Populism and Nationalism in Latin America

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Populism and Nationalism in Latin America

Carlos de la Torre

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POPULISM AND NATIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICA

Carlos de la Torre

This article analyses the articulation of populism and nationalism in Peronism and Chavism. Despite their inclusionary policies, their redistribution of wealth and the expansion of social and political rights, Perón and Chávez built authoritarian governments. These national populist leaders concentrated power in the executive, used laws instrumentally to repress dissent and made use of the state apparatus to colonise the public sphere and civil society. Their autocratic drift is explained by a combination of four factors. First, the logic of populism transformed democratic rivals into enemies. Second, these leaders constructed the people as one, and once in power enacted policies to transform diverse and pluralistic populations into homogeneous peoples embodied in their leaderships. Third, even though these former military ofﬁcers promoted national sovereignty, they acted as the only interpreters of national interests, excluding rivals from the national community. Fourth, Perón and Chávez closed institutional spaces to process dissent and conﬂict, exacerbating the autocratic impulses of their opponents who used any means necessary, including military coups, to try to get rid of populist presidents.

KEYWORDS populism; nationalism; authoritarianism; democratisation; Chávez; Perón

Introduction This article analyses the articulation of populism and nationalism in Peronism and Chavism. Despite their democratising promises and the inclusion of previously excluded groups, the outcome of these two most paradigmatic cases of Latin American national populism was authoritarianism. Juan Domingo Perón and Hugo Chávez used populist discourses, strategies and performances to construct politics as an antagonistic struggle between the people and their internal and external enemies embodied in the oligarchy. They challenged liberal notions of democracy and development. Perón redeﬁned democracy as social justice and national sovereignty. Chávez understood democracy as the participation of common people in building a more equitable and sovereign society. Their democratic credentials lay in their challenges to the political, cultural and socio-economic exclusion of common people, and in their inclusionary policies. These politicians strengthened the state apparatus, and used it to redistribute wealth. Both former military ofﬁcers aimed to build their nation-states free from imperialist domination. They promised a third path between capitalism and Soviet-style communism, and promoted their models of political change abroad. Yet, despite their inclusionary policies, Perón and Chávez built authoritarian governments that concentrated power in the executive, used laws instrumentally to repress dissent and made use of the state apparatus to colonise the public sphere and civil society. Their autocratic drift is explained by a combination of four factors. First, the logic © 2017 EURICOM 2 C. DE LA TORRE

of populism transformed democratic rivals into enemies. Second, these leaders constructed the people as one, and once in power enacted policies to transform diverse and pluralistic populations into homogeneous peoples embodied in their leaderships. Third, even though these former military officers promoted national sovereignty, they acted as the only interpreters of national interests, excluding rivals from the national community. Fourth, Perón and Chávez closed institutional spaces to process dissent and conflict, exacerbating the autocratic impulses of their opponents who used any means necessary, including military coups, to try to get rid of populist presidents. The article has three sections. The first analyses the processes of inclusion and nation- building promoted by Peronism and Bolivarianism. The second section focuses on their autocratic practices that aimed to manufacture Peronist and Chavista national-popular subjects. It analyses how these leaders concentrated power in the executive, subordinating all institutions of accountability to create plebiscitarian democracies. The third section explains how their understanding of politics as the struggle between two irreconcilable camps led to the displacement of democracy towards authoritarianism. This outcome was further facili- tated by the actions of the anti-populist opposition: whereas populists undermined democracy from within, their opponents used the closure of institutions for democratic contestation as an excuse for military interventions.

Populist Inclusion in Argentina and Venezuela Peronism and Chavism are the best-researched cases of Latin American populism. This section analyses the causes that explain the emergence of these movements, and

how they included previously excluded people, focusing on the ways these governments linked the popular and the national.

Perón’s First Administration, 1946–1955 Laclau (1977, 190) wrote that “The strictly populist element in Peronist ideology was the radicalization of anti-liberal popular interpellations”. Peronism redeﬁned democracy as social justice promoted by the active participation of the state in the economy. The values of nationalism and anti-imperialism replaced the previous liberal consensus formed around cosmopolitanism and Europeanism. Perón constructed ordinary people as the embodiment of the nation, while his enemies were portrayed as an anti-patriotic, foreign and pro-imperialist oligarchy. In his presidential campaign of 1946 Perón promised to re-establish free elections to break with the practice of electoral fraud (Peruzzotti 2013, 74). Indeed, once in power he expanded the franchise by giving women the right to vote in 1951. In that election seven women became senators, 24 women were elected to congress and Delia Parodi became vice president of the Chamber of Deputies (Plotkin 2003, 179). Voter turnout under Peronism dramatically surged from 18 per cent of the population in 1946 to 50 per cent in 1955 (Schamis 2013, 155). Perón promised a “real democracy” understood as “a higher standard of living to protect the worker, even the poorest, from capitalist coer- cion” (as quoted in Laclau 1977, 189). Citizenship was expanded to include social and economic rights, and his government recognised the working class as an autonomous social force that “would have direct, indeed privileged access, to the state though its unions” (James 1988, 18). POPULISM AND NATIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICA 3

