Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay in Comparative Perspective (Latin American Political Economy) 3031461649, 9783031461644

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LATIN AMERICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena Argentina, Chile and Uruguay in Comparative Perspective Felipe Monestier

Latin American Political Economy

Series Editors Juan Bogliaccini, Montevideo, Uruguay Aldo Madariaga, Santiago, Chile Sara Niedzwiecki, Santa Cruz, USA

Latin American Political Economy publishes new, relevant, and empirically-grounded scholarship that deepens our understanding of contemporary Latin American political economy and contributes to the formulation and evaluation of new theories that are both context-sensitive and subject to broader comparisons. Inspired by the need to provide new analytical perspectives for understanding the massive social, political, and economic transformations underway in Latin America, the series is directed at researchers and practitioners interested in resurrecting political economy as a primary research area in the developing world. In thematic terms, the series seeks to promote vital debate on the interactions between economic, political, and social processes; it is especially concerned with how findings may further our understanding of development models, the socio-political institutions that sustain them, and the practical problems they confront. In methodological terms, the series showcases cross-disciplinary research that is empirically rich and sensitive to context and that leads to new forms of description, concept formation, causal inference, and theoretical innovation. The series editors welcome submissions that address patterns of democratic politics, dependency and development, state formation and the rule of law, inequality and identity, and global linkages.

Felipe Monestier

Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena Argentina, Chile and Uruguay in Comparative Perspective

Felipe Monestier Departamento de Ciencia Política Universidad de la República del Uruguay Montevideo, Uruguay

ISSN 2945-7076 ISSN 2945-7084 (electronic) Latin American Political Economy ISBN 978-3-031-46164-4 ISBN 978-3-031-46165-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Pobytov/gettyimages This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

To Cecilia

Acknowledgments

This book exists thanks to the support of a large number of people and institutions. In its original version, it was the thesis with which I completed my Ph.D. in political science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. It is, therefore, appropriate to thank first and foremost, the professors at the Institute of Political Science of that university. Among them, I must especially thank Juan Pablo Luna, who played his role as a supervisor with generosity, encouraging me to trust in my project. My personal and academic debt to him is enormous. During the course of Ph.D., this work benefited from the contribution of other professors. Julieta Suárez-Cao and Pierre Ostiguy made very useful comments and suggestions at different project stages. Evelyne Huber and Rodrigo Mardones were part of the thesis evaluation committee and performed this task rigorously and with generosity. Other students in the Ph.D. program helped me in many ways. Rafael Piñeiro encouraged me to undertake the Chilean adventure and was an indulgent and constructive reader of an early version of this text. Ana María Farías, Germán Bidegain, Malgorzata Lange, Antoine Maillet, Roody Reserve, and Sergio Toro commented on different parts of this research. They all helped me improve the final product and encouraged me to continue. Among all Ph.D. students, I owe a particularly great debt to Fernando Rosenblatt, whose intelligence, generosity, and inexhaustible energy made the thesis and this book possible.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I must also thank my colleagues in the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic, especially, my office colleagues Juan Andrés Moraes, Diego Luján, Alfonso Castiglia, and Nicolás Schmidt. Throughout these years, many colleagues gave me their comments and suggestions at seminars, congresses, conferences, and informal talks. At the risk of forgetting some names, I must mention Carlos Adrianzén, Santiago Anria, Florencia Antía, Juan Carlos Arellano, David Altman, Juan Bogliaccini, Jake Bowers, Daniel Buquet, Gerardo Caetano, Fabricio Carneiro, Rossana Castiglioni, Daniel Chasquetti, Carlos Demasi, Sebastián Etchemendy, Adolfo Garcé, Lucas González, Valentín Figueroa, Fernando Filgueira, Martín Freigedo, Carlos Freytes, Guillermo Fuentes, Jorge Lanzaro, Marcelo Leiras, Germán Lodola, Santiago López Cariboni, Camilo López, Andrés Malamud, Aldo Marchesi, Paula Muñoz, Victoria Murillo, Gabriel Negretto, Valeria Palanza, Verónica Pérez, Julio Pinto, Rosario Queirolo, José Rilla, Andrés Rius, Cristóbal Rovira, Lucía Selios, Nicolás Somma, Daniela Vairo, Verónica Valdivia, Guillermo Vázquez Franco, Manuel Vicuña Urrutia, Gabriel Vommaro and Jaime Yaffé. I am grateful to Cath Collins for translating and editing the thesis into English. At Palgrave Macmillan, I am grateful to Juan Bogliaccini, Aldo Madariaga, and Sara Niedzwiecki, members of the editorial board of the Latin American political economy series, for supporting this project and their thoughtful suggestions. Two anonymous reviewers made valuable comments and suggestions to the first version. Also, at Palgrave Macmillan, I am grateful to Lucy Everitt, Saranya Siva, Matthew Savin, and Henry Rodgers. An invaluable network of affection accompanied me along the way. First and foremost, my family—sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephewsall over the world. In Santiago, Nico, Rosi, Fernando, Yamhi, Carlos, Verónica, Pato, María Paz, Germán, Tefy, Piru, Eli, Sergio, Juan Pablo, Karina, Fefi and Magda. In Montevideo, Alejandra, Alicia, Allen, Andrés, Carmen, Claudia, Daniel, Florencia, Gabriel, Jorge, Juanjo, Lucía, Magda, Marcelo, Marina, Rafael, Tato, Vero, Virginia, Ximena, and Yaco. My children Mateo, Elisa, Clara, and Agustín know well that this book has come between us on weekends, holidays, and moments that should be for leisure and enjoyment. I thank them for their patience and hope they can also feel it was worth it. Finally, this book is dedicated to Cecilia Rossel. Her wisdom, intelligence, integrity, and generosity kept me afloat and brought me to safety. Nothing more and nothing less.

Contents

1

Introduction 1.1 Economic elites and political power 1.2 The Puzzle 1.3 The Argument 1.4 The Method References

1 3 5 7 10 14

2

An Explanation of Three Types of Links between Economic Elites and Parties 2.1 The Cohesion of Economic Elites 2.2 Mobilization of Popular Sectors 2.3 Causal Factors in Historical Junctures 2.3.1 The Independence Juncture 2.3.2 The First Democratization Juncture References

17 17 20 22 23 25 29

3

Chile: Economic Elites with Their Own Parties 3.1 The Colonial Roots of Elite Cohesion 3.2 The Independence Juncture: Cohesive Elites and Popular Demobilization 3.3 A Long and Stable Oligarchic Order 3.4 Gradual Democratization: Cohesion Above and Demobilization Below

31 33 39 44 49

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CONTENTS

3.5

The Functional Stability of Elite Forms of Political Involvement References 4

5

6

Argentina: Economic Elites Outside the Party System 4.1 Late Colonization and Territorial Fragmentation 4.2 The War of Independence: Fragmentation from Above, Mobilization from Below 4.3 The Long Road to Short-Lived Stability 4.4 Divided Elites, Popular Mobilization and Accelerated Democratization 4.5 Economic Elites and the Strategy of Politics Without Parties References

59 66 71 72 77 85 95 103 110

Uruguay: Economic Elites Within Polyclass Parties 5.1 Colonial Roots of Elite Weakness 5.2 The Independence Process: Popular Mobilization and Volatile Elites 5.3 Economic Elites and the Birth of a Stable Party System 5.4 The Period of Incorporation, Democracy, and Social Reformism 5.5 Economic Elites, Polyclass Parties, and Democracy References

115 116

Conclusions References

163 173

118 125 132 146 156

References

175

Index

191

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 2.1

The argument. Causal factors and Outcomes Operationalization and evidence to be sought for independent variables Causal sequences that explain variation in linkages between economic elites and political parties in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay

8 12

28

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

For her book on Chilean elites, historian María Rosa Stabili interviewed women descended from some of the country’s most notable upperclass families. One of her interviewees, recounting her lineage, made the following observation: “One of my forefathers, a Colonel Pereira, arrived in Chile with San Martín’s Liberating Army, leaving the rest of his family behind in Buenos Aires. They were well connected… but he arrived here alone. All the Chilean Pereiras are descended from him. We’ve had priests, politicians, generals, all of them dedicated to public service […] It’s interesting to reflect that just that one person started a branch of the family tree that has produced so many politicians: Deputies, Senators in the Chilean parliament […] Whereas the Argentine Pereiras have never featured in public life. They’re very rich, [but] there isn’t a single example one could give” (Stabili 2003, 148–49).1 This vignette does more than just sketch out the destinies of two branches of the same family tree, one on either side of the Andes. It also offers an example of a phenomenon that is crucial for understanding political processes in Latin America: the ways in which economic elites relate with parties and the electoral arena. 1 Here and throughout, unless otherwise specified, translations from works listed in the bibliography as Spanish-language texts are the author’s own.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Monestier, Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena, Latin American Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1_1

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Wealth defines economic elite membership and wealth is a power resource that admits different strategies of use. But what are the factors that explain these differences? Latin America is one of the most unequal regions in the world. This means that its economic elites wield enormous power. However, this does not mean that the interests of the wealthy are completely safe from threats. Democratic or authoritarian regimes can adopt policies that are not aligned with the preferences of the upper classes. To avoid such outcomes, economic elites must find appropriate ways to channel their power resources. This implies maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of the allocation of their resources in different contexts. Under certain circumstances, they can be used to finance electoral campaigns, to influence public opinion through think tanks, to exert pressure on decision-makers through lobbying, and to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of resource allocation. Thus, under certain conditions, most Latin American economic elites have mobilized and continue to mobilize their resources to build national organizations. If the power of economic elites is a key dimension of the political economy, what are the factors that explain the specific ways in which economic elites channel their power? This book takes an in-depth look at this phenomenon, focusing on the links between economic elites and the political party system. The first step to analyze the linkages between economic elites and political parties is defining who is part of the former. As is frequent with widely used categories in the colloquial and academic language, the notion of economic elites has suffered the consequences of conceptual stretching (Sartori 1984). This book considers the wide definition of economic elites that includes large landowners, owners and top management of large corporations, capital owners, high-income professionals, and large multinational corporations.2 The book first establishes a novel approach to conceptualizing forms of political electoral involvement adopted by the economic elites of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay from the first democratization to the end of the C20th century. Then it develops a theory explaining the forms taken by this involvement in considered cases. The main argument is that 2 This notion of economic elites is based on a criterion of social stratification, but does not refer to a class, or to specific segments of a social class, in the Marxist sense of the term. The concept does not refer, either, to the existence of a unitary rational actor.

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the interaction between economic elite cohesion and popular sector mobilization at certain historical junctures determines the forms adopted by elite political involvement.

1.1

Economic elites and political power

The ways in which a few rich people construct and exercise political power have been one of the most recurrent objects of social phenomena since antiquity. However, studies that focus on economic elites and those that consider elites in a broad sense coincide with one crucial issue. Both justify their interest in the mismatch between the size of this social group— a minority by definition—and the disproportionate power they possess (DiCaprio 2012, 2). There is a broad consensus in modern social sciences on the foundational character of the studies on elites developed by Vilfredo Pareto (1979), Robert Michels (1979), and Gaetano Mosca (2004) at the beginning of the twentieth century. These authors argued that the formation of a ruling elite, including the wealthy, was an inevitable tendency in all societies. From their perspective, elites were characterized by their high concentration of power and their ability to reproduce. All three authors were especially skeptical about the possibility of changes that would lead to the elimination of elites and about the capacity of democracy to counteract the power of this privileged group. In the mid-twentieth century, scholars such as Charles Wright Mills (1956), Ralph Miliband (1969), and Elmer Schattschneider (1960) debated intensely with pluralists such as Robert Dahl (1958) about the influential capacity of economic elites. The former argued for the existence of a power elite composed of a triumvirate of groups formed by rulers, the military, and big businessmen. For them, this power elite controlled the main political and economic institutions, which allowed it to perpetuate itself as a dominant class. For Dahl and other pluralists, elites, including economic elites, controlled a disproportionate share of political power, but the ability to transform that power into effective influence was highly contingent and depended on contextual factors. Thus, “the actual political effectiveness of a group is a function of its potential for control and its potential for unity. Thus a group with a relatively low

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potential for control but a high potential for unity may be more politically effective than a group with a high potential for control but a low potential for unity” (Dahl 1958, 465).3 At the end of the 1980s, political sociologists such as Michael Burton and John Higley (Burton et al. 1991) discussed the relationship between elite unity and the stability of political regimes. In political science, without attempting to establish a theory of the political power of elites, many authors paid special attention to the role of economic elites in democratization processes (Di Tella 1971; Przeworski 1991; Rueschemeyer et al. 1992; R. B. Collier 1999; R. B. Collier and Collier 2002). Several of these studies pointed out the importance of the linkage of economic elites with political parties and electoral competition for democratic stability. For Collier and Collier, the results of the democratization processes in Latin America were strongly conditioned by the differences “in the degree and form of subordination of the reformers” to the power of economic elites (2002, 104). For Rueschemeyer Huber and Stephens, the “continued protection of the elite interests through the party system” (1992, 169). To a large extent, this work laid the ground for a body of research focused on the links between economic elites, political parties, and electoral competition and the creation of conservative parties in Latin America (Gibson 1996; Middlebrook 2000) and Europe (Ziblatt 2017). The political strategies deployed by elites for the protection of their interests—including direct involvement in electoral competition through parties—are the result of the calculation of the expected costs and benefits for each of the available strategies (Kalyvas 1996). However, such assessments are frequently affected by biases that cause errors and lead to reconsideration of the available options (Tversky and Kahneman 1974). A priori, the resources required to build a successful political party appear to be much greater than those required to finance part of an election campaign or to lobby a group of rulers (Levitsky et al. 2016; J. P. Luna et al. 2020). However, under certain circumstances, economic elites decide to pursue political action strategies with extremely high costs and uncertain returns. The results of these decisions define different forms of linkages between economic elites and political parties.

3 Italics in original.

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1.2

INTRODUCTION

5

The Puzzle

How can we explain the variations observed in how economic elites channel their political power? The varied ways in which economic elites mobilize their power resources have relevant effects on the defense of their interests and on a wide variety of phenomena such as the stability of political regimes, state power, economic and social development, and the institutionalization of parties and party systems, among others. This book identifies and explains three different ways used by the economic elites of three Latin American countries to channel their political power. The systematic comparison of the cases allows us to observe that the main difference between them refers to the type of links that the economic elites established with political parties and with the electoral arena. The types of links established by the economic elites with the political parties constitute the variable to be explained in this book. In the first type of linkage, the upper classes become directly involved in the electoral arena as the core constituency of parties that it has itself created, and which it uses as a first line of defense for its interests. This type of linkage fits the model of relations between business elites and politicians that authors such as Fairfield have called “partisan linkages”. Specifically, this type of linkage involves the creation of what authors such as Edward Gibson (1996), Kevin Middlebrook (2000), and Daniel Ziblatt (2017) call—in different contexts—"conservative parties”. For Gibson, a conservative or right-wing party is one that, although it manages to attract votes from various sectors of society, has a core constituency formed by the economic elite. The core constituency is defined as the most important group for the definition of the party agenda and the resource provision. Therefore, the core constituencies determine the party’s positions on the most relevant issues (Gibson 1996, 10). The second type of link is characterized by the lack of direct involvement of the economic elites in the parties and electoral competition. This does not imply that economic elites give up influencing the outcome of electoral processes and decision-making in the different branches of government. Instead, they pursue these objectives through actions that may include campaign financing, lobbying, the creation of business organizations and think tanks, corruption, or the formation of alliances with other powerful actors such as the Armed Forces. Tasha Fairfield has referred to these types of links between economic and political elites using labels such as “institutionalized consultation”, “recruitment into

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government”, and “informal ties” (2015, 28–37). Przeworski has rightly observed that these types of ties can develop under democratic regimes as well as under authoritarian regimes (1991, 68). The third type of link is characterized by the direct involvement of the economic elites in the parties and in the electoral competition without having their own party. In this case, the economic elites are directly involved in the parties and in the electoral competition, but they do so through polyclassist parties over which they have a more limited influence. In other words, in this type of linkages the economic elites are only part of the parties’ polyclassist core constituency. Consequently, the degree of convergence between the party program, the priority interests of the economic elites, and the political decisions finally adopted by the party is more uncertain and contingent. Figure 1.1 summarizes the three types of linkages identified. If my description is correct, the way in which economic elites channel their political power includes an alternative that has been overlooked by the literature on the links between economic elites, parties, and the electoral arena in both Latin America and the Caribbean (Gibson 1996; Middlebrook 2000) and in Europe (Gidron and Ziblatt 2019; Ziblatt 2017). Indeed, the literature that has analyzed the types of linkages observed in the relationship between economic elites and parties has coincided in identifying two of these three types of linkages: those that involve the creation of conservative parties and those that do not require direct involvement in parties and elections. The identification of a third type of linkage in which economic elites are directly involved in the electoral arena through polyclassist parties allows us to unpack regimes and processes that would otherwise be glossed into a single category. This variegated understanding can be used, for example, to observe and account for significant divergence between the trajectories of some of Type I: Participation in the Party System via a Conservative Party •An electorally relevant, institutionalized, conservative party exists, with an electoral base that stretches beyond the confines of the economic elite

Type II: Non-Participation in the Party System • Economic elites defend their interests outside the party system (via pressure groups, lobbying, and/or the armed forces)

Type III: Participation in a Party System Without a Conservative Party • Economic elites become part of existing polyclass parties

Fig. 1.1 Possible forms of political participation of economic elites

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INTRODUCTION

7

the region’s most stable democracies, such as Chile and Uruguay. Moreover, this new form of categorizing the political participation of elites offers elements that may help explain successful democratization in countries that have never seen the emergence of conservative parties (e.g., Uruguay). This new conceptualization thereby complements the literature that posits conservative parties as a condition favoring democratic stability (Rueschemeyer 1992). It also reinforces the idea that what really matters is the existence of a permanent presence of the elites in party structures, whether or not conservative parties exist.

1.3

The Argument

This book argues that the literature on the involvement of economic elites in the electoral arena has overlooked some types of empirically observable and theoretically relevant linkages. Consequently, the systematic comparison of the cases is oriented first to show the existence of the types of linkages between economic elites, parties, and elections that are observable in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. The main argument of the book is that the types of links observed are the result of a process that developed over almost two centuries and included two main historical junctures with their respective legacies. The first juncture refers to the period of the wars of independence and the birth of the new Latin American republics. I argue that this juncture defined the main attributes of the links between the economic elites and the political parties observed during most of the nineteenth century in each country, including the period of the so-called oligarchic republics, up to the first decades of the twentieth century. The second historical juncture is the period in which the countries underwent their first democratization, understood as the significant expansion of citizen participation and the establishment of effectively competitive electoral rules. The types of linkages observed in the three cases took shape in this juncture and remained essentially unchanged throughout the twentieth century. It is important to emphasize that this argument does not adopt the analytical framework from theories on critical juncture-dependent trajectories. My argument can be considered a soft, non-deterministic version of such interpretations, with no claim to external validity beyond the three cases analyzed. The argument is completed with the identification of two main explanatory factors, present in both historical junctures, which under

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certain specific combinations favored the formation of different types of links between the economic elites and the parties. These factors are the degree of cohesion of the economic elites and the level of mobilization of the popular sectors. Both will be analyzed in greater depth in Chapter 2 of this book. However, for the purposes of a synthetic description of the argument, the degree of cohesion of the economic elites is defined by the intensity of the conflicts within the upper classes. The greater the intensity of the distributive struggle between sectors of the economic elites, the lower the level of cohesion. On the other hand, the level of mobilization of the popular sectors refers to the extent of political participation of the popular sectors through formal or informal channels since the independence period. The higher the proportion of individuals from the popular sectors who engage in collective actions—either as informal militias or in other forms of activism—the higher the level of popular mobilization. Table 1.1 shows how these two causal factors combined during the first democratization and the type of linkages between economic elites and parties that were established and remained essentially stable at least until the end of the twentieth century. In the case of Chile (Type I), the combination of a relatively low level of popular mobilization and high cohesion of the economic elites led to a type of link in which the economic elites always had their own political parties. In Argentina (Type II), the combination of high levels of popular mobilization and low levels of cohesion of economic elites led to a type of linkage without direct involvement of economic elites in parties and elections. In the case of Uruguay (Type III), the combination of high levels of mobilization of the popular sectors and high levels of cohesion of Table 1.1 The argument. Causal factors and Outcomes Level of Economic Elite Cohesion

Popular Sector Mobilization

High

Low

High

Low

Participation in the party system, but not through a Conservative Party (Type III, Uruguay) Participation in the party system through a Conservative Party (Type I, Chile)

Non-participation in the party system (Type II, Argentina) N/A

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the economic elites configured a type of link in which the economic elites participated directly in the parties and the electoral competition without having their own party. As can be seen, in my argument the results are explained by the values adopted by the causal factors and by the way in which they interact in different countries and situations (Mahoney 2008). For this reason, when analyzing how the factors interact to produce the specific results, I pay special attention to the processes carried out by the economic and political elites of each of the countries over time, with a focus on the sequence of main events (Mahoney and Thelen 2010, 20). The different combinations of factors are important but so is the sequence of those combinations, which can lead to differences in the results. For example, if during the independence juncture there is a combination of low cohesion of the economic elite and high mobilization of the popular sectors, the emergence of viable and electorally relevant conservative parties will be less likely. This is an example of a temporally ordered sequence, which contains a causal relationship between the sequence of events and their outcome (Falleti and Mahoney 2015, 215–16). The argument not only considers the sequence of events, but also the pace at which they unfold. For example, the forms of political action of the economic elites before the first democratization affected their ability to influence, among other aspects, the speed with which the expansion of citizenship occurred and with which they introduced rules that ensured fair elections. In Argentina, the combination of accelerated democratization with very loose economic elites favored the defeat of upper-class parties and, in the medium and long term, stimulated the abandonment of their direct involvement in parties and elections. Although it is argued that the type of links that the economic elites established with the parties and the electoral arena in the two main historical junctures remained as stable legacies for relatively long periods, this does not deny the possibility of changes. For this reason, the chapters dedicated to the analysis of the cases pay special attention to the attempts that sought to significantly modify the forms of political action of the economic elites.

