._consent in 1974, and the ~ n- tietl1 -centu1y was dominated y the Liberal Party.

Regrettably, the end of La Violencia as a historical e1iod was not immediately accompanied by a decline in

\tiolenc as a feature of the Colombian political landscape. { Frustrated by tl1eir exclusion from meaningful political , representation dming tl1e National Eront p eliod,_ nur~r-1r ,J ous nontraditional groups turn ed to guerrilla warfare. 0) Thus, the killing and maimillg tliat were form erly pe1pe- trated by liberals and conse1vatives were simply replaced by climes committed by leftist and Iightist guerrg_Ia and paran1ilitary groups, by diug traffickers , an by tlie mili- tary itself. By 2000, Colombia's homicide rate of 57 p~.r 100,000 popul:fton was the highest in tl1e world, and kid-_ nappings were averaging oveL ten per day ("Drugs, Wm·, and Democracy" 2001 ). Guemlla groups were estimated to control nearly half tlie national temtory, and tlie coun- try had descended into a state of uncontrolled violence tliat tl1reatened the very smvival of constitutional govern- ment. In tlie midst of tltis downwm·d spiral, political mde- -pgndent Alvaro Uiib~ won election as president ill.JOO; and ~ubsequently waged a rotracted war agi&!!st botl:.E1e .guenillas and paramilitmy deatli sg_uads. By 2010, at tl1e end of Uiibe's second terrn of office, homicides, kidnap- pil1gs, and oilier terrolist attacks had all declined signifi- cantly and the government had regained control of all tl1e

ational territory (Case Study 6.1 ). U1ibe was succeeded as president by Ju an Manuel Santos, who previously served as mmister of national defense.

Ecuador Ecuador, like Colombia and Venezuela, achieved politi- cal indep endence with the collapse of Bolivar's Gran Colombia. The new nation imm ediately found itself dee l divided between tlie ultraconservative sierra, or Andean ighland region d~ated by the resiJ;;ts of

CHA PTER 6 Politi cal C h ange 139

Case Study 6.1: Colombia's Violent Drug War

May 1986 Virgilio Barco, candidate of the Liberal

Party, is elected president of Colombia.

August 1989 Luis Carlos Galan, Liberal Party senator

and the leading candidate to succeed Mr. Barco as president, is assassinated on

orders of the Mede llin drug cartel.

President Barco responds by declruing

war ~n the drng cartels and authorizes the

extradition of drng suspects to the United

States. Cesar Gavilia replaces Galan as

Liberal Party candidate for president.

November 1989 Colo111bia's judicia1y system closes down

as judges refuse to hold comt unless the

government increases their protection .

December 1989 Medellin drug lord Jose Gonzalo

Rodrigues Gacha is killed in a bloody battle ,vith national security forces.

May 1990 Cesar Gavi1ia is elect ed successor to

Preside nt Barco. While stating publicly

his intention to continue the deadly clrng war, Gavilia hints of his desire for a

n egotiated settle ment.

Fall 1990 The Medellin cartel kidnaps seven

journalists, including Diana Turbay, the

daughte r of a form er president, and

Francisco Santos, n ews editor of El Tiempo, Colombia's most prestigious n ewspaper. President Gavi 1ia softens his

official position toward the ca1tel by

promising not to extradite to the United States those traffickers who turn

the mselves in and confess their crimes

but rather to t1y them in Colombia.

April 1991 Mede llin crut e l leader Pablo Escobar and

several lieutenants "surrender" to

Colombian governme nt officials on the

condition tliat th ey not be extradited to

the United States and tl1at th ey be

imprisoned at a luxurious count1y ranch.

Jul y 1992 Mr. Escobar and a number of associates

"escape" the luxury prison ranch where

they h ad been h e ld.

December 1993 Pablo Escobar is killed by Colombian secwity forces, and the Cali cartel, allegedly

led by brothers Gilberto ru1d Miguel Rod1iguez Oreju ela, increases its influence.

Fall 1994 Colombian police find two miniature ·'narcosubmarin es ," which iliey suspect

h ave been use d to smuggle cocaine from

po1t ru·eas to ships waiting offshore .

Fall 1994 News accounts report that Colombia's

narcot raffickers have gained control of

much of th e country's best farm and

grazing lands, becoming, in the process , tl1e nation's newest class oflatifundistas.

Summer 1995 Gilberto Rocliiguez Orejuela and bis brother,

Miguel, are captured by Colombian police,

who also obtain a list containing the names of

2,800 persons allegedly on the payroll of the

Cali cartel. Those named on the list included

members of Congress, governors, ru1d judges

as well as high-ranking militmy officers,

prominent journalists, ru1d aililetes .

F ebrua1y 1996 President Ernesto Samper is formally

charged before Congress by Colombia's

chief prosecutor witJ1 h aving accepted millions of dollm·s from cocaine traffickers

for his 1994 presidential campaign.

May 1996 Attorney General Orlando Vasquez

surrenders to autl1orities to face charges he took money from cocaine traffickers.

Nove mber 1997 The Colombian government seizes more

than 300 properties belonging to slain

drug boss Jose Santacruz Londono and

his allies, including 43 ranches, 68

apartments, 103 parking garages, and

assorted real estate agencies ru1d

construction companies.

Summer 1998 Media accounts repo1t th at approximate ly 3,000 of Colombia's 15,000 left-wing

guerlillas are active in protecting tl1e drug trade, whic h has come to be dominate d

by smaller, more technologicall y

sophisticated , and less fl amboyant

trafncking organizations h eadqurutered

mostly in Medellin. Another important

source of guenilla revenues has become

th e kidnapping of civilians and foreign

visitors ru1d holdin g the m for ransom.

January 2000 U.S. Pres ident Bill Clinton announces a

$1.3 billion e rr,terge ncy aid package

inte nded to stre ngthe n tl1e Colombian

military war on dru gs.

F e brumy 2002 The Colombiru1 milita1y launches ru1 offensive to retake a Switzerlru1d-s ized

zone in Caqu eta and Me ta depmtm ents

that h ad been ceded as a peace gesture by th e government tl1ree years before to the

Revolutiona1y Arm ed Forces of Colombia

(F AHC) guerrilla group.

140 CHAPTER 6 Political Change

Case Study 6.1: Colombia's Violent Drug War (Continued) £ Fall 2004 United Nations' statistics showed that

Colombian cocaine production increased almost 400 percent from 1990 to 2003.

September 2010 Colombian armed forces killed Mono Jojoy, the top commander of FARC. This culminated a hvo-year period in which Colombian authmities infiltrated FARC headquarters and located and

.._\Cl,,-,:;... f:_ ~v Quito, and the liberal Pacific coasta ents led by

"\: the citizt:;ns of Guayaquil. Looming over the conserva- tive-liberal divisions was an eve r present militar -

~ ,s,:=, Church alliance , which produced a lengthy string of

)('>. s ort-lived and undistinguished dictatorial regimes down through the nin eteenth century.

An era of liberal rule from 1895 to 1925 resulted in a lessening of Churc 1 mr uence7.n secu ar affairs and in consi derable eco nomic developm e nt. In 1941, P e ru declared war on Ecuador and, in a protocol signed th e following year at Rio de Janeiro, succeeded in annexing a large sector of Amazonia previously controlle d by Ecuador (Figure 6.13).

