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Evangelicals and Politics in Fujimori's Peru

Darío López Rodríguez

in Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Latin America

This chapter attempts to explain the entry of evangelicals into formal politics in Peru during the era of former President Alberto Fujimori. It analyses the evangelical presence in formal politics ... More

This chapter attempts to explain the entry of evangelicals into formal politics in Peru during the era of former President Alberto Fujimori. It analyses the evangelical presence in formal politics via political parties and movements, as well as the evangelical presence in civil society through social movements. It explores the political activities of the National Evangelical Council (CONEP) and investigates the role of women in urban social movements and of evangelicals in general in the peasant patrols.Less

Democrat or authoritarian? Democracy in Bolivarian Venezuela in comparative perspective   

Barry Cannon

in Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution: Populism and Democracy in a Globalised Age

Hugo Chávez has been repeatedly accused of authoritarianism, principally by opposition leaders but also by many foreign supporters of the opposition and even amongst some on the left. This chapter ... More

Hugo Chávez has been repeatedly accused of authoritarianism, principally by opposition leaders but also by many foreign supporters of the opposition and even amongst some on the left. This chapter explores this dichotomy between democracy and authoritarianism in the Chávez government. Chávez has sometimes been compared with another Latin American president branded as both populist and authoritarian, Alberto Fujimori of Peru (1990–2001). Both presidents have been accused of authoritarianism, yet both presidents came to power through democratic means. Both presidents also based their discourse on a celebration of the ‘people’ against a corrupt and corrupting system. Both therefore raise questions about concepts of democracy and authoritarianism within the context of populism. To facilitate the comparison between Chávez and Fujimori, this chapter uses a framework based on ideas on democracy found in D. Rueschemeyer et al. and Roald Dahl, which encompasses five key policy areas generally accepted as indicative of democracy: electoral law and practice, presidential authority and institutional autonomy, human rights, media freedom and the right to information and associational autonomy.Less

Introduction

Ronald Bruce St John

in Toledo's Peru: Vision and Reality

In important ways, the United States government's approach to the administration of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) epitomized the shortcomings of U.S. policy. This chapter presents a ... More

In important ways, the United States government's approach to the administration of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) epitomized the shortcomings of U.S. policy. This chapter presents a life sketch of Fujimori and his legacy. This book describes President Alejandro Toledo's domestic and foreign policy initiatives. The book is a case study of a one-term administration in a single country and it is an investigation which may have wide implications for other Latin America states. This chapter also presents the organization of the book with a brief synopsis of each chapter.Less

From Crisis to Collapse of the Party Systems and Dilemmas of Democratic Representation: Peru and Venezuela

Martín Tanaka

in The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes

This chapter examines the role of the party systems collapse on the crisis of democratic representation in Peru and Venezuela. It explains that Alberto Fujimori and Hugo Chávez dismantled the ... More

This chapter examines the role of the party systems collapse on the crisis of democratic representation in Peru and Venezuela. It explains that Alberto Fujimori and Hugo Chávez dismantled the preexisting political order through institutional reforms and established competitive authoritarian regimes in which democratic representation was replaced by plebiscitarian mechanisms of legitimation. This chapter also highlights the challenges for the countries in rebuilding state institutions with weakened political and social actors and in constructing a new system of democratic representation that is pluralistic and participatory.Less

Between Maoists and Millionaires, 1975–1996

Mark Rice

in Making Machu Picchu: The Politics of Tourism in Twentieth-Century Peru

Burdened with debt, the national state withdrew its investment in tourism development in Cusco in the late 1970s. More ominously, the growth of the Maoist Shining Path rebellion and its attacks on ... More

Burdened with debt, the national state withdrew its investment in tourism development in Cusco in the late 1970s. More ominously, the growth of the Maoist Shining Path rebellion and its attacks on travellers nearly brought the tourism economy to collapse by the end of the 1980s. Yet, this chapter also documents the grassroots innovations in Cusco’s tourism economy. As traditional tourists avoided Machu Picchu, expatriates and locals created a new adventure tourism economy based on backpacking and hiking. Using new transnational cultural and travel networks, these efforts reinvented Machu Picchu as an exotic and adventurous site. The neoliberal government of Alberto Fujimori of the 1990s employed the new imagery of Machu Picchu as it sought to attract new private investment into Peru. These efforts brought in a bonanza of new Lima-based and international investors. However, the new state policies provoked local anger who rallied against tourism development perceived as unjust and as a threat to the region’s historical heritageLess

Enabling Emotional Responsibility II: Criminal Trials in Democratic Transitions

Mihaela Mihai

in Negative Emotions and Transitional Justice

Chapter IV examines transitional criminal prosecutions’ potential to contribute to emotional socialisation and, indirectly, to democratisation. Theoretical insights about the relationship between ... More

Chapter IV examines transitional criminal prosecutions’ potential to contribute to emotional socialisation and, indirectly, to democratisation. Theoretical insights about the relationship between legality and pedagogy are combined with two case studies: the trial of Alberto Fujimori in Peru in 2009 and that of the Ceausescu family in Romania in 1989.Less

Ayacucho 1982: Civil Society Theory and Neoliberalism

Jon Beasley-Murray

in Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America

This chapter examines civil society theory and the practices it fosters within the context of neoliberalism. It begins with an overview of the various definitions of civil society and the reasons for ... More

