– The post-World War II era has been a difficult one
for Guat e malan d e mocracy, as th e n ation b eca me
increasingly polarized berNeen the extre me left and the
extreme right (Love! 20 10; Guzaro and McComb 2010;
Afflito and Jesilow 2007; Jonas 2000; Carmack 1988). In
1954, a UnitecL_States Cen tral Intelligen ce Ag__ency- US,
s onsored coup ove1thre”‘;’. a democratically e ected gov-
e rnm ent which had enacted socioecono mic reforms.
There then began, in 1960, a lon and dee ly divisive
civil war that officially took an_estirnated 140 000 li_ves C.,.1 ’11 t
and left another 60,000 persons “missing’.’ (F igure 6.4 ). tW- 1
~stuerrillas were arrayed against th e u_!!ra-rigl:!!_-
wing milit ary, which threat e n ed to stage a coup
‘ l e,f’.l rciv.e-t , o ~
v~
r- ‘i a–~-t ~ v-1/.l v~
128 CHAPTE R 6 Po li tica l Change
This plaque containing a partial list of the victims of
Guatemala’s recent civil war is mounted on the
exterior wall of the national cathedral in Guatemala
City.
whenever it became too uncomfmtable with the policies
of the civilian government. Paramilita death s uads
perpetuated the S.YE_le of violence. Tens of tho_usands of
peaceful Maya Indians were caught in the crossfire.
By the earlx~s, G atemala was widely regarded
as the w rst violator oLhurna ·ghtsJ.ILalL of atin
An:ierica, and the country was facing a grave economic
crisis. The 99 residential campaign brou ght the
election ci,_b.lvaro Arzu Irigoyen, a cons ervative hus.i-
ness rnan, and the peaceful resolution of the civil ~-
T11is was followed in 999 y the victory of Arzu’s rival,
Alfon so Portillo, in the f} rst p eacetim e presidential
election in nearly for!),’ ye~. Two additional open elec-
tions have since been held. In 2008 Alvaro Colo took
office as Guate mala’s first freely elected leftist resi-
dent in over fifty years . It appears , then , that a fragile
d e mocracy has once again b ee n es tablish ed in th e
deeply divide d nation . Continuing hi_gh levels of civil
CUADERNO DE MAPAS y
APU NTES DE GEOG RA F IA
F IGURE 6.5
A Guatemalan elementary school geography
notebook with a cover map showing Belize as a
province of Guatemala. Although Guatemala has
officially recognized the independence of Belize,
many of Guatemala’s citizens continue to feel that
Belize was unjustly taken from them.
Y!Qlence and the c9rruP.ting of prominent government
officials by drug traffickers are grim reminders , how-
ever, that the healing process is far from complete.
Belize
Belize occupies a portion of the southeastern Yucatan
Peninsula and for thousands of years was an integral pait
of the Maya civilization. Although o~-ill}:’. falling un er
Spanish authority d~1ing th e colonial pe1iod, the first Jer-
man ent Europearuettlements were established b seven-
t~ th-century British buccaneers andl.ater_by__Erig!igl
loggers and escaped slaves from the Caiibbean Isl~ ds. It
thus developed as a sparsely populated, predominantly
English culture realm and was formally declare~sh
co ony in 18~ Self-govern ce witltin the B1itish Com-
monwealth was granted iJ 1964 d the official name was
changed from British Hondw-as to Belize i.11 1973. I~
pendence followed in 19~l, at which time Great Britain
promised to come to the country’s militaiy defense in the
event of an outbreak of armed hostilities with Guatemala
(Figure 6.5). Belize functions today as a stable parliamen-
tary democracy and is widely viewed as more Caribbean
than Central Am e1ica_g,.in_c;_clture ..
Honduras
The early political development of Honduras mirrored
to a large degree that of its western neighbor, Guate-
mala. Following its declaration of i.e nde nce in
~ eons e rvatives rul ti.L.1..8.:W , wh en a lib§ ra
reform e ra was introduced by Marco Aurelio Soto.
There followed anotp er p e riod of cons ervative do.mi-
nance in the late; nineteenth ce ntury, during which
tim e Honduras was subj ected to frequ ent intervention
by its C entral Am e rican n eighbors , p articularly by
more populous and prosperous Guate m~a. The estab-
lishm ent of huge Am erican-o ed-eanana o ·a ·ons
in the early 1900s brought to the northern Caribbean
lowlands a degree of economic developm ent, but also
resulted in foreign fruit inte rests exercising an inordi-
nate amount of political influ e nce-a situation that
critics maintain p ersists to som e degree to the present
day (Soluri 2005; Langley 2002 ).
D espite its proble ms , which have included the 2009
coup d’etat (se Case Study 5.1), a democratic tradition
has recently e merged in Honduras. After an ~end~
period of military_ dominance, ci\jJiai go em.m en: was
reestablished ii) th e_ early 1980s. Since that tim e, th e
country has held free and open presidential elections.
Mu ch-n ee ded judicial and p e nal reforms have been
imple mented, and civilian control over the military has
been form alized . Widespread corrnption and rising levels
of violent c1i me, however, threaten the newly won gains.
El Salvador
settled nation whose ==:c..=.:…==~~==
leaders · torically have la ed promin~ oles in
Central Am e1ican politiGs. The mid-nineteenth centmy
was ominated by the usual conservative-liberal rival-,
ries. Those rivalries cam e to be subsum ed in the late/
1800s by the impact ofs_c offe cultivation, which~
the nation’s landeg_aristoc ·a y into an extremely tightly
knit oligarchy that has attempted to perpetuate itself in
power to the present.
Hi_gh opulation densities and the landed aristocra-
cy’s unwillin ness to voluntarily promote a program of
substantive vagrmian reform have been the root caus e,,s of
El Salvador’s two most recent political c1ises,., The first,
the so-called “Soccer Wm·” with Honduras in 1969, had
its imm ediate provocation in a regional qualifying soccer
match for the World Cup betwee n th e tv.ro countries,
CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e 129
which inflam ed passions to such a degree that the Salva-
doran air force dropped a few bombs on Honduran air-
ports and its army invaded Honduras at two points .
Underlying the conflict, however, had been th e migra-
tion in the previous decades of an estimated 300,000
landless Salvadoran easants into the_thinly popula!:_.e,d
western Honduran borderlands, caused by the Salvador-
ans ‘ inability to o tain an to work in their own nation.
The second, and far more serious , crisis was an
arm ed conflict between the right-wing Salvadoran mili-
tary and Marxist re bels of the Farabundo Marti ( 1~’4-v ,,1
National Liberation Front (FMLN wJ10 attempted ~ V.. 1
tQ._represent the interests of the growing rural landless f~ (
class. Th e civil wm; which broke out in 9 0, took an esti- Q • 1 ~
;;ated 75,000 lives, most of them civilian, and displaced t,t Vl .
approxii11ately 1 million persons before its negotiated set- t-.\0.(
tlem ent in 1992 (Henriquez Consalvi 2010 ). Remarkable
p;·ogress has been achieved in recent years in building
democratic political structures within the nation (Dodson
and Jackson 2004; Juhn 1998; Williams and Walter 1997;
Brockett 1994). Electoral, judicial, and economic reforms
have been implemented, and th e FMLN is now on e of,
many political pmties functioning within an open, plural-
‘ ist governm ent. El Salvador is rapidly reassuming its his-
tmic leadership role within the region.
Nicaragua
Few people of Central Ame1ica have as tragic a histo1y
as the long-suffe1ing Nicaraguans , who from the early
colonial period to the present have seldom experienced
a time when war m1d conflict did not prevail. One source
of continuing tension within the country has been th e
deep cultural differe betv een Mos uitia _tl~i-1.ed
Ina.lan an ack Caribbean coastal plains region th.at
un til 1860 fun ctioned as an autonomous kingdom under
B;itish protection, a~he Spanish-Indian realm that
came to focus on tl1e fertile western volcanic low El,~
bordering_!l1 e Pacific coast (Hale 1994).
In addition to Spanish-English antagonisms , Span-
ish society its elf became bitterly divided during the
colonial era bel:l;veen conservativ andJiheral elements.
The form er cente red on tl1e interior agricultural city of
Granada and the latte r on Leon, whose proximity to
the Pacific Ocean and the world b eyond led to its
selection as tl1e seat of the provincial governm ent. The ·
rivahy between the two factions b ecam e so intense fol-
lowing Ni caragua’s declaration of indep e nde_n ce in
83 ” that the national papital was fin ally moved to tl1 e
c<_? mprornis e site of Managua, the n a small town situ-
ated rou ghly half".ray b etween Granada and Leon .
Frustrated by th eir inability to defeat tl1e conserva-
tives, th e liberals next staged a bizarre episode, hJ!].ng_a.
band of Am e rican filibust ers , led by an adventure r
nam ed William Walke r, to e ngage th e cons e rvative
130 CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e
armies on their behalf. Walker ar1ived with his men in -1855, and the next year managed to et himself “elected”
president of the republic. Walker’s rule quickly became
so offensive to liberals and conse1vatives alike that both
parties enlisted the aid of their Central Ameiican neigh-
bors to d1ive him from…th e__countzy_i_n~
There followed a period of conservativ ina-
tion that__e r_1ckd. in 1J393. with the election of a young
‘beral named Jose Santos Zelaya. Zelaya succeeded in ——- ~
< \0 bringing Mosquitia under effective control for the first
J'-} tim e in Nicaraguan histo1y, but he also sowed the seeds
of his own de mis e by a,!!_em12ting to provoke revolutions
in neighboiing countries. Wh en two Am e rican citizens
were killed in the 1909 revolution against Zelaya, the
Uni~ d States sent naval forces to patrol the Caribbean
coastline of Nicaragu a and within three ye ars had
m~rin~s station ed in _Man ag~, whe re th ey we re to
, remain 011· a “p eacekeeping” mission until 1933 .
. \}. ~ The Am elican occupation was re~sted by the forc<;s
V ~) · of Ge12_eral Augusto Cesar Sandino, who was assass~ated
~" in 1934 by th e U.S.-train ed National Guard commanded
by Anastacio Somoza Garcia (Walker and Wade 2011 ;
Macaulay 1985). Somoza became president in 931 and
proceeded to establish an e~ceptionally rrup and long-
lived dynastic regim e. By the tim e that Somoza’s youn-
ges t so n , Anastasio Somo za D e bayle, gove rn ed as
dictator in the ll):Z0s, it was estimated that the extended
fa mily controlled fully half the wealth of the nation.
In 19790 a bro ad coalition of opposition groups
drove Somoza into exile, leaving Nicaragua impover-
,,.,. ished and deeply divided. A l_eftist group , which called
themselves the Sand inistas in honor of General Sand-
ino, established the mselves in power, ans[ tl1eiijeader,
Daniel Ortega, b ecame president (F igure 6.6). With
\ V ~oviet assistance they built up the milita1y to unprece-
dented levels while atte mpting to discourage private
e terprise . The United States, alarm ed at what it per-
“k- eived as the beginnings oftfi’e first Central American
~~ Marxist state, re spond e d by su orting the contra
counte rrevolutiO..!l,. which cost the nation over 55,D..Q0_
dead or woundeq and untold economic loss es. The
counte rrevolution fail ed to gain th e support of the
masses, partly because the c~r~ leadership wa~ com-
po.,~ed largely of hated forrn e_r Somozista commande_!’s.
In 990-» Violeta Banios de Chamorro, the widow of a
fo rm er newsp aper editor who had been murdered in
1978 by presumed agents of Somoza, defe ated Ortega
in a free election and took offlce. Subsequent elections
have been tumultuous yet relatively open. Reflective of
the political in stability of th e countiy is the fact that the
national co nstitution of 1987 has been revis ed three
times , in 1995, 2000 , and 2005. Ortega was again
elected president in 2006 and has since consolidated his
control of virtually eve1y aspect of national governance
(Marti i Puig 2010 ). Th e nation re mains int e ns ely
This heroic-sized statue of an armed worker was
erected by the Sandinistas in the older sector of
Managua.
divided both politically and socially, and the placing of
collective national good ahead of the pursuit of personal
gain remains its greatest challenge .
Costa Rica
In contrast to the turbulence and political instability that
have characteiized most Central Ameiican nations , Costa
Rica has been a model of relative calm, with q_1ux occa-
si~ sho1t interludes of auth01itaiian rule interrupting
long p e1iods of peaceful , de mocratic government. The
roots of Costa Rican de mocracy extend back into the
colonial era, when the early Spanish settlers anived in the
te mperate, volcanic uplands of the Meseta Central only
to discover that the indigenous populations of the region
were ve1y scarce. Unable to live off the labor of the Indi-
ans as great latifundistas, as was generally the case else-
where in Latin Am e1ica, the Costa Rican Spaniards were
forced to divide the land into smaller family farm-type
CHAPTE R 6 Political C h a ng e 131
FIGURE 6.7
Costa Rica has long invested in the education of its people. Shown here is
th e San Ramon campus of the University of Costa Rica.
u~ t the could work th~mselves. This, in turn, gave
rise to a relatively egalitarian society that stressed democ-
~y and its sustaining value, universal education , and .
that remained largely aloof1rom – the never-ending mili-
tary intrigues that undermined the political development
of neighboring regions (Booth 1998) (Figure 6.7).