The p_si~ World War II era has been characterized by continued political instability and high levels ~- tary il1fluence, but with little of the mtense regionalism and violence that have marred Colombian politics (Isaacs 1993). One individual, Jose Malia Velasco Ibarra, man- aged to assume tl presidene · e tim es ~ 4 ar!d 1972 without e~ comr-leti g_a fullterm in office.

One of the more bizarre Latin Am erican political episodes in recent years was the e lection in 1996 of Abdala Bucaram, a fiery populist from Guayaquil whose screammg, smging, and dancing at campaign stops earned him the nickname "El Loco," tl1e crazy one. Bucaram lasted only a few months before he was removed from office by Congress on grounds of "mental mcapacity." Fol- lowil1g the brief and chaotic reign of Bttcaram's interim replacement, the Harvard-trained Jamil Mahuad, mayor of Quito, was elected president ill 1998.

One of Mahuad's most enduring political accom - plishments was th e conclusion in October 1998 of a peace accord with Peru that settled a border dispute that

ad flared off and on since the Rio de Janeiro Boundary · \C

0 ;frotocol of 1942. Malmad was not as successful, how-

' efever, in reversing Ecuador•; long economic downturn ~ and in Jamiary 2000 was ousted by Indian protesters and

junior army officers who promptly announced the for- mation of a three-man Junta of National Salvation (Ger- lach 2003 ). Under intens e pressure from the United

destroyed every key FARC camp within the country.

December 2010 Colombian security forces killed Pedro "The Knife" Oliverio Guerrero, feared drug lord and leader of a right-wing para- militaiy band that operated in the eastern lowlands. Guerrero was reputed to have been responsible for ordering or per- sonally commiting some 3,000 murders .

.states and other foreign nations, the junta peacefully relinquished power the next day to Vice President Gustavo Noboa, who was immediately ratified as presi- dent by Congress. Lucio Gutierrez, one of tl1e leaders of the Janua 2000 coup , b~sident in earl 2003.

After se rving for two years , Gutierrez was forced J2.Y- Congress to resign_,,. on th e grounds that h e had "abandoned his post," and was replaced by his former vice president, Alfredo Palacio. In 2007, Rafael Correa

--- -took office as th e country's e ighth president in te n years. Correa soon persuaded the voters to 2:_epla_s§ Con ress with a "constitu~n_t_a_ssembly," which then dra ted a new constitutioIL.( the t\ventieth since inde- pendence) that authorized a standing president to be c~tively ree lected for an additional four-year term. As president, Correa increase d spending for social programs and aligned hims elf on many issues with Ven ezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Peru Pe ru 's position as the wealthiest and most powerful of Spain's South American colonies contributed to the growth of a strong royalist faction that was able to repress several creole revolts in the early revolutionary period. Independence was achieved through the assis- tance of foreign forces , initially thos e of Argentine General Jose de San Martin, whose Army of Liberation arrived from Valparaiso, Chile, in 1821 (Figure 6.14 ). The following year at a hist01ic meeting in Guayaquil, San Martin turned over command of his Pe ruvian forces to Simon Bolivar, whose assistant, Antonio Jose de Sucre, defeated the remaining royalist forces both in Lower Peru and in Upper Peru, the latte r being re- named by Sucre the Republic of Bolivar (later Bolivia).

Bolivar hims e lf had no desire to r e main per- manently in Peru and transferred his authority to a gov- erning council led by ,.e. _liberilideniist named Hi 6lito Una~e. Unfortunate ly, Unanue 's democratic ideals were not shared by a number of military caudillos , who

· l\oS ('CV-.\(YJ

\ \ 10.0·

Pacific

Ocean

FIGURE 6.13

1904

Argentina

South Am erican boundary changes in the republican period .

C H APTER 6 P o lit ica l C h ange 141

Br a z i I

I I

~ , -----

1 A t I a n ti C

0 c e a n

, -------- -------

/ -... J- ---- I I

I I

I I

General Jose de San Martfn , who assisted in the liberation of Argentina , Chile , and Peru .

The continuing failure of Peru's civilian and mili- tary aristocracy to improve the living conditions of the highland Indians led in the 1920s to the emergence of two radical olitical n ~eme.nts . One , known as the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), was founded in 1~ by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, who drew much of his inspiration from revolutionary Mexico, where he was living in exile. The party plat- form called for a unified Latin America dedic~to stemming foreign imperialism, gaining Latin American ownership and control of t h e Panama Canal, and nationalizing land and industiy on behalf of the poor. Th e movement imm ediately gained widespread popu - larity among . .the Peruvian intelligentsia and lower clas- ses and was defrau ded of several election victories in the 1930s. More recent! it has provided a philosophi-

( cal rationale for a number of stron gly nationalistic regim es-both milita1y and civilian-that have disc~ aged fre e-market econom ies.

Th e second radical movem ent, Marxis1 , attracted tef'-1- little popular support during the tv.rentieth centmy but became hi hi visible in th e 1980~ through the terrorist ../- activities of a Maoist wing know1}._as S ining~ 1, or Sene, era Luminoso (Taylor 2006; Osborn 2007; Gorriti 1999; Barton 1997). Operating mostly out of the sou th - ern and central sierra. regions , the guerrilla group was responsible for more than 25,000 deaths.1. hundreds of the m local and regional government officials, and for

plunged tl1 e countiy into virtual anarc notwithstand- ove r $20 billion dollc!rs ' worth of ro Jer damage. ing a period from 1~ to 1839 when Peru and Boliyia A much smalle r leftist gu errilla group , known as joined in a confederation. In th e e ra of "Restoration" the Tu Jae Amaru Revolutionary Moveme nt (MRTA ), '.tf+ that followed, Peru was mled by a series of progressive also prospe red to som e degree during the 1980s but leade rs , in cluding Ramon Castilla, under whom th e st e adily lost influ e nc e th e r e aft e r. In a d e sperate country's economic well-b eing becam e incre asingly attempt to force th e national governm e nt to releas e dependent on tl1e expmt both of tl1e Iich coastal depos- about 300 of their imprisoned associates , a gro up of its of seabird dung known as guano and of nitrat e fourteen MRTA rebels captured 340 diplomats and reserves min ed in the northern Atacama region. prominent Peruvians attending a social event at the

The Iiches of the dese rt fe1tilizers soon attracted Lima residence of th e Jap anes e ambassado r in the attention of Spain , which.in 1865 attacked by sea a D ece mb e r 1996. The daring recapture of the co m- numbe r of positions from Valparaiso to the Chincha pound by Peruvian militaiy comman dos the following I slands north of Lima. This led to a brief alliance Ap1i l and th e resultant deaths of the guenillas placed between Chile, Peru , and Bolivia, each of whom at the the movement on the verge of extinction. tim e controlled portions of th e Pacific coastline the n In the 1990 presidential election , Alb e rto Fuji: unde r siege . Victmy over Spain was followed by the _mori , _an agricultural enginee r and son of Jap anese election of ili e first civilian president in Peruvian his_- immigrants , won an upset victory over the celebrated tory, Manuel Pardo, who governed democratic;ally fron1. novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Frustrated at the slow 1872 until 1876. pace of econom ic and political reforms , Fujimori