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1.4

The Method

To illustrate the argument, I develop a methodological strategy based on comparative historical analysis. First, I seek to describe the three cases and, more specifically, whether each one of the three cases demonstrates the principal characteristics of one of the types. I attend to both confirmatory evidence and elements that might suggest alternative explanations. Should my hypotheses prove correct, the evidence will show that Chile presents conservative parties whose principal constituency consists of members of economic elites, who take an active part in decision-making and control party actions in defense of their interests. Argentina should present a case in which economic elites defend their interests using a range of strategies, but resort to direct intervention in party politics sparingly, if at all. Uruguay’s economic elites would meanwhile be shown to take part in politics via polyclass parties that are not controlled by them, rather than via conservative parties. Second, I explore empirical evidence in order to explain the variation between the three cases. The study proceeds via a systematic and contextualized comparison of historical processes in three countries— Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay—to explain the origins, and persistence, of the divergent forms of political participation found among Latin America’s economic elites. The sequences followed in each of three similar cases are compared, in order to identify factors that explain the reproduction of different forms of political involvement of economic elites. The type of comparison follows the traditions of comparative historical analysis, meaning that it demonstrates three fundamental characteristics: one, causal analysis as its principal focus of interest; two, particular emphasis on the study of historical processes; three, utilization of systematic, contextualized comparison among a small number of similar and contrasting cases (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003, 6). The focus is on generating an explanation for certain results in a limited set of cases: that is, on explaining why we see type I in Chile, type II in Argentina, and type III in Uruguay. Thus, throughout our three case studies, inferences are drawn relying on the combination of historical comparativism and case studies as the analytical tools for establishing how the interaction between elite cohesiveness and popular sector mobilization can produce each of the three outcomes. The focus on causality applied in the three case studies improves the quality of the resulting inferences as to the validity of our

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theory regarding which combinations of economic elite cohesiveness and popular sector mobilization produce which results. In keeping with the conventions of comparative historical analysis, the study works with a small number of cases which, while similar, also offer some contrast. Case selection was based on the three different values Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay present in the dependent variable I seek to explain: forms of political action of economic elites. In other words, the cases have been selected because they represent three types of links between economic elites, political parties, and the electoral arena. While these three cases differ in the dependent variable, they are relatively similar regarding baseline social, political, and economic conditions. This selection is crucial for a comparative historical analysis design that allows us to determine whether the interaction of independent variables produces different outcomes in different cases. It is important to note that while the theoretical argument developed may fit other cases, the descriptive and causal inferences presented here are limited to the three cases observed. In this sense, the results cannot be generalized to a larger universe of cases. Table 1.2 shows how the two central independent variables (economic elite cohesiveness, and popular sector mobilization) were operationalized and sets out what evidence was to be observed in relation to each dimension when analyzing each of the three countries: Evidence was principally drawn from secondary sources, particularly work from a range of social scientific disciplines—history, sociology, economics, and political science—that have carried out case studies or comparative studies of forms of political organization among economic elites. Studies looking at change and continuity of the material bases of the economic elite, or at their links to the state and to other social groups, have also been consulted. Following Skocpol (1979) the central difference between the analysis performed here and the historiographies that were consulted for it, is that the present study seeks to go beyond mere description, to establish causal relationships among the phenomena under study. The analysis was carried out by first identifying general historiographical works providing an account of each country’s history. Next, particular attention was paid to studies that have focused on historical periods generally considered to be tipping points or moments of rupture in the countries’ social, political, and economic trajectories. The emphasis on

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Table 1.2 Operationalization and evidence to be sought for independent variables Concepts

Dimensions

Low

High

Economic elite cohesiveness

Power disputes within economic elites

Antagonistic demands on state economic policy, proceeding from segments of the elite whose wealth is based on different economic activities (e.g., mining versus agriculture)

Antagonistic demands on state economic policy, proceeding from the existence of segments of the elite whose wealth is based on different economic activities, are absent Insurrection of one segment of the elite against others is not frequent, and when it occurs, is sporadic and of low intensity Marriage strategies promote the integration of new and old economic elites

Frequent and intense insurrection of one segment of the elite against others occurs

Family integration of economic elites

Popular Sector Mobilization

Participation of popular sectors in wars of independence Insurrections with popular participation

Segregation based on ethnic, religious, or territorial cleavages impedes family integration among economic elites Scarce participation of Significant popular sectors in participation of wars of independence popular sectors in wars of independence Insurrections with Insurrections with popular participation popular are infrequent and of participation are low intensity frequent and of high intensity

(continued)

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Table 1.2 (continued) Concepts

Dimensions

Low

High

Mobilization of the urban working class

Low levels of unionization and mobilization of the urban working class at the beginning of the C20th, or localized mobilization only, met with repression Limited electoral mobilization of popular sectors (limits on suffrage)

High levels of unionization and mobilization of the urban working class at the beginning of the C20th

Electoral mobilization of popular sectors

Broad electoral mobilization of popular sectors (few limits on suffrage)

this section of the literature was driven precisely by the need to identify factors that explain continuity and change in forms of economic elite political organization. The amount of evidence for a particular issue was considered sufficient when a certain saturation point was reached in the findings. The remainder of the text is organized as follows. Chapter 2 presents in detail each of the components of the argument, establishes their links to various contributions in the literature, and presents how the components interact to produce the results it seeks to explain. Chapters 3–5 present, in turn, the cases of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Each of these chapters considers a historical period spanning several centuries, from colonial times to the end of the C20th. The analysis of the cases over time is structured in four stages. Two of them correspond to moments of significant political changes and high contingency. The other two longer stages correspond to periods of greater stability that follow the trajectories determined in the preceding periods. The most contingent and decisive stages of the trajectories followed by the link between economic elites and political parties correspond to the period of the independence wars and the period of the first democratization. Through the intensive use of a large number and various historiographical sources, the book describes the level of cohesion of the economic elites and the level of mobilization of the popular sectors in each stage. On this empirical basis, these chapters illustrate how the interaction between both factors shaped the different links

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between the national economic elites and affected political parties and the electoral arena. Chapter 6 discusses the main findings and conclusions, sketches the limitations of the study, and identifies some issues that would particularly repay further research.

References Burton, Michael, Richard Gunther, and John Higley. 1991. Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe: An Overview. In Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe, ed. John Higley and Richard Gunther, 323–348. New York: Cambridge University Press. Collier, Ruth Berins. 1999. Paths toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. Collier, Ruth Berins, and David Collier. 2002. Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Dahl, Robert. 1958. A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model. American Political Science Review 52 (2): 463–469. Di Tella, Torcuato. 1971. La Búsqueda de La Fórmula Política Argentina. Desarrollo Económico 42/44: 317–325. DiCaprio, Alisa. 2012. Introduction: The Role of Elites in Economic Development. In The Role of Elites in Economic Development, ed. Alice H. Amsden, Alisa DiCaprio, and James A. Robinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fairfield, Tasha. 2015. Private Wealth and Public Revenue in Latin America: Business Power and Tax Politics. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Falleti, Tulia, and James Mahoney. 2015. The Comparative Sequential Method. In Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis, ed. James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, 211–239. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/978131627 3104/type/book. December 9, 2022. Gibson, Edward L. 1996. Class and Conservative Parties: Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gidron, Noam, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2019. Center-Right Political Parties in Advanced Democracies. Annual Review of Political Science 22 (1): 17–35. Kalyvas, Stathis N. 1996. The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Levitsky, Steven, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, eds. 2016. Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Luna, Juan Pablo, Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez, Fernando Rosenblatt, and Gabriel Vommaro. 2020. Political Parties, Diminished Subtypes, and Democracy. Party Politics. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/135406882092 3723. June 26, 2020. Mahoney, James. 2008. Toward a Unified Theory of Causality. Comparative Political Studies 41: 412–437. Mahoney, James, and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds. 2003. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mahoney, James, and Kathleen Ann Thelen, ed. 2010. Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Michels, Robert. 1979. Los partidos políticos: un estudio sociológico de las tendencias oligárquicas de la democracia moderna. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. Middlebrook, Kevin J., ed. 2000. Conservative Parties, the Right, and Democracy in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Miliband, Ralph. 1969. The State and Capitalist Society. New York: Basic Books. Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mosca, Gaetano. 2004. La clase política. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Pareto, Vilfredo. 1979. The Rise and Fall of the Elites. New York: Arno Press. Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber, and John D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sartori, Giovanni, ed. 1984. Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage. Schattschneider, Elmer. 1960. The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/978051181 5805/type/book. December 9, 2022. Stabili, Maria Rosaria. 2003. El sentimiento aristocrático: elites chilenas frente al espejo (1860–1960). Santiago de Chile: Ed. Andrés Bello. Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. 1974. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science 185: 1124–1131. Ziblatt, Daniel. 2017. Conservative Parties and the Birth of Modern Democracy in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 2

An Explanation of Three Types of Links between Economic Elites and Parties

The present study argues that the differences observed in the forms of political involvement of national economic elites are a product of the interaction of two contingent factors—the degree of cohesion of the material interests of the upper classes and levels of popular sectors’ political mobilization—at two different historical junctures—the wars of independence and the first democratization. The following sections of this chapter develop the different components of the argument and analyze how their interaction in the two historical conjunctures under consideration contributed to consolidating different forms of linkages between economic elites, parties, and electoral competition.

2.1

The Cohesion of Economic Elites

The cohesion or unity of elites in general and of economic elites is an issue that has been at the center of the debate of social class theories, power elite theories, and pluralist theories. Despite their differences, these theoretical strands have recognized that the degree of unity of the privileged minorities—political, social, or economic—that occupy the highest positions at the top of the social structure has crucial consequences in terms of their ability to exercise power. However, each of them makes different assumptions regarding the problem of unity or cohesion. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Monestier, Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena, Latin American Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1_2

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Classical elite theory (Michels 1979; Mosca 2004; Pareto 1979) posited that one of the main features of elites was their high degree of internal “integration” or “cohesion”. This attribute was considered a key to explain the stability and perpetuation in power of the ruling elite. This fundamental assumption was assumed and developed by authors such as Joseph Schumpeter (1942) in his theory of democracy. In fact, the most recent academic production of the continuators of the elitist theory (Best and Higley 2018; Higley and Gunther 1991) has placed the problem of elite integration and differentiation at the center of their concerns. During the 1960s and 1970s, fierce polemics between power elite theorists (Mills 1956), pluralists (Dahl 1958), and neo-Marxists (C. Lindblom 1977) revolved around their respective assumptions about elite unity. While the neo-Marxists considered the unity of the capitalist class as a basic assumption, the pluralists postulated the existence of multiple elites whose degree of integration or cohesion was contingent and determined by contextual factors. For authors such as Fairfield (2015) the degree of cohesion of economic elites constitutes one of the basic resources that determine the effectiveness of what—based on Mills (1956) and Miliband (1969)—she calls “instrumental power”. Defined as the capacity to carry out deliberate political actions in order to influence government decisions. The instrumental power of economic elites is differentiated—and complemented—by structural power (C. Lindblom 1977; C. E. Lindblom 1982; Przeworski and Wallerstein 1988) which refers to the limits that operate on the decisions of the rulers based on their hypotheses about the way in which policies can impact foreign investment, employment generation, economic growth, among other dimensions. Structural power can be considered a de facto power that does not require collective action by economic elites and is therefore independent of their degree of internal cohesion. Elite cohesion is an important variable in studies on a wide range of economic, social, and political issues. It is also an important variable in the discussion of the forms of political action of economic elites and their links with parties. In this book, the degree of cohesion of the economic elites is defined by the level of integration and complementarity in the material basis of the wealth of the upper class. As has been established, in this study the concept of economic elites refers to a plural group formed by large landowners, owners and top

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management of large companies, owners of capital, high-income professionals, and large multinational companies. Diverse sources of wealth may be concentrated within a somewhat circumscribed and homogeneous social group or may give rise to elite subgroups with relatively sparse connections between them. Elite cohesion is not, however, determined simply by the number of sectors or activities that coexist within the elite, but rather by the degree of complementarity or antagonism that exists among its members. For example, during a good proportion of the C19th, Uruguay livestock ranching and the meat curing industry operated as complementary activities.1 By contrast, in the same period, industrial concerns in some parts of the Argentine interior suffered the consequences of a policy of trade liberalization promoted by landowning sectors from the La Pampa region. In other words, the focal point of attention is on the dynamic produced within the economic elite and due to economic interests. This should not, either, be taken as implying that a cohesive economic elite must always act as a unitary rational actor. Even when an economic elite is cohesive in the ways posited here, it operates with incomplete information and in contexts that impose tensions between long-term and short-term costs and benefits. It is also important to note that the degree of cohesion or division of the economic elite is not immutable, depending as it does on structural factors and on the agency exercised by different segments of the group in different contexts. Cohesion or division may therefore vary over time, inter alia due to the actions of group members themselves. In sum, the level of cohesion of the economic elite can be thought of as a continuum. At one end, representing maximum cohesiveness, we can observe elites that integrate their interests in a harmonious fashion in all major areas of economic activities. At the opposite end, we see elites who are engaged in zero-sum games, whose wealth is predicated on economic activities that are not easily compatible with one another. What, then, is the relationship between the degree of cohesion of economic elites and the forms of interaction that they establish with political parties? In this book, I argue that the more cohesive the economic elite of a particular country, the higher the probability that it will defend its interests via political parties. When the upper classes are not divided by 1 The divisions produced by the existence of antagonistic economic interests can amplify other types of cleavage—regional, ethnic, ideological, or religious—that also act to exacerbate conflicts rooted in tensions over distribution.

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distributive conflicts, the degree of internal consensus as to what policies they require from the government is higher, and incentives for promoting exclusionary practices among sectors of the economic elite are reduced. The upper classes may be deeply divided by religious, ethnic, territorial, even partisan factors, etc., but if their material interests cohere, it is more likely that they might manage their conflicts via electoral competition. Absent serious distributive conflicts, party organizations acquire prominence and legitimacy as suitable instruments for channeling competition for political power. The higher the levels of effective competition in elections fought by the different segments of these highly cohesive economic elites, the stronger the political parties created for this purpose, and the more likely they are to persist over time.

2.2

Mobilization of Popular Sectors

The cohesiveness of economic elites is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for parties to become the principal vehicle for the defense of their interests. I argue in this study that the level of mobilization of popular sectors2 is the second factor that proves decisive for determining the forms taken by the political involvement of the upper classes. This factor refers to the involvement of popular sectors in the processing of social and political conflict. As Collier and Handlin (2009) argue the “term ‘popular sectors’ is widely understood in Latin America to refer

2 Drawing attention to the importance of this factor does not mean ignoring the highly

diverse range of situations that it may encompass. It is possible, for example, to differentiate according to the place in the social structure where control of mobilization is located. This allows us to distinguish between mobilization activated and controlled from above, and mobilization from below. Mobilization from above describes events in which the subordination of subaltern social groups remains unaltered, even in circumstances in which these groups are politically activated by a leader or by another social group. In mobilizations from below, the political involvement of non-elite groups becomes an example of collective action in defense of particular interests. While these and other distinctions have theoretical and empirical implications, these implications are not developed further in the present study. Our concern is rather to determine whether popular sectors are present or absent from political competition in the two historical junctures we have identified, and in subsequent trajectories. As the case studies developed in subsequent chapters will show the political activation of these sectors tends to manifest itself in different ways over time. In the C19th, via irregular armed forces and/or bands of electoral supporters. In the C20th, as social movements of peasants and/or urban workers (Collier and Collier 2002).

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to groups within the lower strata of the income hierarchy, which constitute the majority in most Latin American countries” (Collier and Handlin 2009, 542). Like them, I use the term popular sectors interchangeably to refer also to the “working classes” and the “lower classes”. Popular sectors are heterogeneous, and their specific composition varies in different historical and geographical contexts. Throughout Latin America, the composition of the popular sectors has changed from the colonial to the post-independence period, during the great migratory flows of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries or as a consequence of changes in the economic structure. In Latin America from the colonial period until the end of the nineteenth century, the popular sectors consisted primarily of all people who were not considered “white”. They also included the poor, servants, the unemployed or temporarily employed, wanderers, unskilled artisans, illiterate or poorly educated rural and urban wage earners, small peasants, and low-ranking soldiers. This is the scope of this notion when this book analyses the level of mobilization of the popular sectors during the independence period and its legacy. At the end of the nineteenth century, the composition of the Latin American popular sectors underwent important changes due to the growth of the urban proletariat, which led to the inclusion of the “social question” in the political agenda. This period also saw the growth of the urban lower-middle classes, which also formed part of the popular sectors. As Collier and Handlin argue the “inclusion of the lower-middle classes among the popular sector is standard usage” (R. B. Collier and Handlin 2009).3 Analyses of the political trajectories of Latin American countries tend to pay attention to popular sector mobilization during periods of the irruption of what is known as the “social question”, associated with the growth of the state apparatus, processes of urbanization and industrialization, and the political activation of the middle and the working classes. All of this set the scene for the political incorporation of nonelite sectors over the course of the first half of the C20th (Collier and Collier 2002; Kurtz 2013; Rueschemeyer 1992; Scully 1992). The history of the region nonetheless features episodes of political mobilization of broad segments of the non-elite population well before this juncture: 3 Although the text uses the term “lower classes”, the notion of the popular classes does not imply a definition based on class criteria in the Marxist sense.