This is not to suggest that Costa Rica has escaped
authoritarian influences altogether. The country was
ruled from 1870 to 1882 by the dictator General Tomas
Guardia and~erwenta s h…91t-lived military coup iij
l Q!L_Jhe father of modern Costa Rican democracy is
widely considered to be Jose “Pepe” Figueres , who rose
to national prominence in 11)48 as the leader of a popu-
lar revolt (Lehoucq 1991). Elected president first in
1953 and later in 1970, Figueres’s greatest achievem ent
may have bee n the complete abolition of th e army,
which he replaced with a civilian-led national police
force. Many of Figueres’s successors have taken leader-
ship roles in pursuing regional solutions to Central
America’s numerous military conflicts. One of those .
successors, Oscar Arias Sane served twice as presi-
dent of Costa Rica, from 1986 to 1990 and again from
2006 to 2010, and was awarded the 1987 Nobel Peace
Priz for his contributions to- th e peaceful resolution of
Nicaragua’s Sandinista-contra war.
Panama
Panama’s unique location , linking North and South
America as well as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans , has
contributed since colonial tim es to making it a region
where Jeople, goods , and ideas all seemed to gathe r
and mix in a manner so fluid that long-term values and ….. – ____.
t~ ons_fgi:_med extrem ely slowly. Its strategic loca-
tion also has encouraged int.ervention by foreign inter-
ests , which in th e post-World War II era has been
CO..]J n!§red by a rising tide of nationalism.
Panama first achieved independence in 1821 fol-
lowing Bolivar’s conquest of loyalist forces stationed in
the isthmus. Shortly thereafter, however, the .country
rE:_ciuested union with Colombia, which governed the
occasionally rebellious territory as a se_p1iautonomous
region throughout the remainder of the nineteenth
ce ntury. In 1903 , the United States , frustrated at
Colombia’s failure to ratify a treaty that would have
allowed th e United States to build a canal linking tl1e \)\
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans , de loyed unbo ats _?.n d tvn–tC~
troo s to persuade the Colombian egislature to grant \/CYff’ 0
Panama independence yet a second tim e. Within weeks
of Anglo American recognition of tl1eir independence,
the jubilant Panamanians, who knew full well the
source of their n ewfound freedom , sign ed the treaty
that ceded in perpetuity to the United States tl1e right
to us;:-occupy, and control a strip of land now knm,vn
as the ~anal Zone. The following year, in yet another
extraordinary abrogation of sovereign power, Panama
adopted a constitution that specific ally authorized
American ‘mi itary intervention in the countiy, if such
inter~ention was necessary to maintain ordei;.
132 CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e
A ship passing through the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal. This view
is fac ing westward toward the Pacific Ocean .
Having established near total control over Pana-
manian internal affairs, the United States proceeded to
dig the canal, which was comple ted and put into opera-
tion in 1914. From that point until 1940, the count1y
was rule d by a series of strongmen ,who, while not
above profiting personally from their positions, were
generally quick to do Am e rican b idding . The JJ.OSt- ,
World War II era brought attitudinal changes in many
Panamanians . While recognizing that much good had
resulted from American economic involve ment in the
countiy, they came to r ent-U .S…. own.ershi of Pana-
ma’s heartland- the Canal Zone (Figure 6.8). This
e merging a · alis was promoted, in part for p er-
sonal political considerations, by several Panamanian
caudillos, including the pro-Fascist Arnulfo Arias , who
was elected president in 1940, 1950, and 1968-only to
be ousted in coups that followed all three victories-
and Colonel Omar Torrijos Herrera, who reigned as
dictator from 1968 until 1981. In 1977, Torrijos and
American President Jimm y Carter agreed on a new
pair of tre a ties that called for th e canal to pass
completely to Panamanian control on Januaiy 1, 2000,
and for Panama to remain politically neutral thereafte r.
Torrijos was followed as military dictator of Panama
by General Manuel Antonio oriega, who is widely
believed- to have b ee n simultaneously em ploye d for
years by the United States Central Intelligence Agency
and by Colombia’s drug warlords. Noriega, having been
indicted on drug trafficking ch arges by two U.S. grand
jmies, beca me increasingly an ti-Am erican in his behav-
ior, and in th e fall of 1989 made the tactical mistake of
dedaiing war on the United States. The United States,
which had been anxious to have the general deposed,
then invaded the count1y (Perez 2000; Millett 1993).
Since Noriega’s ouster, th e re has been considerable
progress toward the creation of stable denwci:ac_y. The
m~ was abolished in 1994_ by constitutional amend-
ment and rep aced by a national police force, a coast
guard, and an air service corps. D e mocratic elections
are now the norm. However, the executive branch con-
tinues to dominate , and the political party system is
weak and candidate-rather than issue-centered. In
the 1999 presidential elections, for instance, Mireya
Moscoso, widow of form er President Arias, defeated
Ma1tin Tonijos , the son of the late dictator. Torrijos, in
turn, se1ved as president from 2004 to 2009 .
THE GREATER A NTILLES
Cuba
The failure of Cuba and Pue1to Rico to seek indepen-
de nce in the early nin e tee nth century dramatically
increased Cuba’s geopolitical importance. Spain, which
had just lost its poss essions on the mainland , de ter-
mined to hold on to its remaining Caribbean colonies at
all cos ts and impos ed repress ive milita1y rule on th e
islan d. Me,mwhile, Ame1ican politicians from southern
slaveholding states, locked in battle \ivith representatives
of th e north ern states for control of Congress, began to
lobby for U.S. annexation of Cuba, ostensibly to bring
lib erty and freedom to the island. The Cubans tl1ern-
se lves remained deeply divid ed among thos e who
favored independence, those who wanted to seek union
with the United States, and those who preferred to see
Cuba contin ue as part of the Spanish empire.
The animosity between the revolutionary an d royal-
ist forces became so intense that a bitter, rnilitaiily incon-
clusive civil war empted in 1868, lasting ten years and
costing over 200,000 lives. Upon th e conclusion of the
war, Cuba was granted representation in the Spanish Par-
liam ent, or Cortes, and vaiious reforms were enacted on
the island that were intended to appease those who had
fought for independence. The changes were too little and
came too late, however, to ste rn the growing indepen-
dence move ment that coalesced around a young poet liv-
ing in exile in the United States nam ed Jose Marti. The
invasion of th e revolutionary forces in 1895 marked the
stait of yet anoth er bloody civil war, one that took Marti’s
own life and that was still raging three yeai·s later when
the U.S. ·battleship Main e exploded in H avana harbor.
The United States’ subsequent declaration of war on
Spain brought about Spain’s expulsion from its remainjng
Caribbean colonies, but it failed to free Cuba from for-
eign domination (Smith and D avila-Cox 1999). This took
the form first of direct Arneiican military rnle and sec-
ondly, from 1902 to 1934, of limited self-gove rnm e nt
(Dur and Gilcrease 2002; Perez 1991) . Dming the latter
pe1iod, Arne1ican-Cuban relations were governed by the
Platt Amendment, which granted to the United States
tl1e use of Cuban military bases, including the naval base
that tl1e United States still holds at Guantanamo, and the
right to intervene militaiily in Cuba for the “protection of
life, property, and individual liberty.”
In reality, the protection of property, especially
Ame ri can sugar and gambli ng inte res ts , was of fa r
greate r concern to Am erican politicians than was the
pres ervation of individual Cuban libe rties, which lan-
guished throughout the early 1900s unde r a series of
corrupt governments chosen from both the liberal and
co ns ervative sect ors. Th e abro gation of th e P latt
Amendme nt was acco mpani ed by th e asce nsion to
power of an army sergeant named F ulgencio Batista,
who, except during a de mocratic interlude from the
mid-1940s to th e early 1950s, controlled a country
whose economy continued to be bound closely to that
of tl1e United States (Moreno 2007).
It was the political repression of the Batista regime,
together witl1 widening socioeconomic inequalities .fed
by American investments on th e island, that inspired a
band of youthful revolutionmies led by Fide l Castro to
attack in 1953 the Moncada rnilitmy barracks in Santi-
ago de Cuba (Figure 6.9). The initial re bellion, staged
on th e 100th annivers ary of Mmtf’s birth, was put down.
However, Castro and his followers late r regrouped in
Mexico and from there returned to Cuba in 1956. In
Janumy 1959, Castro assum ed power in what to many
appeared to be simply another Latin American co-up .
CHAPTER 6 Political C han ge 133
The Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, where
Fidel Castro first attempted to overthrow the Batista
regime . The bui lding is now used as a school.
Witl1in a few years, however, he had outlawed all politi-
cal opposition and publicly declared himself a Marx.ist-
Leninist. In April 1961, Castro weatl1ered tl1e abortive
U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Matanzas province
and, in October 1962, the Am erican-Soviet missile crisis
(Blight and Brenn er 2002 ).
In 1965, all political paities other than the Commu-
nist were outlawed, and in 1968, private prope1ty was
declared illegal. By that time, Cuba’s economy was heavily
subsidized by the Soviet Union, and its foreign policy mir-
rored that of the USSR and its allies, much to the conster-
nation of the United States. Political and economic refonns
within tl1 e Soviet Union and its former eastern European
satellite nations in the late 1980s were greeted with disdain
by Castro, who continued to enjoy a degree of suppmt
from many of Cuba’s elderly and the agrariai1 poor who
had benefited from improvements in education and health
cm·e enacted by the regime. But by the eai·ly 1990s, the
loss of Soviet economic subsidies had forced Castro to
declare the existence of a “special period” that required
the implementation of many of tl1e reforms for which he
had previously criticized the Ru ssians (Susman 1998) .
These and subsequent modifications have included autho-
rization for certain fonm of p1ivate busin ess, encourage-
ment of p1ivate farmers to produce their own food on idle
state land, legalization of the holding of American dollm·s,
ai1d promotion of foreign in vestment and tomism. These
concession s to capitalism have resulted in growing num-
bers of highly educated professionals, such as doctors and
engineers, leaving their peso-paid government jobs, which
offer an average salaiy of U.S.$ 20.00 per month, to work
as dollar-paid restaurant workers and taxi diivers. otwith-
standing this limited economic restruchuing, th e govern –
ment continu es to control 90 percent of the economy.
Substantive political reform has not been implemented,
134 CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e
and Cuba remains a highly militarized state that criminal-
izes free speech and association and represses dissent
(Weinreb 2009; Moses 2000; Jatar-Hausmann 1999) .
Meanwhile, the aging Castro brothers continue to attrib-
ute the country’s ills to American imperialism and its pun-
ishing economic embargo.
Jamaica
The English conquest of Jamaica in 1655 spared the
island the horrors of the wars of independence that swept
Spain’s American colonies, but otherwise continued the
pe1vasive underdevelopm ent common to the plantation-
dominated peoples of the Caribbean. The political begin-
nings of modern Jamaica date to 1944, wh en Great
Britain granted the islanders limited self-government.
This was followed in 1958 by membership in the ill-fated
Federation of the West Indies, which lasted until 1962
when the nation was given its full independence as a par-
liamentary democracy within the Commonwealth.
Jamaican foreign and economic policy has fluctuated
widely since independence, further complicating attempts
to achieve long-term development. Dming the 1970s, the
dominant political force was the People’s National Party
(PNP) led by Michael Manley. Manley attempted to
develop a modified socialist welfare state and to politically
align Jamaica closer to Castro’s Cuba-both to the detii-
ment of the country’s all-important tourist industry. Man-
ley was followed as prime minister in the 1980s by
Edward Seaga, whose Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) advo-
cated a return to private enterp1ise and close ties with the
United States. Needless to say, tourism increased, but
widespread poverty and social unrest persisted. In 1990,
an ideologically reformed Manley was again elected to
office, this time on a platform of reinvigorating the private
economic sector. Manley resigned from office in 1992 for
reasons of health, and Jamaica was governed for fifteen
years by Percival J. Patterson of the PNP. Bmce Golding
of the JLP was elected p1ime minister in 2007.
Haiti
The beginnings of Haitian independence from France
date to the 1790s through a great slave uprising led ini-
tially by Pierre-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture.
From the conclu sion of that conflict to the present,
Haiti has experienced consistently violent and repres –
sive government. The cruelty and suffering have con –
tinued for so long tl1at, to many, the nation has come to
symbolize hatred and poverty-a horrifying exam ple of
the depths to which human society can descend when
subjected to unchecked prejudice and p ersonal ambi-
tion. What makes the situation all the more tragic is
that, p1ior to the uprising, Saint-Domingue was one of
the most prosperous regions in Latin America.