Perón’s government redistributed wealth and increased the share of wages in the national Gross Domestic Product from 37 per cent in 1946 to 47 per cent in 1955. Workers received other material benefits such as access to social and medical services, and paid vacations (Plotkin 2010, 273). Peronism expanded consumption, and in particular food consumption of the working class and the poor: “By giving preference to internal con- sumers over external markets, Peronist food politics (in particular, beef politics) contributed to the elaboration of ideas of empowering the poor, as well as about economic sovereignty” (Rein 2013, 298). Indeed the state had an active role in the economy to pursue autarchic national development. It enacted five-year economic plans, and created the Argentine Insti- tute for the Promotion of Trade that held a monopoly over foreign exchange to promote import substitution industrialisation (Schamis 2013, 152). Perón’s government nationalised “the Argentine central bank, gas, telephone, and railroads” (Finchelstein 2014, 71). Peronism was a symbolic and cultural revolution that altered social classifications, class hierarchies and notions of deference (Plotkin 2010, 274). Until the 1930s and 1940s downtown, Buenos Aires was considered a space where workers did not belong. A worker interviewed by historian Daniel James remembered the 1930s as a time when: I always felt like strange when I went to the city, downtown Buenos Aires—like you didn’t belong there, which was stupid but you felt that they were looking down on you, that you weren’t dressed right. The police there treated you like animals too. (James 1988, 29) The elites of Buenos Aires referred to internal migrants using the term “cabecita negra” to refer to “the subject’s dark skin and black hair” (Milanesio 2010, 55). They racialised Perón’s followers as “black Peronists” or as “greasers”, evoking not only the dirt and oil on worker’s overalls but all that is cheap or of bad taste. Juan and his wife Eva Perón transformed the meanings of these terms that the elites used to stigmatise the poor into virtues. Eva used “the term grasita to affectionately refer to the poor” (2010, 57), and the despised shirtless (descamisados) became the backbone of the Peronist nation. Peronism was built on nationalist ideologies that in the 1930 and 1940s combined Catholicism, anti-liberalism, anti-Communism and anti-imperialism. Nationalists advocated for industrialisation and social reform, and distrusted liberal democracy (Laclau 1977, 187; Plotkin 2003, 7). According to nationalist thinkers, “the armed forces were the true representatives of the country’s interests” (Finchelstein 2014, 31). Perón portrayed the old elites as colonialists, while ordinary people expressed the national interests. He depicted his enemies as an evil and bizarre alliance between capitalists and communists. As a result, as Finchelstein (2014, 77) writes, this “removed all possible Argentineness from opposition to Perón […] They were simple sellouts and traitors to the nation”. In fact, in 1950 Eva Perón declared that “whoever is not a Peronist cannot feel Argentinean” (Zanatta 2011, 309), and in a speech in 1951 she boasted: “Perón is the Homeland” (Finchelstein 2014, 89). In 1952, Congress established the Peronist Doctrine as the Argentine national doctrine. The Peronist Manual stated that “The Peronist doctrine, which is the national doctrine, is exclusively Argentine and is based on what we call Peronism” (as quoted in Plotkin 2003, 23). This doctrine was vaguely defined as endorsing the principles of social justice, economic independence and national sovereignty. Even though the Peronist Doctrine was mostly meant for internal consumption, Perón argued that Argentina had the economic resources—grounded in its role as an exporter of food products in a starving world during the post war—to have a voice in the new world order (Zanatta 2011, 138). He aspired to be the world leader of a third position between capitalism and communism. 4 C. DE LA TORRE

He argued that Latin America and Europe shared a common Catholic and Latin civilisation that was different from both the “Asiatic civilization of Soviet Communism” and “Anglo- Saxon liberalism” (2011, 137). His regime actively promoted the Peronist model of economic and social development abroad. Eva declared in 1948 that Peronist policies for the working class should be adopted throughout Latin America (2011, 203), and the Argentinean embas- sies had worker attachés (Finchelstein 2014, 90). Yet, and despite their efforts, Peronism did not expand through Latin America. The Left resisted Peronism, branding it as fascist, and the Right did not approve of its labour and social policies.

