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Peru The Transition to Democracy
Like many other military establishments on the
continent, the
Peruvian military halted the civilian political process
for a
prolonged period of time (1968-80), attempted major
structural
economic change without a great deal of success,
accumulated a
large debt without public accountability, and then turned
the
political system back over to the same politicians it had
previously ousted. The transition to democratic
government,
meanwhile, raised popular expectations that a fragile new
democracy with severely constrained resources could hardly
hope
to meet.
The 1980 elections were won, ironically, by Fernando
Belaúnde, whom the military had overthrown in 1968. His
victory
was no surprise, given that the elections were contested
by a
leaderless and divided APRA, recovering from the recent
death of
Haya de la Torre, and by a fragmented left that presented
what
political scientist Sandra Woy Hazelton described as a
"cacophony" of candidates and parties. Although Belaúnde
was a
charismatic personality, he had spent the military years
in
exile, and was hopelessly out of touch with Peru's
political
realities in 1980. His government stuck stubbornly to a
neoliberal, export-oriented economic model at a time when
the
world recession caused the prices of Peru's major export
products
to plummet. At the same time, the government fueled
inflation
through fiscal expenditures on major infrastructure
projects,
ignoring the better judgment of the president of the
Central
Reserve Bank (Banco Central de Reservas--BCR, also known
as
Central Bank))
(see
The Search for New Directions, 1975-90
, ch.3). Popular expectations raised by the transition to
democracy
were soon frustrated.
Despite the SL's launching of activities in 1980 and
its
substantial presence in Ayacucho by 1982, Belaúnde refused
to
take the group seriously, dismissing them as
narcoterrorists.
When the government finally realized that the SL was a
substantial security threat as a guerrilla and terrorist
group,
its reaction was too little, too late, and ultimately
counterproductive. The government sent special
counterinsurgency
forces, the Sinchis, to the Ayacucho region, where they
were
given a free hand. The repressive nature of the military
activities and the military's lack of understanding of the
SL
resulted in unwarranted repression against the local
population.
This, if anything, played into the SL's hands.
Natural disasters--floods and droughts--and economic
decline
and triple-digit inflation heightened the negative image
of a
government that was distant and detached from the
population.
This image was also exacerbated by Belaúnde's continuous
insistence, amid economic crisis and the onset of
guerrilla
violence, that the solution to Peru's problems was the
building
of the Jungle Border Highway (la carretera marginal de
la
selva or la marginal), linking the Amazon
region of
the country to the coast. The severity of the economic
crisis of
the Belaúnde years and his government's poor public
relations
image opened the door for a major shift of the political
spectrum
to the left. By late 1983, García, as leader of the
opposition in
Congress, began to tap the increasing support for a
radical
solution to Peru's problems.
Data as of September 1992
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