As was often the case in Latin America’s other wars
of independence, the early leaders of Haiti’s rebellion
were moderate visionaries who were determined to
redress the evils of colonialism , including slavery, and
whose character prevented them from participating in
the tyrannical excesses of those who followed tl1em in
power. Toussaint L’Ouverture was willing for Haiti to
become a self-governing part of the French empire if
Napoleon would only abolish slavery in the colony.
Napoleon’s refusal to do so, and Toussaint L’Ouverture’s
subsequent kidnapping and death in France, resulted in
Haiti’s declaration of independence in 1804. There fol-
lowed an attempt, under Haiti’s first president-emperor,
Jean-Jacques D ess alines, to e radicate eve1y vestige of
despised European influence, including the ]dlling of all
white people and the destruction of tl1eir material pos-
sessions. In the process , the economic infrastructure of
the young country was devastated, and the majority of
the p eople reve rted to a subsistence existe nce from
which most of the population has yet to emerge.
From the fall of President Jean-Pierre Boyer in 1843
to tl1e mid-twentieth century, Haiti alternated between
dictatmial mulatto mle emanating from the capital city of
P01t-au-P1ince and periods in which the national govern-
ment, whose influence in tl1e rural interior districts was
never great, virtually ceased to function. United States
Marines occupied the countiy from 1915 to 1934.
In 1957, a black physician nam ed Frarn;:ois Duvalier
was elected president. Duvalier, or “Papa Doc” as he
came to be called, quickly established one of tl1e most
brutal dictatorships in modern history, one sustained by
inciting the black masses to violence toward middle- and
upper-class mulattoes (Heinl and Heinl 2005). Those
whom Duvalier perceived as threats to himself were sys-
tematically hunted down and killed by his personal secu-
rity force , called the Tontons Macoutes. After previously
having declared, “I am the state,” Duvalier had the con-
stitution rew1itten in 1964 to make him “President for
Life,” a title he held until his death in 1971.
Papa Doc was succeeded by his son, Jean-Claude
Duvalier, known as “Baby Doc,” who fled the count1y
in 1986 after having transferred much of the national
treasury to personal overseas bank accounts. In Decem-
ber 1990, a leftist Catholic priest nam ed Jean-Ber-
trand Aristide was chosen president in the first fully
de mocratic voting in Haiti’s history. Aristide was over-
thrown the following year by th e Haitian militmy and
took refuge in th e United States, which restored him to
power in 1994. Haiti’s first peaceful transfer of power
from one popularly elected leader to another occurred
in 1996 with the inauguration of Rene Preval, Aristide’s
hand-picked successor. Preval’s t erm was marked by
international allegations of widespread corruption and
electoral fraud and the consequent withholding of most
multilateral and bilateral economic assistance . In 2000,
Aristide won a second term in an election boycotted by
the political opposition and widely condemned as fraud-
ulent by inte rnational obs ervers. In early 2004, Aris-
tide’s continued opposition to democratic reforms and
the deepening poverty of the environm entally degraded
country led to an armed rebellion that forced Aristide’s
resignation and exile abroad. Preval was subsequently
elect ed to a second term as preside nt in 2006. The
political and econo mic reconstruction of Haiti will
doubtless be long and difficult.
Dominican Republic
In contrast to the almost continual turmoil of Haiti,
the political development of the Dominican Republic,
Haiti’s weste rn neighbor, has proceeded along the
fairly commqp Latin American patte rn of caudillismo
followed more recently by democracy. Independence
was achieved initially in 1821 but was temporarily lost
wh en Haiti, and late r Spain, governed the country.
Th e later nin eteenth centmy and early twe ntieth we re
a tim e of ge n e rally sho rt-live d dictatorships that
brought mod est economic developm ent to the elites
but little change in the lives of the poor masses . An
internal power vacuum , together with growing Am eri-
can finan cial investments within the country, led to
United States milita1y occupation from 1916 to 1924
(C alder 1984) . This was followed in 1930 by the begin-
ning of the long, harsh dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo,
who , nohvithstanding his callous disregard for civil lib-
erties, did much to mode rnize the economy (Derby
2009; Hall 2006 ).
Trujillo’s assassination in 1961 led to a p e riod of
political instability that brought about a b1ief Ame1ican
occupation in 1965. The post-Trujillo era was dominated
until 1996 by Joaquin Balaguer, a classic sb·ongman who
pillaged the national b·easmy in order to reward his sup-
porters and who employed a variety of self~serving strate-
gies to weaken his political opposition (Ha1tlyn 1998)
(Figure 6.10 ). Under Balague r, the country acquired
many symbols of modernity and prosp e rity while the
masses continued to live, for the most pait, under condi-
tions of severe economic p1ivation. In 1994, the 87-year-
old, nearly blind Balaguer found himself trailing in the
electoral count of an election he thought he was ce1tain
to win; panicked, he stopped tl1e count and shortly there- ·
after announ ced that he had won. Domestic and interna-
tional outrage to the ploy was so strong that Balaguer
agreed during subsequent negotiations to shorten his
term to two years . In 1996, Leonel Fernandez Reyna, a
probusin ess attorney who grew up in ew York City, was
chosen president in open, peaceful elections. Fernandez
Reyna was defeated in the 2000 presidential election by
Hipolito Mejfa but regained th e presidency in 2004 and
was reelected in 2008.
CHAPTER 6 Politica l Chang e 135
Joaqufn Balaguer, served part or all of seven terms
as president of the Dominican Republic from the
1960s to the 1990s.
Puerto Rico
Pue1to Rico, tl1 e second of the Am erican colonies that
re mained loyal to Spain dming the revolutionaiy wars,
was , like Cuba, rewarded thereafter with libe ralized
trade privileges and representation in the Cortes. How-
ever, these co ncessions failed to prevent th e growth of
a lib e ral proindep ende n ce party that had achieved
significant concessions prior to the outbreak of the
Spanish-American Wm·. Although many Pue1to Ricans
res ented the island’s becoming a United States posses-
sion, opposition to the American occupation gradually
diminished, owing largely to an impressive expansion
of roads , schoo ls, and public health se1vices.
Unlike most other Ame1ican tenitorial acquisitions
that ultimately were granted eitl1er statehood or inde-
p endence, Pu erto Rico’s political standing has evolved
ove r th e twentieth century in a som ewhat haphazard
fashion that may yet be modified still furth er. Follow-
ing tl1e Spanish-Ame1ican War, the island was initially
classified as a “territory.” That status was changed in
the Jones Act of 1917 t o on e of an “organized but
unincorporated” part of the United States, and in 1952,
th e island was officially d es ignate d an Am e rican
“commonwealth” or, in th e Spanish , Estado Libre
Asociaclo (Free Associated State) .
Und e r th e provisions of th e commonwealth
agree me nt , Puerto Rico ‘s relationship to the United
States federal government is similar, but not identical,
to that of the Am erican states, with local hom e rule
through popular election of a governor and membe rs
136 CHAPTER 6 Political Change
of a senate and a house of represe ntatives. Puerto
Ricans are considered full American citizens , eligible
for fede ral employment, military service, and welfare
assistance. Th ey are free to travel to and from , and to
seek e mploymen t on , the United Stat es mainland .
Virtually the only p rivileges withheld from th em are
those of voting in American presidential elections and
of having voting representatives in the United States
Congress . Those limitations are tempered , however,
by their having the opportu nity to vote in national pri-
mary elections , representation by an elected (but non –
voting) resident commissioner in the U.S. House of
Re pre se ntative s , and exe mption from all federa l
in co me taxes , except taxes on income earn ed through
employmen t with the federal gove rnm e nt or while
residing on the mainland. The islanders also ben efit
coll ective ly from approximate ly U.S.$10 billion in
ann ual federal spending.
Not surprisingly, many Puerto Ricans are relatively
conte nt with the curre nt commonwealth status, but oth-
ers are seeking eithe r full statehood or full indepe n-
dence. In a 1993 plebiscite, 48.4 percent of those voting
favored continu ed commonwealth status, 46.2 percent
statehood, and 4.4 pe rcent indep endence . In 1998, yet
anoth e r nonbinding referendum resulted in 50.2 p er-
cen t of voters favoring th e existing commonwealth
arrangeme nt and 46.5 p erce nt state hood. One addi-
tional disadvantage of statehood would be th e possible
loss of Spanish as th e official language and th e resultant
dilution of the island’s predominantly Hispanic culture.
The procommonwe alth pos ition is represented
today by the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) , which
was founded in 1938 by Luis Munoz Marin; tl1e pro-
statehood by th e New Progressive Party (PNP ); and
the proindep endence by a variety of smaller parties
(Figure 6.11 ). The American Congress has generally
tried to assume a neutral position.
ANDEAN S OUTH A MERICA
After Simon Bolivar’s final defeat of the Spaniards at
Carabobo in 1821, creole leaders from th roughout the
northe rn Andes gathered at Cucuta and form ed a oos e_
fede ration that came to be_known as La Gran Colom-
bia. The new nation comprised much of present-day
Venezuela, Colom bia, Panama, and Ecuador and was
administered from Bogota. It was largely th e creation
of Bolf var, who dream ed of uniting all of Spain ‘s form er
New World colonies into a voluntary association of free
and enlightened states.
Bolivar’s idealism was far ah ead of his tim e. La
Gran Colombia n ever function ed effectively, owing to
tl1 e isolation and separatist sentim e nts of the regional
popu lation cen t ers , to the p e rsonal ambitions of its
leadership , and to th e extended absences of th e great
F IGURE 6.1 1
Lu is Munoz Marin , the father of modern Puerto
Rico.
liberator himself, who immediately turned his attention
to freeing Peru and Bolivia from th e Spanish grip. In
1828, Bolfvar resigned as president amid an outbreak
of regional re be llions , and in Decembe r 1830 , he
passed away from tube rculosis. Bolfvar had played a
prominent role in the liberation of five of Soutl1 Ameri-
ca’s modern nations , yet he died saddened by the col-
lapse of his dream of he mispheric unity-an ideal that
has largely eluded Latin Am erica to the pres ent day.
Venez uela
Venezuela’s secession from La Gran Colombia was led
by Jose Antonio Paez, a llanero from the Orinoco
plains , who broke with Bolivar and ruled either openly
or behind th e scenes from 1830 until his exile som e
eightee n years later. Although Paez derived his support
from the conservative oligarchy and was reluctant to
relinquish control of the country, he proved hims elf a
capabl e administrator whos e moderate policies pro –
moted regional reconciliation and the economic devel-
opm ent of th e fl edgling republic.
With the fall of Paez and tl1e conservatives, Venezu-
ela was dominated throughout the remainde r of th e
nin eteenth century by a series of dict~ s whose avowed
liberalism was masked b their stron ties to the milita1y,
Chief among th ese was Ge neral Antonio Guzman
Blanco, who ruled directly or indirectly from 1873 until
his exile to his beloved Paris in 1888. Guzman Blanco
reduced still further the power of the already weak Vene-
zuelan Catholic Church, promoted e ducation , and
attempted to build up Caracas as a .showcase of his great-
ness. Thus, despite Guzman Blanco’s legenda1y capacity
for embezzlement, Venezuela advanced under his reign.
The same was tru e, in many respects, of the rule of
{)<::, J an Vicente Gomez, who from 1J 08 to !-_935 CEushe4
h~ ppon e!lts wi_!:h a cru~lty unmatched in Venezuelan
hi story and tr eat e d th e nation al t re asury as if it
were his personal spending account (Yarrington 2003 ).
Ironically, Gomez also laid the foundations of modem
Venezuela through his e ncouragem e nt of foreigQ.,
investment , particularly in the petroleum sector, which
financed the ··country’s development throughout the
twentie th ce ntury. E ve n the progressive democratic
tradition of the post-Gom ez era may be traced in part
to th e revulsion felt by most Venezuelans to the tyran –
nical excesses of the illiterate caudillo.
Gomez was succeeded as pres ide nt by Eleazar
Lo ez Contreras , who used the proceeds of the expand-
ing petroleum industry to fund much-needed schools,
highways, and hospitals-a policy known as sembrar el
petr6leo (sow th e oil). Welcom~ as the e nsuing eco-
nomic growth was , Lopez Contreras made his greatest
contribution in the political sphere, allowing th e return
of num erous exiles and voluntarily relinquishing power
at the completion of his term of office (Figure 6.12 ).
Among th e re turnin g exiles was Romu lo Be tan-
court, whose D emocratic Action (AD ) Party was placed
in power by the military in 1945. Betancourt and his suc-
cessor, Romulo Gallegos , imp lemented widespr~ad
social and a rarian re orm , whicl1 triggered a conserva-
tive militruy coup and a sJ.ecade of corrupt dictatorship
by Marcos Perez Jim e n~ . Following Perez Jimenez’
ouster in 1958, Venezuela established a democratic tra-
dition, with presidents from the elite-dominated Demo-
cra ti c Action and Ch risti an D e mo c rati c (C OPE i
-Committee for Independent Political Electoral Orga-
nization ) parties guiding the country,on a slightly left-of-
center course.