Chávez’s Bolivarianism, 1999–2013 Different from Peronism that enfranchised for the ﬁrst time large numbers of citizens without partisan loyalties, Chavismo constituted a revolt against strong and domineering parties that became “a closed, self-interested, and self-reproducing governing caste insu- lated from popular needs and concerns” (Roberts 2015, 149). By the 1990s the two major political parties of Venezuela, Democratic Action (AD) and COPEI, became increasingly perceived as closed cartel parties that monopolised the political arena, and whose anti-national IMF-imposed policies led to economic decline and to the impoverishment of the middle and working classes. The collapse of the prices of oil in the 1980s led to the introduction of IMF-spon- sored structural adjustment policies that increased social inequality. President Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989–1993) abolished state subsidies, protective barriers, price controls and wage regulations. The hike in the price of domestic gasoline in February 1989

broke the symbolic bond between the state and the people based on the shared assump- tion of the birthright of all Venezuelans for oil rents and cheap gasoline. Huge demonstrations turned into two days of “massive rioting and looting, escalating from neighborhood grocery stores to commercial centers in Caracas and other cities” (Coronil 1997, 376). The state brutally repressed the poor, murdering at least 400 people during these riots known as the Caracazo. State repression undermined and ultimately destroyed the legitimacy of Venezuela’s two-party system. Chávez was elected in 1998 with the promise to establish an alternative model to this crisis-ridden representative democracy. His government created a series of participatory institutions such as the Bolivarian Circles and the Communal Councils. The Bolivarian Circles were formed in 2001 to promote the revolutionary process, study the ideology of Bolivarianism, discuss local issues and defend the revolution. In their heyday, Bolivarian Circles had approximately 2.2 million members and played an active role in the massive demonstrations that rescued President Chávez when he was temporarily removed from ofﬁce in the April 2002 coup (Hawkins and Hansen 2006). Communal Coun- cils were formed in 2005 to involve communities in infrastructure projects and urban renewal. Hawkins (2010, 41) estimated that 35.5 per cent of the adult population participated in Communal Councils, an exceptionally high ﬁgure of about eight million partici- pants. For those who actively participated in the different Chavista institutions, this meant a new sense of dignity and inclusion (Fernandes 2010). It also questions views of participation in these institutions as entirely top-down. Chavism displayed a “diversity of grass roots organizations and formations, which have allied themselves with the Chavista leadership and state apparatus but have operated also with various degrees of autonomy” (Stra- vakakis et al. 2016, 67). POPULISM AND NATIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICA 5

Chávez used constitution-making to bring change. He convened a constitutional assembly tasked with the drafting of a new constitution. The process of drafting the new charter was participatory and involved the contributions and proposals of social movements and common citizens. The new constitution was approved in a referendum with 71.4 per cent of the vote. This charter expanded rights to territory to indigenous people, accepted international treaties on human rights and established a new form of participatory democracy. It also diminished the power of Congress, and concentrated power in the executive (Combellas 2010, 155–157). To displace old political elites, Chávez’s strategy was to defeat them in consecutive elections. Indeed, Venezuelans voted in 16 elections between 1999 and 2012. Constantly travelling the election trail, Chávez ruled as if he was in a permanent political campaign. He used populist discourse and strategies to manufacture rivals into enemies of the people and the homeland, while transforming elections into plebiscites on his persona— the embodiment of the revolutionary future, pitted against the defenders of the old regime. Chávez’s administration equated the interest of the nation with the interest of ordinary people, putting the state at the centre of development. Oil production was nationalised in 2001, and later steel, telecommunications and electric industries followed suit. His government reversed neoliberalism while incrementing its reliance on oil exports to 96 per cent (Hetland 2016, 9). Venezuela reaped huge beneﬁts from the commodity boom of the 2000s, which sent oil prices to record levels. As a result of enhanced revenues, public investment and social spending skyrocketed, and poverty rates—and to a lesser extent inequality—fell while the prices of oil and other commodities remained high. World Bank ﬁgures indicate that the poverty rate in Venezuela fell from 55.4 per cent of the population

in 2002 to 28.5 per cent in 2009 (de la Torre and Arnson 2013, 28). His regime created innovative social programmes like the Misiones to provide health, education and housing to the poor. These social programmes rapidly targeted the lower classes, and boosted his popularity as major social spending coincided with elections. These programmes also suffered from major design flaws. They were haphazard and politicised, and their implementation lacked efficiency, transparency and institutionalisation. The fiscal foundation of Chávez’s social programmes, especially those that relied heavily on oil windfall rents, was unsustainable in the long run (Weyland 2013). Falling prices of oil led to an increase of poverty in Venezuela. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America, poverty rates jumped from 24 per cent in 2012 to 32 per cent in 2013. Another study concluded that 75 per cent of Venezuelans were poor according to their income in 2015 (Arenas 2016, 19). Chávez’s political movement, the new constitution and even Venezuela were renamed as “Bolivarian”. The ideology of Bolivarianism portrayed Simón Bolívar as an anti-imperialist hero, and as the founding father of “Latin Americanism” vis-à-vis US-dominated “Pan-Americanism” (Anderson 2014). Bolivarianism advocated the self-determination of a Venezuela free from the interests of multinational corporations. It was also understood as a project to strengthen Venezuela’s cultural identity (Anselmi 2013, 67). Chávez enacted policies of bilingual education in indigenous communities to preserve indigenous cultures, and promoted Afro-Venezuelan cultural practices like the traditions of slave resistance of cimarronaje and the celebration of leaders of slave revolts (2013,69–70). This way, Chávez erected himself as the heir of Bolívar’sunfinished project of Latin American unity free from US influence. He became the symbol of the spirit of resistance and defiance of Latin America and the Global South towards the empire. The former 6 C. DE LA TORRE