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including during and after the cycle of the wars of independence, and the ensuing period of political organization of the new republics. In this study, I therefore argue that it is an error to limit analysis of popular sector mobilization to a relatively circumscribed period of the C20th. There is no compelling theoretical or empirical justification for overlooking the relevance of popular sector agency during the period of time that elapsed between the wars of independence, and the beginning of mass politics. I also argue that the degree of political mobilization of popular sectors was crucial, not only in the C20th but also over the course of the C19th. In practice, nation state formation is determined by structural conditions, some of which can be traced back to the colonial period and beyond, but also by the preferences of a limited range of relevant actors. In this scenario, economic elites play a central role, but so too do popular sectors. In reality, while the exclusion of non-upper-class social groups is a dominant pattern in C19th Latin American politics, this is neither an invariable reality nor an absolute truth. For present purposes, a starting premise will be that popular sector political mobilization occurring before the final decades of the C19th, when it existed at all, frequently took the form of armed insurrection promoted both from above and from below (Silva and Rossi 2018, 13). Observable variations in levels of popular sector mobilization depended, inter alia, on the type of labor power that predominated in rural sectors; the geographical concentration or dispersion of the labor force; the intensity of elite subordination of popular sectors, and the militarization of society during the wars of independence (Halperín Donghi 1988). Once urbanization and industrialization began at the end of the C19th, new social movements and new forms of working-class mobilization emerged. In some countries—albeit only in a minority—mobilization aimed at improving working conditions was accompanied by demands for political rights. In other cases, sectors of the elite that were excluded from power took advantage of this mobilization to demand reforms that made politics more competitive.

2.3

Causal Factors in Historical Junctures

The theory set out in this study underlines the relevance of cohesion of economic elites and popular mobilization of popular sectors as key factors in explaining the forms taken by the political involvement of Latin American economic elites. It also argues that it is the interaction between

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these two variables that explains the type of linkage that is established between the upper classes and the party system. I show that there are two particular historical moments—independence and initial democratization—, during which this interaction defines the subsequent trajectories of forms of political involvement by economic elites. 2.3.1

The Independence Juncture

The first moment unfolded over the first few decades of the C19th, when Latin America was experiencing the crisis of its colonial order, wars of independence, and the formation of its modern republics. The crisis of the colonial order, triggered by exogenous factors to do with developments in Europe, served as a permissive condition (Soifer 2010) for the creation of a juncture strongly contingent. Meanwhile, “productive” conditions (Soifer 2010) were supplied by the circulation of Enlightenment ideas, against a backdrop of increasing dissatisfaction on the part of the criollo elites with the conditions imposed by Spain. These conditions provoked insurrections and supplied their leaders with a set of general principles for the political order that was to replace the colonial regime. Less than three decades later, the Spanish colonial regime had fallen apart and was beginning to be replaced by independent states. The new states instituted constitutions and created presidential republics amidst a host of internal and external threats (Drake 2009; Halperín Donghi 1988; Smith 2005). This context—the coexistence of highly cohesive economic elites, with scarce popular sector mobilization—produced a stable political order that was inclusive at the level of the higher social strata. Any intra-elite differences that might arise were processed via electoral competition between parties that they themselves had created, and still controlled. This type of regime allowed ethnic, religious, regional, and other differences to be administered within the economic elite, which continued to be strongly integrated in terms of its material interests. At the same time, this regime promoted a minimal level of political participation among popular sectors, which were controlled and instrumentalized by the elite at election time. This political dynamic contributed to the institutionalization of the political parties of the economic elite, which became consolidated as electoral organizations with nationwide reach. This in turn increased their capacity

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to compete effectively when the cycle of mass politics began in the early C20th.4 I hypothesize that this is the combination of factors that arose in Chile. Where the economic elite was, instead, only weakly cohesive, and where there was intense popular mobilization, the prevailing political dynamic came to be the exclusion of defeated factions. This introduced a factor of permanent instability into the system as a whole. Moreover, the lack of economic elite cohesion and the early, intense, mobilization of popular sectors stimulated the conversion of the military leaders of the wars of independence into caudillo-style leaders. Committed to defending their quota of power by any means necessary, these figures were correspondingly not well disposed to the notion of submitting to the rules of the game of electoral competition and checks and balances between branches of the state. In some cases, these leaders established alliances with factions of the economic elite, in order to impose their will on other segments of the elite. This political dynamic created conditions that were inimical to the consolidation of electoral competition as a means of managing conflict. In addition, intra-elite exclusion and the lack of competitiveness of the system reduced incentives to bet consistently on the development of party organizations with national reach. Accordingly, once the cycle of mass politics began, the fragility of elite parties, and their lack of capacity for efficient electoral competition, would become apparent. I hypothesize that this is the type of interaction seen in the case of Argentina. Lastly, it is possible to discern another combination of factors occurring during the independence era. This combination is observed in cases where an early and intense popular mobilization coincided with an economic elite that was cohesively from the point of view of its material interests but weakened and vulnerable due to structural factors and the effects of the crisis of the colonial order. The conflicts within the economic elite did not, here, correspond to cleavages between groups active in different sectors of the economy; nor was the wealth of the upper classes being accrued in incompatible (antagonistic) ways. Rather, we can observe a tendency toward the atomization of short-term interests owing to disputes centered on basic issues such as land titles. In these cases, the economic elite’s countervailing power was too weak to 4 Constituting the optimal route to polyarchy, in the terms proposed by Robert Dahl (1971).

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prevent caudillos from dominating the political scene almost continuously throughout the C19th, mobilizing popular sectors as armed followers and electoral supporters. The interaction of these factors stimulated the creation of more or less stable groups of political rivals, never under the permanent control of the economic elite despite the latter’s best efforts to eliminate the influence of the caudillos. At the end of this process, the upper classes opted for the only realistic means of obtaining some level of political influence: signing up to one or more of the existing rival groups. This created a situation that would be correspondingly difficult to roll back once an economic elite per se was finally consolidated. The beginning of mass politics therefore found elites inserted into existing parties that they did not control, attempting to exert influence over their leaders. I hypothesize that this combination of factors was the one that prevailed in the case of Uruguay. In sum, during this independence era, the degree of cohesiveness of the economic elite and levels of popular sector mobilization combine to define three possible political trajectories which determine the conditions under which initial democratization takes place. 2.3.2

The First Democratization Juncture

The second key moment corresponds to the period of expansion of citizenship that gave rise to the cycle of democratization and mass politics in Latin America. Without unduly glossing over some important differences of detail, we might treat this cycle as having begun across the entire region during the early decades of the C20th, as a sometimes more, sometimes less, accelerated process, over which elites exercised varying degrees of control. In this book I argue that the form in which this process came about, and its results, are strongly conditioned by the trajectories initiated in the independence era; and then are once again affected by the particular combination of elite cohesiveness and popular sector mobilization that prevails in this second phase. Countries that went through the independence juncture with cohesive economic elites and un-mobilized popular sectors followed a trajectory of stabilization and consolidation of competitive political regimes, with institutionalized party systems and a strong presence of parties whose core constituency was the upper class. In these cases, the process of widening citizenship came about gradually and over a long period, according to a rhythm determined by the dynamics of competition between sectors

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of the elite, plus a lack of willingness to make concessions to non-elite outgroups. Democracies were stable, but there was a high level of control over, and subordination of, the popular sectors. If my predictions are borne out, Chile would be a case in point. By contrast, where the juncture around independence produced political systems where intra-elite conflict led some sectors of the elite to exclude others, and where elites did not construct stable, electorally relevant parties, the expansion of citizenship was more rapid and less controlled. The upper classes were accordingly incapable of acting effectively, in an ever more competitive electoral scenario. The result was a decline in the number and fortunes of parties of the economic elite, which therefore ceased to be able to defend its interests through electoral competition. In the mid to long term, successive electoral defeats pushed this social sector to prioritize other strategies for defending its interests, reducing the legitimacy of the party system and of democratic institutions. In these cases, democracy was basically unstable. Cycles of inclusion and expansion of popular sector rights—through the action of populist movements—alternated with periods of authoritarian regimes or restricted democracies, with the state under corporatist control. My hypothesis is that this is the configuration that explains the Argentine case. Finally, in countries in which highly mobilized popular sectors coexisted with a weakened economic elite, the result was an unstable political system, with strong protagonism from caudillos and party organizations with polyclass constituencies. The consolidation of a robust economic elite came late in the day, and this elite was not able to displace caudillos and their support bases in order to regain control over the party system. As an alternative, it promoted the stabilization of the system by joining parties and pushing for changes to the agenda of political competition that increased its capacity for influence. The polyclass nature of the parties that elites joined prevented the emergence of competitive oligarchic regimes in these countries. In these cases, electoral guarantees and the expansion of citizenship arrived together, in a short space of time. Over the long term, the permanent presence of economic elites in parties that they never completely controlled produced stable and highly inclusive democracies. If my theory is correct, Uruguay should follow this pattern. In stylized form, my theory holds that in Chile and Uruguay, the democratization juncture defines a mode of political participation that will hold steady across the C20th, and which is characterized by the participation of economic elites in the party system in two different formats: in

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Chile, via conservative parties; and in Uruguay, via polyclass, non-elitecontrolled parties. In both countries, this represents a reinforcement of the pattern produced in the period immediately following the independence juncture. In Argentina, by contrast, democratization determines a new format for upper-class political participation, one in which this class abandons the party system as a space relevant for the defense of their interests. This represents a change to the form of elite participation, and to the oligarchic political order that elites had managed to construct after the independence era. Table 2.1 represents the causal processes that, according to my theory, took place during both junctures and in the subsequent trajectory of each of the three countries. In sum, the central conceptual and descriptive contribution of my theory is that it allows for the emergence of formats for elite political participation that are not currently found in the literature, thereby going beyond approaches that reduce elite political participation to the presence or absence of significant, stable conservative parties. The alternative conceptualization presented here therefore aims to supersede the limitations of a literature focused exclusively on the presence or absence of conservative parties, and which treats this binary as the only feature relevant for describing the political action of Latin American economic elites. In terms of its explanatory power, the theory provides an argument regarding two factors—upper-class cohesiveness and popular sector mobilization—that account for variation in the ways economic elites are politically involved with party systems, as well as for change and continuity in this involvement over time. In consonance with previous research (Gibson 1996), the theory presented here brings together structural factors that stretch back to the colonial period and the political dynamics of the C19th. It ranks these factors in order of importance and uses them to explain forms of political action adopted by economic elites during the C20th. This allows us to see divergent trajectories as the outcome of a causal mechanism in which extremely contingent periods are followed by phases of equilibrium.

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Table 2.1 Causal sequences that explain variation in linkages between economic elites and political parties in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay

Chile

Argentina

Uruguay

Independence period

Trajectory

Little renewal of economic elites during the independence process, little relative autonomy of leaders, revolutionary soldiers, little militarization of society, and little involvement of popular sectors in independence conflicts Heterogeneity in the levels of renewal of the economic elites during the independence process. Heterogeneity in the material base of wealth between and within regions. Heterogeneity in the perception of egalitarianism between regions. High level of militarization and popular mobilization

Early and stable oligarchic regime led by economic elites produces strong state institutions. High exclusion of popular sectors. Competitive party system with early institutionalized conservative parties

Renewal of the economic elites— especially in the commercial sector— during the independence process. Economic base of the elites is relatively homogeneous. Weakening of the political power of the economic elites against caudillos with a high level of autonomy. High militarizat ion and mobilization of popular sectors, especially in rural areas

(i) Political instability and state weakness. Intense and exclusive intraelite competition. Caudillista leaderships and popular mobilization. (ii) Political stability and state consolidation. Oligarchic regime (with a Conservative Party) exclusive at the intra-elite level and at the popular level Recurring competition between caudillos with popular mobilization produces strong party identities. Elites fail in the attempt to exclude caudillos; state weakness forces economic elites to become involved in parties. There is no oligarchic regime

Democratization period Highly cohesive economic elites with strong conservative parties regulate the gradual process of incorporation of the working class. Intense and focused popular mobilization, heavily repressed

Result Economic elites regularly participate in the party system through conservative parties, with strong veto power

Reformist pressure from excluded elites and mobilization of the working class produces accelerated democratization. Economic elites remain divided. Fragmentation and loss of relevance of the Conservative Party

Economic elites with no relevant links to the party system. They use other strategies in defense of their interests

Cohesive but partisan divided economic elites reinforce incorporation to face reformist threat and incipient mobilization of urban working sectors. Failed attempts to create conservative parties. Agreed and rapid democratization

Economic elites regularly participate in the party system through polyclas s parties

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References Best, Heinrich, and John Higley, eds. 2018. The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Collier, Ruth Berins, and David Collier. 2002. Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Collier, Ruth Berins, and Samuel Handlin. 2009. Introduction: Popular Representation on the Interest Arena. In Reorganizing Popular Politics: Participation and the New Interest Regime in Latin America, ed. Ruth Berins Collier and Samuel Handlin, 3–31. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Dahl, Robert. 1958. A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model. American Political Science Review 52 (2): 463–469. ———. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Drake, Paul W. 2009. Between Tyranny and Anarchy: A History of Democracy in Latin America, 1800-2006. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Fairfield, Tasha. 2015. Private Wealth and Public Revenue in Latin America: Business Power and Tax Politics. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Gibson, Edward L. 1996. Class and Conservative Parties: Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Halperín Donghi, Tulio. 1988. Historia Contemporánea de América Latina. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Higley, John, and Richard Gunther, eds. 1991. Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe. 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/978 1139173902/type/book. June 19, 2023. Kurtz, Marcus J. 2013. Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective: Social Foundations of Institutional Order. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lindblom, Charles. 1977. Politics and Markets. New York: Basic Books. Lindblom, Charles E. 1982. The Market as Prison. The Journal of Politics 44 (2): 324–336. Michels, Robert. 1979. Los partidos políticos: un estudio sociológico de las tendencias oligárquicas de la democracia moderna. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. Miliband, Ralph. 1969. The State and Capitalist Society. New York: Basic Books. Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mosca, Gaetano. 2004. La clase política. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Pareto, Vilfredo. 1979. The Rise and Fall of the Elites. New York: Arno Press. Przeworski, Adam, and Michael Wallerstein. 1988. Structural Dependence of the State on Capital. American Political Science Review 82 (1): 11–29.

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Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber, and John D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper Perennial. Scully, Timothy. 1992. Rethinking the Center. Party Politics in Nineteenth & Twentierth Century Chile. Standford: Standford University Press. Silva, Eduardo, and Federico M. Rossi, eds. 2018. Reshaping the Political Arena in Latin America: From Resisting Neoliberalism to the Second Incorporation. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Smith, Peter. 2005. Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative Perspective. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Soifer, Hillel David. 2010. The Causal Logic of Critical Junctures. http://www. concepts-methods.org/Files/WorkingPaper/PM%2024%20Soifer.pdf.

CHAPTER 3

Chile: Economic Elites with Their Own Parties

Historically, the Chilean economic elites have been characterized by their involvement in the electoral arena through political parties (Garretón 2000; Gil 1966, 56; Scully 1992, 210). Chile’s richest sectors have consistently pursued political action and the defense of their interests via conservative parties, defined as organizations oriented toward electoral competition, whose core constituency is formed by individuals who belong to the highest economic strata of society (Gibson 1996, 7). This is a notably stable phenomenon: indeed, it is difficult to find any stage of Chile’s political history that did not feature at least one Conservative Party. These are, moreover, parties with weight in the system as a whole. They are also highly institutionalized parties, able to survive profound changes in the surrounding national and international context. Even the briefest review of Chile’s history throws up a range of examples. The oldest is the Conservative Party (Partido Conservador), a political vehicle of the traditional economic elite that was formed by landowners from Chile’s central valley. Formally founded in 1857, the party’s roots were in fact profoundly linked to the conservative faction that had fought in Chile’s 1829 and 1830 civil wars—known as the “pelucón” faction—and to the early decades of the “autocratic republic” (Gil 1966, 54). Between its founding in 1857 and its dissolution in 1949, the Conservative Party was a bastion of defense of the interests © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Monestier, Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena, Latin American Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1_3

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of the traditional landowning class—the “Chilean aristocracy”. It was also notable for its ideological affinity with the values of the Catholic Church, in the face of threats from other sectors of the elites who were in favor of secularizing society and the State (Gil 1966, 246). The Liberal Party (Partido Liberal) followed quite a similar path. Created in 1849 by the more secular, urban, and intellectual sectors of the country’s economic elite, its core constituency was top-heavy with commercial, banking, and mining interests (Scully 1992, 34–36). Over the course of its history the Liberal Party acted alternately as rival then ally of the Conservative Party, occupying a position of significance in the party system for almost a century (Gil 1966, 252–255). The same principal constituency was served by the National Party (Partido Nacional), a short-lived but significant experience, forged from a merger of the Liberal and Conservative parties, that served similar ends (defending the interest of the Chilean upper class) and had a similar composition (members of the country’s richest families and principal economic groups). The National Party lasted from 1966 to 1973, when it went into voluntary abeyance after explicitly embracing the 1973 military coup and ensuing military regime, headed by Augusto Pinochet (Valdivia 2008). During the authoritarian regime that followed the 1973 coup, two right-wing parties still in existence today were formed: Renovación Nacional (“National Renewal”), RN, and the Unión Demócrata Independiente (“Independent Democratic Union”), UDI. There are differences of emphasis between the two parties, including on issues such as their positions with regard to the authoritarian past, their links with conservative moral discourse, and their level of electoral appeal among popular sectors. Notwithstanding, the leadership of both is overwhelmingly composed of members of the country’s economic elite, and their political agendas are closely aligned with elite interests (Huneeus 2001; Moulian and Torres Dujisin 1988; Silva 1996). How can we explain the significant and enduring presence of parties representing the economic elite in Chile’s party system throughout its history? I propose the view that the almost uninterrupted presence of influential, institutionalized parties whose principal constituency is the economic elite, and whose activities in public life are dedicated to defending the material interests of the elite, is the result of a political dynamic forged from the combination of a strongly cohesive upper class with weakly mobilized popular sectors.

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The Colonial Roots of Elite Cohesion

The conquest and colonization of Chile began in 1540 with the establishment of the first military and administrative authorities appointed by Spain. This founding group of authorities, made up of Spaniards and a few American-born criollos , did not immediately establish itself as an economic elite strictu sensu. Various factors impeded the emergence of a group of this kind until at least the second half of the C17th. Principal among them was the geographical isolation of Chilean territory, relative both to Spain and to the rest of Latin America. The quite literally marginal role of Chile among Spain’s American colonies was accentuated as the process of colonization advanced, and it became clear that Chile’s gold and silver deposits were not going to live up to expectations. Accordingly, as Pinto Santa Cruz (1996, 34) observes, “reclusion came to be the defining characteristic of the Chilean system of production during the colonial era”. Over the course of the C16th, Chile also suffered the effects of a prolonged military conflict generated by Mapuche resistance to the attempted colonization of the territories south of the Bío Bío river, territories that the Spanish termed “Araucanía”. The “Araucanía war” culminated in the delineation of a frontier which Spanish colonization found it almost impossible to cross. This had a high economic cost, since it prevented exploitation of the lands to the south, at the same time as making demands on a high proportion of the available human resources and riches generated from mining, agriculture, and livestock in the rest of the territory (Collier and Sater 1996, 18). This situation was to last until the mid-C17th. Only then did the frequency and intensity of armed clashes abate sufficiently to allow the colonists to free up a large proportion of the resources they had until that point dedicated to waging war (Collier and Sater 1996, 13; Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 52). Lastly, the consolidation of an economic elite in Chile was impeded by some of the measures that were taken from Spain with the specific aim of ensuring control over colonial subjects and preventing the emergence of a noble colonial class. Evidence of these concerns can be seen in the limits and restrictions placed on the granting of encomiendas , as well as in reluctance to award noble titles to the upper echelons of the colonial bureaucracy, or to the criollo oligarchy (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 55). In spite of these restrictions, C16th colonization would set precedents that defined enduring characteristics of Chilean society. In that period

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the indigenous population north of the Bío Bío river was subjugated by military force and obliged to work in the encomienda system.1 Spanish conqueror and colonist Pedro de Valdivia introduced the system as a way to reward his subordinates, financial backers, and family members. The encomienda was to become the principal source of labor power in Chile through to the end of the C16th and was one of its first indicators of social differentiation (Collier and Sater 1996, 7; Sagredo Baeza 2014, 59). As far as production was concerned, the encomienda system was deployed principally in panning for gold and in early agriculture. Brutal working conditions however conspired with other factors to produce a constantly dwindling indigenous labor force that would lead, just over a century later, to the relative decline of the significance of the encomienda as one of the ways in which someone could gain admittance to the incipient Chilean economic elite (Góngora 1975). By the end of the C16th, the exhaustion of indigenous labor and of mine deposits combined to produce an extremely precarious overall economic situation: a situation that would however change over the course of the C17th (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 53; Sagredo Baeza 2014, 60). On the one hand, the boom then bust of gold mining forced the colonizers to turn almost exclusively to agriculture and livestock. At the same time, a temporary stabilization in the Araucanía conflict produced what Jocelyn-Holt describes as a “general reorientation of society”, as a result of which “the previous urban-military axis [was] replaced by a new and eminently rural center of gravity” (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 57–58). As a result, the C17th proved to be a period of deep economic and social change for the Chilean economy and society, producing some of the 1 The encomienda, like the mita, constituted one of the oldest and most widespread forms by which indigenous labor was exploited by Latin America’s colonizers. Basically, the relevant military or administrative authorities handed over a group of people and families—which could total thousands of individuals—to a private individual. This person acquired the right to receive the tribute that the indigenous population was held to owe to the Crown, by virtue of their status as vassals (Halperín Donghi 1988, 19). The encomienda lasted for a maximum of two generations, and those to whom the right had been granted had obligations. These supposedly included to care for and evangelize the indigenous people assigned to them, as well as to populate and defend Crown territory. In practice the encomienda was a system of brutal exploitation that reduced millions of indigenous people to the most abject living and working conditions, contributing to the decimation of indigenous populations in various regions of Latin America (Sagredo Baeza 2014, 59–60).