Frustrated by what h e p erceived to be mounting
corruption and declining income levels for tl1e middle
and lower socioeconomic classes of tl1e oil-rich country,
a young army colonel nam ed 1;:!Qgo Chav_ez tried ~ ce
in 1992 to or anize military coup.s to \ierthrow Presi-
dent Carl os Andres P erez. C havez failed in both
attempts and was imprisoned for two years , but P , ·ez
was im eached on corruption charges. Chavez then
determinedto seek tl1e presidencyon a platform of far-
reaching structural reform. Following his election i
1998, Ch avez directed the formation of a constitutional —-
CHAPTER 6 Politica l Change 137
Eleazar Lopez Contreras who, as president of
Venezuela from 1935 to 1940, did much to promote
the development of democracy by allowing the
return of political exiles and by relinquishing power
at the completion of his term in office.
assembly, which wrote a new constitution in 1999 The
constitution enabled Chavez, as president, to ~
the opeosition-.9.Q!D inated Co gress and replace it with .
a unicameral legislature called tl1e National Assembly
tl-iat was controlled by Chavez’s politiZaf party. Chavez
also gaJ:ned control of the judicial branch of gove:r;n-
lllfill.t. In addition, the new constitution extended the
p reside nt’s te rm of office from five years to six and per-
mitted the president to seek imm ediate reelection ,
which Chavez realized in 2000 and again in 2006. In a
2009 national_referendtt vote:r;s appi:oved tl1e elimi-
nation of term limits on all el~ed officials, thereby
clearing the way for Chavez to attempt to re main in
office for life.
In recent years , Chavez has endeavored to consoli-
date his power by arresting or otl1erwise attempting to
intimidate his oppon ents , by closing down or restricting
the operations of indep ende nt media, by selectively
nationalizing private companies whose existence he has
viewed as an impedim ent to the building of a socialist
state, and by bypassing ilie legislature in order to enact
laws by decree . H e has also established “communal
assemblies,” which are new local administrative bodies
whose intended function is to circumvent and th ereby
redu ce the power and auiliority of municipal govern-
mental officials, many of whom have opposed Chavez.
In short, in the tradition of a lassie caudil/Q, Chavez has
systematically endeavored to e radicate his opposition
138 CHAPTER 6 Political Change
and to p e rp etuat e hims e lf in power in d efinitely.
Simultaneously, he has become a strident clitic of capi-
talism in general and of the United States in particular.
His foreign policy has centered on channeling financial
support to leftist candidates and officeholders through-
out Latin America, on purchasing armaments to expand
his military capacity, and on building closer ties to lead-
ers of nations whose views are similar to his. Chavez’s
plimmy base of support is the lower socioeconomic clas-
ses , who view him as their best hope for justice and
opportunity.
Colombia
Colombia, or New Granada as it was officially known
until 1863, ,has long shuggled, with only limited success,
to achieve th e political unity and stability necessmy to
develop fully its rich natural resource base. Liberal m1d
,,:_(‘ conservative parties had formed as early as the 1830s,
1v> , and the first of the nation’s pe1iodic civil wars was fought
_:J …p <. from 1840 to 1842. Both liberals and conse1vatives ilti-
tially favored a weak cen tral governm ent with power con-
centrated in the states, whose isolation pe1p etuated the
strong regional economic and cultural differences that
had evolved dming the colonial era. However, the failure
of federalism to eradicate the endemic poverty and vio-
lence finally led to the passage of a Constitution of 1886,
which created a s_trong central government headquar-
tered at Bogota. The new constitution laid the foundation
of the modem Colombian state but failed to prevent a
second liberal-cons ervative civil war. This “War of a
Tl1ousand Days” raged froml899 until 1901 and left the
counhy vi1tually powerless to oppose the U.S .-supported
secession of Panama. So unstable was the national gov-
ernment throughout this early republican peliod that the
first peaceful transfer of presidential power from on~
political party to another did not occur until 1930. _,
In the midst of the never-ending political turbulence,
tl1e Colombian RO ulation contilmed to grow, and millions
upon millions of rural peasants found themselves reduced
to a nem·-hopeless existence, shuggling to sustain life on
tiny subsistence plots of lm1d owned but scarcely used by
the uilian-based alistocracy. In an effort to assist these
b, fmnilies , the Colombian Congress ill 1936 passed Law 200.
“f;..,t.. f::· ( Law 200 promised title to the rural colonos –=–most of
~ whom were either squatting on or renting lands that would
–<- never be used by the latifundistas-of properties that they
could show they had brought under "economic exploita-
tion." Conh·my to tl1e legislature's intent however, the law
had the ~ t of spurring the previously indiffer~nt ~en-
tee landlords to oust the peasants before they could
ilnprove the land. This, in tum, led to the dm·k years o~ _
Violencia, an m:a of.almost indisc1iminate rural violence,
~ch produced the ~assination in~of Jorge El.fecer
Gaitan, tl1e leader of the Liberal Party. Gaitan's death
spm·ked a Jiot in Bogota now refen-ed to as the Bogotaw, . ·,\
and Colombia was plunged for a third tilne into bloodyGjo,–1
civil war. By .!_957, the war had resulted in a uarter of a
million deaths m1d over 750,000 refugees-mostly rur 1
folk fleeing the lawlessness in the co’mitiyside (Braun
2009; Sanchez and Meertens 2001; Bushnell 1993). Those –{ A
\ peasants who remained in tlie villages cmne to forrn a vast 0 jff, l
discontented, landless rural proletmiat whose children, las ;:_J,t f
hijos de la vwlenpia, have formed the nuclei of the numer- 1J
ous leftist guerrilla groups tl1at have persisted to tl1e pre-
sent (Denissen 2010; Bergquist, Peiiaranda, and Sanchez
2001; Violence in Colombia 2000).
La Violencia was brought to an end by tlie National
Front Constitutional Reform of 1957, in which liberals
and conservatives agreed to form a coalition government
wherein the presidency alternated and governors ·ps and
mayoral offices were divided ill proportion to tl1e number
of votes obtained by each party. This arrangement was
abandoned by mutual._consent in 1974, and the ~ n-
tietl1 -centu1y was dominated y the Liberal Party.
Regrettably, the end of La Violencia as a historical
e1iod was not immediately accompanied by a decline in
\tiolenc as a feature of the Colombian political landscape. {
Frustrated by tl1eir exclusion from meaningful political ,
representation dming tl1e National Eront p eliod,_ nur~r-1r ,J
ous nontraditional groups turn ed to guerrilla warfare. 0)
Thus, the killing and maimillg tliat were form erly pe1pe-
trated by liberals and conse1vatives were simply replaced
by climes committed by leftist and Iightist guerrg_Ia and
paran1ilitary groups, by diug traffickers , an by tlie mili-
tary itself. By 2000, Colombia’s homicide rate of 57 p~.r
100,000 popul:fton was the highest in tl1e world, and kid-_
nappings were averaging oveL ten per day (“Drugs, Wm·,
and Democracy” 2001 ). Guemlla groups were estimated
to control nearly half tlie national temtory, and tlie coun-
try had descended into a state of uncontrolled violence
tliat tl1reatened the very smvival of constitutional govern-
ment. In tlie midst of tltis downwm·d spiral, political mde-
-pgndent Alvaro Uiib~ won election as president ill.JOO;
and ~ubsequently waged a rotracted war agi&!!st botl:.E1e
.guenillas and paramilitmy deatli sg_uads. By 2010, at tl1e
end of Uiibe’s second terrn of office, homicides, kidnap-
pil1gs, and oilier terrolist attacks had all declined signifi-
cantly and the government had regained control of all tl1e
ational territory (Case Study 6.1 ). U1ibe was succeeded
as president by Ju an Manuel Santos, who previously
served as mmister of national defense.
Ecuador
Ecuador, like Colombia and Venezuela, achieved politi-
cal indep endence with the collapse of Bolivar’s Gran
Colombia. The new nation imm ediately found itself
dee l divided between tlie ultraconservative sierra, or
Andean ighland region d~ated by the resiJ;;ts of
CHA PTER 6 Politi cal C h ange 139
Case Study 6.1: Colombia’s Violent Drug War
May 1986 Virgilio Barco, candidate of the Liberal
Party, is elected president of Colombia.
August 1989 Luis Carlos Galan, Liberal Party senator
and the leading candidate to succeed Mr.
Barco as president, is assassinated on
orders of the Mede llin drug cartel.
President Barco responds by declruing
war ~n the drng cartels and authorizes the
extradition of drng suspects to the United
States. Cesar Gavilia replaces Galan as
Liberal Party candidate for president.
November 1989 Colo111bia’s judicia1y system closes down
as judges refuse to hold comt unless the
government increases their protection .
December 1989 Medellin drug lord Jose Gonzalo
Rodrigues Gacha is killed in a bloody
battle ,vith national security forces.
May 1990 Cesar Gavi1ia is elect ed successor to
Preside nt Barco. While stating publicly
his intention to continue the deadly clrng
war, Gavilia hints of his desire for a
n egotiated settle ment.
Fall 1990 The Medellin cartel kidnaps seven
journalists, including Diana Turbay, the
daughte r of a form er president, and
Francisco Santos, n ews editor of El
Tiempo, Colombia’s most prestigious
n ewspaper. President Gavi 1ia softens his
official position toward the ca1tel by
promising not to extradite to the United
States those traffickers who turn
the mselves in and confess their crimes
but rather to t1y them in Colombia.
April 1991 Mede llin crut e l leader Pablo Escobar and
several lieutenants “surrender” to
Colombian governme nt officials on the
condition tliat th ey not be extradited to
the United States and tl1at th ey be
imprisoned at a luxurious count1y ranch.
Jul y 1992 Mr. Escobar and a number of associates
“escape” the luxury prison ranch where
they h ad been h e ld.
December 1993 Pablo Escobar is killed by Colombian
secwity forces, and the Cali cartel, allegedly
led by brothers Gilberto ru1d Miguel
Rod1iguez Oreju ela, increases its influence.
Fall 1994 Colombian police find two miniature
·’narcosubmarin es ,” which iliey suspect
h ave been use d to smuggle cocaine from
po1t ru·eas to ships waiting offshore .
Fall 1994 News accounts report that Colombia’s
narcot raffickers have gained control of
much of th e country’s best farm and
grazing lands, becoming, in the process ,
tl1e nation’s newest class oflatifundistas.
Summer 1995 Gilberto Rocliiguez Orejuela and bis brother,
Miguel, are captured by Colombian police,
who also obtain a list containing the names of
2,800 persons allegedly on the payroll of the
Cali cartel. Those named on the list included
members of Congress, governors, ru1d judges
as well as high-ranking militmy officers,
prominent journalists, ru1d aililetes .
F ebrua1y 1996 President Ernesto Samper is formally
charged before Congress by Colombia’s
chief prosecutor witJ1 h aving accepted
millions of dollm·s from cocaine traffickers
for his 1994 presidential campaign.
May 1996 Attorney General Orlando Vasquez
surrenders to autl1orities to face charges
he took money from cocaine traffickers.
Nove mber 1997 The Colombian government seizes more
than 300 properties belonging to slain
drug boss Jose Santacruz Londono and
his allies, including 43 ranches, 68
apartments, 103 parking garages, and
assorted real estate agencies ru1d
construction companies.
Summer 1998 Media accounts repo1t th at approximate ly
3,000 of Colombia’s 15,000 left-wing
guerlillas are active in protecting tl1e drug
trade, whic h has come to be dominate d
by smaller, more technologicall y
sophisticated , and less fl amboyant
trafncking organizations h eadqurutered
mostly in Medellin. Another important
source of guenilla revenues has become
th e kidnapping of civilians and foreign
visitors ru1d holdin g the m for ransom.
January 2000 U.S. Pres ident Bill Clinton announces a
$1.3 billion e rr,terge ncy aid package
inte nded to stre ngthe n tl1e Colombian
military war on dru gs.
F e brumy 2002 The Colombiru1 milita1y launches ru1
offensive to retake a Switzerlru1d-s ized
zone in Caqu eta and Me ta depmtm ents
that h ad been ceded as a peace gesture by
th e government tl1ree years before to the
Revolutiona1y Arm ed Forces of Colombia
(F AHC) guerrilla group.
140 CHAPTER 6 Political Change
Case Study 6.1: Colombia’s Violent Drug War (Continued) £
Fall 2004 United Nations’ statistics showed that
Colombian cocaine production
increased almost 400 percent from
1990 to 2003.
September 2010 Colombian armed forces killed Mono
Jojoy, the top commander of FARC.