leader of a coup d’état became an icon in leftist circles such as the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil: “Chávez provoked a roar of appreciation from fifteen thousand acti- vists who packed a sports stadium and greeted him with cries of ‘Here comes the Boss’” (Jones 2007, 422). Months later he was the star at the counter-summit to the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, where crowds cheered for him, while demonstrators humiliated George W. Bush. The goal of Chávez’s Bolivarianism was the revolutionary transformation of the exist- ing national and international institutional system to found a new order. His populist and nationalist language identified internal and external enemies: US imperialism and those elites that serve its interests. It polarised the nation and the international system into two irreconcilable and antagonistic camps: the people versus the oligarchy; neoliberalism versus socialism of the twenty-first century; bourgeois-liberal democracy against participatory real democracy; US-led Pan-Americanism versus Latin Americanism; and the Global South versus the empire. In the struggle between motherland and empire there was no room for dissent. Those who were critical of the revolutionary process willingly or not served the interests of the enemies of the nation. To provide subsidised oil to Cuba and other small nations of the Caribbean, Chávez created Petro Caribe in 2005. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) was founded in 2004 as a counterproject to US-dominated neoliberal free trade initiatives (Bagley and Defort 2014). Its members included Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Dominica, Ecuador, Saint Vincent, Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, and Honduras that left this alliance after the coup against president Manuel Zelaya in 2009. ALBA promised a real Latin American and Caribbean integration based on social justice and solidarity among the

peoples. Their goals were to construct Bolivar’s dream of Latin American unity to stop US domination in the region (Murphy 2014, 58). Differently from Perón, who failed to promote his regime abroad, Chávez’s Bolivarian model of regime change was emulated in Bolivia and Ecuador. Evo Morales and Rafael Correa used constitution-making to revamp all institutions in their nations, rejected neoliberalism to expand the role of the state in the economy, changed their foreign policies to promote national sovereignty and joined ALBA.

National-populist Autocratic Practices Perón and Chávez led illiberal and anti-pluralist national-populist governments. They blended democratic practices like elections as their source of legitimacy, with autocratic strategies to consolidate their rule. These leaders claimed to be the truthful representation of the nation and the poor. They concentrated power in the executive, controlled all the institutions of the state, regulated and censored the privately owned media and used the state to create loyal social movements from the top down.

Concentrating Power By 1950, after reforming the constitution to allow for Perón’s re-election, all institutions of government were in Peronist hands. Perón “had already replaced the members of the Supreme Court with staunch defenders of the regime, had gained ﬁrm control over Congress, and had tamed the labor movement” (Plotkin 2003, 98). As historian POPULISM AND NATIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICA 7

Romero (2002, 110) argues, “at every level of government, all power was concentrated in the hands of the executive—whether mayor, governor, or president—making it clear that the movement and the nation were considered one”. Chavismo also incrementally gained nearly absolute command of all institutions of the state: “This control extended well beyond the executive branch to a supermajority in the legislature and to what were nominally independent agencies and branches of government, at both the national and local levels” (Hawkins 2016, 244). In 2004 Chávez put the highest judicial authority, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, in the hands of loyal judges. By 2006 hundreds of lower court judges were fired and replaced by unconditional supporters as well (Hawkins 2016, 252). The National Electoral Council was politicised. Even though it made sure that the moment of voting was clean and free from fraud, it did not enforce rules during the electoral process, routinely favouring Chávez and his candidates. These populist leaders constructed politics as confrontations against enemies that needed to be destroyed. Perón argued that when political adversaries became “enemies of the nation” they were no longer “gentlemen that one should fight fairly but snakes that one can kill in any way” (Finchelstein 2014, 86). He “had a militaristic view of followers. They were ‘the soldiers of Peronism’ in ‘permanent fight against treason’ and the traitors of the nation” (2013, 87–88). Yet Perón never actualised the physical elimination of the enemy or used war to create a national community. Similarly, Chávez did not face political rivals, but the oligarchy defined as the enemies of the people, “those self-serving elites who work against the homeland” (Zuquete 2008, 105). He used a militaristic and warlike language. He faced epic battles, and military

themes played a central role in his use of symbols. He called for the formation of battalions, squads and squadrons to win elections (López Maya and Panzarelli 2013, 249). Like Perón he did not murder his opponents, but he used an aggressive language to portray them as enemies of the nation. He called traditional politicians imbeciles, squalid ones and little Yankees. He referred to the owners of the media as the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” (López Maya and Panzarelli 2013, 248).

