¿Fascistas o revolucionarios? Política de izquierda y de derecha entre los campesinos pobres

Abstract

The spread of democracy beyond Western Europe to Latin America and the duration of Latin American democracies through one or more elections has revealed a surprising and disturbing trend in Latin America. Many new Latin American electorates have supported rightist and non-democratic candidates who, once elected president, have engaged in auathoritarian behavior, bypassing, corrupting or closing the legislature, undeterminig judicial autonomy, and attempting to extend their terms in office indefinitely. Examples of such presidential behaviour in Latin America include Carlos Menen in Argentina, Alberto Gujimori in Peru, and Arnoldo Aleman in Nicaragua. Within Latin American electorates, it is evident that the rural population is even more likely to support rightist candidates than is the electorate as a whole. Rural rightism is surpring, however, given a largebody of literature from the 1970s and 1980s where peasants and rural dwellers are seen primarily as leftists, such as in Russia, China, Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua. The presence of rightist rural electoral support in new Latin American democracies leaves a puzzle: are peasants fascists or revolutionaries? To unravel such a puzzle, the essay looks first at four cases of rural support for fascism or authoritarian populism in the early to mid-twentieth century, France, Italy, Germany, and Argentina. It compares factors explaining such rightist rural support with the knowledge we have about rural support for the left in Russia, China, Cuba, and Nicaragua. The essay concludes that two overall sets of factors are at play in explaining rural support and activism of a rightist or leftist nature. These are 1) background factors including the context of economic and social relations and the nature of land tenure and 2) foreground factors including thye nature of political leadership, organizational style and skill and the kind of rhetoric used to attract and motivate rural followers. Based upon these comparisons of rural political activism and scrutiny of the European and Latin American cases, the essay concludes that rural dwellers are neither naturally fascists nor naturalleyrevolutionaries. Rather, their activism and heir electoral support can be moved in either direction depending upon the preexisting social and economic background and upon the skill and style of leaders attempting to win rural support. We need to look carefully at the candidates running for office and at their organizational style and the nature of their rhetoric. Such foreground factors will be more likely to tell us whether or not their electoral support (and their behavior in office, for that matter) willresemble the cases of fascism and rightist authoritarianism of the early and midtwentieth century.