This culminated a hvo-year period in
which Colombian authmities infiltrated
FARC headquarters and located and
.._\Cl,,-,:;…
f:_ ~v Quito, and the liberal Pacific coasta ents led by
“\: the citizt:;ns of Guayaquil. Looming over the conserva-
tive-liberal divisions was an eve r present militar –
~
,s,:=, Church alliance , which produced a lengthy string of
)(‘>. s ort-lived and undistinguished dictatorial regimes
down through the nin eteenth century.
An era of liberal rule from 1895 to 1925 resulted in
a lessening of Churc 1 mr uence7.n secu ar affairs and in
consi derable eco nomic developm e nt. In 1941, P e ru
declared war on Ecuador and, in a protocol signed th e
following year at Rio de Janeiro, succeeded in annexing
a large sector of Amazonia previously controlle d by
Ecuador (Figure 6.13).
The p_si~ World War II era has been characterized
by continued political instability and high levels ~-
tary il1fluence, but with little of the mtense regionalism
and violence that have marred Colombian politics (Isaacs
1993). One individual, Jose Malia Velasco Ibarra, man-
aged to assume tl presidene · e tim es ~ 4
ar!d 1972 without e~ comr-leti g_a fullterm in office.
One of the more bizarre Latin Am erican political
episodes in recent years was the e lection in 1996 of
Abdala Bucaram, a fiery populist from Guayaquil whose
screammg, smging, and dancing at campaign stops earned
him the nickname “El Loco,” tl1e crazy one. Bucaram
lasted only a few months before he was removed from
office by Congress on grounds of “mental mcapacity.” Fol-
lowil1g the brief and chaotic reign of Bttcaram’s interim
replacement, the Harvard-trained Jamil Mahuad, mayor
of Quito, was elected president ill 1998.
One of Mahuad’s most enduring political accom –
plishments was th e conclusion in October 1998 of a
peace accord with Peru that settled a border dispute that
ad flared off and on since the Rio de Janeiro Boundary
· \C
0
;frotocol of 1942. Malmad was not as successful, how-
‘ efever, in reversing Ecuador•; long economic downturn
~ and in Jamiary 2000 was ousted by Indian protesters and
junior army officers who promptly announced the for-
mation of a three-man Junta of National Salvation (Ger-
lach 2003 ). Under intens e pressure from the United
destroyed every key FARC camp within
the country.
December 2010 Colombian security forces killed Pedro
“The Knife” Oliverio Guerrero, feared
drug lord and leader of a right-wing para-
militaiy band that operated in the eastern
lowlands. Guerrero was reputed to have
been responsible for ordering or per-
sonally commiting some 3,000 murders .
.states and other foreign nations, the junta peacefully
relinquished power the next day to Vice President
Gustavo Noboa, who was immediately ratified as presi-
dent by Congress. Lucio Gutierrez, one of tl1e leaders of
the Janua 2000 coup , b~sident in earl 2003.
After se rving for two years , Gutierrez was forced
J2.Y- Congress to resign_,,. on th e grounds that h e had
“abandoned his post,” and was replaced by his former
vice president, Alfredo Palacio. In 2007, Rafael Correa
— -took office as th e country’s e ighth president in te n
years. Correa soon persuaded the voters to 2:_epla_s§
Con ress with a “constitu~n_t_a_ssembly,” which then
dra ted a new constitutioIL.( the t\ventieth since inde-
pendence) that authorized a standing president to be
c~tively ree lected for an additional four-year
term. As president, Correa increase d spending for
social programs and aligned hims elf on many issues
with Ven ezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Peru
Pe ru ‘s position as the wealthiest and most powerful of
Spain’s South American colonies contributed to the
growth of a strong royalist faction that was able to
repress several creole revolts in the early revolutionary
period. Independence was achieved through the assis-
tance of foreign forces , initially thos e of Argentine
General Jose de San Martin, whose Army of Liberation
arrived from Valparaiso, Chile, in 1821 (Figure 6.14 ).
The following year at a hist01ic meeting in Guayaquil,
San Martin turned over command of his Pe ruvian
forces to Simon Bolivar, whose assistant, Antonio Jose
de Sucre, defeated the remaining royalist forces both
in Lower Peru and in Upper Peru, the latte r being re-
named by Sucre the Republic of Bolivar (later Bolivia).
Bolivar hims e lf had no desire to r e main per-
manently in Peru and transferred his authority to a gov-
erning council led by ,.e. _liberilideniist named Hi 6lito
Una~e. Unfortunate ly, Unanue ‘s democratic ideals
were not shared by a number of military caudillos , who
· l\oS
(‘CV-.\(YJ
\
\
10.0·
Pacific
Ocean
FIGURE 6.13
1904
Argentina
South Am erican boundary changes in the republican period .
C H APTER 6 P o lit ica l C h ange 141
Br a z i I
I
I
~ , —–
1 A t I a n ti C
0 c e a n
, ——– ——-
/
-… J- —-
I
I
I
I
I
I
General Jose de San Martfn , who assisted in the
liberation of Argentina , Chile , and Peru .
The continuing failure of Peru’s civilian and mili-
tary aristocracy to improve the living conditions of the
highland Indians led in the 1920s to the emergence of
two radical olitical n ~eme.nts . One , known as the
American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA),
was founded in 1~ by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre,
who drew much of his inspiration from revolutionary
Mexico, where he was living in exile. The party plat-
form called for a unified Latin America dedic~to
stemming foreign imperialism, gaining Latin American
ownership and control of t h e Panama Canal, and
nationalizing land and industiy on behalf of the poor.
Th e movement imm ediately gained widespread popu –
larity among . .the Peruvian intelligentsia and lower clas-
ses and was defrau ded of several election victories in
the 1930s. More recent! it has provided a philosophi-
(
cal rationale for a number of stron gly nationalistic
regim es-both milita1y and civilian-that have disc~
aged fre e-market econom ies.
Th e second radical movem ent, Marxis1 , attracted tef’-1-
little popular support during the tv.rentieth centmy but
became hi hi visible in th e 1980~ through the terrorist ../-
activities of a Maoist wing know1}._as S ining~ 1, or
Sene, era Luminoso (Taylor 2006; Osborn 2007; Gorriti
1999; Barton 1997). Operating mostly out of the sou th –
ern and central sierra. regions , the guerrilla group was
responsible for more than 25,000 deaths.1. hundreds of
the m local and regional government officials, and for
plunged tl1 e countiy into virtual anarc notwithstand- ove r $20 billion dollc!rs ‘ worth of ro Jer damage.
ing a period from 1~ to 1839 when Peru and Boliyia A much smalle r leftist gu errilla group , known as
joined in a confederation. In th e e ra of “Restoration” the Tu Jae Amaru Revolutionary Moveme nt (MRTA ), ‘.tf+
that followed, Peru was mled by a series of progressive also prospe red to som e degree during the 1980s but
leade rs , in cluding Ramon Castilla, under whom th e st e adily lost influ e nc e th e r e aft e r. In a d e sperate
country’s economic well-b eing becam e incre asingly attempt to force th e national governm e nt to releas e
dependent on tl1e expmt both of tl1e Iich coastal depos- about 300 of their imprisoned associates , a gro up of
its of seabird dung known as guano and of nitrat e fourteen MRTA rebels captured 340 diplomats and
reserves min ed in the northern Atacama region. prominent Peruvians attending a social event at the
The Iiches of the dese rt fe1tilizers soon attracted Lima residence of th e Jap anes e ambassado r in
the attention of Spain , which.in 1865 attacked by sea a D ece mb e r 1996. The daring recapture of the co m-
numbe r of positions from Valparaiso to the Chincha pound by Peruvian militaiy comman dos the following
I slands north of Lima. This led to a brief alliance Ap1i l and th e resultant deaths of the guenillas placed
between Chile, Peru , and Bolivia, each of whom at the the movement on the verge of extinction.
tim e controlled portions of th e Pacific coastline the n In the 1990 presidential election , Alb e rto Fuji:
unde r siege . Victmy over Spain was followed by the _mori , _an agricultural enginee r and son of Jap anese
election of ili e first civilian president in Peruvian his_- immigrants , won an upset victory over the celebrated
tory, Manuel Pardo, who governed democratic;ally fron1. novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Frustrated at the slow
1872 until 1876. pace of econom ic and political reforms , Fujimori
Conflict over tl1e Atacama nitrate fields led, in ~ staged what has come to be known as an autogolpe , or
to tl1e War of the Pacific, which resulted in the humili- ) elf-coup ,” in AprH 1992, Assuming, with the suppoit
ating d~feat of Bolivia and Peru by Chile. In the 1883 (o~ of th e powe rful military, all civil political autiiorit
Treaty of Anc6n, Chile gained Bolivia’s Pacific tenitmies Fujimori dissolved Congress and oversaw the adoption
as well as the southern Peruvian provinces of Tarapaca in 1993 of a n ew cons titutiqn that made legal his
and Arica (see Figure 6.13) . Tarapaca was returned to reelection in 1995.
Peru in 1929, by which time the countiy was governed by By the late 1990s , Fujim ori e njoyed high vote r
a civilian administration headed by Augusto B. Leguia. approval ratings , having be e n widely credited with
FIGURE 6.15
This poster showing Alejandro Toledo standing
among the Inca rui ns of Machu Picchu dressed in
the presidential sash and staff symbolizes Peruvian
pride in his Amerindian ancestry.
defeating both terrmisrn and inflation. Buoyed by a con-
troversial Supreme Court ruhng, the s.!!:Q!!grn_an sought
and won ainteclreelectionin_May 2000. By N~er,
however, Fujirnori had resigned in disgra~ having been
dismissed on grounds of ‘\noral incapacity” by Congress,
Fujimori has since been convicted of e mbe zzle ment,
abuse of powe r, and hurna~ rights violations and sen-
tenceg toJen y prison terms by Peruvian comts.
In 00 A~ jandro Toledo , a form er World Bank
economi st, became the first Amerindian president of
modern Peru (Figure 6.15 ). Toledo was succeeded as
president in 2006 by Alan Garcia, who had previously
served as president from 1985 to 1990. Peru prospered
under both Toledo and Garcia, strengthening de mo-
cratic institutions and implementing market-orie nted
economic reforms that resulted in a greatly reduced
external public debt and declinin g levels of inte rnal
poverty (St. John 2010 ).
Bolivia
Bolivia, like Pe ru , lon g was divided b etween a small ,
elite trro ean class, which monopolized th e wealth of
the nation ‘s mining and agricultural sectors , and the
CHAPTER 6 Polit i ca l Change 143
m~ses of highland I~, who since the European
conquest had lived as if in a world completely separate
from but subservient to that of the blancos, or whites .
While the Indians toiled and suffered in silence, fully
aware of the awful consequences of rebelhon, the aris –
tocracy_ engaged~in an.incredible number of cou sand
countercoups, av~ gmg in the process 11101; than one-
government per year. Meanwhile, tl1e political instabil-
ity i much to weaken Bolivia’s rnilita1y and economic
position and l’ed to th e loss of three valuable peripheral
regions : the northern Atacama to Chile through the
War of the Pacific, the territmy of Acre to Brazil in the
e arly 1900s , and ove r 233 ,000 square kilom e t e rs
(90,000 square miles) of lowland Chaco to Paraguay in
the 1930s (see Figure 6.13 ).
The C_haco War marked a historic. turnin g point
in Bohvia’s social developm ent, as the white and m es-
tizo officers found themselves dependent for their very
live s upon the despised inclios. For their part, the
previously docile Indians we re awake n ed both to a
sense of their in _· ‘dua worth as hum an beings and to
their collective capaci to influence the cours e of the
nation.
In tl1e years follO\,ving the war, increasing numbe rs
of young, nationalistic Bolivians turned to socialist and
Marxist thought in their quests to redress the evils of
the past. These stirrings were met by a series of hberal
reform laws whose effect was negated by th e power of
the established conservative aristocracy. A new political
party called the Movimiento Nacionalista Revoluciona-
rio (Nationalist Revolutio nary Movement, or MNR )
was form ed in 940 by a group of i~tellectuals headel
by Victor Paz Estenssoro. Paz Estenssoro fled to Argen-
tina in 1946, where he became a symbol of the budding
Bolivian revolution. Finally, in 959 the country
e rupted into civil war and Paz Es tenssoro returned
from exile to lead the new revolutionary government. In
contrast to the countless coups of the past, Bolivian
societ:. was fundamentall and irreversibl altered. The
government nationalized th e holdings of th e Patino,
Aramayo , and Hochschild mining GQ!:p,Oration_s , each of
which had annual budgets large r than thos e of the
national government and which had exploited the labor
of the Indians for centuries. Nationalized, too, were the
huge rll;ral ..J!5..if.uncli . Laws calling for universal suffrage
and education and for expanded labor rights were also
passed in an outpouring of social legislation that contin-
ued until the OU1.llif of the MNR by General Rene Bar-
rientos in 1964. It was in lJl.67, while Banientos served
as preside nt , that Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the noted
Cuban revolutionary of Argentin e birtl1, was killed in
the eastern Andean slopes of Santa Cruz province .