National Populism and the Media Control, regulation and censorship of the media were strategies used to silence dissent and to create consensus around these leaders. Perón temporarily closed critical media venues and expropriated the critical newspapers La Prensa, and La Nueva Provincia (Romero 2002, 10). His government created a chain of radio stations and newspapers. The Subsecretaría de Prensa y Difusión “published more than 2.5 million pamphlets of various types and more than 3 million posters, in addition to producing movies and other propaganda materials” (Plotkin 2003, 31). Chávez enacted legislation to control the content of what the private media could publish. In 2000 the Organic Law of Telecommunication allowed the government to suspend or revoke broadcasting concessions to private outlets when it was “convenient for the interest of the nation”. The Law of Social responsibility of 2004 banned “the broadcasting of material that could promote hatred and vio- lence” (Corrales 2015, 39). These laws were ambiguous and the government could interpret their content according to its interests. Chávez took away radio and television fre- quencies from critics as well. The Venezuelan state became the main communicator, controlling 64 per cent of television channels (Corrales 2015, 41). 8 C. DE LA TORRE

Populists were media innovators. Eva Perón used the radio to communicate directly with her followers. She transformed politics into antagonistic and melodramatic confrontations: Her scenarios never changed and her characters were stereotyped by the same adjectives: Perón was always “glorious,” the people “marvelous,” the oligarchy egoísta y vende patria [selﬁsh and corrupt], and she was a “humble” or “weak” woman, “burning her life for them” so that social justice could be achieved, cueste lo que cueste y caiga quien caiga [at whatever cost and regardless of consequences]. (Marysa Navarro as quoted in de la Torre 2010, 18) For his part, Chávez used mandatory broadcasts that all media venues were forced to air to directly communicate his policies, and created his own television show, Aló Presidente. Every Sunday he addressed the nation for about six hours. He set the informational agenda as he announced major policies in a television show where he also sang popular tunes and talked about his personal life and dreams. Chávez thus became an ever-present ﬁgure in the daily life of Venezuelans. He was always talking on the radio and on television, billboards with his image adorned cities and highways, and Venezuelans became polarised by deepening divisions between his loyal followers and his enemies.

Controlling Civil Society and Creating National-popular Subjects These leaders attempted to keep civil society under control. Perón dominated the labour movement by displacing and jailing communist, socialist and anarchist leaders, and by promoting cronies to the leadership of the powerful national labour confederation CGT. Chávez, for his part, created parallel workers’ unions, teachers and student move-

ments. In addition, his administration enacted legislation that used ambiguous language to control and regulate the work of non-governmental organizations. In 2010 the Law for the Defense of Political Sovereignty and National Self-Determination in Venezuela barred non-governmental organisations that defended political rights or monitored the performances of public bodies from receiving international assistance (Corrales 2015, 39). Their educational policies aimed to expand access to previously excluded groups, and simultaneously to create Peronist or Bolivarian subjects. In Argentina the number of high school students rose from 38,686 in 1946 to 46,942 in 1951, and the number of students at the University of Buenos Aires increased from 17,742 in 1941 to 41,325 in 1951 (Plotkin 2003, 90). Women’s illiteracy was reduced from 15 per cent in 1947 to 9.38 per cent in 1958, while the proportion of women college graduates increased from 15.67 per cent in 1946 to 24.15 per cent in 1955–1960 (Plotkin 2003, 179). In addition to increasing spending on education from 3.4 per cent of the GDP when he got to power to 5.1 per cent in 2006, Chávez created a series of education programmes like the Mission Robinson that eliminated illiteracy, the Mission Ribas that gave high-school equivalency diplomas and the mission Sucre that provided access to college education. The goal of their educational reforms was to create Peronist or Bolivarian national subjects. In a speech delivered in 1953, Perón “deﬁned himself as the ﬁrst indoctrinator of the nation who ‘delegates to the Argentinean teachers and professors the responsibility of inculcating [the Peronist doctrine] in the children and youth of the New Argentina’” (Plotkin 2003, 100). A handbook for teachers stated that “[t]hose who do not follow the doctrine which has been created for the Nation are against the Nation” (Plotkin 2003, 191). Simi- larly, article 107 of the 1999 Constitution stated that the principles of Bolivarian ideology had to be taught in all schools in Venezuela (Anselmi 2013, 96). POPULISM AND NATIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICA 9

