‘Can “theory” teach us anything new about Peru? Can “Peru” teach us anything new about theory?’ These two intriguing questions are posed by historian Paulo Drinot to a group of Peruvianist scholars who represent a wide variety of disciplines. He challenges them to enter into a creative dialogue with an eminent array of theorists ranging from Huntington to Foucault to Judith Butler on matters such as those related to chronic political and institutional weaknesses, the intractable economic, social, gendered and racialised forms of exclusion and violence against women. The outcome is a not surprisingly yes to the first question, although not so sure for the second. For some interesting insights and new interpretations do emerge from the application of theory to the recent history of Peru. Indeed, after having undergone a major transformation since the 1960s, the time is ripe, according to Drinot, to re-examine and challenge the now well-worn precepts of the so called ‘new’ history of the country.
Drinot sees this effort as a way also of assessing two historical processes that have dominated the past three decades, that of the internal armed conflict of the 1980s and the not unrelated ‘Neoliberal revolution’ that followed in the 1990s. For, as he reminds us in his introduction, they were closely related in that the crisis of the former, including government mismanagement of the 1980s, created the conditions for the neoliberal reforms initiated by the government of President Alberto Fujimori in the following decade. Neoliberalism, of course has continued, more or less successfully, by successive governments in the 2000s, as the stunning annual six per cent growth rate during these years attests.
But it now appears unlikely that this growth rate, which has dramatically expanded the country's now consumer oriented middle class and lowered the poverty rate, cannot be sustained. For the old fissures and cracks in Peru's social and political fabric, the geographical and racial-class divide and dysfunctional politics, remain just as intractable as ever. For Peru's remarkable economic success has been powered by a traditional historical pattern, its enormous mineral wealth and mining. Today it has not only lifted the overall economy to new heights, but also measurably increased government revenues to that which could be applied, hypothetically, to resolve some of these historical problems. It is to find solutions then, by applying theory, that Drinot challenges his contributors.
The Peru in Theory includes nine worthwhile contributions, including one by the author himself. Alberto Vergara usefully employs a Toquevillian framework that highlights the tensions between equality and liberty to explain Fujimori's authoritarianism in the 1990s. For him it is not some cultural predisposition or the immediate preceding crisis of the war against the Shining Path insurgency or hyperinflationary policies of the first government of Alan García. Rather it was Velasco's top-down reforms that eliminated the gamonal class in the sierra that opened the way two decades later enabling Fujimori to exercise his authoritarianism to extend state power into the interior.
Maria Balarin shows how Laclau's thoughts on Gramsci's notions of hegemony can fruitfully illuminate how people in marginalised conditions develop identities reflective of hegemonic social structures. Daniella Maria Gandolfo's ‘The Street Keeper and the Mayor’ draws on Georges Bataille's discussion of transgression and politics, throwing light on urban social mobilisations, the theatre of transgressions and neoliberal gentrification in Lima during the mayorality of Alberto Andrade in Lima the 1990s. Drinot locates ‘Foucault in the Land of the Incas’ applying his distinction between sovereignty and governability, arguing that García's infamous ‘dog in the manger’ discourse in his second administration perfectly captures his ongoing ‘capitalist neoliberal revolution’. For it conjures up a primordial popular fear of an internal enemy in political and bio-political terms, environmentalists, on the one hand, and atavistic Indians, on the other, both of whom opposed García's blank cheque to foreign hydrocarbon companies to exploit areas in the Amazon and elsewhere with destructive consequences.
Matthias vom Hau and Valeria Biffi employ what Michael Mann refers to ‘state infrastructural powers’ and education that spread liberal nationalism in many parts of the world. In Peru the authors apply this dictum to the Aristocratic Republic and Leguia's Patria Nueva as well as Bustamante and Odria after World War II (education) that established liberal nationalism as hegemonic. But contrary to Mann, Hau and Biffi argue, a ‘counter hegemonic’ discourse can and did take root under the Velasco regime.
We can also see the usefulness of Cecilia Pela's application of James Scott in analysing the current turmoil in multiple conflicts brought on by the unrestrained expansion of the booming mining sector into isolated and environmentally sensitive regions of the interior; and of Omar Awapara Franco and Eduardo Dargent Bocanegra's chapter ‘Huntington in Peru (Or Beware of Reforms)’ wherein the dangers of unintended consequences of reforms in the context of weak and malfunctioning political institutions have produced adverse results, such as in the well-meaning process of decentralisation or new electoral laws which have weakened rather than strengthened the country's political party system as well as the central government's capacity to respond to natural disasters.
José Carlos Orihuela in his ‘Crossing Boundaries’ applies the work of Albert Hirschman and his terms ‘voice’ and ‘exit’ to understand the success of Chile in promoting economic development through state sponsored institutions such as CORFO as early as the great depression. But Peru was unable to achieve a similar success, clinging to liberal doctrines of laissez faire and non-intervention and later in its timid attempts at low level efforts with little capacity for success, followed by grandiose developmental efforts by Velasco's bureaucratic National Planning Institute, equally to no avail.
Finally, last but not least, Jelke Boesten draws perceptively from various works by Judith Butler to show how sexual violence against women both reflects and at the same time reproduces the hierarchical structures of Peruvian society. In so doing she explains why women, especially indigenous women, could be raped in wartime during the internal conflict of the 1980s, but also thereafter, with impunity in peace time. Paul Gootenberg offers some perceptive comments in his afterword to the volume.
To conclude, Drinot's Peru in Theory is something of a tour d’ force in the field of Peruvian studies, bringing together a range of new scholars to plumb the theories of the great theorists in order to illuminate various aspects of what sociologist José Matos Mar referred to as Peru Problema. I am not so sure it works the other way around, that is can Peru teach us something new about theory? Nevertheless, Peru in Theory stands out as a shining example of what can be done with a similar approach for other country-specific cases.