The intervening years h ave brought halting pro-
gress in the efforts of Bolivians to establish a stable
democracy. The forced tranquility of the cons ervative
144 CHAPTER 6 Political Chan ge
rnilitar dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer from in to 1978 was followed by a four- ear eriod when _
e country experienc_ed nine different g~ nrn e nts.
Bolivia has enjo e democratic ule sin the-aged Paz
Estenss r.o v.as electe_d.JQ ~ cond term in…1982. He
was reelected to a third term in 1985 (Figure 6.16).
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, head of the MNR, was
chosen president in 1993 and succeeded in implement-_…_
ing numerous economic and political reforms . He was
followed in 1997 by the former dictator Banzer, who
campaigned as a reform ed proponent of democracy
and socially equitable free-market economic policies.
In 2002, Sanchez de Lozada was chos en by Congress to
se rve a second, nonconsecutive, te rm after neither he
nor Juan Evo Morales , th e leader of Bolivia’s powerful
and increasingly militant coc a growe rs union , suc –
ceeded i11 winning a majority of votes in the gene ral
election. Following ~ idespread protests of hisJl:.ee.-
marke t ec~ c policies including a plan to export
Bolivian n atural gas to the United States through a
Chilean port, Sa chez de Lo~ as forcecLto resign
just fourteen months afte r taking office. His successor
was form er Vice President Carlos Mesa.
Following Mesa’s brief period of governance, Ev
Moral e_s took ~e in Janua ~ as Bolivia’s freely
e ected preside nt. Adopting the model imple mented
previously by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Morales then
convened a “cQnstituent asse mbl ” w 1ich drafted a new
C_Q nstitutio1 that was subsequently approved in a
national referendum. Pursu~ e new constitution,
n;tional elections were held again in December 2009,
and Morales was reelected president with 64 percent
of the vote . Unde r the new constitution, a president
can se rve a tota_l of two consecutive five-year terms.
Morales interprets his 2009 election as the start of his
first t e rm unde r the new constitution and th e reby
claims eligibility to run for reelection in 2014 . His
opponents argue that h e is actually serving his second
cons ecutive term and therefore is ineligible for imm e-
diate reelection. Morales has described his domestic
policy as “communitarian socialism.” His p1i01ities have
included increasing th e leve of state control of the
economy and improving the living levels of the impov-
e rish ed Indian mass es (John 2009 ; Perreault 2008 ).
Bolivia continues to face not only the traditional social
and physical barriers to its developm ent but also the
economic and political cons equences of dep endence
on the e;>,.-port of narcotic drugs.
SOUTHERN S OUTH A MERICA
Chile
Chile today h as one of the most elongated sh ap es of
any nation on eaith. During the colonial era, however,
F IGURE 6.16
Victor Paz Estenssoro founded Bolivia’s Nationalist
Revolutionary Movement and served as president
of the nation on three occasions from the 1950s to
the 1980s.
the region of Spanish settlement referred to as Chile
was small and compact, extending from the River Bfo-
Bfo south of Concepcion to Santiago and Valparaiso on
the north . H e re the Central Valley was divided into
h uge haciendas whose owners lived in th e style of clas-
sic Spanish aristocrats , supported by masses of te nant
laborers known as inquilinos.
Creole revolutionari es led by Juan Martine z de
Rozas and Bernardo O’H iggins first declared indepen-
dence in 1810 but we re unable to defeat the royalist
forces. O’Higgins, whose Irish fath er had served Spain
as governor of Chile and viceroy of Peru, fled to Men-
doza, Argentina, where he joined the army of Jose de
San Martin, who th en led his troops across the Andes,
driving the Spaniards from Chile in 181 before mov-
ing on to liberate Peru.
The English-educated O’Hi ins ruled Chile as
supre me director until 1823, imp..9sin a numb e r of
social and economic reforms that alienated th e C urch
an l land e d aristo c ra;;-y but also sel_ a standarq of
enlightened governm e nt that woulcLb come th hall-
mark of Chilean politics for a centul’}’_,a nd a h.alf. Fol-
lowing his ouster, O ‘Higgins fled to Pe ru , and Chile
entered a p riod of consei:.yative dominance._thatlasted
until 1861. The conservatives reinforced the Chilean
tradition of a strong central gove rnme nt and defeated
th e Pe ruvian-Bolivian Confede ration in a war that
lasted from 1836 until 1839. Th e c~ n_!_ry’s southern _
frontiers were extended to the Gulf of Ancud through
th e romo ion o f Gen nan settlement in response to_
continued Araucanian Indian resistance. Under a series
‘f) of ,hl:> eral administrations. that govern e d Chile from
1861 until 189l, the strong se nse of national p1ide that
flowed from th e conservative militaiy and immigration
successes continued to grow. The Chilean vict01y in the
War of the Pacific brought addition al te rritorial gains
and considerable we alth from the export of Ataca ma
nitrates . This wealth , togethe r with the sale of agricul-
tural produ ce from the C entral Valley, fin ance d th
establishm ent of a modern industrial sector. Economic
prosp e rity · was a cc ompani e d b y additi~ l soc ial
reform s, includin g a fi.uth er reduction in th e influ ence
of th e Church , and Chile ca me to be viewe d both at
home and abroad as a n1odel of st~ble and progressive
g9vernm ent.
Th e earl tw · th centmy was ch aracte rized by
an ell.’Pansion of Jarliam e ntar .e_ower relative to that of
th e chief executive, and also by tlie beginnin gs of a sig:_
nificant labor move ment that gain ed widespread sup-
port among th e nitrate and copper miners of the north
and the urb an industrial workforce. Communist, social-
ist, and othe r radical le ftist p artie s we re e stablished
and grew rapidly, fed by risin g une mploym e nt stem –
min g from re duce d foreign de mand for nitrates, the
worldwide dep re ssion, and the failure of th e landed
aristocracy to e n act me aningful agrarian reform. In
1936, the leftist pa1ties united in a Popular Front that
gove rned Chi e as e Radical Part): from 1938 to.1959
and atte mpted to pattern the countiy’s economic and
soc~l prog rams after thos e of the welfar e states of
western Europe.
With the defeat of the Radicals in th e 1952 elec-
tion , even greater pressures for change em erged from
the fa r left . In th e 1958 residential election, Salvador
Alleu4_e, the candidate of the Marxist Party, lost by
less than three pe rcentage points. Allende placed sec-
on d a~n in th e 1964 e lec tion and the n , in ~
stunned the world by becoming tin Am e rica’s first
frrely elected Marxist h eacio state.~F.igure 6.17).
Alle nde im mediately began to re stru cture Chilean
soc iety. The h uge Am e rican -owne d coppe r min.es in
theriorthern Andes were nationali zed in 1971., furth er -in cu rring th e wra th of th e Unit e d States. Within
month s, lar~ segments of the banking, transportation ,
and industrial sectors l1ad als o pass ed into governm ent
control_, and agrari_an reform was under way. Inflation
and unem ployment soare d, and hom emake rs, business –
men , and facto ry wo rke r s to o k to th e stree t s in a
CHAPTER 6 Politica l C h a ng e 145
Salvador Allende became Latin America’s first
freely elected Marxist head of state with his
selection as president of Chile in 1970.
n ever-e nding se ries of de monstrations and counte r-
d e mons tr at ions. All e nd e, who had won le ss than
37 percent of tl1e popular vote, had move d t o far too
fust3 nd was losing control of even his own supp01ters
(Carr and E lln er 1993) .
In Septe mber 973, the arm ed forces attacked th e
national palace, killing Allende in the proce ss-:- South
A~ erica’s strongest democratic tradition was re laced . d_/_’>/ a 14,-
by a militaiy dictatorship headed by General Augusto
Pfnochet (Figure 6. 18). Pinochet proceede d to estab-
lish a n.i!_hless police stat~ that was responsible for the /t./;;;,
d~ appi!arance an d. killing of thousands of alleged su~- 0
ve rsive s. H e also undid mu ch of the social legis1ation of
th e previous half centmy and moved the nation into a
free-market economy that resu lted in large economic
gains beginning in the 1980s.
Following Pipoch e t’s re signation as pre side nt in
~ 1990, Ch ilean presidential politics were domin ate d for
twenty years oy a coalition of cente r-left parties kno~
as the Conc ertaci6n por la Democracia (Accord for
D e 1’h ocracy). Th e prioritie s of th e Con ce rtac i6n
includ e d th e ma int e nanc e of Chi le‘s n e o li b e ral
146 CHAPTER 6 Po litica l Chan ge
General Augusto Pinochet was the right-wing
military dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990.
economic model and the completion of the institutional
t ransition to full de mocracy (Borzutsky and Wee ks
2010; Mares and Aravena 2001 ). The latter was greatly
fac ilitate d by Pinoch e t’s r e tir e me nt as army com-
mander in 1998. The dominance of the Concertaci6n
e nd e d in 2010 with th e e le ction of busin e ssman
Seb as tian Pin e ra , th e candidate of th e ce nter-right
political coalition known as th e Alliance for Chi le
(Alianza ).
Paraguay
Paraguay has been r’!:’.led thrQJJgh most oD.ts mstmy by
lon g-lived caudillos, whose actions have made the na-
tion one of the most socially and econom ically under-
developed countries in the Western H emisphere . The
first of th e dictators was Jo se Gaspar Rodrigue z de
Francia, who from 1814 until his death in 18.10 did his
utJllOSt to physically and intellectually isolate Paraguay
from the outside world. Francia was followed by Carlos
Antonio Lopez and his son, Francisco Solano Lopez,
who ruled until 1870. During the reign of the latter,
Paraguay, angered at the Argentine closing of the Rio
de la Plata, unwisely declared war in 1 865 not .only__gn
Argentina but on Uruguay and Brazil as well. In th e
ensuin·g ‘Yar of the Triple Alliance , Paraguay suf-
fe red imm ens e economic and emotional devastation,
losing over on e-half of its popu lation and almost all of
its adult mares:=Th e chaotic p e riod that follow e d
b rought, in 18?7 h th e formation of two political parties,
tl1e ~ nservative Colorados and th e Liberals.
F rom 1932 to 1935, tl1e nation fought tl1e Chaco
W ar, whi ch r e sult e d in Bolivia’s d e feat and the
annexation of a large but sparsely settled area (see Fig-
ure 6.13 ). The end of the war brought Colonel Rafael
Fr.§.lnco to power. Franco attempted to modernize the
impoverished countiy th rough a pr
In JJ154, General Alfredo Stroessner of the Colo-
rado Party assumed power and, operating under a per-
petual state of siege, was reelected without meaningful
opposition e ve ry five yea rs th e reaft e r until he was
d epos e d in 1989 by Gen e ral Andr e s Rodrfg11e z.
Rodriguez, whose daughter was marri ed to Stroessn er’s
son, had pre vious ly gained control of much of the
wealth of the countiy and did little to alter its reputa-
tion as a center of Soutl1 Am e rican contraband trade,
drng trafficking, and money lau nde1ing (Nickson 1996).
One of Rodriguez’s ositive accomplishments , how-
ever, was tl1e passage in 1992 of a new constitution that
grea!ly strengilien ed gov rnm ental c eeks and bala!!£!:.S
and protections of hum an rights . Paraguay’s te nder
de111ocracy has since survived an unsuccessful military
coup in 1996 against Rodriguez’s successor, J~ Carlos
Wasmosy, and the murde r in 1999 of Vice Preside nt
Luis Argana. The latter led the Chamber of Deputies to
impeach tll en-Presiclent Raul Cubas who, witl1 form er
army general Lino Oviedo, subs equently fled to Brazil
to escape prosecution for Argana’s murder.
Argentina
Argentina’ s o cl ern po liti cal development can b e
traced t 1776, whe n the Spanish gove rnment, con-
cerned with the threat of Portuguese expansion south-
ward from Brazil alon g the Atlantic coast, established
the Viceroyalty of La Plata, with administrative head-
quart~ ue nos Aires at the m~uth of th e River
Plate . In th e ensuing four decades, the growth and in –
flu ence of Buenos Aires and the Pampean region it
served increased steadily, much to tl1e consternation of
the remainder of the viceroyalty, which in addition to
Paraguay included p9rtions of Upper Peru or Bolivia,
Uruguay, an d the interior Andean areas centered on
Salta, Tucuman , and Cordoba.
In 1816, th e region declare d its independence
from Spain as th e United Provinces of th e Rio de la
Plata. A powe r struggle imm ediately arose be tween the
more ~ ard-looking leadership ~ Buenos Aires and
that of the jnward-looking inte rior provinces , which
historically had been oriented toward the Andean min-
ing centers of Upper Peru. By th e late 1820s, Paraguay,
Bolivia, and Uruguay had each becom e independent,
and the comp etition between Buenos Aires and the
Andean regions was framed in the context of a bitter
rivalry between two groups: federalists, who fr!YQted-!!
0 weak national governm ent with power concentrated in.