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most long-lasting and significant features that shaped the country’s future development. In the initial phase, livestock farming became the country’s principal economic activity, although its development was limited. Tallow and (to a lesser degree) leather and beef jerky were produced for the small domestic market and began to be exported to Lima and Potosí, initially in small quantities. Horses were also trained, for the use of the militias stationed at the frontier with the Araucanía district, and mules were supplied for mining concerns in Potosí (Collier and Sater 1996, 9). From the mid-C17th onward, an increase in domestic wheat consumption and in the volume and price of wheat exports to Peru drove a gradual transformation of livestock ranches into estates producing cereal crops. The process was completed and consolidated over the C18th, when predominantly agricultural estates became the economic mainstay of rural areas and, accordingly, a major source of wealth and social prestige among the propertied classes (Bauer 1994, 32). The boost given to cereal production over the C18th increased the value of land and stimulated concentration of property ownership, particularly via displacement, and the purchase of the least extensive smallholdings—known as chacras —by large landowners.2 These economic changes were accompanied by changes in labor relations and the social structure. Chile’s territory, until now inhabited by its native populations plus the small group of colonizers who had been initially granted encomiendas , lands, or mines, came to also be occupied by a large contingent of Spaniards, plus poor criollos or mestizos , active in military circles and in all kinds of personal service. Once the demand for soldiers declined and the number of indigenous people subjected to encomiendas dwindled, members of this contingent began to be drawn into rural economic activities. They initially practiced small-scale agriculture and animal husbandry, on lands conceded by their owners in return for services rendered and/or on payment of a fee. This formula, referred to as “arriendo” (rent), spread rapidly throughout the Central Valley.

2 Chacras were productive units that came about as a result of subdivision, donation by municipal authorities, and the dividing up of large estates via inheritance. They played an important part in supplying food to population centers, and some also produced for export. As haciendas became the central focus of rural life, the economic importance of chacras decreased (Collier and Sater 1996, 11).

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These transformations in the economic structure of rural colonial society became increasingly formalized and complex over the course of the C18th, leading to the emergence of inquilinaje, an institution that would prove key to Chilean society right through until the second half of the C20th (Bauer 1994, 34).3 Inquilinaje grew during the C18th process of concentration of the economically productive lands of the Central Valley into the hands of a few hundred proprietors, considerably reducing the scope for social mobility or even survival for Spaniards and poor criollos or mestizos . In order to assure economic survival, members of these groups reached arrangements with landowners entailing various forms of co-operation where neither wages nor rents were paid. Generally, poor families were allowed to construct some kind of precarious dwelling and raise a few head of cattle on poorer quality estate land, in return for working as occasional laborers in ranching work and/or looking after the owner’s property (Góngora 1960, 80–87). The relationship between owners and these workers (“inquilinos ”) underwent significant change in the final decades of the C18th. The increasing demand for wheat to meet market demand from Peru led to increases in land value and greater demands on the estate workers. The latter were forced to improve productivity and to multiply and diversify the services rendered to estate owners in return for the right to stay on the estate. Occasional agricultural labor for the owner gave way to continuous demands that took up most of the time of the whole family group, reducing the time that could be dedicated to generating income and/or, in the final analysis, reducing the quality of life. The choice was a stark one: estate workers either accepted the new conditions or were forced to leave the owner’s estate and throw in their lot with the thousands of rural inhabitants who scratched a living beyond the boundaries of the large landed estates (Góngora 1960, 102). In fact, the consolidation of land ownership and new style labor relations had produced a large group, located at the very bottom of the social order, who survived thanks to seasonally fluctuating temporary work, or illicit activities such as land occupation or theft. This subgroup of the rural population, living in precarious conditions outside the hacienda walls, was at one and the same time a labor reservoir allowing continued exploitation 3 The first published analyses of both inquilinaje and arriendo appear in the geographical and political studies carried out in the first half of the C19th by Claudio Gay (1854).

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of the workforce, and a potential threat to landowners’ property (Bengoa 1988, 26). Uncertainty and misery awaited any inquilino who was not minded to accept changes in the conditions of the agreement that bound them to the hacienda. Against such a backdrop it is understandable that the links between landowners and their inquilinos could last a lifetime, often even being passed on from generation to generation (Bauer 1994, 34–35). The stability of labor relations, the unanswerable power of the rural upper classes, and a geographical setting notable for the absence of large population centers all combined to turn haciendas into relatively selfsufficient economic, social, and political units. Owners personified a good proportion of the services and functions that the institutions of the day were incapable of providing: “chapel, store, jail, school” (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 60). The inquilino and his family lived and worked on the owner’s land, and owners enjoyed “a large quota of de facto jurisdictional authority”, ruling over “a […] hierarchical order built on close personal and clientelistic connections” (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 59–60). Paradoxically, although the hacienda was central to Chile’s political and social development, this centrality was not matched by its economic importance. In practice, the profits from agricultural production were, historically, low. Even during the boom periods produced by cereal export, profits attached to these economic units were low, especially compared to those achieved by haciendas in the rest of Latin America. Other than during a brief initial period of the late C17th and early C18th, agriculture and livestock were not the main basis of the wealth of Chile’s economic elites. Rather, they had to “combine rural agrarian activities with mining, financial, and urban business interests if they wished to prosper” (Bengoa 1988, 11). What importance, then, attaches to the institutionalization and diffusion of this model of production throughout the Chilean Central Valley during the colonial period? The answer is simple: the institutionalization of the hacienda as the basic unit of production was much more important for its effect on the social and political order than for its economic consequences. Its longevity is explained not by its profitability, but by its political function. The Chilean colonial hacienda was a key institution in the development of the social and political structures that underlie the two factors which explain economic elites’ political action and its forms over time: the degree of elite cohesiveness and levels of popular sector mobilization.

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The concentration of the productive land of the Central Valley in the hands of just a few owners defined initial belonging to the apex of economic power. In the C17th, a significant contingent of Spanish immigrants, mostly from the Basque country, settled in Chile and turned their hand to commerce. Taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the cereal export cycle, they accumulated large fortunes, a portion of which they immediately reinvested in the purchase of land. This was the beginning of what would become a lasting tendency toward integration of capital generated in different areas of economic activity by a highly cohesive elite. It was also the first successful experience in what was to become a recurrent cycle of integrating “new money”—recently enriched groups—into the pre-existing economic elite (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 61– 62). The period during which colonialism was established had seen a major process of integration of the encomienda and estancia elites via marriage (Góngora 1970). In a similar way, from the C17th onward, the old Castilian elite softened its tendency toward endogamy in order to open itself up to Basque families who had recently become wealthy. This was the period in which a new elite, the “Basque-Castilian aristocracy” or “traditional oligarchy”, was founded, featuring some of the surnames that still frequently appear at the apex of the social, political, and economic pyramids: Errázuriz, Eyzaguirre, Echenique, Vicuña (Stabili 2003, 200). The new immigrants, and a few descendants of the first colonizers and soldiers who had fought in the Araucanía conflict “made up the two hundred or so landowning families of the ‘noble neighborhood’ of the last days of the colony” (Bauer 1994, 35). Closely interlinked by the system of entailed estates, by shared interests, and by a dense network of marriage alliances, the members of this economic elite managed to co-opt the Bourbon bureaucracy and, in many cases, to become part of it. In this way, the colonial period saw the beginnings of an alliance between political and economic powers which would successfully navigate the political change represented by the war of independence and the period of initial construction of institutions (Barbier 1972). The colonial hacienda and inquilinaje would also prove decisive for the low level of political mobilization of popular sectors. As we will see below, hacienda and inquilinaje were central to the construction of social control in rural Chilean society (Jocelyn-Holt 2004). Scholarly opinion varies as to the mechanisms by which inquilinaje produced this result. Where some authors (Jobet 1955; Zeitlin 1980) see naked coercion, others perceive a combination of paternalism and leadership exercised

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by owners over inquilinos (Valenzuela 2001). Beyond these differences of interpretation, however, a basic consensus sees inquilinaje as a structure central to assuring the subordination and demobilization of the labor force. As Bengoa asserts, workers in rural areas, despite living in “isolated, traditional, highly exploitative conditions, [had] relatively expansive spaces of reproduction, in a traditional and paternalistic setting, [together with] local political control that allowed the deployment of repression in cases where paternal-filial submissiveness was not enough” (Bengoa 1988, 13).

3.2

The Independence Juncture: Cohesive Elites and Popular Demobilization

The cycle of the war of independence and the ensuing decades constitutes a crucial stage in the configuration of political institutions of the new Latin American states. The political dynamic produced during this period had strong consequences for the development of political systems during the rest of the C19th (Drake 2009; Negretto 2013). In many Latin American countries, the wars of independence led to violent division among colonial-era elites. Reasons included internal confrontations among the upper class over the positions adopted by different segments toward the conflict between royalists and patriots. Elites also became divided over how the costs of funding the war were apportioned, and the effects of the rupture of commercial links with the old colonial center. The war also provoked militarization, fostered the emergence of new leaderships, and confronted elites with the need to control plebeian violence, whether in the patriot or royalist camps (Halperín Donghi 1988, 136–137). The end of the war generated new areas for debate within ruling groups. Firstly, about the institutional order that new States should adopt, and the role that revolutionary caudillos and the popular sectors should play in them. The subordination of the Church to the new authorities, and the place of the clergy in the process of legitimation of the political order, were also important sources of conflict that placed the relationships between different elite factions under stress (Sábato 2018). In some cases, these tensions were the first step toward the definition of Liberal and Conservative parties (Negretto 2013). Finally, the economic fragility of the new states opened a space of competition and tension between sectors of the elite disposed to satisfy the hunger for credit in exchange

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for the charging of interest, or more importantly, in return for political influence over the new governments (Halperín Donghi 1988, 145–147). Each of these tensions and challenges can be traced in Chile. Nonetheless, the economic elite remained essentially united both during and after the war of independence, contributing to the production of a political order that stands out for its extreme stability, when compared to the observable reality of the rest of Latin America, in particular in countries such as Argentina and Uruguay. At the same time, groups outside the upper class maintained a relatively low level of political mobilization throughout the period. Even in the most intense phases of the military conflict between royalist and patriot forces, subaltern sectors generally stayed on the margins of the conflict, resisting by every possible means attempts by either band to recruit them. These two factors are the mainstays of any explanation of the path taken by the political action of Chile’s economic elite across the C19th. The cohesion of the Chilean upper classes—understood as the absence of internal conflicts provoked by groups with antagonistic economic interests—conferred great power on this sector to define the general orientation of the political process, or, in the worst case scenario, to veto potentially unwelcome options. At the same time, the habitual and enduring demobilization of the popular sectors impeded the emergence of significant new political actors beyond the limits of the economic elite, placing substantial restrictions on the ways in which members of the privileged classes could approach intra-elite conflicts. The result of the interaction of the two factors was a social and political order that was relatively stable, at least by the Latin American standards of the day. This order was managed by a highly institutionalized party system, with a permanent and significant presence of parties that expressed the interests of the economic elite, and which were run directly by members of that elite. Looking to the characteristics displayed by Chilean society in the final stages of the colonial era, historiographical sources agree on some notable features of upper-class political action. In particular, the sources mention a tendency on the part of this sector to monopolize appointments to high political office, handing out top jobs according to family and intra-elite connections, as well as displaying “ever more assertive and successful aristocratic aspirations”, displayed in “a gradual desire to make [their] power ever more visible” (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 63). The descriptions tend to identify this group by its high degree of cohesion and the integrated

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nature of its economic interests, which included finance, mining, and commerce as well as agricultural activities (Sagredo Baeza 2014, 124). In Chile, unlike in other countries in the region, the war of independence did not significantly alter the economic elite’s position of dominance. In effect, as Bauer observes, “as Spanish power disintegrated […] the cohesive, classist criolla elite made subtle adjustments […] to take control of the machinery of republican government” (Bauer 1994). When independence was declared, this same informal aristocracy became consolidated as the mainstay of the governing classes, in which the colonial authorities had simply been replaced by revolutionary military leaders. Contrary to expectations, the revolutionary war in fact strengthened the power of this elite group (Collier and Sater 1996, 42). As has already been observed, the economic elite that emerged in the colonial period survived both the chaos of the prolonged war with Spain and the turbulence generated during the process of construction of the institutions of a new state. The literature registers numerous mentions of the persistence of this social sector. In particular, scholarship highlights the enduring ubiquity of a small group of economically and politically interlinked families in most key economic and administrative posts. These families had roots stretching back to the colonial period, forming a tangled web of shared interests that explains the specific ways in which social conflict was managed (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 98). The cohesiveness of the economic elite prevented conflict and placed limits on the ambitions of the strongmen of the period. In common with other countries of the region, Chile had to deal with the tensions produced by the inevitable political protagonism acquired by the main military men of the revolutionary era. The prestige accruing to the heads of those victorious armies that had managed to unite patriotic forces turned them into natural candidates to exercise high level political power in the new republics. Such is the case of Bernardo O’Higgins, at the time of Chilean independence. Although O’Higgins enjoyed enormous military prestige, his designation as Supreme Director of the new government had to be imposed by the Chileno-Argentine army of General San Martín in order to meet with the approval of the Chilean economic elite. The opinion of the criolla aristocracy was decisive for the designation of O’Higgins, a renowned soldier but a relatively uncharismatic personality, who mistrusted both the traditional aristocracy and any radical liberal

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project that would entail popular sector political mobilization outside the confines of the army. The intransigence with which O’Higgins confronted “populist” factionalism within the ranks of his own patriotic army is eloquent testimony to the virtues that the economic elite perceived in O’Higgins. The appearance of military chiefs who showed charisma, leadership ambition, and popular support, such as Manuel Rodríguez or José Miguel Carrera and his brothers, set off alarm bells from the economic elites and provoked immediate and forceful responses. During O’Higgins’s administration: Juan José and Luis Carrera were executed by firing squad in 1818. Months later, the charismatic guerilla leader Manuel Rodríguez was assassinated, and José Miguel Carrera was hunted down before finally being captured and shot in 1821 (Collier and Sater 1996, 47). When O’Higgins’s personalist traits led him to distance himself from the traditional aristocracy, threatening to reduce their privileges and veto power, they withdrew their support and eventually forced his downfall through forging allegiances with military men and civilians who opposed him. The economic elite thus operated a veto, preventing the consolidation of O’Higgins’ political leadership or the development of a political force relatively insulated from their own sphere of influence. Between 1823 and 1831, a period that traditional Chilean historiography dubbed “anarchic”, a succession of political experiments took place that would eventually give rise to a conservative republic (Edwards 1987). In fact, the political dynamics of this phase were far from chaotic in nature, in particular if we compare them to the early decades of independence of Argentina or Uruguay. The moderate levels of political instability that Chile lived through between 1823 and 1831 did not reflect irreconcilable interests at the heart of the economic elite. On the contrary, it was the strongly integrated nature of the elite that allowed it to weather the storm, forging alliances born of circumstance, with military commanders capable of providing the order needed to secure commerce and agriculture. They did so without harming their own interests, and without creating political institutions that would limit their own capacity for influence. Every time a government of this period proved unable or unwilling to accept these terms, the traditional Chilean aristocracy simply procured or supported a change of government (Collier and Sater 1996, 46). Important though it undoubtedly is, cohesion among economic elites is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for explaining the trajectory of elite political involvement over the C19th. The fact that subaltern social

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groups demonstrated an almost non-existent capacity for political mobilization also had an effect, severely constraining their chances of exercising influence over the events of the independence juncture. Few, if any, appreciated this fact sooner or more exactly than Diego Portales.4 For Portales, “the almost generalized tendency of the masses to be at rest guarantees public peace”.5 This tendency notably persisted throughout the independence juncture surrounding independence and over the entire C19th, a marked contrast with what was occurring in Río de la Plata during the same era. There, highly mobilized subaltern groups appeared right from the outset, coming to constitute the juntista movement, which favored the creation of governing juntas in order to fill the vacuum produced by the imprisonment of the King (Pinto and Valdivia 2009, 27). Historians addressing the cycle of the Chilean War of Independence have observed that the participation of the “lower classes” (bajo pueblo) was absolutely peripheral, came extremely late, and only came about at all as a result of coercion by the patriotic and royalist authorities (León 2002).6 In 1810, the Governing Junta (Junta de Gobierno) of Santiago approved the creation of its own army, but the call resonated only with some members of the traditional patrician classes.7 The absence of resonance among the people of repeated calls for loyalty to one’s country or the crown can also be seen in the fact that both sides deemed it necessary to create a large amount of rules and norms attempting to contain

4 Diego Portales (1793–1837) was a prominent member of the economic elite and a highly influential politician. He is considered the architect of the political regime established in 1830. His ideas of order and subordination of civil society to state authority were embodied in the 1833 constitution. 5 In correspondence with Joaquín Tocornal, dated July 16, 1832. 6 The exception that confirms the rule appears to have been a small contingent of

guerrilla fighters led by Manuel Rodríguez and others during resistance to the reconquista. In fact, some authors observe that the apparently most spontaneous examples of political activation of popular sector groups appear to have happened on the side loyal to Spain (León 2002). 7 A contemporaneous account recalls the episode in ironic tones: the constitution of a new political authority led to Santiago filling up with officers attired in the most elegant uniforms, “which merited that someone posted a pamphlet on the doors of the palace, with a caricature showing an infinitely large officer corps, all in luxury, and behind them one single sorry-looking soldier” (Pinto and Valdivia 2009, 30).

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or eliminate incessant acts of indiscipline and desertion (Grez Toso 2007; León 2002). Levels of political mobilization among the “low people” did not vary significantly in the immediate post-independence phase. Some more recent historiographies have regarded the “pipiolo” period8 —particularly between 1823 and 1826, during the Ramón Freire government—as a phase of political awakening on the part of the popular sectors (Salazar 2005). The predominant view in both traditional and more recent historiography however considers that there was little or no change in levels of mobilization among non-elite groups (Pinto and Valdivia 2009, 335). The political instability that is said to be characteristic of the period was not of a sort that favored the entry of the subaltern classes into political conflict. In the rural sector, at least, the different categories of workers and smallholders who between them made up the majority of the rural population remained “in their traditional state of serene tranquility” (Jocelyn-Holt 2012, 304).