Conflict over tl1e Atacama nitrate fields led, in ~ staged what has come to be known as an autogolpe , or to tl1e War of the Pacific, which resulted in the humili- ) elf-coup ," in AprH 1992, Assuming, with the suppoit ating d~feat of Bolivia and Peru by Chile. In the 1883 (o~ of th e powe rful military, all civil political autiiorit Treaty of Anc6n, Chile gained Bolivia's Pacific tenitmies Fujimori dissolved Congress and oversaw the adoption as well as the southern Peruvian provinces of Tarapaca in 1993 of a n ew cons titutiqn that made legal his and Arica (see Figure 6.13) . Tarapaca was returned to reelection in 1995. Peru in 1929, by which time the countiy was governed by By the late 1990s , Fujim ori e njoyed high vote r a civilian administration headed by Augusto B. Leguia. approval ratings , having be e n widely credited with

FIGURE 6.15 This poster showing Alejandro Toledo standing among the Inca rui ns of Machu Picchu dressed in the presidential sash and staff symbolizes Peruvian pride in his Amerindian ancestry.

defeating both terrmisrn and inflation. Buoyed by a con- troversial Supreme Court ruhng, the s.!!:Q!!grn_an sought and won ainteclreelectionin_May 2000. By N~er, however, Fujirnori had resigned in disgra~ having been dismissed on grounds of '\noral incapacity" by Congress, Fujimori has since been convicted of e mbe zzle ment, abuse of powe r, and hurna~ rights violations and sen- tenceg toJen y prison terms by Peruvian comts.

In 00 A~ jandro Toledo , a form er World Bank economi st, became the first Amerindian president of modern Peru (Figure 6.15 ). Toledo was succeeded as president in 2006 by Alan Garcia, who had previously served as president from 1985 to 1990. Peru prospered under both Toledo and Garcia, strengthening de mo- cratic institutions and implementing market-orie nted economic reforms that resulted in a greatly reduced external public debt and declinin g levels of inte rnal poverty (St. John 2010 ).

Bolivia Bolivia, like Pe ru , lon g was divided b etween a small , elite trro ean class, which monopolized th e wealth of the nation 's mining and agricultural sectors , and the

CHAPTER 6 Polit i ca l Change 143

m~ses of highland I~, who since the European conquest had lived as if in a world completely separate from but subservient to that of the blancos, or whites . While the Indians toiled and suffered in silence, fully aware of the awful consequences of rebelhon, the aris - tocracy_ engaged~in an.incredible number of cou sand countercoups, av~ gmg in the process 11101; than one- government per year. Meanwhile, tl1e political instabil- ity i much to weaken Bolivia's rnilita1y and economic position and l'ed to th e loss of three valuable peripheral regions : the northern Atacama to Chile through the War of the Pacific, the territmy of Acre to Brazil in the e arly 1900s , and ove r 233 ,000 square kilom e t e rs (90,000 square miles) of lowland Chaco to Paraguay in the 1930s (see Figure 6.13 ).

The C_haco War marked a historic. turnin g point in Bohvia's social developm ent, as the white and m es- tizo officers found themselves dependent for their very live s upon the despised inclios. For their part, the previously docile Indians we re awake n ed both to a sense of their in _· 'dua worth as hum an beings and to their collective capaci to influence the cours e of the nation.

In tl1e years follO\,ving the war, increasing numbe rs of young, nationalistic Bolivians turned to socialist and Marxist thought in their quests to redress the evils of the past. These stirrings were met by a series of hberal reform laws whose effect was negated by th e power of the established conservative aristocracy. A new political party called the Movimiento Nacionalista Revoluciona- rio (Nationalist Revolutio nary Movement, or MNR ) was form ed in 940 by a group of i~tellectuals headel by Victor Paz Estenssoro. Paz Estenssoro fled to Argen- tina in 1946, where he became a symbol of the budding Bolivian revolution. Finally, in 959 the country e rupted into civil war and Paz Es tenssoro returned from exile to lead the new revolutionary government. In contrast to the countless coups of the past, Bolivian societ:. was fundamentall and irreversibl altered. The government nationalized th e holdings of th e Patino, Aramayo , and Hochschild mining GQ!:p,Oration_s , each of which had annual budgets large r than thos e of the national government and which had exploited the labor of the Indians for centuries. Nationalized, too, were the huge rll;ral ..J!5..if.uncli . Laws calling for universal suffrage and education and for expanded labor rights were also passed in an outpouring of social legislation that contin- ued until the OU1.llif of the MNR by General Rene Bar- rientos in 1964. It was in lJl.67, while Banientos served as preside nt , that Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the noted Cuban revolutionary of Argentin e birtl1, was killed in the eastern Andean slopes of Santa Cruz province .

The intervening years h ave brought halting pro- gress in the efforts of Bolivians to establish a stable democracy. The forced tranquility of the cons ervative

144 CHAPTER 6 Political Chan ge

rnilitar dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer from in to 1978 was followed by a four- ear eriod when _ e country experienc_ed nine different g~ nrn e nts.

Bolivia has enjo e democratic ule sin the-aged Paz Estenss r.o v.as electe_d.JQ ~ cond term in...1982. He was reelected to a third term in 1985 (Figure 6.16). Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, head of the MNR, was chosen president in 1993 and succeeded in implement-_..._ ing numerous economic and political reforms . He was followed in 1997 by the former dictator Banzer, who campaigned as a reform ed proponent of democracy and socially equitable free-market economic policies. In 2002, Sanchez de Lozada was chos en by Congress to se rve a second, nonconsecutive, te rm after neither he nor Juan Evo Morales , th e leader of Bolivia's powerful and increasingly militant coc a growe rs union , suc - ceeded i11 winning a majority of votes in the gene ral election. Following ~ idespread protests of hisJl:.ee.- marke t ec~ c policies including a plan to export Bolivian n atural gas to the United States through a Chilean port, Sa chez de Lo~ as forcecLto resign just fourteen months afte r taking office. His successor was form er Vice President Carlos Mesa.

Following Mesa's brief period of governance, Ev Moral e_s took ~e in Janua ~ as Bolivia's freely e ected preside nt. Adopting the model imple mented previously by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Morales then convened a "cQnstituent asse mbl " w 1ich drafted a new C_Q nstitutio1 that was subsequently approved in a national referendum. Pursu~ e new constitution, n;tional elections were held again in December 2009, and Morales was reelected president with 64 percent of the vote . Unde r the new constitution, a president can se rve a tota_l of two consecutive five-year terms. Morales interprets his 2009 election as the start of his first t e rm unde r the new constitution and th e reby claims eligibility to run for reelection in 2014 . His opponents argue that h e is actually serving his second cons ecutive term and therefore is ineligible for imm e- diate reelection. Morales has described his domestic policy as "communitarian socialism." His p1i01ities have included increasing th e leve of state control of the economy and improving the living levels of the impov- e rish ed Indian mass es (John 2009 ; Perreault 2008 ). Bolivia continues to face not only the traditional social and physical barriers to its developm ent but also the economic and political cons equences of dep endence on the e;>,.-port of narcotic drugs.