Textbooks were Peronised in Argentina and Bolivarianised in Venezuela. Eva’s auto- biography became mandatory reading at all levels of education, and children learned to read and write their first words with sentences such as Evita loves me or Perón loves children (Finchelstein 2014, 81). Peronist textbooks also changed fundamental values of the socialisation of children. For example, they redefined charity as social justice and, instead of being considered a burden, work became a right. The curriculum of Bolivarian schools taught about Bolívar’s legacy and the struggles of the founding fathers for sovereignty, national independence and social justice. Chávez was not mentioned directly, yet as sociologist Anselmi (2013, 132) sustains in his study of Bolivarian schools, “there is a tacit hope that once children grow, they will transfer their respect and devotion for the symbols and icons of classical Bolivarianism to [Chávez’s] revolutionary Bolivarianism”. The privileged image of populist femininity was motherhood. In an article published in his party magazine, Perón explained: “I have faith in women, because I have faith in mothers” (Grammático 2010, 128). The duty of Peronist women was to spread and popular- ise Perón’s doctrine, starting in the home (2010, 135). In his turn, Chávez appealed to women as revolutionary mothers. In a speech delivered on women’s day he declared: “Venezuelan women are the soul and essence of the revolutionary process … [They are] giving birth to a new country … being a housewife is dignified work” (as quoted in Espina and Rakowski 2010, 194). If women were conceived as mothers, populist leaders were constructed as fathers of their motherlands. The father metaphor, Kampwirth (2010, 12) argues, “turns citizens into children” and a politician into someone who understand their interests and needs, and

who could punish those who fail to recognise his wisdom. A father’s work is never done, and he has a mission that lasts a lifetime. Perón boasted to secure 60 years of Peronist power to redeem Argentina, and only cancer prevented Chávez from becoming Venezuela’s permanently elected president for life. Both Perón and Chávez were portrayed as carriers of the unfinished missions of exemplary nationalist figures. Perón declared that 1950 was the year of General San Martín. Like the founding father who led Argentina’s struggle for political independence by expelling the Spanish empire, Perón was conquering economic independence by expelling imperialists from Argentina (Zanatta 2011, 295). Chávez was erected into the carrier of Bolívar’s project of national and continental liberation. He asserted to be following the foot- steps of the “true Bolívar, the Bolívar of the people, the revolutionary Bolívar” (Torres 2009, 246). To celebrate the 10th anniversary of his presidency, Chávez visited the tomb of Bolívar and asserted: “Ten years ago, Bolívar—embodied in the will of the people—came back to life” (Lindholm and Zúquete 2010, 24). Like Hugo Chávez, Juan and Eva Perón were erected into mythical and even religious-like figures. Evita asserted that “Perón is a God”, while other Peronist professed that “God is Peronist” (Finchelstein 2014, 80). She referred to Perón’s Argentina “as the promised land” and to Perón as its “savior” and “redeemer” (Zanatta 2011, 318). Eva Perón herself was portrayed as a saint: “She was the First Samaritan, the Lady of Hope, and just before her death, she became the Spiritual Leader of the Nation” (Plotkin 2003, 159). State employees: were compelled to attend weekly “doctrinal lectures” with topics such as “The Word of Perón” […] It was mandatory that pictures of Perón adorned lecture halls during the 10 C. DE LA TORRE

“indoctrination”. Watching propaganda movies about the Peróns and their work was also mandatory. (Finchelstein 2014, 81) Those who did not follow Peronist secular religion with Perón as its god, and his regime as a new church, were branded heretics (Zanatta 2011, 435–436). Turning to Venezuela, Chávez constantly invoked “Jesus as ‘my commander in chief’ and as ‘the Lord of Venezuela’” (Lindholm and Zúquete 2010, 33). His followers elevated Chávez into a saint-like ﬁgure with the powers to heal. In 1999 an elderly woman grabbed him by the arm to beg him “Chávez help me my son has paralysis”. A crying young man stopped him outside the door of Caracas Cathedral and told him: “Chávez help me, I have two sons that are dying of hunger and I do not want to become a delin- quent, save me from this inferno” (as quoted in Torres 2009, 229). Chávez compared his leadership with that of Jesus Christ. In 1999, he asserted: “true love for other human beings is measured by whether you can die for others; and here we are ready to die for others” (Torres 2009, 230). His prophetic words of following Jesus’ example of giving his life to liberate his people were dramatically manifested when Chávez compared his agony with cancer with the passion of Christ. During a religious service broadcasted by national television during Holy Week in 2012 he prayed out loud: Give me life … Christ give me your crown of thorns. Give it to me that I bleed. Give me your cross … Give me life because I still need to do things for this people and motherland. Do not take me. Give me your cross, your thorns, your blood. I will carry them, but give me life. Christ my Lord. Amen.1

National Populism as a Struggle between Friend and Enemy Perón and Chávez polarised politics as Schmittian struggles between the people and the nation embodied in their leaderships, against anti-national and anti-popular oligarchic enemies. They closed institutional spaces for the opposition. Perón accused members of the opposition in Congress of contempt, barred them from the chamber of deputies, and even stripped some representatives of their congressional immunity (Romero 2002, 108). In the elections of 1951, Peronists won all of the Senate seats, and 90 per cent of the chamber of deputy seats (2002, 124). Similarly, Chávez controlled all the institutions of the state and governed by decree, bypassing the legislative power. In Aló Presidente he even boasted: “Iamthelaw;Iam the state” (López Maya and Panzarelli 2013, 258). Without institutional channels to process con- ﬂicts, in conditions of profound polarisation, and when elites and even the middle class felt that their class and status privileges were under attack, radical sectors of the opposition invited the military to resolve civilian problems. In Argentina “much of the opposition was concerned to eliminate Perón by whatever means necessary” (Romero 2002, 124). Likewise, radical sectors of the Venezuelan opposition plotted an anti-Chávez coup. With the closure of democratic institutions to voice dissent, the streets became the main venue to show loyalty or opposition to Perón. His movement was born with spon- taneous workers’ demonstrations that demanded his liberation from jail in 17 October 1945. Since then and until his fall in 1955, “huge public demonstrations became part of the urban landscape of the country” (Chamosa 2011, 127). The government used demonstrations to cement loyalty to Perón, and the opposition took to the streets against Perón. In October 1954, university students went into strike against Perón nationwide and hundreds of students were arrested (Brown 2010, 213). POPULISM AND NATIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICA 11