3.3

A Long and Stable Oligarchic Order

From 1830 onward, the Chilean political system entered a long cycle of stability, only occasionally interrupted by conflicts between factions of the economic elite. These conflicts involved changes in the rules of the game over competition, and in the relationships between branches of state, but existing social relations were preserved or strengthened. During this period, usually referred to as the “Portalean order”,9 the political involvement of the Chilean upper classes came to dominate national political life. In practice, this period was to prove pivotal in channeling the economic elite’s defense of its interests into the vehicle of political parties. The legitimacy of the new order was based on its offering guarantees of representation to all existing factions within the elite. Such an entente was possible only because the sources of division between distinct segments of the Chilean oligarchy did not arise from, and were not reflected in, irreconcilable economic interests. Political disputes, while intense, were therefore not perceived by the actors involved in them as a zero-sum game. The pragmatism displayed by Diego Portales and his

8 Name given to a period of liberal ascendancy during the early C19th. 9 For being based on the ideas of Diego Portales.

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allies meanwhile allowed them to perceive that, once a few fundamental rules of the game had been established, the importance that attached to the adoption of one particular institutional design rather than another was limited, when compared to what Portales himself described as “the weight of the night” (el peso de la noche), i.e., the continuity of the colonial-era social and economic order (Jocelyn-Holt 1997, 26–27). This does not mean that political stability was exempt from the challenges common to other countries of the region at the time. In particular, opposing groups identified by their continued allegiance to either O’Higgins or Carrera fought more or less openly until the mid-C19th. Regionalist demands from the districts of Concepción and Copiapó sparked sporadic armed confrontations until 1859. Notwithstanding, the cohesiveness displayed by economic elites, and the weakness of popular sector political mobilization, combined to have a considerable dampening effect on the reverberations of such confrontations. Tensions between different fractions of the economic elite did occasionally spill over into armed insurrections, as occurred for example in 1851, 1859, and 1891. In each case, these were relatively brief conflicts— lasting between five and nine months—in which only a tiny fraction of the adult male population was directly engaged (Somma 2011, 352). The small number of insurrections that erupted in and after 1830 ended in the establishment of a new political equilibrium, expressed in institutional accommodations that expressed the victors’ preferences but never led to a definitive, nor even a prolonged, exclusion of the defeated (Loveman and Lira 1999). Generally speaking, the rebalancing of the system was expressed in changes to the constitution and/or to electoral arrangements. This latter strengthened the role of the party arena as the principal space for managing conflicts, and in so doing strengthened the virtual monopoly that members of the economic elite exercised over the country’s principal political roles or responsibilities (Scully 1992, 28). In addition to the consolidation of the state’s repressive power, the permanence of institutions such as the hacienda and inquilinaje also contributed to ensuring stability through the demobilization of the popular sectors. The social subordination and economic dependence that the hacienda structure imposed on popular sectors stunted the development of any kind of autonomous social movement. The economic and status differentials that the hacienda helped to foment among different strata of the non-landowning rural population also made it virtually impossible for territorially proximate, but socially and culturally distant,

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groups to develop repertoires of collective action.10 Unlike the situation prevailing in Río de la Plata, where an abundance of cattle and horse stock allowed gauchos virtually unlimited food resources and freedom of movement beyond the reach of landowners, in the Chilean rural environment the popular classes were trapped in a situation of subordination and dependence (Bauer 1994). The relative political stability that was observed since 1830 did not imply that the economic and social structures remained unchanged. New social groups established themselves, and grew rich, fast, thanks to the boom in mining of copper and silver (1820–1880). The boom invigorated international trade, generating capital that was soon reinvested in financial activities and, of course, in land.11 These transformations did not, however, alter the political order that had been forged in the aftermath of independence, with economic elite cohesiveness once more providing the key to political stability. Just as had occurred in the C18th, when newly wealthy Basque immigrants had united their fortunes and surnames with those of the existing elite, so too in the C19th. The economic elite that had run the country since the end of the colonial period proved capable of smoothly incorporating the possessors of new fortunes linked to mining, banking, and the commercial concerns of Valparaíso. The fusion of the traditional elite with members of these new sectors that had driven Chile’s integration into international capitalism began in the business arena, but quickly diversified, as it had before, into alliances through marriage. These newly forged family ties produced novel, highly endogamic “family systems”

10 Bengoa (1988) claims that the hacienda established two basic models of social and political subordination, differentiated by the type of contractual relationship. “Ascetic” subordination—the type that he attributes to inquilinos —is notable for its hard work, discipline, submission, and respect for the patriarchal figure of the estate owner. It is based on the promise of mid- and long-term reward. What Bengoa calls “sensual” subordination, on the other hand, was the lot of afuerinos , especially a subtype referred to as “rotos ” (literally, “broken ones”): undisciplined, refractory individuals, exhibiting scant respect for authority or private property, but unable to effectively stand up to the power of the landowner due to being given over to pleasure, gambling, and alcohol. 11 Some historians date a process of renovation of the families who made up the landowning elite, to the second half of the C19th. This phenomenon is attributed to the effects of financial ruin suffered by some owners in the aftermath of agrarian crises between 1858 and 1873, and to laws that eliminated the institution of entailment (inheritance by primogeniture), forcing some large latifundios to be broken up (Stabili 2003, 222).

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that would prove flexible and able in future to incorporate new fortunes and surnames (Stabili 2003; Bro 2022). These strategies allowed the elite to interweave all major economic activity, thus minimizing the chances of conflicts of interest arising. Once more, Chile’s economic elite demonstrated that one of the key drivers of its internal cohesion is its ability to simultaneously embrace change and continuity. The sectors that made up the upper classes changed, as did the activities on which their wealth was based. In the process, new surnames came into the ascendant in the power structure: Edwards, Délano, Lyon, Urmeneta, Cousiño, Anwandter, and others. In the long term, these tendencies produced an economic elite “without fault lines, and with investments spread across all types of productive activity” (Correa Sutil 2011, 31). In the center of this interwoven web of families and interests, traditional forms of land exploitation such as the hacienda and inquilinaje survived. Although their economic significance declined over time, their political relevance did not. The profitability of agricultural exploitation declined systematically over the second half of the C20th,12 but the hacienda continued to assure the propertied classes of political control over large swathes of the rural population. The electoral overrepresentation of rural areas further guaranteed that landowners would be very strongly represented in parliament (Bengoa 1988, 12).13 Over the C19th, the political activation of subaltern social groups came about gradually, at a pace determined by competition between different political groups within the economic elite. Variations in the criteria that had to be met in order to obtain the right to vote came to constitute a way to confer legitimacy on the political order, ensuring that all relevant segments of the economic elites were represented in each branch of government (Borón 1972; Colomer 2004). The interplay of all these factors left political competition in Chile channeled into a course whereby relatively low-intensity conflicts were managed through a mix of competition, negotiation, and pacts. The absence of popular sector mobilization reinforced the incentives for an 12 The economic value of latifundios derived in large part from their use as a means to access credit (Bauer 1994, 135–137). 13 This would provide yet another motive for families who had made their money in mining, banking, or commerce to seek to establish societies and kinship links with the landowning elite as a way of gaining entry into the political elite (Bengoa 1988).

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economic elite with highly convergent material interests to make electoral competition the place where their ideological differences were aired. In sum, between the war of independence and the beginning of the C20th, Chile’s political situation was notable for the early consolidation of a stable oligarchic regime, capable of reconciling a genuinely competitive political dynamic in which all relevant segments of the economic elite were included, with the exclusion and demobilization of the great majority of popular sectors. The stability of Chile’s oligarchic regime contributed to the institutionalization of the political parties that emerged over the second half of the C19th and allowed for testing of a wide variety of institutional arrangements that made the regime gradually more competitive. Between 1857 and 1861, disputes between sectors more, or less, in favor of concentrating power in the hands of the president, plus tensions between pro- and anticlerical groups, gave rise to a party system with three main components. The Conservative Party (Partido Conservador), represented the most pro-clerical end of the spectrum, and the one most closely linked to the landowning economic elite. The Radical Party (Partido Radical ), was at the opposite end of the spectrum in confessional matters, with an anticlerical stance. The economic interests of its adherents were more likely to include industrial and urban commercial activities, and the party leadership was multiclass in that it included some figures of middle-class origin. Finally, the Liberal Party (Partido Liberal ), combined a moderate anticlerical rhetoric with an accentuated pragmatism that allowed it to form alliances with first one, then the other, of the two alternative parties (Moulian 2006; Scully 1992; Valenzuela 1985). Subtle details and differences aside, the social composition of the parties’ core constituencies allows us to categorize both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party as conservative parties in Gibson’s sense of the term (1996, 7).14 The configuration of the party system stimulated changes in the dynamic of political competition. In the 1870s, a series of constitutional reforms severely restricted presidential authority and bolstered the power

14 There is significant debate among scholars as to what interests these parties repre-

sented. For some, they were the political expression of cleavages between different sectors of the economic elite (Zeitlin 1984). Others however see them as the political expression of conflict between economic elites who had lost control of the state apparatus, and a professional political class that fought to retain its privileges and relative autonomy (Valenzuela and Valenzuela 1983; Valenzuela 1985).

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of the legislature.15 In 1874 the political opposition, led by the Conservative Party, approved electoral reforms that eliminated restrictions on citizenship status founded on economic criteria. In practice this meant the granting of suffrage to all literate males of 21 years or older (if married), or 25 years or older, if single (Valenzuela and Valenzuela 1983, 14). By 1876 this reform had doubled the number of citizens eligible to vote and had tripled the number of those who actually did so. The percentage of the population whose names appeared on the electoral register reached 5.1%, a figure that would remain relatively stable until constitutional reform in 1925 (Scully 1992, 51). Despite these changes, electoral guarantees remained absent. This being so, the main impact of the extension of citizenship rights, particularly in rural areas, was to increase the electoral support base of the Conservative Party, which duly strengthened its representation in the legislature. This in turn further strengthened ties between the economic elite, and the party system (Colomer 2004; Rueschemeyer et al. 1992).

3.4

Gradual Democratization: Cohesion Above and Demobilization Below

The type of link that the Chilean upper class had with political parties and the electoral arena during most of the C20th was defined between 1920 and 1932, from the crisis of the oligarchic regime and the beginning of the process of effective democratization (Borón 1972; Cavarozzi 1978; Colomer 2004; Scully 1992). This root and branch transformation of the system took the form of a process of effective political incorporation of traditionally excluded social sectors, and the reconfiguration of the party system (Gil 1966, 68; Scully 1992, 63). In the economic sphere, this period saw the end of the growth cycle associated with saltpeter exploitation, and the beginning of a phase of expansion of large-scale copper mining. This phase coincided with major fluctuations in both the volume and the price of exports of Chilean raw materials, due to the effects of the First World War followed by the great crash of 1929 (Meller 1998; Pinto Santa Cruz 1996).

15 The exercise of the presidency was limited to a single five-year term; Senate seats were to be filled by popular vote, and the veto power of the executive branch was reduced (Valenzuela and Valenzuela 1983, 12).

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Despite changes to the configuration of the party system and in the integration of economic elites, at the end of this period the Chilean upper classes continued using political parties and electoral competition involvement as one of the preferred strategies for defending their interests. The upper classes united and regrouped themselves in different party organizations, but continued to have parties of their own, which they used as tools for defending their interests. In other words, although the components of the party system changed, as too did the main axis around which political competition was organized, clear continuity can be seen in the ways in which economic elites forged links with certain organizations and the functions that these organizations fulfilled in the protection of elite interests. The Chilean economy changed substantially over the final quarter of the C19th. After defeating Bolivia and Peru in the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), Chile extended its territory and incorporated the northern provinces of Tarapacá and Antofagasta. These areas contained vast mineral deposits, particularly of saltpeter. The exploitation of these deposits allowed for a cycle of economic expansion that transformed the economy, associated elites, and the world of work (Blakemore 1993; Pinto Santa Cruz 1996). The saltpeter boom lasted from 1880 to 1930, during which time Chile became the world’s principal producer and supplier. At its height, between 1901 and 1915, saltpeter represented over 70% of the total value of Chilean exports. An average of five of every ten dollars of export earnings between 1880 and 1932 came from the saltpeter industry (Meller 1998, 24). Although the conquest of the lands that made the nitrate boom possible cost Chile five years of war, once the armed conflict came to an end, all aspects of the economic exploitation of saltpeter—extraction, transportation, trade on the international market—were handed over almost completely to the control of foreign capital. The Chilean state stepped back from direct management of this valuable resource, acquiescing to its takeover by British and US investors. In so doing, the state sacrificed an important part of the profits generated by nitrate mining, opting for taxation of the sector as its principal method of deriving value. A driving force in this decision seems to have been the absence of

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the capital required for exploitation and commercialization on the scale required (Meller 1998, 29; Pinto Santa Cruz 1996, 83).16 In an international context marked by strong growth in demand and in the price of nitrate, concentrating its exploitation in the hands of foreign capital gave rise to an intense flow of immigration of owners, technicians, and other professionals, who came to occupy a privileged place at the apex of the social structure. The owners of the new fortunes that were made in mining were incorporated into the traditional economic elite, and new entries began to appear on the select list of upper-class surnames. Chile’s largest fortunes were no longer to be made in activities controlled by the old “Basque-Castilian” aristocracy, and over the period the relative economic importance of the agricultural and livestock activity of the Central Valley went into almost terminal decline. It became, at best, the supply sector for a domestic market stimulated by the expansion of mining, commerce, and industry (Bauer 1994; Encina 1955).17 Since the end of the C19th, the renewal of the Chilean economic elite was also stimulated by the country’s first phase of industrial development. The transport costs accrued by the importation of consumer goods, demographic growth, and a rise in internal demand provided an initial stimulus for the emergence of a manufacturing sector before import-substituting industrialization began. According to some estimates, by 1911, 75,000 workers were employed in the industrial sector, mainly concentrated in small and medium-scale workshops. Owners were a mix of Chilean and foreign capitalists, who sat on the boards of various limited companies while also holding investments in land, mining, and commerce (Bauer 1994, 238). The economic changes referred to here are a testament to an intense, rapid process of transformation of the Chilean elite. The origins of the new rich, and—in particular—the material basis of their fortunes both marked a sharp break with the past. This might lead us to expect that the conditions had been created for a confrontation between old and new 16 The causes and consequences of this decision have been exhaustively debated by Chilean social science. For a good summary of the debate, see Pinto Santa Cruz (Pinto Santa Cruz 1996, 78–84). 17 Two main factors prevented the decline from being even steeper: increases in land productivity, achieved firstly by German immigrants who settled in the south, and secondly by foreign investors who reinvested part of the profits from mining in the acquisition of latifundios which they subsequently managed with the incorporation of new technology (Meller 1998, 56; Pinto Santa Cruz 1996, 74).

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sectors of the Chilean oligarchy. This proved far from being the case: levels of elite cohesion continued to be extremely high. As historian María Rosa Stabili (2003) has signaled, the late C19th saw a new opening up of Chile’s economic elite via marriage alliances. Once a decade had gone by, connections between all main economic sectors were so strong that it was almost impossible to separate landowners from owners of mining, commercial, or industrial interests (Bauer 1994, 239). Additionally, the economic interests of those involved in these sectors were not in tension with one another. Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz describes in detail the basic consensus on which cohesion was founded: all were producers of primary products or related services; all were mainly in favor of free trade, all were well served by the depreciation of the Chilean currency (Pinto Santa Cruz 1996, 62). Toward 1908, twelve families descended from the old aristocracy owned around 20% of the main landed estates. The remainder were in the hands of miners, traders, and industrialists, most of them foreign incomers (Bauer 1994, 236–237). The nascent industrial elite was connected, in similar ways, to mining and agricultural activities (Meller 1998, 56). Beyond this almost total integration of economic interests and areas of activity, in the political arena new and old elites seemed to be operating some kind of division of labor by tacit accord. The traditional Chilean elite continued to occupy the most influential posts in government and at the helm of political parties. New arrivals would also find their way into such positions in due course, but during the first decades of the C20th, the integration of economic interests did not generate any significant renewal or replacement among the cliques who held leadership positions in the old oligarchical parties. This parceling out of tasks helps explain the growth in functions and size of the state that also took place at this time. The extraordinarily high profit margins that the mining sector enjoyed until 1920 favored the development of a taxation and public spending structure that placed the burden of taxation largely on foreign capital. This in turn allowed a low level of taxation for the rest of the population to be combined with a sustained increase in fiscal spending (Kurtz 2013, 139; Meller 1998, 57). Changes in the economic structure also had other significant impacts on social structure and the political system, in particular, on the level of political mobilization of popular sectors. In this sense, the years prior to the crisis of the oligarchic regime showed a dual reality. On the one

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hand, workers from rural areas—where over half the population lived— remained in a situation of subordination and demobilization that, details aside, was largely recognizable from the pre-independence era. On the other hand, the combination of processes of urbanization with a growth in the workforce directly or indirectly employed in mining, industry, and the state, provided a first impulse for political organization and activation by one portion of the popular sectors. The number of workers employed in mining enclaves doubled in the period immediately after the War of the Pacific. At the same time, a sharp increase was seen in the number of workers recruited by port activity and (to a lesser extent) in the industrial sector. Faced with increasing demand for labor from these sectors, a portion of the peasants who had been mobilized to fight in the War of the Pacific did not return to their rural origins after the war. The overall result was an accelerated, and unprecedented, change in the world of work. For the first time in its history, Chile had a clearly differentiated non-rural proletariat with its own identity (Angell 1972, 11–12). All historiographies of this period agree that the Chilean proletariat suffered extreme exploitation in the mines, the ports, and the incipient industrial sector. The working conditions of this sector were probably noticeably worse than those of rural inquilinos and peones, although the conditions for some kind of collective action to alter their situation were more favorable. In the last decade of the C19th, the world of work saw a sustained rise in mutual assistance organizations, which soon came to serve as vehicles for channeling demands and rallying points around which protests and strikes could coalesce. The response of the oligarchic regime and its associated political parties to this unprecedented challenge swung between timid efforts at co-optation, and brutal repression (Grez Toso 2007). This was the backdrop against which the Chilean Workers’ Federation, Federación Obrera de Chile (FOCH) was born. Created in 1909 as an association of railway workers connected to the Democratic Party,18 within a few years it became the principal workers’ organization with a nationwide reach, bringing together workers from other areas of activity with a discourse increasingly aligned with the notion of class struggle. As the FOCH’s rhetoric and practice became ever more combative toward 18 The Democratic Party, founded in 1857, is considered the first Chilean workers’ party (Valenzuela 1998).

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capital, it moved further away from the Democratic Party. In 1912 the more radical wing of the FOCH created the Socialist Worker Party, Partido Obrero Socialista (POS). Under the leadership of Luis Emilio Recabarren, by the beginning of the C20th the POS had become the most important party on the Chilean left, a precursor for the Communist Party, Partido Comunista, that would be created a decade later (Gil 1966). For Scully (1992), the creation of the POS and the Communist Party represents a tipping point for the Chilean party system. Turning to the categories introduced by Duverger (1957), he argues that the parties that emerged over the course of the C19th—liberals, conservatives, radicals, and democrats—were “parliamentary parties”, formed on the basis of political competition restricted to intellectuals and economic elites, within a limited set of institutions from which popular sectors were virtually barred. By contrast, the POS and Communist Party represented the first parties in the system that were “externally generated” as a vehicle for channeling the demands of politically excluded social sectors (Scully 1992, 77). From the point of view of the forms of political involvement of economic elites, the first steps of democratization give us a chance to observe deep changes in the social and economic structure that were reflected in the composition of the Chilean upper class and in the material basis of their riches. Their level of cohesion nonetheless continued to be high. The world of work meanwhile began a process of transformation leading to at least two distinct scenarios. In the rural areas, the absence of popular sector political mobilization was perpetuated, with the sector partially brought into political citizenship as the electoral base for parties of the economic elite (Bengoa 1990). In cities and mining enclaves, the new proletariat self-organized and mobilized politically, going up against elite parties in the streets and at the ballot box (Angell 1972; Edwards 1987; Grez Toso 2007). The type of links that the Chilean economic elites had established with political parties during the independence conjuncture and had strengthened during the oligarchic regime were exposed to new challenges. Once more, the interaction between economic elite cohesion and popular sector mobilization determined the agenda when it came to links between the Chilean upper classes and the party system.