SOUTHERN S OUTH A MERICA

Chile Chile today h as one of the most elongated sh ap es of any nation on eaith. During the colonial era, however,

F IGURE 6.16 Victor Paz Estenssoro founded Bolivia's Nationalist Revolutionary Movement and served as president of the nation on three occasions from the 1950s to the 1980s.

the region of Spanish settlement referred to as Chile was small and compact, extending from the River Bfo- Bfo south of Concepcion to Santiago and Valparaiso on the north . H e re the Central Valley was divided into h uge haciendas whose owners lived in th e style of clas- sic Spanish aristocrats , supported by masses of te nant laborers known as inquilinos.

Creole revolutionari es led by Juan Martine z de Rozas and Bernardo O'H iggins first declared indepen- dence in 1810 but we re unable to defeat the royalist forces. O'Higgins, whose Irish fath er had served Spain as governor of Chile and viceroy of Peru, fled to Men- doza, Argentina, where he joined the army of Jose de San Martin, who th en led his troops across the Andes, driving the Spaniards from Chile in 181 before mov- ing on to liberate Peru.

The English-educated O'Hi ins ruled Chile as supre me director until 1823, imp..9sin a numb e r of social and economic reforms that alienated th e C urch an l land e d aristo c ra;;-y but also sel_ a standarq of enlightened governm e nt that woulcLb come th hall- mark of Chilean politics for a centul'}'_,a nd a h.alf. Fol- lowing his ouster, O 'Higgins fled to Pe ru , and Chile

entered a p riod of consei:.yative dominance._thatlasted until 1861. The conservatives reinforced the Chilean tradition of a strong central gove rnme nt and defeated th e Pe ruvian-Bolivian Confede ration in a war that lasted from 1836 until 1839. Th e c~ n_!_ry's southern _ frontiers were extended to the Gulf of Ancud through th e romo ion o f Gen nan settlement in response to_ continued Araucanian Indian resistance. Under a series

'f) of ,hl:> eral administrations. that govern e d Chile from 1861 until 189l, the strong se nse of national p1ide that flowed from th e conservative militaiy and immigration successes continued to grow. The Chilean vict01y in the War of the Pacific brought addition al te rritorial gains and considerable we alth from the export of Ataca ma nitrates . This wealth , togethe r with the sale of agricul- tural produ ce from the C entral Valley, fin ance d th establishm ent of a modern industrial sector. Economic prosp e rity · was a cc ompani e d b y additi~ l soc ial reform s, includin g a fi.uth er reduction in th e influ ence of th e Church , and Chile ca me to be viewe d both at home and abroad as a n1odel of st~ble and progressive g9vernm ent.

Th e earl tw · th centmy was ch aracte rized by an ell.'Pansion of Jarliam e ntar .e_ower relative to that of th e chief executive, and also by tlie beginnin gs of a sig:_ nificant labor move ment that gain ed widespread sup- port among th e nitrate and copper miners of the north and the urb an industrial workforce. Communist, social- ist, and othe r radical le ftist p artie s we re e stablished and grew rapidly, fed by risin g une mploym e nt stem - min g from re duce d foreign de mand for nitrates, the worldwide dep re ssion, and the failure of th e landed aristocracy to e n act me aningful agrarian reform. In 1936, the leftist pa1ties united in a Popular Front that gove rned Chi e as e Radical Part): from 1938 to.1959 and atte mpted to pattern the countiy's economic and soc~l prog rams after thos e of the welfar e states of western Europe.

With the defeat of the Radicals in th e 1952 elec- tion , even greater pressures for change em erged from the fa r left . In th e 1958 residential election, Salvador Alleu4_e, the candidate of the Marxist Party, lost by less than three pe rcentage points. Allende placed sec- on d a~n in th e 1964 e lec tion and the n , in ~ stunned the world by becoming tin Am e rica's first frrely elected Marxist h eacio state.~F.igure 6.17).

Alle nde im mediately began to re stru cture Chilean soc iety. The h uge Am e rican -owne d coppe r min.es in theriorthern Andes were nationali zed in 1971., furth er -in cu rring th e wra th of th e Unit e d States. Within month s, lar~ segments of the banking, transportation , and industrial sectors l1ad als o pass ed into governm ent control_, and agrari_an reform was under way. Inflation and unem ployment soare d, and hom emake rs, business - men , and facto ry wo rke r s to o k to th e stree t s in a

CHAPTER 6 Politica l C h a ng e 145

Salvador Allende became Latin America's first freely elected Marxist head of state with his selection as president of Chile in 1970.

n ever-e nding se ries of de monstrations and counte r- d e mons tr at ions. All e nd e, who had won le ss than 37 percent of tl1e popular vote, had move d t o far too fust3 nd was losing control of even his own supp01ters (Carr and E lln er 1993) .

In Septe mber 973, the arm ed forces attacked th e national palace, killing Allende in the proce ss-:- South A~ erica's strongest democratic tradition was re laced . d_/_'>/ a 14,- by a militaiy dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pfnochet (Figure 6. 18). Pinochet proceede d to estab- lish a n.i!_hless police stat~ that was responsible for the /t./;;;, d~ appi!arance an d. killing of thousands of alleged su~- 0 ve rsive s. H e also undid mu ch of the social legis1ation of th e previous half centmy and moved the nation into a free-market economy that resu lted in large economic gains beginning in the 1980s.

Following Pipoch e t's re signation as pre side nt in ~ 1990, Ch ilean presidential politics were domin ate d for

twenty years oy a coalition of cente r-left parties kno~ as the Conc ertaci6n por la Democracia (Accord for D e 1'h ocracy). Th e prioritie s of th e Con ce rtac i6n includ e d th e ma int e nanc e of Chi le's n e o li b e ral

146 CHAPTER 6 Po litica l Chan ge

General Augusto Pinochet was the right-wing military dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990.

economic model and the completion of the institutional t ransition to full de mocracy (Borzutsky and Wee ks 2010; Mares and Aravena 2001 ). The latter was greatly fac ilitate d by Pinoch e t's r e tir e me nt as army com- mander in 1998. The dominance of the Concertaci6n e nd e d in 2010 with th e e le ction of busin e ssman Seb as tian Pin e ra , th e candidate of th e ce nter-right political coalition known as th e Alliance for Chi le (Alianza ).

Paraguay Paraguay has been r'!:'.led thrQJJgh most oD.ts mstmy by lon g-lived caudillos, whose actions have made the na- tion one of the most socially and econom ically under- developed countries in the Western H emisphere . The first of th e dictators was Jo se Gaspar Rodrigue z de Francia, who from 1814 until his death in 18.10 did his utJllOSt to physically and intellectually isolate Paraguay from the outside world. Francia was followed by Carlos Antonio Lopez and his son, Francisco Solano Lopez, who ruled until 1870. During the reign of the latter, Paraguay, angered at the Argentine closing of the Rio de la Plata, unwisely declared war in 1 865 not .only__gn Argentina but on Uruguay and Brazil as well. In th e ensuin·g 'Yar of the Triple Alliance , Paraguay suf- fe red imm ens e economic and emotional devastation, losing over on e-half of its popu lation and almost all of its adult mares:=Th e chaotic p e riod that follow e d b rought, in 18?7 h th e formation of two political parties, tl1e ~ nservative Colorados and th e Liberals.

