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From the Breakdown of Oligarchic Domination to Neoliberal Governance: The Impact of the Shining Path on Peru’s Constitutional Democratic Order Maxwell A. Cameron Department of Political Science University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z1 Email: [email protected] December 22, 2015 Author’s note: This is a revised version of a paper presented in a workshop at DRCLAS, Harvard University, May 19-20, 2014. I am grateful to Hillel Soifer, Alberto Vergara, Teivo Teivainen and Francisco Durand for advice and guidance in preparing this paper. 1 Introduction What impact did the Partido Comunista del Perú-Sendero Luminoso—the Shining Path—have on the development of Peru’s constitutional order? This chapter approaches the problem through the lens of comparative constitutionalism. The Constitution of 1979 was written at the end of military rule, just before the Shining Path’s “initiation of armed struggle.” The Constitution of 1993 was written in the aftermath of President Alberto Fujimori’s 1992 presidential self-coup, or autogolpe, which was justified by the need for emergency measures to fight the counter- insurgency war. Whereas the first constitution preceded Peru’s internal conflict, the second followed it. By comparing the two documents we can begin to assess the legacy of the internal conflict. Two central lessons emerge. The first is that the Shining Path crucially influenced the development of Peru’s constitutional order. Analysts agree that the 1993 constitution was more authoritarian and neoliberal than its 1979 predecessor (Mauceri 1996; Teivainen 2002; Planas 1999). It rolled back social features of the 1979 constitution, and facilitated the concentration of power in the hands of the executive branch of government.1 It also proved remarkably enduring. Specifically, Peru did not emulate other countries in the region that undertook constitutional reforms (often called republican “refounding”) as part of a left turn.2 In this view, the Shining Path foreclosed the possibility of a left turn by creating an emergency situation that resulted in a constitution that locked in a neoliberal economic model and with a correspondingly limited democracy. The argument exemplifies Naomi Klein’s (2009) “shock doctrine.” There is another, perhaps more optimistic finding. The constitution of 1979 and 1993 are actually quite similar in terms of their protection for fundamental rights and freedoms as well as the organization of the political roles and offices of the state. The 1993 Constitution was written 2 under Fujimori, but it never sanctioned the kinds of abuses of power that occurred under his rule, and indeed the President almost immediately found himself entangled in his own violations of it. If we place both constitutions within a longer historical perspective, the 1979 constitution appears to reflect a deeper process of societal democratization under military rule and thereafter; and, although the 1993 constitution rolled back certain social democratic features of the 1979 constitution, it nonetheless retained other constitutional and democratic elements; moreover, some of the authoritarian features were ultimately overturned. The role of the Shining Path within this larger process of democratization was negative but insufficient to reverse the trend. To support these arguments, this chapter is organized into six substantive sections. The first examines the breakdown of oligarchic domination and the process of social democratization that culminated in the 1978 Constituent Assembly. The second interprets the Shining Path within the context of this transformation. The third section examines how the stresses imposed on the newly democratized political regime, and the emergency situation, led to a rupture of the constitutional order. The fourth section compares the 1979 and 1993 Constitutions. The fifth section discusses the emergence of neoliberal governance techniques fostered by the 1993 Constitution. The sixth section places Peru in the comparative context of Latin America’s left turns. The final section concludes. I. The Breakdown of Oligarchic Domination The initial crisis of the oligarchic state in the 1920s and 1930s did not result in the breakdown of oligarchic domination, which remained particularly strong in the countryside. Conflict between Peru’s military and the leader of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, led to a proscription of the latter from from holding public office and the 3 postponement of necessary social, political and economic reforms. When these reforms were finally adopted, it was, paradoxically, under the tutelage of reformist military officers who seized power in a coup in 1968. The rural oligarchy was finally destroyed by an extensive land reform, the creation of peasant cooperatives, unionization, industrial communities, and corporatist institutions. The aim of the military was to modernizing the nation while limiting class conflict. Instead of avoiding class conflict, however, the reformist military officers exacerbated it, and Peru entered a period of internal conflict that would ultimately cost tens of thousands of lives and untold property damage. Prior to the sweeping reforms undertaken by the military regime between 1968-1980, Peruvian society was characterized by structural dualism between the coast and the sierra—a source of cultural heterogeneity that dated to the colonial period (Cotler 1976: 35). The coast was the seat of criollo culture; the highlands, of indigenous cultures. The urban areas along the coast monopolized technologies of social communication, including newspapers and television, and were integrated into global economic markets. The sierra, with its preindustrial economic arrangements, was a sort of archipelago containing “vast pockets of isolation” in which “traditional social forms of organization” coexisted with large landholdings (Cotler 1976: 36) or haciendas. On the haciendas the relationship between lord (or gamonal) and peasant (colono) were particularly repressive and exploitative. Gamonal oppression relied on public spectacles of savage punishment as a way of affirming superiority over the Indian.3 But it also rested on manipulation which was “made possible, among other causes, by the monopoly exercised by the dominant on knowledge of the Castilian tongue” (Degregori 1989: 10). Power and knowledge were fused in the person of the landowner. Mestizos dominated the professions: lawyers, judges, 4 governors, police, merchants, mayors and tax collectors were recruited overwhelmingly from among mestizos. They monopolized access to written texts and restricted literacy and education to guarantee their domination. Only the literate could elect or be elected to public office in this system. The hacienda system resembled a “triangle without a base.”4 It was a system of total and despotic power.5 There was less oppression, but life was still precarious for those living in indigenous communities. These communities were based on collective ownership of land, and internal cohesion was based on kinship and particularistic networks. Indigenous communities relied on ancestral norms and communal practices to coordinate the activities of their members. Small in scale, their lives were organized around face-to-face communication, and anchored in generational hierarchies; their collective knowledge was stored in biological memory and transmitted orally; their connection to the larger division of labour was precarious and sporadic. Yet they were cohesive collectivities, bound together in tightly-knit groups based on reciprocity and mutual aid capable of surviving many external threats, both environmental and human. There were constant tensions as large landlords sought to expand their holdings at the expense of indigenous communities. The collapse of oligarchic domination began in the late 1950s. The expansion of literacy and education in the countryside, combined with the spread of mass communications, especially radio, diminished the power of mestizos and gamonales and enabled challenges to oligarchic domination.6 Peasant unrest in La Convención near Cuzco in 1958-62 focused on the inequities of a system of domination based on massive haciendas. Peasants began to organize into unions and to undertake land invasions. Inspired by the example of the Cuban revolution, urban intellectuals joined the struggle.7 In short order land invasions spread throughout the highlands, 5 involving hundreds of thousands of peasants. Although an incipient guerrilla movement was quickly put down, it called attention to the ways in which Peru’s socioeconomic problems stemmed from the backwardness of the rural oligarchy, the lack of national integration, and a weak and dependent state.8 Military officers who fought against the guerrillas were able to directly observe the oppression and misery created by the very order they were expected to defend; they decided it was time for change (Cleaves and Pease García 1983: 216). One such officer was Juan Velasco Alvarado, a junior officer who seized power in a coup on October 3, 1968. As the leader of the self-styled revolutionary government of the armed forces he embarked on sweeping reforms to break the domination of the rural oligarchy and lay the foundations for a new development model based on the inclusion of workers and peasants, appreciation of indigenous culture, and redistribution of land and income.9 “One of the major goals of antioligarchic and nationalist revolution,” according to Julio Cotler (1975:

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