Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasise the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite". This article focuses on populism in Latin America.
Latin America has been claimed to have the world's "most enduring and prevalent populist tradition" with both left-wing populists and right-wing populists achieving historical and current-day electoral success in many Latin American nations. This has been argued to be because Latin America is a region with a long tradition of democratic governance and free elections, but with high rates of socio-economic inequality, generating widespread resentments that politicians can articulate through populism.Michael L. Conniff, "A historiography of populism and neopopulism in Latin America" History Compass (2020) e12621 https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12621
History
First Wave (1930s–1960s) The first wave of Latin American populism began at the start of the Great Depression in 1929 and last until the end of the 1960s. The 1973 Chilean coup d'état which overthrew Salvador Allende's socialist government is seen as the end of the populist era. In various countries, politicians took power while emphasising "the people": these included Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Perón in Argentina, and José María Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador. These relied on the Americanismo ideology, presenting a common identity across Latin America and denouncing any interference from imperialist powers.
Populism has been an important force in Latin American political history, where many charismatic leaders have emerged since the beginning of the 20th century, as the paramountcy of agrarian oligarchies had been dislocated by the onset of industrial capitalism, allowing for the emergence of an industrial bourgeoisie and the activation of an urban working class,Guillermo A. O'Donnell, Bureaucratic authoritarianism: Argentina, 1966–1973, in comparative perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, , pp. 9–10 causing the emergence of reformist and multi-class nationalist politics, centered on a charismatic leadership,John D. French, The Brazilian workers' ABC: class conflict and alliances in modern São Paulo. University of North Carolina Press, 1992, , p. 4. such as Aprismo founded by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, and Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–1975) in Peru, Germán Busch (1936–1939), Gualberto Villarroel (1943–1946) and the MNR and later Juan José Torres (1970–1971) in Bolivia, the Socialist Party of Chile (before adopting a more Marxist line and distancing from APRA) and the political movements gravitating around Perón (1946–1955, 1973–1974) concentrated in the Justicialist Party in Argentina, Carlos Ibáñez del Campo's movement in Chile (1927–1931, 1952–1958), Getúlio Vargas' Brazilian Labour Party (1930–1945, 1951–1954) and Adhemar de Barros's Social Progressive Party in Brazil, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán's National Leftist Revolutionary Union and Gustavo Rojas Pinilla's National Popular Alliance (1953–1957) in Colombia, Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia's movement (1940–1944), criticises for excluding Calderón; citing that it was unlike other populist movement as it was unable to attract support from the "large middle-class sectors". and José Figueres Ferrer's National Liberation Party (throughout the 1940s and 1970s) in Costa Rica, Ramón Grau's Partido Auténtico in Cuba (1933–1934, 1944–1948), Juan Bosch's Dominican Revolutionary Party (1963), Assad Bucaram's Concentration of People's Forces, Velasco Ibarra's (throughout the 1930s to 1960s) and Guillermo Rodríguez (1972–1976) in Ecuador,; he was part of a wave of new leftist and populist leaders like Allende, Peron's second term and was called "perunista".Revolutionary Action Party in Guatemala (1944–1954), the Institutional Revolutionary Party under Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940) and under Luis Echeverría (1970–1976) in Mexico, Omar Torrijos's Democratic Revolutionary Party (1968–1981) in Panama, Rafael Franco (1936–1937) and his Febreristas in Paraguay and Democratic Action under Rómulo Betancourt (1945–1948, 1959–1964) and Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979) in Venezuela. Which parties and movements are "national-populist" remains disputed. Óscar Osorio (1948–1956) created the Revolutionary Party of Democratic Unification in El Salvador modeled after the Mexican PRI but his regime reversed many reforms in face of a "communist threat" and Fulgencio Batista started off populist. Ideologically, Latin American populism, with its emphasis on nation-building under an authoritarian leadership as a prerequisite for technological modernization, betrayed the earlier influence of Comtean positivism. Socially, for many authors—such as Brazil's Octavio Ianni—populism should be understood as the political alliance between an emerging industrial bourgeoisie and a newly organizing urban working class, in which the former accepts social reforming for the latter's sake as long as the working class remains politically subordinated to both a more or less authoritarian State and private enterprise,Rafael Torres Quintero & Rafael Quintero López, El mito del populismo: análisis de los fundamentos del Estado ecuatoriano.Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador, 1980, p. 27 in a process of controlled inclusion of the "masses" into the political system,Mehmet Uğur & Nergis Canefe, eds., Turkey and European integration: accession prospects and issues. London, Routledge, 2005, , p. 51 a co-opting process some Marxist authors like Brazil's Francisco Weffort ascertain was accepted by the newly urbanized working class given their lack of a previously developed class consciousness.Alberto Aggio, Agnaldo de Sousa Barbosa, Hercídia Mara Facuri Coelho Lambert, Política e sociedade no Brasil, 1930–1964. São Paulo: Anna Blume, 2002, , p. 74 Even though many of these national-populist parties or their successors like Bolivian Revolutionary Left Movement or Brazilian Democratic Labour Party joined the Socialist International they did not define themselves as socialist or social democratic but they were social-reform-oriented. They came to power through coup d'états presented as revolutions like the Mexican Revolution (1911–1920), Brazilian Revolution of 1930, Cuban Revolution of 1933, Paraguayan February Revolution of 1936, Bolivian Socialist Revolution of 1936, 1943 Argentine Revolution, Guatemalan Revolution (1944), Venezuelan October Revolution of 1945, Costa Rican Revolution of 1948, Salvadoran Revolution of 1948, Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, Dominican April Revolution of 1965 (failed), Peruvian Revolution of 1968 and the Panamanian Revolution of 1968.