F rom 1932 to 1935, tl1e nation fought tl1e Chaco W ar, whi ch r e sult e d in Bolivia's d e feat and the

annexation of a large but sparsely settled area (see Fig- ure 6.13 ). The end of the war brought Colonel Rafael Fr.§.lnco to power. Franco attempted to modernize the impoverished countiy th rough a pr<?gram of agrarian. r~form and labor legislation. Both moves alienated the traditional elites, who promptly deposed Franco. How- ever, they failed to eliminate altogether his supporters, who under the name Febreristas have continued to tl1e present tim e as a muted political opposition group .

In JJ154, General Alfredo Stroessner of the Colo- rado Party assumed power and, operating under a per- petual state of siege, was reelected without meaningful opposition e ve ry five yea rs th e reaft e r until he was d epos e d in 1989 by Gen e ral Andr e s Rodrfg11e z. Rodriguez, whose daughter was marri ed to Stroessn er's son, had pre vious ly gained control of much of the wealth of the countiy and did little to alter its reputa- tion as a center of Soutl1 Am e rican contraband trade, drng trafficking, and money lau nde1ing (Nickson 1996).

One of Rodriguez's ositive accomplishments , how- ever, was tl1e passage in 1992 of a new constitution that grea!ly strengilien ed gov rnm ental c eeks and bala!!£!:.S and protections of hum an rights . Paraguay's te nder de111ocracy has since survived an unsuccessful military coup in 1996 against Rodriguez's successor, J~ Carlos Wasmosy, and the murde r in 1999 of Vice Preside nt Luis Argana. The latter led the Chamber of Deputies to impeach tll en-Presiclent Raul Cubas who, witl1 form er army general Lino Oviedo, subs equently fled to Brazil to escape prosecution for Argana's murder.

Argentina Argentina' s o cl ern po liti cal development can b e traced t 1776, whe n the Spanish gove rnment, con- cerned with the threat of Portuguese expansion south- ward from Brazil alon g the Atlantic coast, established the Viceroyalty of La Plata, with administrative head- quart~ ue nos Aires at the m~uth of th e River Plate . In th e ensuing four decades, the growth and in - flu ence of Buenos Aires and the Pampean region it served increased steadily, much to tl1e consternation of the remainder of the viceroyalty, which in addition to Paraguay included p9rtions of Upper Peru or Bolivia, Uruguay, an d the interior Andean areas centered on Salta, Tucuman , and Cordoba.

In 1816, th e region declare d its independence from Spain as th e United Provinces of th e Rio de la Plata. A powe r struggle imm ediately arose be tween the more ~ ard-looking leadership ~ Buenos Aires and that of the jnward-looking inte rior provinces , which historically had been oriented toward the Andean min- ing centers of Upper Peru. By th e late 1820s, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay had each becom e independent, and the comp etition between Buenos Aires and the

Andean regions was framed in the context of a bitter rivalry between two groups: federalists, who fr!YQted-!!

0 weak national governm ent with power concentrated in. ( l})the provinces-;-and centralists or unitarianists (Unitar-

Tos), w~ ght to bujld a strong central government. The fed e ralist- centralist schism was subsumed

into a larger conservative-liberal conflict. The conser- vative e era ists favore d the continued dominance of th e classic alliance of the Church and landed aiistoc- racy, while th e lib eral centralists favore d expanded trade and a secularstate patterned after the United States and Great B1itain. The initial success of the lib- erals an d th eir enlightened leader, B rnardino Rivada- via, soo n gave way to a n ex t end e d p e riod of cons~ ative domin ance unde r the leade rship of Juan Mapuel de Rosas , who enjoyed broad supp01i amon g th~ gaucho cau.dillos of the Pampa (Lyn ch 2001) .

Rosas' force d exile to Great Britain in 2. ushered in a g den age of hberahsm , whose leaders, including

artolom e Mitre, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and ,'l. Nicolas Avellaneda, promoted f eign immigration and_

~ in vestment, public secular education, and freedom of th e _gress and religion. The influx of fmeigners contin-

r. ue~nto the late 1800s, which saw the opening of th e Pampa to farm ing and increas ed inves tm e nt by and trade with Great Britain. Tw.o new p_<?litical parties we1:e also fo rmed.in_ the 1890s . The firs t, the Spciahst Par , . attracted mod rate support among the e merging urban labor fo rce, and the second, the Radical Civic Union;') grew quickly as a reform mo~ement advocating univer- sal r:Q_ale suffrage and an end to public conuption . The election of Hipolito Yiigoyen in 1916 marked the begin- ning of a fomte~-year Radical era that broughLunpi:ec- edenteq economic and social development.

In the succeeding decades , Argentina fell from one of Latin America's most deve lop ed and e nlighten ed countries to one of its most financially and politically troubled-a tragic illustration of the consequences of unchecked de magoguery a~d misguided economic pol- icies. The col_lapse began with the Great D epression of the 1930s, which seriously damaged Argentina's export- oriented economy and fostered a longing for the gran- deur of the past . Into this void stepped a group of military officers , who in 1943 ove rthrew the conserva- tive governm ent. Included among the rebels was Cclo-

el Juan Domin o Peron , wh o after his election as president in ~ ir!!, extre mely high taxes on pri- vat ely ow ned busine ss e s aud th e estc. the Pampa . Pe ron the n inv e st e d th e t ax r e_y :mies in government-subsidized industries that provided jobs to thou~ds of rural-to- urb an migrants known collec- tively as the descamisados, or "shirtless ones." Peron thus succeeded in creating, in classic de magogic fash - ion, a huge urban prole tariat that looked to him for suppoli a nd direction. In this he was greatly aided by

CHAPTE R 6 Politi ca l C han ge 147

his wife, Marfa Eva Dua1ie , who , as "Evita," became virtu ally a d e migoddess to the masses, whom sh e courted through h e r Eva Peron Foundation (Plotkin 2003).

Peron was reelected in 1952, the same year Evita died of cancer. Three years late r, with the out ut of th~ overtaxed estancias and governm e nt-ope rated indus- trial sector both in rapid decline,, the militarx staged a cou. and Pe ron fl e d to Europ e . Th e re followed a p arade of short-lived military and civilian governm ents , none of which was cap able of res toring econom ic disci- pline to th e nation. As conditions continued to worsen , tl1e exiled Pe ron becam e alm os t a cult fig ure to many who co nvince d th e ms elves th at prospe rity could b e res t ored t h rough his re turn. Th e clim ac tic rfil..J:!.rn occ.urr d_at last in Jun e 1973, but a year later, Pe ron died . An economically reeling A;gentina found its elf ruled by Peron 's widow, Marfa Estela (Isabel), whos e sole qualiflcation to govern was that she had been rnar- 1ied briefly to Juan.