( l})the provinces-;-and centralists or unitarianists (Unitar-
Tos), w~ ght to bujld a strong central government.
The fed e ralist- centralist schism was subsumed
into a larger conservative-liberal conflict. The conser-
vative e era ists favore d the continued dominance of
th e classic alliance of the Church and landed aiistoc-
racy, while th e lib eral centralists favore d expanded
trade and a secularstate patterned after the United
States and Great B1itain. The initial success of the lib-
erals an d th eir enlightened leader, B rnardino Rivada-
via, soo n gave way to a n ex t end e d p e riod of
cons~ ative domin ance unde r the leade rship of Juan
Mapuel de Rosas , who enjoyed broad supp01i amon g
th~ gaucho cau.dillos of the Pampa (Lyn ch 2001) .
Rosas’ force d exile to Great Britain in 2. ushered
in a g den age of hberahsm , whose leaders, including
artolom e Mitre, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and
,’l. Nicolas Avellaneda, promoted f eign immigration and_
~ in vestment, public secular education, and freedom of
th e _gress and religion. The influx of fmeigners contin-
r. ue~nto the late 1800s, which saw the opening of th e
Pampa to farm ing and increas ed inves tm e nt by and
trade with Great Britain. Tw.o new p_
In the succeeding decades , Argentina fell from one
of Latin America’s most deve lop ed and e nlighten ed
countries to one of its most financially and politically
troubled-a tragic illustration of the consequences of
unchecked de magoguery a~d misguided economic pol-
icies. The col_lapse began with the Great D epression of
the 1930s, which seriously damaged Argentina’s export-
oriented economy and fostered a longing for the gran-
deur of the past . Into this void stepped a group of
military officers , who in 1943 ove rthrew the conserva-
tive governm ent. Included among the rebels was Cclo-
el Juan Domin o Peron , wh o after his election as
president in ~ ir!!, extre mely high taxes on pri-
vat ely ow ned busine ss e s aud th e estc. the
Pampa . Pe ron the n inv e st e d th e t ax r e_y :mies in
government-subsidized industries that provided jobs to
thou~ds of rural-to- urb an migrants known collec-
tively as the descamisados, or “shirtless ones.” Peron
thus succeeded in creating, in classic de magogic fash –
ion, a huge urban prole tariat that looked to him for
suppoli a nd direction. In this he was greatly aided by
CHAPTE R 6 Politi ca l C han ge 147
his wife, Marfa Eva Dua1ie , who , as “Evita,” became
virtu ally a d e migoddess to the masses, whom sh e
courted through h e r Eva Peron Foundation (Plotkin
2003).
Peron was reelected in 1952, the same year Evita
died of cancer. Three years late r, with the out ut of th~
overtaxed estancias and governm e nt-ope rated indus-
trial sector both in rapid decline,, the militarx staged a
cou. and Pe ron fl e d to Europ e . Th e re followed a
p arade of short-lived military and civilian governm ents ,
none of which was cap able of res toring econom ic disci-
pline to th e nation. As conditions continued to worsen ,
tl1e exiled Pe ron becam e alm os t a cult fig ure to many
who co nvince d th e ms elves th at prospe rity could b e
res t ored t h rough his re turn. Th e clim ac tic rfil..J:!.rn
occ.urr d_at last in Jun e 1973, but a year later, Pe ron
died . An economically reeling A;gentina found its elf
ruled by Peron ‘s widow, Marfa Estela (Isabel), whos e
sole qualiflcation to govern was that she had been rnar-
1ied briefly to Juan.
With Marxis t terrorism on th e rise and the treasmy
depleted , Isabel was removed from office by th e mili-
tary in 1976. Ye~rs of h arsh authoritarian rul e and
rightist death squads followed , vvhich resulted not only
in th e near elimin ation of tl1e communist guerrillas but
also the kidnapping, torturing, and/or killin g of som e
30,000 Argentin e citizens durin g a p eriod of state ter-
1:-;i·isrn tllli.t has com e to be known as th e Dirty Wa
(Feitlowitz 2011 ; Bosco 2006; Bou vard 1994). Most of
the victims were guilty of nothin g othe r than disagree-
ing with the nation’s militaiy rulers. Meanwhile, the
downward economic spiral continu ed. In April 1982,
Argentina invaded th e F alkland, or Malvinas, I slands
and declared war on Great Britain . The action’s osten-
sible purpos e was to recover the islands , which , not-
vvithstanding Argentine claims of sovereignty, had been
administere d by Great Britain continuously since 1833.
However, the nation’s military rulers clearly hoped the
conflict would divert attention from the deteriorating
dom estic scene (Fernando de Santibafi es 2007; Freed-
rn; n 1988; Escude 1988; Caviedes 1984). Argentina’s
humiliating defeat led to a return of civilian rule in
.1983 . In 989, Carlos Saul N!_enem of th e Pe ronist
Party took the p residential oath of office, marking tl1e
first tim e in Argentine hist01y that on e freely electeq
p,resident had succeeded another. Mene m did much in
the early 1990s to return the financially ravaged coun-
tiy to a free -market eco nomy.
By the e nd of Me ne m’s sec ond te rm , h oweve r,
Argentina’s economy was again in sharp decline, with
unemployment, corruption , and crim e at unacceptable
levels. Mene m was succeeded as president in 1999 by
F e rnando D e la Rua of the Rival Allian ce for Work,
Justice, and Education. Regrettably, D e la Rua proved
to be no more effective than Mene m in instilling fiscal
‘ 0-·
148 C HAPTER 6 Politi c al Ch a n ge
disciplin e upon th e Argentin e people, and his resigna–tion in 2001 plunged the counby into a grave economic
and political crisis that witnessed the collapse of four
inteiim governm ents in the following eighteen months
(see Case Study 13.2). Nestor irchner was declared
~ nner of the- 2003_presidential runoff election when
form er President Menem withdrew his candidacy.
Argentina’s econom y re bounded strongly during
Kirchner’s term of office, and 1e came to oe viewed by ,-
many as a mode rn -day Peron. He was succeeded as
preside nt in 2007 by his wi fe, Cristina F e rnandez.
Kirchne r was widely e;,,.’Pected to stand again for presi-
d e nt in th e 2011 national e le ctions , but h e di e d
un expectedly of a heart attack in 2010.
Uruguay
Uruguay; or L a Banda Oriental, as the land east of the
Urugu ay Hive r was widely known , long was i!._buffer
zone be twee n Brazilian se ttle ment to th e north and
Spanish coloni es along the Hio de la Plata. It first de-
clared its indep endence in 1810 under the leade rship
of Jose Gervasio A1tigas, whos e gaucho forces were re-
pulsed in an attack on the Spanish garrison at Monte-
video . F ollo~vin additional p eriods of foreign occupa-
tiqn and British mediation , Argentina and Brazil fin ally
agreed to relinquish their claims to the area, and inde-
pendence was truly realized in 1828″ ..
~ > No soon er h ad freedom com e, however, than th e
nation lapsed into a civil war between the followers of
two r ival cauclillos, Fructuoso Hive ra and Manu el
Orib e . Bec aus e Riv e ra ‘s for ce s incorporate d red-
colored ribbon s into th eir clothing and Oribe’s follow-
ers wore white, th e factions becam e known as th e
Colorados (reds ) and Blancas (whites). Although th e
co nflict foc used initially on pe rsonalities, it became in
time a libe ral ( Colorado )-cons e rvative (Blanco ) divi-
sion that has continued to the present.
Following the co~ on of th e civil war in the
early 1850s , Uruguay was dominated for half a centu ry
by gaucho cauclillos, wh o from 1865 onward were all
Coloraclos. By the later decades of the nineteenth cen-
tmy, both the Colorado and Blanco organizations we re
maturing into traditional political parties as the nation
as a whole evolved into a leadin g exporter ·of meat and
wool. Nume rous social reform s, includin g free public
edu cation, were also enacted. A significant mileston e
on the road to democracy was reach ed in 1890 wh e n
the ot!J:go ing wesident, Gene ral Maximo Tajes, sup-
ported a civilian successor, Julio H errera y Obes, thus
ending milita1y control over the country.
In J 903 , ye t an oth er Co lorado candidat e, Jos e
Batlle y Ord6fi ez, was ch osen president (Figure 6.19 ).
Afte r putting down a revolt led by th e Blancas , who by
th e n h ad change d th eir p arty nam e to Nationalist,
FIGURE 6.19
Jose Batlle y Ord6fiez attempted to mold Uruguay
into Latin America’s first welfare state in the early
1900s.
B~ lle set about trying to transform Uruguay into_a
So_uth Ameri can Switzerland-the country he most
admired. His reforms , som e not fully imp le me nted
until after the completion of his second term as presi-
dent in 1915, involved II0jor political and socio ~ –
nomic restructuring. Politically, Ba tll e no t only
succee d ed in establishing p e ace b e twe e n the rival
political parties but argued as well for the creation of a
plural executive system. This was implemented in 1919
throu gh the formation of a nine-m e mb e r National
Council for Administration that shared executive power
with th e president. Economically, Batlle did much to
conve rt Urugu ay into Latin Am e rica’s first welfare
state, nationalizing num erous ente1prises and passing
liberal social and labor legislation.
Uru guay’s socialist econom continued long after
Batlle’s death , brin ging th e nation internation al acclaim
as a progressive state but gradually sappin its fin a~1cial
strength as federal outlays increas ed and private in vest-
ment declined. The countiy’s lin gerin g economic mal-
aise finally led in l 958_to a cons e rvative ationalist
victory, e ndin g nin e ty- three cons ec utive ye ars of
Colorado rule . Rather than implem e nting fiscal
reforms , 1owever, the Nationalists continued in deficit
spending, hoping th ere by to gain an eve n great e r
degree of popular support. Batlle’s concept of a plural
exec utive form of government had b ee n reim ple –
mented in 1951 but proved again to b e unworkable.
The ~ were marked by dee enin .l!Lflatio.11-R.nd the .
emergence of a violent Marxi~t guerrilla grou~ na.n1.ed
the · ovement of National Liberation, or ~ maros.
By 973~ the viol~nce and economic disintegration
had_E.ached such levels that President Juan M. Bord-
aberry of th e Colorado Party agreed to military control
of his administra tion a 1 act for which h e was sen–tenced years later to a lengthy prison term. There fol-
lowedadi!;,k pe · in which Congress was abolished
and cj_yil lib erties were reduced ._Bordaberry hims elf
was removed by the military in 1976. Civilian rule was _
reestablished in l@, although th(l military has contin.-
ued to ex~t a strong political influence.
The postmilitary era has b een characte1ized by the
eme rgence of a leftist coalition known as th e Bro.;id
Front (Frente Amplio ), which won 40 p ercent of con-
~
gressional seats in the 1999 election . In response, the
Colorado and Nationalist parties have on occasion col-
laborated as a unified opposition. Th e 2004 presiden-
tial campaign brought th e election of the aroad Front
candidate, Tabare Vasquez , thus marking th e end of
near y two centuries of poliJ:ical_<:.ontrol by the Colo-
rado and Nationalist Parties . The 20 9_election was
w'on by the Broad Front candidate, Jose M~jica, who ,
having repudiated his youthful ideology as one of the
found e rs of th e Tupamaros , ran on a platform of
national reconciliation.
Brazil
We noted previously that the Napoleonic wars of early
nineteenth century Europe led to th e establishm ent by
Portugal’s royal family of a g~ nm ent-in -~le in Rio
de Janeiro and to Do:n Pedro’s declaration of Brazilian
independence in 182 . ;With the sovereignty of the new
nation assured through the protection of the British
Navy, Pedro moved to legitimize his reign by drafting
in 1.B2L’Lhighly autho~tarian constitution. The consti-
tution gave the emperor the authority to appoint both
fe de ral and state offi.cials and also the right to resolve
con fli ct b e tw ee n different governmen t branch e s
through the use of a royal “moderating power. ” How-
ever, Pedro’s vi1tually unlimited constitutional author-
ity failed_to prevent a steady erosion of public support,
which was linked to his arbitrary rule, to his forcing
into exile his most compe tent advisor, Jose Bonifacio
de Andrada e Silva, and to a number of foreign policy
revers als , including th e loss of Uruguay. F ew of th e
dominant Brazilian aris t ocracy we re disappointe d ,
CHAPTER 6 Political Chang e 149
then, when Dom Pedro returned to Portugal in 1831,
leaving his 6-2::ear-old son to rule in his stead. –
There followed nine years of 1iberal-conservati e
jousting that ended with Dom Pearo 11 being declared
o age in 1840. In contrast to his sire, Dom Pedro II
matured into a kind and scholarly father-fi@re we of
ruler who felt a sincere love for B.razil . .and ‘ts . eoJ;1._le,
and who generally rnled wisely and effectively during his
nearly five decades in office (Skidmore 2009 ; Prado
1967) (Figure 6.20) >By creating in 847 the post of
prim e minister and by carefullx ing his “moderating
power” to balance conflicting liberal-conservative · ter-
ertL within the tra itional oligarchical power group s,
Pedro II was able to tablisl a de re of freedom and ,
order that Brazil has yet to duplicate. Forei n ca ital ~ \ / .
an immigrants, attracted by the countiy’s sta ility and ) (‘(\i/,cf·~
economic potential, arrived in ever in creasing numbers ;
slav$!ry was gradually_eliminated; the milita1y was barred
from political activity; and the Church was eigned in.