In the early 1950s Perón entered into conﬂicts with the Catholic Church over his educational policies, the construction of Evita as a saint after her death and the formation of the Christian Democratic party as an oppositional force to Peronism. In May 1955, Perón pro- posed a constitutional amendment to separate the church from the state. Perón’s followers and the Church clashed in the streets. In June, 100,000 middle-class protesters marched through the streets of downtown Buenos Aires. Several days later, thousands of Peronist workers gathered for a counterdemonstration in the Plaza de Mayo, the city’smain square, and burned churches (Brown 2010, 213). On 16 June 1955 the navy and opposition politicians staged a failed coup that resulted in the death of 300 civilians (Romero 2002, 129). Finally, Perón was ousted in September. General Eduardo Lonardi “proclaimed himself in Buenos Aires the provisional president of the nation, before a crowd as large as those once assembled by the fallen regime, though undoubtedly different in its compo- sition” (2002, 130). Likewise, because Chávez polarised Venezuelan society into two antagonistic camps and closed institutional spaces to voice dissent, “the streets rather than the legislature, the courts, and the electoral system became the principal setting of this confrontation” (Encar- nación 2002, 39). In April 2002 a coalition of business, labour and civil society organisations, with the active support of the privately owned media, organised demonstrations against what they perceived as the undermining of democracy. On 11 April, hundreds of thousands took the streets to protest against Chávez’s oil and educational policies. Labour leader Carlos Ortega urged the crowd to go to the presidential palace to oust Chávez. They marched for about seven miles to the Miraﬂores Palace chanting “The people united will never be defeated”. On their way more people joined in: “The extraordinary size of the

march strengthened the opposition’s perception that the whole country was with them and that history was in their side” (Coronil 2011, 35). Television showed images of Chávez’s loyalists firing upon the crowd. Nineteen people died, and even though it was later shown that those images were manipulated by the media and were not accurate, the general perception at that time was that the president was repressing the people. The massive protests against Chávez and the images of chavistas firing at demonstrators were used as a pretext to legitimise a coup. Arguing that Chávez had abandoned power, the businessman Pedro Carmona with the support of high military officers, as well as the US and Spanish governments, took power. He dismissed all elected officials and institutions of Chávez’s administration, and named ultra-conservatives as ministers without including other members of the anti-Chávez coalition. Carmona became isolated from other members of the anti-Chávez coalition who did not support the coup d’état, and the armed forces returned Chávez to power on Sunday 14 April. Chávez’s supporters triumphantly received him and acclaimed the recently overthrown president as the embodiment of the democratic ideal, and as a figure larger than life who over- came a coup d’état. Organised in the Bolivarian Circles, urban land committees and other associations, Chávez’s followers had responded to the opposition ’s protests with counter demonstrations. In April, Chávez’s supporters guarded the presidential palace of Miraflores. After learning of the April 2002 coup against Chávez, millions of poor Venezuelans mobilised from their neighbourhoods, “blocking every highway and street and converging on the historic center of Caracas to surround Miraflores Palace” (Ciccariello-Maher 2013, 169). Chávez and his followers argued that popular autonomous mobilisation defeated the coup. 12 C. DE LA TORRE