With Marxis t terrorism on th e rise and the treasmy depleted , Isabel was removed from office by th e mili- tary in 1976. Ye~rs of h arsh authoritarian rul e and rightist death squads followed , vvhich resulted not only in th e near elimin ation of tl1e communist guerrillas but also the kidnapping, torturing, and/or killin g of som e 30,000 Argentin e citizens durin g a p eriod of state ter- 1:-;i·isrn tllli.t has com e to be known as th e Dirty Wa (Feitlowitz 2011 ; Bosco 2006; Bou vard 1994). Most of the victims were guilty of nothin g othe r than disagree- ing with the nation's militaiy rulers. Meanwhile, the downward economic spiral continu ed. In April 1982, Argentina invaded th e F alkland, or Malvinas, I slands and declared war on Great Britain . The action's osten- sible purpos e was to recover the islands , which , not- vvithstanding Argentine claims of sovereignty, had been administere d by Great Britain continuously since 1833. However, the nation's military rulers clearly hoped the conflict would divert attention from the deteriorating dom estic scene (Fernando de Santibafi es 2007; Freed- rn; n 1988; Escude 1988; Caviedes 1984). Argentina's humiliating defeat led to a return of civilian rule in .1983 . In 989, Carlos Saul N!_enem of th e Pe ronist Party took the p residential oath of office, marking tl1e first tim e in Argentine hist01y that on e freely electeq p,resident had succeeded another. Mene m did much in the early 1990s to return the financially ravaged coun- tiy to a free -market eco nomy.

By the e nd of Me ne m's sec ond te rm , h oweve r, Argentina's economy was again in sharp decline, with unemployment, corruption , and crim e at unacceptable levels. Mene m was succeeded as president in 1999 by F e rnando D e la Rua of the Rival Allian ce for Work, Justice, and Education. Regrettably, D e la Rua proved to be no more effective than Mene m in instilling fiscal

' 0-·

148 C HAPTER 6 Politi c al Ch a n ge

disciplin e upon th e Argentin e people, and his resigna--tion in 2001 plunged the counby into a grave economic and political crisis that witnessed the collapse of four inteiim governm ents in the following eighteen months (see Case Study 13.2). Nestor irchner was declared ~ nner of the- 2003_presidential runoff election when form er President Menem withdrew his candidacy.

Argentina's econom y re bounded strongly during Kirchner's term of office, and 1e came to oe viewed by ,- many as a mode rn -day Peron. He was succeeded as preside nt in 2007 by his wi fe, Cristina F e rnandez. Kirchne r was widely e;,,.'Pected to stand again for presi- d e nt in th e 2011 national e le ctions , but h e di e d un expectedly of a heart attack in 2010.

Uruguay Uruguay; or L a Banda Oriental, as the land east of the Urugu ay Hive r was widely known , long was i!._buffer zone be twee n Brazilian se ttle ment to th e north and Spanish coloni es along the Hio de la Plata. It first de- clared its indep endence in 1810 under the leade rship of Jose Gervasio A1tigas, whos e gaucho forces were re- pulsed in an attack on the Spanish garrison at Monte- video . F ollo~vin additional p eriods of foreign occupa- tiqn and British mediation , Argentina and Brazil fin ally agreed to relinquish their claims to the area, and inde- pendence was truly realized in 1828" ..

~ > No soon er h ad freedom com e, however, than th e nation lapsed into a civil war between the followers of two r ival cauclillos, Fructuoso Hive ra and Manu el Orib e . Bec aus e Riv e ra 's for ce s incorporate d red- colored ribbon s into th eir clothing and Oribe's follow- ers wore white, th e factions becam e known as th e Colorados (reds ) and Blancas (whites). Although th e co nflict foc used initially on pe rsonalities, it became in time a libe ral ( Colorado )-cons e rvative (Blanco ) divi- sion that has continued to the present.

Following the co~ on of th e civil war in the early 1850s , Uruguay was dominated for half a centu ry by gaucho cauclillos, wh o from 1865 onward were all Coloraclos. By the later decades of the nineteenth cen- tmy, both the Colorado and Blanco organizations we re maturing into traditional political parties as the nation as a whole evolved into a leadin g exporter ·of meat and wool. Nume rous social reform s, includin g free public edu cation, were also enacted. A significant mileston e on the road to democracy was reach ed in 1890 wh e n the ot!J:go ing wesident, Gene ral Maximo Tajes, sup- ported a civilian successor, Julio H errera y Obes, thus ending milita1y control over the country.

In J 903 , ye t an oth er Co lorado candidat e, Jos e Batlle y Ord6fi ez, was ch osen president (Figure 6.19 ). Afte r putting down a revolt led by th e Blancas , who by th e n h ad change d th eir p arty nam e to Nationalist,

FIGURE 6.19 Jose Batlle y Ord6fiez attempted to mold Uruguay into Latin America's first welfare state in the early 1900s.

B~ lle set about trying to transform Uruguay into_a So_uth Ameri can Switzerland-the country he most admired. His reforms , som e not fully imp le me nted until after the completion of his second term as presi- dent in 1915, involved II0jor political and socio ~ - nomic restructuring. Politically, Ba tll e no t only succee d ed in establishing p e ace b e twe e n the rival political parties but argued as well for the creation of a plural executive system. This was implemented in 1919 throu gh the formation of a nine-m e mb e r National Council for Administration that shared executive power with th e president. Economically, Batlle did much to conve rt Urugu ay into Latin Am e rica's first welfare state, nationalizing num erous ente1prises and passing liberal social and labor legislation.

Uru guay's socialist econom continued long after Batlle's death , brin ging th e nation internation al acclaim as a progressive state but gradually sappin its fin a~1cial strength as federal outlays increas ed and private in vest- ment declined. The countiy's lin gerin g economic mal- aise finally led in l 958_to a cons e rvative ationalist victory, e ndin g nin e ty- three cons ec utive ye ars of

Colorado rule . Rather than implem e nting fiscal reforms , 1owever, the Nationalists continued in deficit spending, hoping th ere by to gain an eve n great e r degree of popular support. Batlle's concept of a plural exec utive form of government had b ee n reim ple - mented in 1951 but proved again to b e unworkable. The ~ were marked by dee enin .l!Lflatio.11-R.nd the . emergence of a violent Marxi~t guerrilla grou~ na.n1.ed the · ovement of National Liberation, or ~ maros.

By 973~ the viol~nce and economic disintegration had_E.ached such levels that President Juan M. Bord- aberry of th e Colorado Party agreed to military control of his administra tion a 1 act for which h e was sen--tenced years later to a lengthy prison term. There fol- lowedadi!;,k pe · in which Congress was abolished and cj_yil lib erties were reduced ._Bordaberry hims elf was removed by the military in 1976. Civilian rule was _ reestablished in l@, although th(l military has contin.- ued to ex~t a strong political influence.