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At the juncture that gave rise to democratization, some sectors of the elite pointed to the need to channel the demands of the new, organized popular sectors through the party system. The peculiar reformist leadership of Arturo Alessandri Palma exemplifies this point of view.19 Alessandri Palma represented a profound break with the traditional forms of Chilean politics ever since his first, successful, electoral campaign in 1915—which saw him elected as senator for the saltpeter-producing province of Tarapacá. He was probably the first politician from a traditional elite background who appreciated the implications of the social and economic transformations that Chile had been living through since the end of the C19th. Although he made his career in the Liberal Party, his strongly anti-oligarchical discourse was clearly directed to exploiting dissatisfaction and unrest among the middle class and urban workers. This rhetoric brought him closer to “leftist” sectors of the Radical and Democratic parties and cost him support from more moderate factions of his own party, made nervous by the “populist” tone of his campaign.20 Alessandri politically mobilized a considerable section of the nonunionized urban proletariat, which made up the majority of the Chilean working class. This support did not translate directly into votes so much as into the active participation of citizens from this social segment in campaign rallies. Nonetheless, the irruption of the urban proletariat onto the political scene, plus Alessandri’s populist rhetoric, were more than enough to scare traditional political and economic elites (Correa Sutil 2011; Gil 1966; Bauer 1994). In the 1920 elections Alessandri won the presidency, defeating conservative coalition candidate Luis Barros Borgoño by a single electoral

19 Arturo Alessandri Palma (1868–1950) is considered the most important Chilean politician of the first half of the C20th. He was President of the Republic between 1920–1925 and 1932–1938. 20 According to Alberto Edwards: “No-one was more truly oligarchic [than Alessandri] when cocooned in the atmosphere of the salones of Lazcano and of Fernández Concha; but no-one was more ‘of the people’ (pueblo), either, than he when […] he found himself surrounded by men of the Left, in the heart of a provincial middle class that was impatient to be free of the yoke, rapturously applauded by the workers of nitrate country” (“Nadie fue más sinceramente oligarca [que Alessandri] mientras lo envolvió la atmósfera de los salones de Lazcano y Fernández Concha, nadie fue tampoco más ‘pueblo’ que él mismo, cuando […] se encontró rodeado por hombres de izquierda, en el seno de una clase media provinciana impaciente por sacudir el yugo, fervorosamente aplaudido por los obreros del país del salitre”) (Edwards 1987, 213).

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college vote.21 Alessandri’s room for maneuver was extremely limited, given an opposition majority in the Senate, and the fact that his own legislative support base included groups as diverse as Liberals—opposed to any significant change to the status quo—and Democrats pushing for progressive social legislation. The “reformist mandate” also suffered from other disadvantages, proceeding from scarce electoral participation and the systematic fraud practiced by winners and losers alike (Scully 1992, 81). Although electoral data shows Alessandri defeating Barros Borgoño in more urbanized zones and areas with the highest concentration of workers, his candidacy did not lead to higher political participation among those sectors. The FOCH and the Socialist Workers’ Party doubted Alessandri’s sincerity, viewing him as a direct rival in the struggle to capture the working-class vote (Scully 1992, 81). All indicators suggested that Alessandri’s triumph had marked the end of a long cycle of political stability, which had managed to bring together all significant sectors of the elite while continuing to exclude popular sectors. For Edwards, “something quite deep and fundamental had ceased to exist: the passive obedience of the country’s masses before the old oligarchical circles” (Edwards 1987, 228). The conservative opposition however had sufficient electoral support to block the moderately reformist agenda that Alessandri wanted to push. In 1924, political impasse and an economic crisis provoked political intervention by the Armed Forces. Alessandri Palma abandoned his presidency in September 1924, in favor of a designated governing Junta made up of military men. This marked the beginning of a phase that has been characterized as the most politically unstable of Chile’s history and was to last until 1932 (Scully 1992, 83). Although the political cycle between 1924 and 1932 may appear chaotic and contradictory at first sight, those years saw the consolidation of certain changes and continuities that were to prove enormously important in shaping the trajectory of the economic elite’s political involvement and the development of Chilean democracy. Constitutional

21 Alessandri appeared to have lost the popular vote by a margin of over 1,000, but an electoral tribunal awarded him the victory. Many analysts believe that terror of the likely popular reaction if Alessandri was defeated, was determinant in persuading the Conservative Party and moderate Liberals to acknowledge him as the victor (Millar 1981; Gil 1966).

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reforms approved in 1925 introduced significant changes to the dynamics of political competition. In the sphere of relations between the branches of government, the reforms limited the legislative branch’s power to initiate legislation and its ability to force ministers out of the cabinet. Political power was concentrated into the hands of the president, direct presidential election was introduced, the governing term was extended from five to six years, and immediate (consecutive) presidential re-election was banned (Blakemore 1993, 79; Torres Dujisin 1989). As far as electoral legislation goes, the 1925 constitution did not significantly modify the expansion of citizenship among popular sectors. It did, however, introduce changes that improved voter guarantees: the creation of an electoral tribunal (the Tribunal Calificador de Elecciones); the drawing up of an independent, permanent, periodically updated electoral roll, and the introduction of safeguards to ensure neutrality in the counting of votes. It also made voting compulsory, on pain of prison or fines for those who did not comply. Taking part in acts of bribery or illegal pressure on voters was considered an electoral crime that could attract fines or a prison sentence. At a time of strong political instability, the new rules of the game sought to shore up the legitimacy of elections (Torres Dujisin 1989, 14–16). These changes led to a modest increase in the percentage of the population registered to vote, growing from 7.8% to 9.8% between 1924 and 1932 (Scully 1992, 92). The political incorporation of the popular sectors did not see an accelerated expansion of citizenship, nor was the political activation of the new urban and mining proletariat reflected in the extension of electoral rights. Between 1920 and 1932, the parties of the economic elite managed to further moderate reformist initiatives that were never, in any case, particularly radical; and the expansion of citizenship continued to be a gradual affair highly controlled by the parties of the economic elites. The configuration of the party system did, however, change significantly, reflecting a newly central place afforded to the social question (Remmer 1984). The emergence and consolidation of the Communist Party (1922) and the Socialist Party (1933) marked a before and after for the political space in which party competition was organized. The pro-versus anticlerical axis was replaced by a left–right axis, and the emergence of the new parties forced a change in the position occupied by the old parties. Communists and socialists occupied the left-wing space, with liberals and conservatives clustered around the right. The Radical Party occupied the center, taking

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up what had previously been the Liberal Party’s mantle and forging coalitions with parties to its left and to its right, over the subsequent three decades (Moulian 1986, 2006; Scully 1992). The first democratization also saw the emergence of new political leadership, forged outside of existing established political parties. The most significant of these new leaders was Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who would occupy a central role in Chilean politics until the end of the 1950s, and twice became president of the republic (1927–1931 and 1952–1958). Ibáñez del Campo’s political orientation oscillated between persecuting parties and social organizations, promoting corporatist forms of political participation, making anti-oligarchic and pro-popular declarations in the classical populist vein, and signaling sympathy with and admiration for European fascism. The social and economic collapse provoked by the great crash of 1929 undermined his popularity, and in July 1931, forced his resignation (Rojas Flores 1993). For an illustration of the degree of political instability we need look no further than two events that took place during the seventeen months between the fall of Ibáñez del Campo and the presidential elections of October 1932. In October 1931, presidential elections took place. Conservative candidate Esteban Montero triumphed, winning over 60% of the votes. This was confirmation that the old parties of the economic elite still had electoral weight: even after twelve years of instability, the party machines were still highly efficient, capable of organizing a campaign and competing successfully. The second event had to do with the end of the Montero government, which was truncated in June 1932 by a coup led by an Air Force Colonel named Marmaduke Grove. Grove proclaimed a “socialist republic”, which was to last less than two weeks. Despite the brevity of the interlude, this episode had two important results. On the one hand, it triggered the formation and coming together of pro-revolutionary groups who would go on to form the basis on which the Socialist Party was founded. On the other, it created the conditions for Grove to go on to become the dark horse of the October 1932 presidential elections, in which he received a surprisingly high 18% of the votes (Drake 1978, 65; Scully 1992, 88). The period of political change that took place between 1920 and 1932 marked the beginning of democratization in Chile and at the same time consolidated the participation of economic elites in right-wing political parties and in the electoral arena. Ironically, this period ended as it had begun: with a new electoral triumph for Arturo Alessandri Palma in the

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elections of October 1932. But Alessandri, popularly known as the “Lion of Tarapacá”, was far from being the candidate of fiery radical and antioligarchic discourse that he had been in 1920. The political system was also much changed. In the political system that emerged immediately after independence, and was reformulated in 1891, members of the economic elites occupied all main government posts. The first government of Arturo Alessandri represented an attempt to reconfigure the political system by incorporating sectors from outside the upper classes. This experiment was resisted by economic elites, which destabilized the system and led to the political activation of the Armed Forces. In 1932, once the crisis had passed, the second administration of Arturo Alessandri assured the functional continuity of the linkage between economic elites and the new party system (Moulian 2006, 53).

3.5

The Functional Stability of Elite Forms of Political Involvement

The juncture of the first democratization put an end to the oligarchical regime and saw the beginnings of a new party system. Despite the instability that was an enduring feature of the period, the forms by which economic elites were connected to the party system remained essentially unchanged. The change in the logic of political competition broke the monopoly previously exercised by the parties of the upper classes, but did not eliminate their powers of containment (Moulian 2006). Economic elites accordingly maintained their involvement in the party system, as a still-relevant form of defense of their interests. During the subsequent period, lasting right through to the present day, the form of political involvement adopted by economic elites has been put to the test on numerous occasions. The first test of the stability of the forms of political involvement of Chile’s economic elites arose in 1938, when the “Popular Front”, Frente Popular, came to power. The Front was an electoral coalition made up of radicals, socialists, and communists. Some scholars see this period as one in which the parties of the economic elite began to experience relative weakness, leading them to adopt a predominantly defensive strategy (Garretón 2000, 55). From this perspective, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party are seen as having lost some of their capacity to influence the direction of public policy because they managed neither to

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modernize nor to construct a programmatic alternative that was suited to the changes in social and economic structure that were taking place. Accordingly, it is argued, during those years the Liberal and Conservative parties came to play a secondary role in the defense of sectorial interests (Drake 1978, 99). This version of events nonetheless requires revision, in the first place because the electoral weight of traditional parties of the Chilean right remained significant between the mid-1930s and the early 1950s.22 Secondly, the supposed inability of the parties of the economic elite to undergo self-renewal could also be viewed as rational behavior: given the relatively anodyne nature of the threat represented by Popular Front government,23 elite parties need do little more than maintain their ability to contain those reformist initiatives that they considered problematic (Moulian 2006; Correa Sutil 2011).24 Finally, during the course of these same years, the influence of business organizations over public policy increased considerably. The major associations of captains of industry, commerce, and agriculture came to control posts in the highest echelons of state bureaucracy, such as the Corporation for the Promotion of Production, Corporación de Fomento a la Producción, CORFO, created as a state entity to encourage and direct the process of industrialization (Schneider 2004, 155). This did not, however, mean that elite parties lost relevance. Rather, at this stage it is possible to observe intense coordination between some business organizations and political parties, as was the case for example of the National Agricultural Society, Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura (SNA), with both Liberal and Conservative parties (Drake 1978, 99; Moulian and Torres Dujisin 1985). As Tomás Moulian (2006) has argued, between 1938 and 1947 Chile’s economic elites used their parties to roll out a strategy of “defensive containment” (contención defensiva) in response to the new scenario

22 The highest vote share taken by all right-wing parties added together was 46.7%, in the municipal elections of 1935. The lowest was 33.6%, in the 1947 municipal elections. The electoral decline of both parties of the right, while real, was extremely gradual (Scully 1992, 127). 23 Due to its own internal contradictions as well as the essentially moderating role of the Radical Party as the coalition’s dominant partner. 24 This was to be the fate of initiatives seeking to modify the electoral system in a way that limited its over-representation of rural areas, or projects that sought to allow rural workers to unionize.

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created by Popular Front government. During this phase, the Liberal– Conservative Party alliance was sufficiently powerful to force the government to compromise, adapting its modernizing and industrializing plans in ways that made them more palatable to the economic elite (Moulian 2006, 21). The presence of parties of the economic elite was so influential that it contributed, toward the end of the cycle of Popular Front governments, to the fracturing of the governing coalition and the resultant banning of the Communist Party—between 1948 and 1958—enacted via the “Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy”, Ley de Defensa Permanente de la Democracia.25 In this way, the economic elites and their parties brought the phase of “defensive containment” to an end and switched to a more active containment strategy, which Moulian denominates as “repressive”. This entailed severe curtailment of the quality of democracy, without actually requiring the installation of an authoritarian regime (Moulian 2006, 143). The stability of the form of political participation adopted by Chile’s economic elites between 1920 and 1932 was next put to the test during the presidential administrations of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (1952–1958) and Jorge Alessandri (1958–1964). These quite different personalities had in common the fact that they had made it into office as independent candidates, with a discourse highly critical of political parties. Both of their governments also undertook ill-fated attempts to reorient the country’s development model along liberal and technocratic lines. In the case of Ibáñez, his anti-party posture came to be expressed in concrete form when he chose a cabinet of ministers made up almost exclusively of personal confidantes, with few strong ties to established parties. In the economic sphere, his administration initially embarked on an orthodox stabilization program, with the support of the Liberal and Conservative parties. In 1955, backed by the main business associations, influential broadsheet El Mercurio, and the parties of the right, he agreed to follow the counsel of the US consultancy firm Klein-Saks, which recommended structural adjustment. The results successfully brought inflation under control—falling from 38%, in 1956, to 17% by 1957— but at the price of a significant hike in unemployment. The social costs of 25 Popularly known as the “Ley Maldita”, loosely translatable as Accursed Law. As well as banning the Communist Party, the law stripped its members of their political rights. Many were imprisoned or forced into exile.

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the adjustment were so substantial that its measures were relaxed ahead of the 1958 elections (Collier and Sater 1996, 278–279; Correa Sutil 2011, 222). The government of Jorge Alessandri26 saw the first experience of a ministerial cabinet with a strong presence of technocrats with no previous party-political experience (Montes 2000). Between 1958 and 1962, Alessandri promoted a new model of development that involved currency depreciation and the deregulation of overseas trade. Surprisingly, however, these measures met resistance from some sectors of the upper classes. There was strong cohesion between the traditional oligarchy— the landowners—and groups connected to more economically dynamic activities such as industry and financial capital, with the former overrepresented politically. These factors combined to make it difficult to conceive of any consensual political project bolder than simple containment of the less tolerable aspects of a developmental model (Moulian 2006, 192). The administrations of Ibáñez del Campo and Jorge Alessandri coincided with an era of gradual decline of the electoral strengths of the Liberal and Conservative parties, who lost vote share to the left. At the beginning of the 1960s, the right-wing parties nonetheless still retained the allegiance of a quarter of the electorate. Another decisive sign of the stability of the presence of parties of the economic elite came in the mid-1960s, when the party system was transformed by the creation of the Christian Democrat Party, Partido Demócrata Cristiano. The Christian Democrats came to power in 1964 with a program for transformation that included agrarian reform, investment in industrial modernization, educational reform, and the nationalization of copper, while stopping short of proposing a break with the capitalist order.27 Having thrown their weight behind the Christian Democrat candidate with the sole aim of avoiding the victory of socialist 26 Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez (1896–1986) was the son of Arturo Alessandri Palma. His political career was combined with a prominent role in business and leadership of the major economic pressure groups. 27 It is interesting that historiography that has collected testimonies from members of economic elite families shows a widespread and strong sentiment of rejection of the Christian Democrat Party, seen as responsible for the beginnings of the crisis that led to the 1970 victory of Salvador Allende. Many members of the elite seem to see the reformism of 1964–1970 as even more deserving of condemnation as the socialism of the Popular Unity era, given that the former was promoted by political leaders who shared their own elevated social station (Stabili 2003, 47).

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candidate Salvador Allende, the parties of the economic elite suffered their worst ever results in the municipal elections of 1965, obtaining just 12.5% of the votes. This result created the conditions for the merger of the old right-wing parties into a single new grouping, the National Party (Partido Nacional) (Pereira 1994). The crisis of Liberals and Conservatives coincided with the most accelerated phase yet of the extension of citizenship, as a result of reforms approved in 1958 and 1962. The former strengthened the secret nature of the ballot, while the second made it compulsory for citizens to appear on the electoral roll. These transformations, plus rural to urban migration, led to the parties of the economic elite losing their hegemonic position in rural constituencies, which accelerated their internal crises and the need for the elite to seek new alternatives for representation (Scully 1992, 142). Against this backdrop, the creation of the National Party clearly illustrates the dynamic of change and continuity that prevails in the relation between Chilean economic elites and the party system. The crisis of the traditional parties that dated from the C19th, plus the irruption of parties that presented a much more serious threat to elite interests than the Popular Front, triggered a process of revision and self-criticism. The result was the creation of a new type of right-wing party, nationalist, and authoritarian, which espoused the electoral mobilization of the middle sectors and urban workers, at the same time as presenting a radical critique of the party system as a whole, blamed for the economic crisis the country was living through. The break with the forms of political action associated with the traditional parties of the Chilean right could be clearly seen in the 1970 election manifesto of National Party candidate Jorge Alessandri. This was in turn a foreshadowing of the orientations that the “Chicago Boys” later brought to the Pinochet regime (Garretón 2000; Valdivia 2008; Moulian and Torres Dujisin 1988). The triumph of the Popular Unity (Unidad Popular) coalition in 1970, by virtue of which Allende became president, represented an extraordinary challenge to the conventional political strategies of the economic elites. The outcome of this phase—the coup of September 11, 1973— reflects the degree of polarization created by Allende’s administration and his implementation of the “Chilean road to socialism”. The actions of the elite both within the party system and via business corporations demonstrate their conviction that opposition through democratic institutionality was no longer viable. Although the National Party did play a prominent role in opposition—more prominent, in fact, than its 1970 electoral result

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would have suggested—business associations also took an active part in initiatives aimed at destabilizing the government (Schneider 2004, 163). Active participation in preparations for the coup, and the open support lent by business interests to the military regime headed by Augusto Pinochet, are clear indicators of economic elites’ change of strategy in the face of the threat posed by Popular Unity. The National Party went into voluntary abeyance, after signaling its support for the new government, and some of its main leaders went on to occupy positions of responsibility in the regime (Garretón 2000, 60). The main business associations or guilds (gremios ) meanwhile briefly recovered their channels of access to, and influence on, the state apparatus after the coup. They were soon displaced by the neoliberal technocracy, although the Pinochet regime did always kept open lines of dialogue with the major economic corporations. These consultations were particularly intense in periods of economic crisis (1982 and 1983), when the regime had to intensify its repression of popular mobilization and needed more urgently than ever to be able to count on public support from key business actors (Silva 1996, 205). In essence, the period of the Pinochet regime produced an important renewal of the ideas that predominated within Chile’s economic elites (Silva 1996). The project of radical transformation of the development model that had been sketched out by Jorge Alessandri’s presidency, and in his 1970 election manifesto, was finally taken up by the main business sectors and by the Armed Forces, and was imposed in an authoritarian fashion on the rest of society. This transformation was promoted intellectually by a group of economists trained at the University of Chicago, particularly influenced by the neoliberal doctrines of Milton Friedman. Protected politically by the Armed Forces, the Chicago Boys took over the main positions in economic management (Huneeus 2000). Over the same period, another group of civilians acquired increasing influence, going on to play an important role in theoretical justification of the legitimacy of the military regime, and design of political institutions seeking to increase its longevity. The group’s ideologue was Jaime Guzmán, a university professor of conservative Catholic views very closely modeled on those of Spanish ultramontanism. Guzmán had founded the “gremialista”

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movement28 in the late 1960s, and later gained notoriety as a fierce opponent of the Popular Unity government (Valdivia 2008; Cristi 2011). “Gremialistas” and Chicago Boys came from quite different intellectual traditions and political trajectories but converged around a common vision. The gremialistas provided the theoretical justification of authoritarianism, the critique of democracy, and the design of the political order that would eventually provide the scaffolding for the 1989 transition back toward democracy. The Chicago Boys designed the economic reforms that turned Chile into a laboratory for the dismantling of the Keynesian state and the implanting of neoliberalism. Both groups formed the basis of political parties which the Chilean economic elites used to work toward the defense of their interests in the electoral political arena (Ffrench-Davis 1999; Silva 1996). The first intimations of a beginning of transition toward democracy sparked a debate within these groups about the most suitable means for preserving the legacy of the authoritarian regime and defending the positions of power they had achieved. Two positions can be differentiated, which both recall and transform the identities of the old Conservative and Liberal parties. On the one hand, a group with conservative Catholic roots, centered on the figure of Jaime Guzmán, sought to capitalize on the results of the regime. Presenting themselves as its natural heirs, they staunchly defended Pinochet and all aspects of his rule. This group was the kernel of what later became the Independent Democratic Union party, Unión Democrática Independiente (UDI) (Valdivia 2014, 175). A second group of somewhat younger civilians, with links to the liberal tradition and identified with the regime’s economic reforms, attempted to take distance from the most criticized aspects of the authoritarian regime, such as its human rights violations. Seeking to create a center-right electoral base, this group subsequently became the National Renewal party, Renovación Nacional (RN) (Siavelis 2014). These differences do not represent significant cleavages within the Chilean economic elite. On the contrary, the UDI Independent Democratic Union and RN have forged an electoral alliance in every election

28 A right-wing movement founded by Guzmán in the Law School of Santiago’s Catholic University in 1967. According to Valdivia (2008, 13–14), gremialismo differed from the traditional Chilean right in opposing liberal ideas at the same time as defending capitalism and “anti-statist corporativism inspired by traditional Catholicism”.