A1tistic and other forms of individual expression were
encouraged.
Yet as tim e passed, the emperor gradually lost influ-
ence. Many of th e landed aristocracy resented his efforts
to abolish slavery, his daughter and son-in-law were
most unpopular, and his handling of Brazil’s role in the
War of the T1iple Alliance was criticized by an increas-
ingly restive officer corps. Afflicted with diabetes, Pedro
II finally a];mka B&LBrazil entered a republican
period that brought a l)ew constitution, drafted in 1891
by the liberal states man Ruy Barbosa, and the transfer
of economic and political power from the national gov, C l’.J-.l,l.d, ‘,,
emment back to local caudillos, known as coroneis.
By the 1920 , three distinct political move m_.§ nts
were under way. The ~ was the formation of a group
of youn milita1y technocrats known as the tenentes, or
lie ute nants , who became convinced that th ex: alon e
po~sessed the collective scientific .kno.wle_d e mana e-
rial skills, and commitm ent to individual freedoms nec-
essary to assure the_future d YelapmenLo.f.the_nation.
The sfl.CQJ:ld move ment was communism , which came
to b e identifled with the National LiberatiQ!!_ Alliance
(ANL ). Th e tbiJ;.d. was f~ n, which was eventually
represe nted by the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB )
and attracted considerable support among the German
immigrant groups of th e south.
In the midst of the grovving political polarization
and the economic aftershocks of the Great D epression,
Getulio Var as ass um ed power in 1930. Over a fifteen-
year p eriod of demagogic rule, Vargas restructured Bra-
zilian socie ty into what he called the New 2 tate , or
Estado Novo (Figure 6.21). Economically, th e Estaclo
Novo was a hyb1id blending of the tenente faith in tech-
nology with socialism , and entailed the us e of federal
resources to promote industrial and agricultural mod-
ernization . Politically, the New State was fundam entally
150 C H APT E R 6 Politi c a l Chan ge
Emperor Dom Pedro II governed Brazil in a
generally progressive and paternalistic fashion
from 1840 to 1889.
the old caudillism o at a national level, with Vargas offer-
ing himself as the champion of the e me rging urban
labor fo rce and the embodim ent of Brazilian nationq)_-
ism , which he promoted through a re~wed empha_sis
on sp01t s and th e mts. After being forced by the armx to
i·esign in 1,M5… Va,.rgas was elected for yet another ten1!
in 1950 but acco mplished little otl1e r than nationalizing
foreign oil holdings . H e con1mitted suicide in 1954.
H is successor, Jus celil)o Kubitsch e k, continu.ed
Vargas’s program of grandiose, state-spons ored indu s-
trialization, particularly in the mining and ene rgy sec-
tors , but h e did so only thro ugh m_as,sive borrowing
that e nlarged th e fo reign debt and fu eled inflation .
One of Ku~itsch e k’s legacies was building the new
capital city of Brasilia ·n fu lfillment of the centuries-
old dream of developing the spars ely settled inte rior
of the country.
Kub itsch e k was fo llowe d by Jafiio Quadros , a
refo rm er who myst eriously resign ed afte r only seven
Getulio Vargas functioned as the authoritarian ruler
of Brazil from 1930 to 1945 and from 1950 to 1954.
months in office, and by Joao Goulart, an old left-wing
Vargas-era politician whos e ye ars of se rvice as vice
president failed to prepare him to be an effective presi-
dent. Within a few years of Goulart’s assuming office,
Brazil’s economy was on the verge of collapse, and the
middle and upper classes were convinced that a leftist
dictatorship was in the offing. It came as no surprise, ~-.+ oi{J\
th en, when the ilitaiy re moved Goulmt in 1964, sus- fY’.l \ J
pe nded constitutiona guarantees of civil liberties,an ~ ~ f-)
began to hunt down and torture leftist “subve rsives ,”
so me 3.:LQ.00 of whom were killed or disai;1. eareq in the
following two decades (Skidmore 1990; Step an 1988;
Archdiocese of Sao Paulo 1986). The political repres-
sion was gradually relaxed in th e late 1970s and early
1980s as the economy continued to stru ggle under th e
weight of triple-digit inflation and growin g in com e gaps
between the wealthy and the poor, between urban and
rural dwellers , and between the south and th e north.
The transition back to de mocracy begfilLlll 19.B —
with the holdin g of ope n municipal elections and the
selection of a transitional civilian residen . A new – —constitution was approved thre e years later, and was
followed in 989 by an open presidential election in
which the poeulist center-right Fernando Collor de
Mello defeated th e socialist-worker candidate , Luiz
Inacio “Lula” da Silva (Weyland 1993 ). Collor cam-
paigned on a platform of overcoming Brazil’s hype r-
inflation by privatizing state-owned corporations and
by balancing th e budget through reduced govern-
me nt spending. H e resign ed from office in 1992 after
the lower house of c’ongressimpeach ed hi~ cor-
ruption charges. Former financ e minister F e rnando
H enriqu e Cardoso b eca me preside nt in 1995 and
served capably for two terms, curbing inflation and
inv es tin g in h ealth care and e ducation. H e also
hande d ove r power peace fully to his successor, da
Silva, who , notwithstanding his fie ry past, e m braced
free-marke’t economic policies , the success of which
brought umprecedented prosp erity and increasing
inte rnational influ ence . Da Silva’s hand-picked suc-
cessor, former gu errilla leader Dilma Rou~eff, took
office in 2011.
THE G UIANAS
Th e so-called Wild Coast of South America’s northern
Guiana country was colonized intermittently during the
sixteenth and seventeen th centuries by Spain, Portugal,
the Netherlands, England, and France, all with an eye
to es tablishing Caribbean-like plantation economies
alon g the coastal plains . By the late 1700s, the Dutch
had emerged as the dominant force throughout the re-
gion with tl1 e exception of Cayenne on the east, which
was controlled during most of the colonial era by the
French.
Guyana
Th e Dutch coloni es of D e me rara , Ess e quibo , and
Berbice were ceded in 1814 to Great Britain, which
united th e m as British Guiana in 1831. Just thre e
years later, slavery was abolished throughout the Brit-
ish empire, and the blacks began abandoning th e Gui-
ana plantations in great numb ers , wanting at all costs
to avoid agricultural labor, which in th eir minds car-
ried a stigma of inferiority by virtue of its associatio’n
with slavery. As the blacks migrated to George town ,
the capital city, and to other newly established settle-
ments , th e European plante r class replaced th em with
indentured laborers, mostly from India. As tim e
passed , th e East Indians , as they were known , came to
control not on ly the agricultural sector but the urban
comme rcial and t echnical professions as well. After
the cessation of indentured labor in 1917, black feel-
ings of economic and political insecurity were corn-
CHAPTER 6 Political Change 151
Forbes Burnham , founder of Guyana’s Peoples
National Cong ress Party, was chosen the first
president of the newly independent country in
1966. He ruled Guyana for twenty years until his
death in 1985.
pounded by the higher East Indian birth rates , which
by the mid-twentieth century were resulting in an
eve r increas ing numerical advantage for th e Indo-
Guyanese.
The nation’s deep racial divisions led, in the 1950s,
to the formation of two political parties. The first , the
People’s Progressive Party (PPP ), was led by an East
Indian dentist named Cheddi Jagan, an acknowledged
com munist. Th e second was a b lack African party
known as the Peoples National Congress (PNC), whose
leader, Forbes Burnham , desc1ibed himself as a social-
ist (Figure 6 .22 ). Independe nce within th e British
Commonwealth was achieved in 1966, but political
fraud and racial violence have continued in the “Coop-
erative Rep ublic” through a postindep e nd e nce e ra
dominated by Burnham , Jagan , and Burnham’s PNC
successor, D esmon d Hoyte. Chicago-born Janet Jagan
was elected president in 1997 fo ll owing her husband’s
death but resigned in 1999 for reasons of health . Th e
country has since been governed by Bharrat Jagdeo, an
Inda-Guyanese.
152 CHA PTER 6 Political Change
Guyana has also had a long-standing dispute with
Venezuela over the ownership of the land between the
wes t bank of the Essequibo River and the present
shared boundary, which was fixed in 1899. Guyanese
desires to strengthen their claim to the isolated region,
which amounts to slightly more than half of the national
territory, contributed to the government’s authorizing
the Reverend Jim Jon es’s American People’s Temple
group to settle an undeveloped portion of the rain for-
est. Th e mass murder-suicides of the group resulted in
the deaths of nearly 1,000 men, women, and children
in November 1978.
Suriname
The land that today makes up th e nation of Surinam e
was colonized in the mid-seventeenth century by the
English, who traded it to th e Dutch in 1667 in ex-
change for New Netherlands (New York). As in Guy-
ana, Suriname’s colonial economy centered on coastal
sugar and cotton plantations , which we re manned
through the importation of hundreds of thousands of
black slaves from Africa. Som e of these were able to
escape into the h eavily forested interior, where their
descendants , called Bush Negroes or Maroons , con –
tilme a largely subsistence existence (chapter 7). Th e
abolition of slavery in 1863 led , as in Guyana, to a black
flight to th e towns and mining centers, and to the im –
portation of mostly East Indian and Javanese inden-
tured laborers , who eventually came to own most of
the agricultural land and to dominate the urban profes-
sional classes.
Internal self-government was achieved in 1954
when th e Dutch declared Suriname equal to the
Netherlands and the Nethe rlands Antilles within the
Kingdom of the N e th erlands. Many at this time
expressed the belief that Suriname would mature into
a prosperous and peaceful state, a model of polyethnic
democracy for other developing nations . Others, espe-
cially Surinamers of Asian de scent, feared that the
racial and economic divisions we re far more serious
than was officially acknowledged . These fears led
approximately 40 percent of the population, including
much of the educated and skilled workforce, to emi-
grate to the Nether lands prior to the granting of inde-
pendence in 1975. .
In F ebruary 1980, Colonel Desi Bouterse led a
creole military coup th at ove rthrew the civilian gov-
ernment. The action was welcomed by much of the
population , which p erceived the outgoing administra-
tion incapable of managing the economy effectively.
Th e initial e uphoria quickly vanish ed , howe ver, as
Boute rs e, governing through a nine-membe r National
Military Council (NMC), began in 1982 to systemati-
cally assassinate political opponents and to implement
a reign of terror. The Bush Negroes , under the lead-
ership of Ronnie Brunswijk, responded to Bouterse’s
attempts to forcibly resettle them by starting in 1986
a guerrilla movement called the Jungle Commando.
The movement crippled bauxite mining operations in
the northeastern portion of the country and led to
10,000 Maroons taking refuge across th e Maroni
River in French Guiana. A peace agreement was
signed between the rebel groups and the government
in 1992.
Pressured by his political and economic problems,
and by long-standing territorial disputes with Guyana
and French Guiana, Bouters e allowed free elections in
1987. H e staged yet another coup in 1990 and then
permitted elections again in 1991 and 1996. In 1999,
Bouterse was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court of
drug trafficking. Protracted legal proceedings against
Boute rs e and others acc us e d of th e 1982 murders
b egan in 2007. To the consternation of much of th e
international community, Bouters e was elected presi-
dent in 2010. Suriname continues today to be a trou-
bl e d and d ee ply divid e d nation whose fragil e
de mocracy is threatened by ethnic intolerance and a
weak economy.
French Guiana
French Guiana, or Guyane Frarn;aise, has belonged to
France almost continuously since 1667. Its eighteenth-
and nineteenth-centmy agricultural development par-
alleled that of Guyana and Suriname, with indentured
Asians replacing freed blacks as the principal source of
labor on the coastal sugar plantations. The develop-
ment of the plantations was hindered by periodic out-
breaks of typhus, malaria, and yellow fever that cost
thousands of lives. Ovving in part to the region’s repu-
tation as one of the least healthy places on earth , it at-
tracted few settlers, and the French resorted in the
mid-nineteenth century to using it for various penal
colonies. The most infamous of these, Devil’s Island,
closed in 1945.
The p eop le of French Guiana hav e h e ld full
French citizenship since 1848 and have had represen-
tation in the French Parliament since 1877. French
Guiana was declared an overseas department of France
in 1946, since which tim e it has exp erienced modest
population growth through th e es tablishm e nt of a
European space center (Ingold 2006; Redfield 2000 )
and the settlement of Hmong refugees from Laos and
French continentals. Although the latter are a numeri-
cal minority to the black creoles, they have formed an
ultraconse rvative National Front moveme nt th at is
strongly opposed to independence.