This chapter examines civil society theory and the practices it fosters within the context of neoliberalism. It begins with an overview of the various definitions of civil society and the reasons for the concept’s popularity. It then criticizes the way the term “civil society” is deployed through a close reading of political theorists Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, whose theorization of civil society reveals the concept’s profound ambivalence: it is presented as a moderating, mediating force, but depends upon what Cohen and Arato call the “democratic fundamentalism” that drives the social movements that constitute civil society itself. The chapter asserts that the neoliberal state outflanks civil society theory with a cult of transparency that bypasses mediating institutions and breaks down the boundary between society and state. Neoliberalism and its diffuse sovereignty herald a revolution in reverse, a fundamentalism purged of affect. Finally, the chapter offers an account of Peru’s Sendero Luminoso and their relations with the neoliberal regime of Alberto Fujimori.Less

Introduction: Taboo

in The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima

In 1957, José Matos Mar carried out the first systematic study of Lima's barriadas in an attempt to shed light on what was then the fastest growing but most poorly understood form of urbanization in ... More

In 1957, José Matos Mar carried out the first systematic study of Lima's barriadas in an attempt to shed light on what was then the fastest growing but most poorly understood form of urbanization in the city. After his work, many other social scientists became interested in the barriadas, noticing that one of the consequences of this form of urban expansion is that life in Lima has grown fragmented, increasingly transpiring within well-delimited coordinates of class and race that rarely overlap. This chapter explores the social and political context of late 1990s and early 2000s Lima, the period before and after the downfall of Alberto Fujimori's regime, when Mayor Alberto Andrade's impulse to order and cleanse the city center coexisted with unprecedented central government corruption. Building on the work of Georges Bataille, the author examines the relation between taboo and transgression, and also reflects on her return to her native city of Lima by citing the work of Peruvian novelist and anthropologist José María Arguedas.Less

The consequences and impact of populism: institutionalisation and democractisation in Chávez's Venezuela  

Barry Cannon

in Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution: Populism and Democracy in a Globalised Age

This chapter discusses the political consequences and impact of populism. Examining the literature, two principal consequences of populism emerge: increased popular participation and diminished ... More

This chapter discusses the political consequences and impact of populism. Examining the literature, two principal consequences of populism emerge: increased popular participation and diminished institutionalisation. The chapter argues that this analysis overlooks the influence of ideology on the extent of popular participation in specific populist experiences, and fails to place populism and specific populist governments in Latin America within a global and regional context. In order to deal with these issues, the chapter examines some writings on populism by two well-known U.S.-based political scientists, Kurt Weyland and Kenneth M. Roberts, who emphasise the consequence of diminished institutionalisaton. It then considers the failings in this analysis, referring to the current global and regional context, particularly the expansion of democracy in the age of globalisation. The chapter also looks at Hugo Chávez's presidency to illustrate these arguments, comparing it with Alberto Fujimori's presidency for comparative purposes.Less

First Diary

in The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima

In this diary, the author reflects on the developments in Lima under the administration of Mayor Alberto Andrade. Waves of assaults, robberies, kidnappings, and rapes are once again sweeping through ... More

In this diary, the author reflects on the developments in Lima under the administration of Mayor Alberto Andrade. Waves of assaults, robberies, kidnappings, and rapes are once again sweeping through the city. An older woman, one of the street sweepers who staged demonstrations against the government, partially undresses to express her protest. The connection between nakedness and death, whether it is murder or suicide, is explicitly made by Georges Bataille. Bataille's most thorough examination of the relation between nakedness and death takes place in the context of what he calls eroticism. In Lima, Andrade's urban renewal campaign is quickly fizzling, mainly because President Alberto Fujimori has made it a priority to destroy him as a viable future presidential candidate.Less

Second Diary

in The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima

In this diary, the author reflects on Georges Bataille's ideas on animality from his Theory of Religion and how they are applicable to Lima. The negation of our animality, says Bataille, is at times ... More

In this diary, the author reflects on Georges Bataille's ideas on animality from his Theory of Religion and how they are applicable to Lima. The negation of our animality, says Bataille, is at times so drastic that the rules concerning the basest aspects of our humanity are seldom the object of our attention, for the mere affirmation of the taboo is deemed or is experienced as a transgression. This transgression is evident in the street sweepers' protests in Lima, along with the tension they produced in the media between the compulsion to silence their public stripping and the compulsion to speak of it in order to explain it away as a “technique” of protest or as a government-backed staged performance for political gain. Roberto Mendieta, a professor at Universidad Católica, implied that the street sweepers' demonstrations were part of President Alberto Fujimori's filthy tricks against Lima Mayor Alberto Andrade.Less

Subnational Contention in Neoliberal Peru

Kent Eaton

in Territory and Ideology in Latin America: Policy Conflicts between National and Subnational Governments

This chapter argues that, while ideological conflicts over the market in Peru have taken on a sharply territorial logic since the country’s neoliberal turn in 1990, subnational resistance to ... More

This chapter argues that, while ideological conflicts over the market in Peru have taken on a sharply territorial logic since the country’s neoliberal turn in 1990, subnational resistance to neoliberalism has been ineffective in the two dimensions conceptualized in this book. According to the argument developed in the first half of the chapter, capacity and coalitional constraints have undermined regional presidents in their attempts to build distinctive subnational policy regimes, including attempted uses of regional zoning authority to regulate mining in ways that would deviate from neoliberalism. The second half of the chapter then demonstrates how structural and coalitional constraints have negatively affected efforts by subnational officials to contest neoliberalism as the dominant national policy regime. Instead, a succession of Peruvian Presidents, including Alejandro Toledo, Alán García, and Ollanta Humala, have been able to overcome territorial resistance and defend the neoliberal reforms introduced in the 1990s by Alberto Fujimori.Less