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since 1989, and both parties have strong penetration in the upper echelons of Chilean society. Most of the leaders of both are closely connected to those few prominent families who dominate the world of business, some tracing their family trees back to the C18th. Some scholars have nonetheless pointed to significant differences between Chile’s transitional and post-transitional parties of the right, and those that existed during most of the previous part of the C20th. For Siavelis (2014) one of the major novelties is the fact that the new parties of the right have a social base: since he asserts that late C19th and early C20th liberalism and conservatism were nothing more than the political expression of business organizations (Siavelis 2014, 255). By contrast, the new parties of the Chilean right—in particular, the UDI Independent Democratic Union— have a facility which their predecessors lacked for constructing a twin electoral base, with strong representation in the upper and lower echelons of society (Rosenblatt 2018). Beyond these differences in the type of electorate-party linkage that prevails in each period, however, the UDI and RN share with early C20th Liberals and Conservatives an apparent facility for constructing parties whose electoral base spread far beyond only society’s richest sectors (Luna 2014). Helped by institutional engineering that privileges the preservation of the status quo, the alliance of the UDI Independent Democratic Union and RN has constituted a formidable political force, one that has attracted between 25 and 44% of the vote in presidential elections held between 1989 and 2013, and 34–44% of vote share in lower house legislative elections in the same period. These results, plus the institutional design inherited from the dictatorship, have strengthened the role of parties of the economic elite as veto actors, able to block any reformist initiative that tries to dismantle the more salient features of the development model instituted by the military regime.

References Angell, Alan. 1972. Politics and the Labor Movement in Chile. London: Oxford University Press. Barbier, Jacques. 1972. Elite and Cadres in Bourbon Chile. The Hispanic American Historical Review 52 (3): 416–435. Bauer, Arnold J. 1994. La Sociedad Rural Chilena. Desde La Conquista Hasta Nuestros Días. Santiago de Chile: Universidad Andrés Bello.

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Bengoa, José. 1988. Historia Social de La Agricultura Chilena. Tomo I: El Poder y La Subordinación. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Sur. ———. 1990. Historia Social de La Agricultura Chilena. Tomo II: Haciendas y Campesinos. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Sur. Blakemore, Harold. 1993. From the War of the Pacific to 1930. In Chile since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell, 33–86. New York: Cambridge University Press. Borón, Atilio. 1972. El Estudio de La Movilización Política En América Latina: La Movilización Electoral En La Argentina y Chile. Desarrollo Económico 12 (46): 211–243. Bro, Naim. 2022. The Structure of Political Conflict. The Oligarchs and the Bourgeoisie in the Chilean Congress, 1834–1894. Journal Theory and Society 52 (3): 353–386. Cavarozzi, Marcelo. 1978. Elementos Para Una Caracterización Del Capitalismo Oligárquico. Revista Mexicana de Sociología 40 (4): 1327–1352. Collier, Simon, and William F. Sater. 1996. A History of Chile, 1808–1994. New York: Cambridge University Press. Colomer, Josep. 2004. Taming the Tiger: Voting Rights and Political Instability in Latin America. Latin American Politics and Society 46 (2): 29–58. Correa Sutil, Sofía. 2011. Con las riendas del poder la derecha chilena en el siglo XX . Santiago de Chile: Debolsillo. Cristi, Renato. 2011. El pensamiento político de Jaime Guzmán. Una biografía intelectual. Santiago de Chile: LOM. Drake, Paul W. 1978. Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932–52. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 2009. Between Tyranny and Anarchy: A History of Democracy in Latin America, 1800-2006. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Duverger, Maurice. 1957. Los Partidos Políticos. México, DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Edwards, Alberto. 1987. La Fronda Aristocrática En Chile. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria. Encina, Francisco. 1955. Nuestra Inferioridad Económica. Sus Causas, Sus Consecuencias. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria. Ffrench-Davis, Ricardo. 1999. Entre El Neoliberalismo y El Crecimiento Con Equidad. Tres Décadas de Política Económica En Chile. Santiago de Chile: Dolmen. Garretón, Manuel Antonio. 2000. Atavism and Democratic Ambiguity in the Chilean Right. In Conservative Parties, the Right, and Democracy in Latin America, 53–79. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Gay, Claudio. 1854. Historia Física y Política de Chile. Tomo I . París: E. Thunot y Cía.

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Gibson, Edward L. 1996. Class and Conservative Parties: Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gil, Federico. 1966. The Political System of Chile. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Góngora, Mario. 1960. Origen de Los “Inquilinos” de Chile Central. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile. ———. 1970. Encomenderos y Estancieros. Estudios Acerca de La Constitución Social Aristocrática de Chile Después de La Conquista 1580–1660. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile. ———. 1975. Urban Social Stratification in Colonial Chile. The Hispanic American Historical Review 55 (3): 421–448. Grez Toso, Sergio. 2007. De la “regeneración del pueblo” a la huelga general: génesis y evolución histórica del movimiento popular en Chile (1810–1890). Halperín Donghi, Tulio. 1988. Historia Contemporánea de América Latina. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Huneeus, Carlos. 2000. El régimen de Pinochet. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Sudamericana. ———. 2001. La Derecha En El Chile Después de Pinochet: El Caso de La Unión Demócrata Independiente. Kellog Institute (Working Paper 285). https://kellogg.nd.edu/sites/default/files/old_files/documents/285_ 0_0.pdf. Jobet, Julio César. 1955. Ensayo Crítico Del Desarrollo Económico Social de Chile. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria. Jocelyn-Holt, Alfredo. 1997. El peso de la noche. Nuestra frágil fortaleza histórica. Santiago de Chile: Planeta. ———. 2004. Historia General de Chile 3. Amos, Señores y Patricios. Santiago: Editorial Sudamericana. ———. 2012. La independencia de chile: Tradición, modernización y mito. Santiago de Chile: Debolsilllo. Kurtz, Marcus J. 2013. Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective: Social Foundations of Institutional Order. New York: Cambridge University Press. León, Leonardo. 2002. Reclutas Forzados y Desertores de La Patria: El Bajo Pueblo Chileno En La Guerra de La Independencia, 1810–1814. Historia 35: 251–297. Loveman, Brian, and Elizabeth Lira. 1999. Las Suaves Cenizas Del Olvido. Vía Chilena de Reconciliación Política 1814–1932. Santiago de Chile: LOM. Luna, Juan Pablo. 2014. Segmented Representation: Political Party Strategies in Unequal Democracies, 1st ed. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Meller, Patricio. 1998. Un Siglo de Economía Política Chilena (1890–1990). Santiago de Chile: Universidad Andrés Bello.

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Millar, René. 1981. La elección presidencial de 1920. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria. Montes, J. Esteban., Scott Mainwaring, and Eugenio Ortega. 2000. Rethinking the Chilean Party Systems. Journal of Latin American Studies 32 (3): 795– 824. Moulian, Tomás. 1986. El Gobierno de Ibáñez. 1952–1958. Santiago de Chile: FLACSO-Chile. ———. 2006. Fracturas. De Pedro Aguirre Cerda a Salvador Allende (1938– 1973). Santiago de Chile: LOM. Moulian, Tomás, and Isabel Torres Dujisin. 1985. Discusiones Entre Honorables. Las Candidaturas Presidenciales de La Derecha. 1938–1946. Santiago de Chile: FLACSO-Chile. ———. 1988. La Reorganización de Los Partidos de La Derecha Entre 1983 y 1988. Negretto, Gabriel. 2013. Making Constitutions: Presidentes, Parties, and Institutional Choice in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pereira, Teresa. 1994. El Partido Conservador, 1930–1965: Ideas, Figuras y Actitudes. Santiago, Chile: Fundación Mario Góngora. Pinto, Julio, and Verónica Valdivia. 2009. ¿Chilenos Todos? La Construcción Social de La Nación (1810–1840), 1st ed. Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones. Pinto Santa Cruz, Aníbal. 1996. Chile: Un Caso de Desarrollo Frustrado. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universidad de Santiago. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universidad de Santiago. Remmer, Karen L. 1984. Party Competition in Argentina and Chile: Political Recruitment and Public Policy, 1890–1930. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Rojas Flores, Jorge. 1993. La Dictadura de Ibáñez Del Campo y Los Sindicatos (1927–1931). Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria. Rosenblatt, Fernando. 2018. Party Vibrancy and Democracy in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber, and John D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sábato, Hilda. 2018. Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Sagredo Baeza, Rafael. 2014. Historia mínima de Chile, 1st ed. Madrid: Turner [u.a.]. Salazar, Gabriel. 2005. Construcción de Estado En Chile (1800–1837): Democracia de “Los Pueblos”, Militarismo Ciudadano, Golpismo Oligárquico. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Sudamericana. Schneider, Ben Ross. 2004. Business Politics and the State in Twentieth-Century Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Scully, Timothy. 1992. Rethinking the Center. Party Politics in Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Chile. Standford: Standford University Press. Siavelis, Peter. 2014. Chile: The Right’s Evolution from Democracy to Authoritariansm and Back Again. In The Resilience of the Latin American Right, ed. Juan Pablo, 242–267. Luna and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Silva, Eduardo. 1996. The State and Capital in Chile: Business Elites, Technocrats, and Market Economics. Boulder: Westview Press. Somma, Nicolás. 2011. When Powerful Rebel. Armed Insurgency in NineteenthCentury Latin America. Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame. Stabili, Maria Rosaria. 2003. El sentimiento aristocrático: elites chilenas frente al espejo (1860–1960). Santiago de Chile: Ed. Andrés Bello. Torres Dujisin, Isabel. 1989. Historia de Los Cambios Del Sistema Electoral En Chile a Partir de La Constitución de 1925. Valdivia, Verónica. 2008. Nacionales y Gremialistas: El “Parto” de La Nueva Derecha Política Chilena, 1964–1973, 1st ed. Santiago de Chile: Lom Ediciones. ———. 2014. Su revolución contra nuestra revolución. La pugna marxistagremialista en los ochenta. Santiago de Chile: LOM Ed. Valenzuela, Arturo. 1998. La política de partidos y la crisis del presidencialismo en Chile: una propuesta para una reforma parlamentaria. In La crisis del presidencialismo. 2. El caso de Latinoamérica, La crisis del presidencialismo, ed. Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, 11–92. Madrid: Alianza. Valenzuela, Arturo, and J. Samuel Valenzuela. 1983. Los Orígenes de La Democracia. Reflexiones Teóricas Sobre El Caso de Chile. Estudios Públicos 12: 7–39. Valenzuela, J. Samuel. 1985. Democratización Vía Reforma: La Expansión Del Sufragio En Chile. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Ildes. ———. 2001. Class Relations and Democratization: A Reassesment of Barrington Moore’s Model. In The Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America, ed. Miguel Angel, 240–286. Centeno and Fernando López-Alves. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zeitlin, Maurice, ed. 1980. Classes, Class Conflict, and the State: Empirical Studies in Class Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop Publishers. ———. 1984. The Civil Wars in Chile (or the Bourgeois Revolutions That Never Were). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 4

Argentina: Economic Elites Outside the Party System

Once Argentina’s era of mass democracy began, the country’s economic elites would never again have relevant political parties with national reach. This state of affairs persisted to become a salient characteristic of C20th Argentine politics, and one of the keys to understanding the country’s difficulties in consolidating stable democracy (Borón 2000; Gibson 1996; Morresi and Vommaro 2014; Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). This phenomenon is noteworthy when one considers the situation that prevailed at the end of the C19th and beginning of the C20th, a period of extraordinary economic growth and relative political stability. At that time, the economic elites seemed to be creating a pattern of active and lasting participation in the party system via a set of electorally relevant organizations with national reach. In the terms used by Gibson (1996), the party system as it existed in Argentina between 1880 and 1916 displays a set of conservative parties whose principal constituencies came from different segments of the economic elites. In fact, most of the historiographical and political science analysis that has been done of the period takes it as read that Argentina had a classic oligarchic regime, in which one of the parties—the National Autonomist Party, Partido Autonomista Nacional—managed to establish itself as hegemonic through extensive use of fraud, clientelism, and intervention by the national executive power in provincial politics. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Monestier, Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena, Latin American Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1_4

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The decline and loss of relevance of the elite parties that took place from 1916 naturally did not mean that economic elites ceased to defend their interests in the political arena. The alternatives that they used intensively included forging connections to the state apparatus via corporate pressure and lobbying, as well as recurrent political intervention by the Armed Forces in the form of coups and the installation of authoritarian regimes (in 1930, 1943, 1955, 1962, 1966, and 1976). In the aftermath of the 1930 coup, and for over half a century subsequently, different segments of Argentina’s economic elites also embarked upon initiatives attempting to create or revive parties capable of pursuing the defense of their interests. All these efforts however failed or had only a very limited reach. As has already been stated, the theory put forward by this work holds that the types of links that prevail in the relationship between economic elites and political parties depend on the interaction of two causal factors—the degree of cohesiveness of economic elites, and the level of political mobilization of the popular sectors—at two periods of contingency and great political change: independence, and the period of formation of mass democracy. This chapter aims to demonstrate that the weakness of elite parties in Argentina, and their inability to become relevant actors under democratic regimes, is the consequence of a persistent lack of cohesion within the upper classes, and of the early, intense political mobilization of popular sectors.

4.1 Late Colonization and Territorial Fragmentation Spanish colonization of the territory that makes up present-day Argentina began late, when compared to the rest of Hispanic America. The general characteristics of the colonial process were determined by the discovery and exploitation of the immense silver mine at Potosí (in modern-day Bolivia), which kickstarted a cycle of economic expansion and demographic growth in the region. This phenomenon in turn triggered the conquest of present-day Argentina, in search of new mineral deposits and of indigenous populations that could be turned into a workforce. The path taken by the colonial impulse was also shaped by the search for a

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trading route that would reduce the times and costs of trade between America and Spain.1 It was against this backdrop that various population centers were founded, initially small, and many of which would not even go on to become cities. The more successful of these ventures from the first stage of colonialization included Santiago del Estero (1553), San Miguel del Tucumán (1565), Córdoba (1573), Salta (1582), La Rioja (1591), and Jujuy (1593), in the northwest. The zone around Cuyo gave rise to the founding of Mendoza (1561), San Juan (1562), and San Luis (1594); while the coastal area saw the establishment of Santa Fe (1573) and Corrientes (1588). Buenos Aires was founded on the Río de la Plata river in 1580. During most of the colonial period, these cities and their spheres of influence were divided into administrative units, most of which depended politically on the Virreinato (Viceroyalty) of Peru. Unlike in Chile, where colonization was largely restricted to the relatively homogenous Central Valley, Río de la Plata’s cities were spread around a very extensive and diverse area, in terms of both its geography and the indigenous populations that lived there. The relative isolation, the type of links established with the indigenous peoples, and the natural resources that were available produced significant differences between the cities in terms of their societies and levels of economic development (Lynch 1993). Absent the precious metals that they had come to find, colonists’ wealth and status depended at the beginning on the material and symbolic recognition conferred upon them by the Crown. Donation of land, the concession of encomiendas , and the right to exploit the wild cattle herds that ran free across most of the territory gave rise to incipient local elites. The impact of these benefits was not identical across all the cities and regions of the new territory. Encomiendas , for example, constituted a key resource in the formation of the initial fortunes of the cities of the northwest, such as Santiago del Estero, Salta, and Tucumán. Intensive practice of the encomienda had enormous demographic consequences.

1 Until the Bourbon reforms, legal trade between Spain and its colonies in the Americas

was based on monopoly, restriction of the numbers of ports through which goods could enter and leave, and the concentration of all commercial exchange in two huge convoys per year. The system favored social sectors that had a monopoly over colonial commerce, multiplied the costs of commercialization of imported goods, and reduced the purchasing power of silver from the Americas.

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In the coastal region and in Buenos Aires, by contrast, intense indigenous resistance made this type of exploitation less viable.2 Although the Spaniards who led the founding of the colonies and settled in the cities were recognized as “neighbors” with the right to be in the cabildos ,3 the social distance between Spaniards, Europeans, and criollos was relatively low. By contrast, indigenous populations, mestizos , Black people and zambos 4 were highly segregated in both status and material living conditions (Di Meglio 2012, 37). Those population centers that did manage to establish themselves embarked on a process of productive specialization, shaped inter alia by demand from Potosí, the main economic center of the region. Jujuy, Salta, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, and Córdoba, for example, began to specialize in the breeding and sale of mules, to supply mining activities and the transport of goods to and from Alto Perú. In Tucumán—together with Salta, one of the two richest cities in the region—agricultural activity flourished, giving rise to cart-making. San Juan produced and sold aguardiente spirits, Mendoza made wine. Asunción and Corrientes were the main suppliers of mate tea to Potosí and Santiago. Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba, and Cuyo had enormous reserves of wild cattle, a resource which began to be exploited via expeditions that slaughtered cattle in regions surrounding cities, in order to trade the hides (Di Meglio 2012, 113; Gelman 2014, 86–89). No process of economic specialization was as rapid, or as far-reaching in its effects, as the one that took place in Buenos Aires. Shortly after its foundation, the city’s port became the main entry and exit point for illegal trade in the region. An ever-growing proportion of Potosí silver, and of cattle hides, left the region via Buenos Aires, and increasing quantities of slaves and consumer goods arrived at the port via trafficking involving Spanish, Portuguese, and English ships. The cities began to abandon some of their more self-sufficiency-oriented activities in favor

2 Which explains the demand for slave labor in Buenos Aires and some of the cities of the coastal region. 3 The cabildo was the basic unit of government of all Spanish cities in the America. Cabildos enjoyed considerable autonomy, and were empowered to communicate directly with the monarch. Their main functions included city governance and the administration of justice. 4 A term adopted in Latin America at that time to refer to people of mixed Afrodescendant and indigenous parentage.