The postmilitary era has b een characte1ized by the eme rgence of a leftist coalition known as th e Bro.;id Front (Frente Amplio ), which won 40 p ercent of con- ~ gressional seats in the 1999 election . In response, the Colorado and Nationalist parties have on occasion col- laborated as a unified opposition. Th e 2004 presiden- tial campaign brought th e election of the aroad Front candidate, Tabare Vasquez , thus marking th e end of near y two centuries of poliJ:ical_<:.ontrol by the Colo- rado and Nationalist Parties . The 20 9_election was w'on by the Broad Front candidate, Jose M~jica, who , having repudiated his youthful ideology as one of the found e rs of th e Tupamaros , ran on a platform of national reconciliation.

Brazil We noted previously that the Napoleonic wars of early nineteenth century Europe led to th e establishm ent by Portugal's royal family of a g~ nm ent-in -~le in Rio de Janeiro and to Do:n Pedro's declaration of Brazilian independence in 182 . ;With the sovereignty of the new nation assured through the protection of the British Navy, Pedro moved to legitimize his reign by drafting in 1.B2L'Lhighly autho~tarian constitution. The consti- tution gave the emperor the authority to appoint both fe de ral and state offi.cials and also the right to resolve con fli ct b e tw ee n different governmen t branch e s through the use of a royal "moderating power. " How- ever, Pedro's vi1tually unlimited constitutional author- ity failed_to prevent a steady erosion of public support, which was linked to his arbitrary rule, to his forcing into exile his most compe tent advisor, Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva, and to a number of foreign policy revers als , including th e loss of Uruguay. F ew of th e dominant Brazilian aris t ocracy we re disappointe d ,

CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e 149

then, when Dom Pedro returned to Portugal in 1831, leaving his 6-2::ear-old son to rule in his stead. -

There followed nine years of 1iberal-conservati e jousting that ended with Dom Pearo 11 being declared o age in 1840. In contrast to his sire, Dom Pedro II matured into a kind and scholarly father-fi@re we of ruler who felt a sincere love for B.razil . .and 'ts . eoJ;1._le, and who generally rnled wisely and effectively during his nearly five decades in office (Skidmore 2009 ; Prado 1967) (Figure 6.20) >By creating in 847 the post of prim e minister and by carefullx ing his "moderating power" to balance conflicting liberal-conservative · ter- ertL within the tra itional oligarchical power group s, Pedro II was able to tablisl a de re of freedom and , order that Brazil has yet to duplicate. Forei n ca ital ~ \ / . an immigrants, attracted by the countiy's sta ility and ) ('(\i/,cf·~ economic potential, arrived in ever in creasing numbers ; slav$!ry was gradually_eliminated; the milita1y was barred from political activity; and the Church was eigned in. A1tistic and other forms of individual expression were encouraged.

Yet as tim e passed, the emperor gradually lost influ- ence. Many of th e landed aristocracy resented his efforts to abolish slavery, his daughter and son-in-law were most unpopular, and his handling of Brazil's role in the War of the T1iple Alliance was criticized by an increas- ingly restive officer corps. Afflicted with diabetes, Pedro II finally a];mka B&LBrazil entered a republican period that brought a l)ew constitution, drafted in 1891 by the liberal states man Ruy Barbosa, and the transfer of economic and political power from the national gov, C l'.J-.l,l.d, ',, emment back to local caudillos, known as coroneis.

By the 1920 , three distinct political move m_.§ nts were under way. The ~ was the formation of a group of youn milita1y technocrats known as the tenentes, or lie ute nants , who became convinced that th ex: alon e po~sessed the collective scientific .kno.wle_d e mana e- rial skills, and commitm ent to individual freedoms nec- essary to assure the_future d YelapmenLo.f.the_nation. The sfl.CQJ:ld move ment was communism , which came to b e identifled with the National LiberatiQ!!_ Alliance (ANL ). Th e tbiJ;.d. was f~ n, which was eventually represe nted by the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB ) and attracted considerable support among the German immigrant groups of th e south.

In the midst of the grovving political polarization and the economic aftershocks of the Great D epression, Getulio Var as ass um ed power in 1930. Over a fifteen- year p eriod of demagogic rule, Vargas restructured Bra- zilian socie ty into what he called the New 2 tate , or Estado Novo (Figure 6.21). Economically, th e Estaclo Novo was a hyb1id blending of the tenente faith in tech- nology with socialism , and entailed the us e of federal resources to promote industrial and agricultural mod- ernization . Politically, the New State was fundam entally

150 C H APT E R 6 Politi c a l Chan ge

Emperor Dom Pedro II governed Brazil in a generally progressive and paternalistic fashion from 1840 to 1889.

the old caudillism o at a national level, with Vargas offer- ing himself as the champion of the e me rging urban labor fo rce and the embodim ent of Brazilian nationq)_- ism , which he promoted through a re~wed empha_sis on sp01t s and th e mts. After being forced by the armx to i·esign in 1,M5... Va,.rgas was elected for yet another ten1! in 1950 but acco mplished little otl1e r than nationalizing foreign oil holdings . H e con1mitted suicide in 1954.

H is successor, Jus celil)o Kubitsch e k, continu.ed Vargas's program of grandiose, state-spons ored indu s- trialization, particularly in the mining and ene rgy sec- tors , but h e did so only thro ugh m_as,sive borrowing that e nlarged th e fo reign debt and fu eled inflation . One of Ku~itsch e k's legacies was building the new capital city of Brasilia ·n fu lfillment of the centuries- old dream of developing the spars ely settled inte rior of the country.

Kub itsch e k was fo llowe d by Jafiio Quadros , a refo rm er who myst eriously resign ed afte r only seven

Getulio Vargas functioned as the authoritarian ruler of Brazil from 1930 to 1945 and from 1950 to 1954.

months in office, and by Joao Goulart, an old left-wing Vargas-era politician whos e ye ars of se rvice as vice president failed to prepare him to be an effective presi- dent. Within a few years of Goulart's assuming office, Brazil's economy was on the verge of collapse, and the middle and upper classes were convinced that a leftist dictatorship was in the offing. It came as no surprise, ~-.+ oi{J\ th en, when the ilitaiy re moved Goulmt in 1964, sus- fY'.l \ J pe nded constitutiona guarantees of civil liberties,an ~ ~ f-) began to hunt down and torture leftist "subve rsives ," so me 3.:LQ.00 of whom were killed or disai;1. eareq in the following two decades (Skidmore 1990; Step an 1988; Archdiocese of Sao Paulo 1986). The political repres- sion was gradually relaxed in th e late 1970s and early 1980s as the economy continued to stru ggle under th e weight of triple-digit inflation and growin g in com e gaps between the wealthy and the poor, between urban and rural dwellers , and between the south and th e north.

The transition back to de mocracy begfilLlll 19.B -- with the holdin g of ope n municipal elections and the

selection of a transitional civilian residen . A new - ---constitution was approved thre e years later, and was followed in 989 by an open presidential election in which the poeulist center-right Fernando Collor de Mello defeated th e socialist-worker candidate , Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva (Weyland 1993 ). Collor cam- paigned on a platform of overcoming Brazil's hype r- inflation by privatizing state-owned corporations and by balancing th e budget through reduced govern- me nt spending. H e resign ed from office in 1992 after the lower house of c'ongressimpeach ed hi~ cor- ruption charges. Former financ e minister F e rnando H enriqu e Cardoso b eca me preside nt in 1995 and served capably for two terms, curbing inflation and inv es tin g in h ealth care and e ducation. H e also hande d ove r power peace fully to his successor, da Silva, who , notwithstanding his fie ry past, e m braced free-marke't economic policies , the success of which brought umprecedented prosp erity and increasing inte rnational influ ence . Da Silva's hand-picked suc- cessor, former gu errilla leader Dilma Rou~eff, took office in 2011.