Despite efforts to charter an ideological pedigree to Populism in Latin America, as has been attempted by some, working, e.g., with concepts taken from Perón's Third Position, Latin American countries have not always had a clear and consistent political ideology under populism. Populist practitioners and movements in Latin America usually adapt politically to the prevailing mood of the nation, moving within the ideological spectrum from left to right many times during their political lives. If populist movements in 1930s and 1940s Latin America had apparent fascist overtones and based themselves on authoritarian politics, as was the case of Vargas' Estado Novo dictatorship in Brazil (1937–1945),Octavio Rodríguez Araujo, Derechas y ultraderechas en el mundo. Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2004, , p. 140 or of some of Peron's openly expressed sympathies,Íñigo Bolinaga, Breve historia del fascismo. Madrid: Nowtilus, 2008, , p. 242 in the 1950s populism adapted—not without considerable unease from its political leadershipIn 1952, viz., Vargas' Labor Minister in Brazil saw his tasks in fervently anticommunist terms: to battle ideologies opposed to "traditions" of social peace—John D. French, Drowning in laws: labor law and Brazilian political culture. University of North Carolina Press, 2004, , p. 81—to heightened levels of working-class mobilization. Therefore, it is not surprising that 1960s populism was associated mainly with radical, left-leaning petty-bourgeois nationalism, which emptied the State of its function as a coercive class-rule apparatus and saw it instead as an organ of representation of the Nation as a whole.Francisco Weffort, O populismo na política brasileira. Rio de Janeiro:Paz e Terra, 1978, p. 43. Such was the case, for instance, of the Goulart government (1961–1964) in Brazil, Goulart being described as a fiery populist who identified—mainly rhetorically—with the dispossessed and tried to foster a reformist agenda through ties to the organized Left.Stephen G. Rabe, The most dangerous area in the world: John F. Kennedy confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999, , p. 66 The fact that Goulart was eventually ousted by the military shows that, in the views of some authors, other populist leaders of the time faced a jeopardy: they were reformists who, in the pursuit of their agenda, had to encourage popular mobilization and class conflict they ultimately abhorred.John D. French, The Brazilian workers' ABC: class conflict and alliances in modern São Paulo, p. 262 Consequently, populism was eventually identified by the 1970s military dictatorships as "demagogery" and as a risk to the stability of the existing social order.Mary P. Lassiter, ed., Economics, politics and social issues in Latin America. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2007, , p. 25
In some countries, Populism has been fiscally supported in Latin America during periods of growth such as the 1950s and 1960s and during commodity price booms such as in oil and precious metals.Grigera, Juan. "Populism in Latin America: Old and new populisms in Argentina and Brazil" International Political Science Review (2020) https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512117701510 Political leaders could gather followers among the popular classes with broad redistributive programs during these boom times. Conversely, in others countries, Populism has been historically associated with countering the relative decline of export agriculture with deficit spending and import-substitution policies aimed at developing an internal market for industrial consumer goods.Luiz Renato Vieira, Consagrados e malditos: os intelectuais e a Editora Civilização Brasileira. Brasília: Thsaurus, 1998, , p. 41 Populism in Latin America has been sometimes criticized for the fiscal policies of many of its leaders, but has also been defended for having allowed historically weak states to alleviate disorder and achieve a tolerable degree of stability while initiating large-scale industrialization. Though populist fiscal and monetary policies, called macroeconomic populism, has been criticized by economists, who see in it the ultimately dysfunctional subordination of economic policy to political goals,Rüdiger Dornbusch & Sebastian Edwards, eds. The Macroeconomics of populism in Latin America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991, , p. 16 some authors acknowledge populism to have allowed non-radical leaders and parties to co-opt the radical ideas of the masses so as to redirect them in a non-revolutionary direction. It's generally regarded that populists hope "to reform the system, not to overthrow it".Rüdiger Dornbusch & Sebastian Edwards, eds. The Macroeconomics of populism in Latin America, 47.
Second Wave (1990s)