Conclusions Differently from exclusionary right-wing European or American populism, the Latin American variant is inclusionary. Filc (2015) argues that different legacies of colonialism explain why Latin American populists did not aim to build national communities by expelling the foreign and non-white other, but on the contrary aimed to include the excluded. Yet even if populism in Latin American was inclusive, it was not democratic. Despite their inclusionary rhetoric and policies of nation-building and national popular empowerment, Perón and Chávez built autocratic governments. The logic of populism explains their success in rupturing exclusionary institutional arrangements, and in including the excluded. Yet its view of politics as a Schmittian confrontation between friend and enemy led to the enactment of autocratic policies that aimed to construct the people as one. As Laclau (1977, 2005) argued, populism is a logic that constructs national-popular subjects. Populism built powerful identities that allowed for their mobilisation against internal and external enemies. The poor and the non-white who were stigmatised by the elites as irrational, as emotional and as the dangerous rabble became the embodiment of the Peronist and the Bolivarian nations. The language of populism sparked bottom-up mobilisation, participation and popular empowerment. Under populism, leaders and organisations of the subaltern disputed who had the power to speak on behalf of the people, and who represented the nation. In addition, populists in power enacted policies to expand the franchise, to encourage the participation of common people in politics and to redistribute income and, to a lesser extent, wealth. An active state was put in charge of renegotiating the terms of dependency, and to acquire a sovereign voice in world politics. At the same time, Perón and Chávez were anti-pluralists. They attempted to become the only voice of the people. Dissent even within their own coalitions was seen as treason. These leaders went further than other populists in Latin America in their attempt to manufacture the people as one. They controlled and censored the media, used the state to colonise civil society and to create loyal social movements, reformed the educational system to make Peronist and Bolivarian national subjects, and even created political theologies. They aimed to stay in power until completing their missions of liberating their peoples. However, Perón was overthrown with a coup d’état, and cancer took Chávez’s life. But these leaders failed in creating homogeneous and unitary peoples. Their policies were resisted by intellectuals, journalists, middle-class sectors, social movements’ leaders, some leftist parties and politicians from the opposition. Their attempts to be the only voice of the people were also contested by sectors of their coalitions, and sympathetic social movements that used the openings of the political system to push for their autonomous demands. Peronist workers and many Bolivarian organisations did not succumb to the will of their leader, but rather strategically supported their policies, and pushed these leaders to fulﬁl their democratising and redistributive promises. Even though Peronism and Chavism were not able to create homogeneous national communities, they polarised their nations into two antagonistic and irreconcilable camps. Populists and their defectors saw each other not as democratic adversaries, but as enemies. The opposition that felt marginalised, and with little opportunities to get back to power using democratic institutions, plotted military coups against Perón and Chávez. Populists for their part excluded those who did not uncritically accept Perón or Chávez as the only and truthful voice of the people. They were branded as enemies of the populist leader, the people and the nation. POPULISM AND NATIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICA 13

Peronism and Chavism emerged as responses to exclusionary systems. They fulﬁlled their promises to include the poor politically, economically and culturally. Yet these processes of inclusion led to autocratic regimes because the logic of populist confrontation denied democratic spaces for opponents who were constructed as enemies of the poor and the nation. Sectors of the opposition for their part where also anti-pluralist and denied populists of any democratic legitimacy, going so far as inviting the military to stage coups. After the horrors of brutal human right abuses of the Bureaucratic Authoritarian State in Argentina in the 1970s, the Peronist logic of war was replaced with the political grammar of human rights, and political enemies became political adversaries. Even though Nestor and Cristina Kirchner (2003–2015) used populist discourse in their war against the oligarchy, a stronger civil society did not fully accept their language of politics as an antagonistic struggle between two irreconcilable camps. The Kirchners were not able to generate a populist rupture in Argentina. Thousands mobilised against Cristina Kirchner’s agrarian policies. Her attempts to modify the constitution to allow for her re- election were resisted by civil society and an independent constitutional court (Peruzzotti 2015). After the failed coup, the Venezuelan opposition used democratic means to resist Chavism. They joined forces in the Mesa de la Unidad, and under the leadership of Henrique Capriles challenged Chávez in 2012 and Nicolás Maduro in 2013. The fact that they were able to use elections to confront Chavism illustrated that Venezuela was a hybrid regime with some democratic spaces left open. Subsequent to Chávez’s death and following the collapse of oil prices, Venezuela is enduring a prolonged stalemate between the

heirs of Chávez and the opposition, and it is uncertain whether democracy will survive in Venezuela. Even though populists promised national emancipation, direct popular rule and increased participation of the people in politics, military strongmen were built into the embodiment of the people and as the only voice of the nation in Argentina and Venezuela. When institutional channels to protest were perceived as closed, the most reactionary sectors of the opposition turned to undemocratic means to stop populist administrations. If the populists undermined democracy from within, the perception that democratic channels were closed tempted undemocratic opponents to invite the military to take power away from Perón and Chávez. Laclau did not analyse the autocratic perils of the logic of populism based on views of the people as one (Arato 2015). Its Schmittian logic of the political threatened pluralism, and the independence of civil society and the public sphere from the state. Even though Perón and Chávez got to power with the promise to improve deﬁcient and exclusionary democracies, their legacy was to build autocratic governments. Perón and Chávez undermined democracy from within, closing democratic institutional spaces. Their autocratic governance gave excuses to the radical sectors of the opposition to plot coups with the military. One way or the other, these national populist governments included the excluded at the cost of directly or indirectly undermining democracy.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors. 14 C. DE LA TORRE

NOTE 1. http://runrun.es/runrunes/40538/la-nueva-religiosidad-de-chavez-revela-la-gravedad-de- su-cancer.html (accessed May 31, 2017).

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Carlos de la Torre (corresponding author) is Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts

and Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA. Email: c.delatorre@ uky.edu

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