THE G UIANAS

Th e so-called Wild Coast of South America's northern Guiana country was colonized intermittently during the sixteenth and seventeen th centuries by Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, and France, all with an eye to es tablishing Caribbean-like plantation economies alon g the coastal plains . By the late 1700s, the Dutch had emerged as the dominant force throughout the re- gion with tl1 e exception of Cayenne on the east, which was controlled during most of the colonial era by the French.

Guyana Th e Dutch coloni es of D e me rara , Ess e quibo , and Berbice were ceded in 1814 to Great Britain, which united th e m as British Guiana in 1831. Just thre e years later, slavery was abolished throughout the Brit- ish empire, and the blacks began abandoning th e Gui- ana plantations in great numb ers , wanting at all costs to avoid agricultural labor, which in th eir minds car- ried a stigma of inferiority by virtue of its associatio'n with slavery. As the blacks migrated to George town , the capital city, and to other newly established settle- ments , th e European plante r class replaced th em with indentured laborers, mostly from India. As tim e passed , th e East Indians , as they were known , came to control not on ly the agricultural sector but the urban comme rcial and t echnical professions as well. After the cessation of indentured labor in 1917, black feel- ings of economic and political insecurity were corn-

CHAPTER 6 Political Change 151

Forbes Burnham , founder of Guyana's Peoples National Cong ress Party, was chosen the first president of the newly independent country in 1966. He ruled Guyana for twenty years until his death in 1985.

pounded by the higher East Indian birth rates , which by the mid-twentieth century were resulting in an eve r increas ing numerical advantage for th e Indo- Guyanese.

The nation's deep racial divisions led, in the 1950s, to the formation of two political parties. The first , the People's Progressive Party (PPP ), was led by an East Indian dentist named Cheddi Jagan, an acknowledged com munist. Th e second was a b lack African party known as the Peoples National Congress (PNC), whose leader, Forbes Burnham , desc1ibed himself as a social- ist (Figure 6 .22 ). Independe nce within th e British Commonwealth was achieved in 1966, but political fraud and racial violence have continued in the "Coop- erative Rep ublic" through a postindep e nd e nce e ra dominated by Burnham , Jagan , and Burnham's PNC successor, D esmon d Hoyte. Chicago-born Janet Jagan was elected president in 1997 fo ll owing her husband's death but resigned in 1999 for reasons of health . Th e country has since been governed by Bharrat Jagdeo, an Inda-Guyanese.

152 CHA PTER 6 Political Change

Guyana has also had a long-standing dispute with Venezuela over the ownership of the land between the wes t bank of the Essequibo River and the present shared boundary, which was fixed in 1899. Guyanese desires to strengthen their claim to the isolated region, which amounts to slightly more than half of the national territory, contributed to the government's authorizing the Reverend Jim Jon es's American People's Temple group to settle an undeveloped portion of the rain for- est. Th e mass murder-suicides of the group resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,000 men, women, and children in November 1978.

Suriname The land that today makes up th e nation of Surinam e was colonized in the mid-seventeenth century by the English, who traded it to th e Dutch in 1667 in ex- change for New Netherlands (New York). As in Guy- ana, Suriname's colonial economy centered on coastal sugar and cotton plantations , which we re manned through the importation of hundreds of thousands of black slaves from Africa. Som e of these were able to escape into the h eavily forested interior, where their descendants , called Bush Negroes or Maroons , con - tilme a largely subsistence existence (chapter 7). Th e abolition of slavery in 1863 led , as in Guyana, to a black flight to th e towns and mining centers, and to the im - portation of mostly East Indian and Javanese inden- tured laborers , who eventually came to own most of the agricultural land and to dominate the urban profes- sional classes.

Internal self-government was achieved in 1954 when th e Dutch declared Suriname equal to the Netherlands and the Nethe rlands Antilles within the Kingdom of the N e th erlands. Many at this time expressed the belief that Suriname would mature into a prosperous and peaceful state, a model of polyethnic democracy for other developing nations . Others, espe- cially Surinamers of Asian de scent, feared that the racial and economic divisions we re far more serious than was officially acknowledged . These fears led approximately 40 percent of the population, including much of the educated and skilled workforce, to emi- grate to the Nether lands prior to the granting of inde- pendence in 1975. .

In F ebruary 1980, Colonel Desi Bouterse led a creole military coup th at ove rthrew the civilian gov- ernment. The action was welcomed by much of the population , which p erceived the outgoing administra- tion incapable of managing the economy effectively. Th e initial e uphoria quickly vanish ed , howe ver, as Boute rs e, governing through a nine-membe r National Military Council (NMC), began in 1982 to systemati-

cally assassinate political opponents and to implement a reign of terror. The Bush Negroes , under the lead- ership of Ronnie Brunswijk, responded to Bouterse's attempts to forcibly resettle them by starting in 1986 a guerrilla movement called the Jungle Commando. The movement crippled bauxite mining operations in the northeastern portion of the country and led to 10,000 Maroons taking refuge across th e Maroni River in French Guiana. A peace agreement was signed between the rebel groups and the government in 1992.

Pressured by his political and economic problems, and by long-standing territorial disputes with Guyana and French Guiana, Bouters e allowed free elections in 1987. H e staged yet another coup in 1990 and then permitted elections again in 1991 and 1996. In 1999, Bouterse was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court of drug trafficking. Protracted legal proceedings against Boute rs e and others acc us e d of th e 1982 murders b egan in 2007. To the consternation of much of th e international community, Bouters e was elected presi- dent in 2010. Suriname continues today to be a trou- bl e d and d ee ply divid e d nation whose fragil e de mocracy is threatened by ethnic intolerance and a weak economy.

French Guiana French Guiana, or Guyane Frarn;aise, has belonged to France almost continuously since 1667. Its eighteenth- and nineteenth-centmy agricultural development par- alleled that of Guyana and Suriname, with indentured Asians replacing freed blacks as the principal source of labor on the coastal sugar plantations. The develop- ment of the plantations was hindered by periodic out- breaks of typhus, malaria, and yellow fever that cost thousands of lives. Ovving in part to the region's repu- tation as one of the least healthy places on earth , it at- tracted few settlers, and the French resorted in the mid-nineteenth century to using it for various penal colonies. The most infamous of these, Devil's Island, closed in 1945.

The p eop le of French Guiana hav e h e ld full French citizenship since 1848 and have had represen- tation in the French Parliament since 1877. French Guiana was declared an overseas department of France in 1946, since which tim e it has exp erienced modest population growth through th e es tablishm e nt of a European space center (Ingold 2006; Redfield 2000 ) and the settlement of Hmong refugees from Laos and French continentals. Although the latter are a numeri- cal minority to the black creoles, they have formed an ultraconse rvative National Front moveme nt th at is strongly opposed to independence.