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of products that made their way to the region via contraband through the port. As both the volume and the value of this contraband grew, becoming central to the economy of Río de la Plata, Cuyo, and Alto Perú, the Spanish crown attempted to impose some measure of control, for example by setting up internal customs posts. While these did not succeed in bringing the illegal commerce to a halt, they did contribute to delineating the contours of an internal market that would correspond to the future frontiers of Argentine territory (Brown 2011, 29; Luna 1995, 23). The political importance of Buenos Aires grew with its economic importance, and events that betrayed the existence of jealousy and competition between cities became frequent. The creation of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata (1776)], and the approval of Free Trade Regulations (Reglamento de Libre Comercio), in 1778, accentuated the problem and led to important changes in the region’s economy and society (Lynch 1993). The designation of Buenos Aires as the capital of the Viceroyalty entailed the installation of the court, along with other colonial institutions, each with their respective contingents of personnel. This same phenomenon, with differences of scale, was repeated in many of the cities of the Viceroyalty, adding complexity to the social structure and increasing differentiation between sectors. The new institutional arrangements sought to restrict the autonomy of local government and strengthen the control of the monarchy over its subjects. The practical results were however uneven. The diversity of situations and interests that coexisted in the cities of the new Viceroyalty affected the implementation and outcomes of reform. In some cities the new authorities did manage to limit the power of the cabildos , only to come into open conflict with established local elites. In other cities, the effect of the reforms was dampened by traditional elites co-opting or buying off state functionaries (Gelman 2014, 124; Losada 2009, 31). In the case of Buenos Aires, the sheer quantity and diversity of colonial institutions located in the city considerably reduced the power of the cabildo. Beyond these changes, we can assert that the intention, which was to isolate new functionaries from traditional elites, was not achieved. In the end, marriages, credit, opportunities for mutually beneficial business transactions, and outright

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corruption wove a dense web of relationships between old elites and functionaries, particularly of middle and low rank (Losada 2009, 43).5 This same desire for control over local elites was what led to the reorganization of the territory into large administrative districts—intendencias —directly ruled by representatives designated by the Viceroy. The creation of these administrative units did not help to make links between Buenos Aires and the other cities any smoother: the populations who were supposedly subject to these locally inserted authorities resisted some of their decisions, and appealed directly to the Viceroy to intervene. In this way the Viceroy often ended up at odds with authorities he himself had put in office, helping to deepen the conflicts between Buenos Aires and some of the main cities of the interior, such as Cordoba and Salta (Chiaramonte 1997; Lynch 1969).6 The approval of the Free Trade Regulations, Reglamento de Libre Comercio, in 1778 allowed Buenos Aires to buy and sell with other ports in America and Spain, and gave it the monopoly over the whole territory of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. The new regime stimulated the renewal of the Buenos Aires economic elite. The local representatives of the trading companies of Cádiz, in Spain, accumulated the largest fortunes. This opened up opportunities for enrichment and upward social mobility for some of the immigrants who arrived in the second half of the C18th (Losada 2009, 32). The change to the institutional environment for trade benefited the commercial elite but fed divisions among its members. Those economic actors who were not included in the Spanish monopoly7 began to demand absolute freedom to trade with other European powers. At the end of the C18th, the pro-liberalization position was in the ascendant as a result of war in Europe, and the inability of Spain to guarantee exclusivity and regularity in trade flows with America. These divisions help to explain

5 Something which might help to explain the low levels of loyalty to the crown demonstrated by functionaries during the independence period. 6 As we will see below, these conflicts are at the root of the resistance that these cities offered to the revolutionary movement begun by Buenos Aires in 1810, and of the confrontations with the provinces of the coastal region, the northwest, and Cuyo, once independence had been declared. In other cases, the tensions explain the ruptures that gave rise to new states such as Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay. 7 The monopoly placed restrictions on trade, but also offered certain guarantees to those economic agents it authorized to operate in overseas commerce.

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the varying stances taken by sectors of the elite over the events of 1810 (Halperín Donghi 2011, 201). The Bourbon reforms also affected the economic elites of the cities of the interior, but the experience of the upper classes of Salta, Tucumán, and Córdoba was different from that of Buenos Aires and the coastal cities. In Salta, Tucumán, and Córdoba the level of renewal was lower, and there was more co-optation and integration between old and new elites. The prosperity of these groups, and their dependence on the stability of the commercial flows that linked the Viceroyalty and Spain, form part of the explanation for their skeptical or even openly hostile attitudes to the juntista movement and Buenos Aires’s self-appointed role in it. In sum, the way in which colonization took place led to the formation of a society in the environs of Río de la Plata made up of multiple economic elites, coexisting while inserted in very different contexts. Only weakly interlinked, they made their living in distinct areas of economic activity. Their links with Spain were also diverse in nature. This heterogeneity contributed to the surfacing of tensions and conflicts between different territorial spaces, each with its respective society.

4.2

The War of Independence: Fragmentation from Above, Mobilization from Below

The juntista movement that began in Buenos Aires in 1810, and the war of independence that dragged on for the subsequent decade, resulted in profound transformations of the political, economic, and social order that had come about as a result of the creation of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata in 1776. Right from the outset, the revolutionary elites adopted a logic of competition based on factions, in which it was difficult to find stable patterns of allegiance. Antagonism between different sectors of the elites contributed to the disintegration of the colonial political order and severely impeded the consolidation of a viable alternative. Intense popular sector mobilization moreover brought new sources of instability, which conspired against the creation of a political center capable of imposing its authority on the whole territory. The rupture of the colonial order plunged the existing model of political representation into crisis. The revolution, with its democratic rhetoric, called for electoral competition as the legitimate way to select authorities. The combined effect of the militarization of society as a consequence of the war, plus the calling of elections, provoked an intense and accelerated

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process of political activation of the popular sectors. The interaction of militarization and the calling of elections determined the principal characteristics of the dynamic of political competition in C19th Argentina, as well as the form of political involvement pursued by its economic elites. Intense debates ensued about the degree of autonomy that the territories and cities of the old Viceroyalty should enjoy, and the need to have political authorities able to ensure unity. Different views over these matters, and a heterogeneity of interests among and between regional elites, produced the emergence of two identifiable groups: federalists, and unionists. These identities did not originate as the political expression of a gulf between Buenos Aires and the rest of the cities in the territory. In fact, the political processes of the C19th showed a strong presence of unionist contingents in various cities in the interior, and conversely, significant support in Buenos Aires for federalism. The conflicts that arose between elites from different regions, and within regions also, are a testament to the fact that on the whole elite groups did not, at the beginning of the revolutionary period, come anywhere close to constituting the leadership class of an alreadyconfigured political community. On the contrary, these were relatively small, predominantly urban groups whose strongest identity was based on their belonging to a certain city or region. The revolution changed the agenda for relationships within these sectors, and accentuated their disputes. Only against such a backdrop can we account for experiences such as those of some of the elites of Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Corrientes, and Córdoba, who spent decades embarked upon political and military action that openly challenged the hegemony of Buenos Aires (Halperin Donghi 2011, 279). The revolutionary process would produce winners and losers among the elite. Principal among the losers, of course, were the authorities of the Viceroyalty and the bureaucrats of the Spanish Crown. High-ranking officials were the most likely to fall victim to the anti-Spanish sentiment that the revolution fomented.8 The winners included individuals who were able to attain the highest political office due to the fall of the colonial order. Although most leaders of the revolution came from families who 8 The anti-Spanish climate made itself felt in punitive measures against figures strongly identified with the old order, but was somewhat mitigated by the existence of family and economic ties between members of the traditional leadership class, and leaders of the revolutionary movement (Losada 2009, 66).

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had long been part of the elite, they were rarely drawn from the upper echelons of that elite. Therefore, and in contrast to Chile, Argentina’s revolution allowed for some social mobility without producing a radical rupture with the preceding social order. From an economic perspective the revolution harmed almost all sectors, although expectations differed as to what the vicissitudes of war would bring. For traders and producers who had depended on the routes and privileges of the economy of the Viceroyalty, reality had changed radically, and it was highly unlikely that anything would ever again be the same as it had been prior to 1810. For the traders who had fought for economic liberalization, on the other hand, the horizon looked more promising as long as one fundamental condition could be assured: peace. In this way, the political and economic elites who had sparked the revolution gradually came to be at loggerheads (Halperin Donghi 2011, 201). Their confrontation was made worse by the appearance of a new kind of leader: military officers and rural caudillos, reluctant to bow to the preferences of the economic elites since they had their own bases of legitimacy. The military men and caudillos were the product of the militarization of society brought about by the war, and the need to recruit armies. Between 1810 and 1820, in particular, urban civilian elites began to be displaced in favor of military men who had made their careers during the revolution, or caudillos linked to the countryside. These figures began to take on an ever-greater share of military and administrative responsibilities. Examples include José de San Martín, Carlos María de Alvear, Manuel Dorrego, Martín Miguel de Güemes, and, later, Facundo Quiroga, Francisco Ramírez, Estanislao López, Martín Rodríguez, and Juan Manuel de Rosas. The ascent of the caudillos as primary protagonists of the revolutionary political dynamic had various important implications. They have traditionally been portrayed as figures operating in the institutional vacuum provoked by the crisis of central government, accentuating that crisis still further by their rejection of any and all mechanisms that would have placed a brake on their own authority. However, it should be noted that during this period there were several constitutional experiments that did, overall, contribute to territorial delineation in the provinces beyond the urban centers (Losada 2009, 72).

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The juncture around independence, then, featured elite fragmentation and the emergence of the caudillo. It also featured high levels of political mobilization by the popular sectors. The Argentine revolutionary movement that began in 1810, unlike its Chilean equivalent, had active political participation “from below”. The phenomenon was particularly marked in Buenos Aires—which amplified its overall importance—and on the coast, although it was also intense in Salta and Jujuy, and featured to some degree across the whole territory. Recurrent episodes of mobilization were carried out by poor criollos, indigenous people, mestizos , Black people and mulatos. The highest levels of political mobilization of popular sectors were generally seen in the territories with “most population considered white, fewer traditional lineages, and more changing fortunes” (Di Meglio 2012, 188).9 In the case of Buenos Aires and the rural areas of Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, and Corrientes, historiography has highlighted a prevalence of “egalitarian” or “democratic” attitudes among broad swathes of the criollo population who considered themselves to be “decent”—or even “noble”, by the standards of pure breeding and bloodlines that defined the principal strata of colonial society in Río de la Plata. These relatively enlightened egalitarian ideals became more pronounced, and spread to other social sectors, during the political and economic crisis that preceded the juntista movement. The popular classes had notable levels of participation in the citizen militias and irregular forces that combated and defeated the English invasion of 1807. In the years prior to the outbreak of the pro-independence revolution, the militias set great store by their citizenship status. They also fought to keep privileges such as the right to choose their own officers, resisting every effort to assimilate them into regular forces. Viceroy Liniers—a hero of resistance against the British, who would later be executed by the revolutionaries—saw where such attitudes might lead. Referring to the trials and tribulations he faced in attempting to train a disciplined army, he asked: “how could [subordination] take hold between people who consider one another to be equal?” This was the basis on which the political activation of the popular sectors during the revolutionary process was built (Johnson 2013, 81). 9 This social composition can be explained by the relatively weakly rooted nature of the encomienda system; the precarious living conditions of the first inhabitants, and the lack of colonists with prestigious family trees; as well as by opportunities for enrichment and upward social mobility for individuals who engaged in contraband and moneylending.

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We have already seen, above, how the political and economic importance of Buenos Aires, as the former headquarters of the Viceroyalty and seat of government between 1810 and 1820, multiplied the effects of different forms of lower-class political participation. Among the most recurrent and consequential of these forms were popular mobilizations instigated by sectors of the elite, as a way of intervening in the constant disputes between factions of the government and opposition; and mutinies and uprisings by popular sector groups within the armies and militias. These modes of political activation led the subaltern classes to involve themselves directly in movements that installed and brought down governments and other civil and military authorities. These actions also allowed the popular sectors to demonstrate their preferences and dissatisfaction toward the political management of the revolutionary process, and their own expectations of change and continuity regarding various aspects of the old colonial order. Nonetheless, it should be remembered that the popular sectors were not homogeneous in either composition or preferences. Perhaps the only thing that united much of the popular class in Buenos Aires during the revolutionary period was a shared hatred of the Spanish. This found expression in a host of forms of real and symbolic violence, which the authorities at times encouraged, and at other times sought to contain (Di Meglio 2006, 97). The war with Spain was, naturally, determinant in the political mobilization of the popular sectors. The need to organize the revolutionary army also detonated the adoption of fiery rhetoric by both civil and military leaders, who invoked “the people” and issued impassioned pleas to their “fellow citizens”. Both of these terms were certainly more inclusive in intent that the kinds of terms used during the colonial period to address those who belonged to the reduced circle of “neighbors” (vecinos ), or “decent people”, who were allowed to take part in political matters (Ternavasio 2002). Official discourse was otherwise full of contradictions which obliged revolutionary leaders to strike a sometimes difficult balance between social order and the dissemination of a new ideal of citizenship (Di Meglio 2012, 203). The fragmentation of the economic and political elites over how the revolutionary process should be steered, and what its objectives should be, produced fierce inter-factional competition. The absence of minimally consensual mechanisms for defining the makeup, legitimacy, and organization of government led to frequent confrontations and crises of

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legitimacy and governability. These were often resolved by political mobilization that called for popular sector involvement, either as citizens or as part of the armies that regularly challenged civilian political authorities via pronunciamientos.10 Examples abound, whether in the form of struggles between factions of the political elites in Buenos Aires and other cities and regions of the interior, or in conflicts between Buenos Aires and the regions that questioned its political leadership. The intensity of the political mobilization of the popular sectors of the city of Buenos Aires can be seen in the events that preceded the rise and fall of successive revolutionary governments. In April 1811, one faction of the Junta mobilized some hundreds of individuals from the suburbs, directing them toward the city’s Plaza de la Victoria11 in an effort to force the resignation of opposition deputies. Members of the group that came under siege denounced the intervention of the common masses and the complicity of the mayors of some peripheral areas in recruiting them. In September of the same year, the procedure was repeated with other actors. A year later, in October 1812, the presence of the “riffraff” and of troops, this time instigated by one of the then-active Masonic lodges, produced a new change of government. The incomers would go on to fall in exactly the same fashion, in April 1815. These kinds of episodes, involving different parts of the “low classes” and meeting quite different fates, became a permanent feature of Buenos Aires politics at least until 1860. The distribution of political power at all levels ceased to be disputed almost exclusively between members of the elite. Increasing factionalism in the elite, plus the precarious nature of political institutions, favored the transformation of subaltern classes into actors who could determine the outcome of political competition (Di Meglio 2012, 204–211). The early political activation of the plebe favored the emergence of a new class of leader, able to operate as intermediary between the popular sectors and leaders of the different factions. These were individuals who occupied economic, administrative, or military positions that brought them into contact with different segments of the subaltern classes, and who commanded resources that allowed them to politically activate significant portions of those classes. Their capacity for rallying groups was one 10 Whereby armed groups, stopping short of launching a coup, would nevertheless use a show of explicit or implicit force to back up their expression of views on issues that were strictly speaking the purview of the civilian political authorities. 11 Now the Plaza de Mayo.

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of the things that proved decisive for the success or failure of popular mobilizations: leaders were responsible for the size of the crowd and, importantly, for ensuring it remained biddable. Figures able to fill such a role became the key political actors of Argentine C19th politics. This did not go unnoticed by elites, who noted the importance of such figures and worked to command their support and loyalty (Fradkin 2008, 63). As well as more or less spontaneous mobilization, another outlet for popular political participation came in the form of the military forces in which they had to serve. The longer the war went on, the greater was the pressure from successive revolutionary governments to ensure the enrollment of all sectors of the population available for mobilization. This entailed measures that tended to turn citizen militia into regular armies. Such policies naturally met resistance among those who, having heeded the call to defend the new American fatherland as free citizens, suddenly found themselves placed in conditions of subordination reminiscent of the very same colonial order they had fought to abolish. The change of status was considerable, carrying with it onerous practical implications for large swathes of the population in terms of the period during which they were required to serve, disciplinary procedures to which they were subject, and the social distance that separated officers from regular troops. In December 1811 the troops of the Patricios Regiment (Regimiento de Patricios) of Buenos Aires rebelled against their officers, citing a series of demands whose spirit could be summed up as wanting to be treated as “loyal free citizens, not ordinary rank and file troops” (Di Meglio 2012, 214). The government responded to this subordination with repression, making an example of the troops (Halperin Donghi 2011, 205). Nonetheless, similar military mutinies, with substantial popular sector participation, would recur throughout the entire period. Even a nonexhaustive survey restricted to Buenos Aires alone shows that similar incidents took place in 1814, 1815, 1819, and 1820. In every case, uprisings led by individuals from the subaltern classes were met with fierce reprisals from governments determined to try and prevent the emergence of popular caudillos who might aspire to become “plebeian tribunes” (Di Meglio 2012, 218). The war also provoked intense political activation of the popular sectors of other regions of the Viceroyalty. The rural areas of the coastal region saw significant mobilization of the subaltern classes, making up armies that would fight, in succession, the royalists, the Portuguese, and—above

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all—the regular Buenos Aires military force.12 These mobilized popular sectors were headed up by individuals from a whole range of social origins: from hacienda owners who formed part of the regional economic elite, to indigenous leaders and rural caudillos completely alien to the world of the upper classes. All of this created extremely volatile political coalitions (Di Meglio 2013, 241). Popular sectors in these provinces saw their capacity for political mobilization further enhanced by an economic structure that was based on the exploitation of an almost endless supply of beef cattle. This offered a means of subsistence to a considerable mass of free men, without regular waged employment and of no fixed abode. These men made up the bulk of the followers who supported the region’s caudillos across the C19th. For the Buenos Aires elites, these sectors represented the epitome of barbarianism standing in the way of the ultimate triumph of civilization. The federalism of the caudillos was perceived as nothing more than a pretext for “uprising by those who have nothing to lose, and for that very reason take delight in destroying the wealth of others” (Halperin Donghi 2011, 279). This hostile attitude is understandable given that popular sector mobilization in the provinces was sufficiently intense, and opposition to Buenos Aires centralism so rooted, as to constitute stubborn impediments to the consolidation of nationwide political institutions until at least 1880. In Salta and Jujuy, a heterogenous group of individuals from the rural popular sectors formed the basis of a revolutionary army led by the hacienda owner Martín Miguel de Güemes. This contingent, unlike that of the coastal region, was loyal to the Buenos Aires government, which it served efficiently, impeding the advance of the royalist forces from Alto Perú via guerilla warfare. Although there were hierarchies and material remuneration, this was not strictly speaking a professional army. Its actions are therefore an important part of the varied repertoire of popular mobilizations registered during the independence juncture. Güemes’s leadership was based on both personal charisma and the distribution of beneficence: land and cattle expropriated from enemies of the

12 A prime mover among these mobilized irregular forces was the one that originated in the territory of the “Eastern Band”, Banda Oriental —present-day Uruguay—center of operations of the influential federal caudillo José Gervasio Artigas. This case is discussed in the next chapter.

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revolution, exemptions from rent, freedom for slaves, etc. This consolidated his political power in the local area, allowing him to bring pressure to bear on Buenos Aires, and on the traditional Salta and Jujuy elites, when he deemed it necessary. These latter groups were scandalized by the privileges Güemes conceded to the troops and officials of his army, at the same time as they correctly identified him as the only figure capable of keeping the plebe in check (Mata de López 2013).13 In sum, the independence war juncture dislocated the colonial-era political and economic order, adding new faultlines to elite fragmentation. Moreover, the new governments’ aspirations to legitimacy, and the exigencies of war, stimulated the political activation of the popular sectors via electoral participation and, above all, the widespread militarization of society. The interaction of these factors conditioned the subsequent trajectory of Argentine political life after independence. As Leandro Losada argues, “the difficulties of building a political order after 1810 included, among their causes, the confrontations and discord that ran through the elites, and the intense politicization of the popular sectors, which became a singular feature of Río de la Plata politics” (Losada 2009, 65).

4.3

The Long Road to Short-Lived Stability

In 1816, the United Provinces (Provincias Unidas) declared independence from Spain. This did not, however, signify the arrival of peace nor the consolidation of a nationwide political order. Instead, it marked the beginning of a period of enormous instability that would include the 1820 fall of the Buenos Aires government, the political segregation of Buenos Aires from the rest of the provinces for almost a decade, and the definitive separation of the territories that would later become Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This instability was due to structural factors rooted in the colonial era, as well as to the legacy left by the independence-era (Sábato 2018). Between 1810 and 1820 successive governments of the city of Buenos Aires had at least nominally occupied the role of national authority, despite waging internal and external wars. This situation was however to 13 The revolutionary context also stimulated a significant increase in the popular mobilization of the popular sectors in the other provinces around the same time: see, for example, excellent works on a range of cases: Cuyo (Bragoni 2013), Córdoba (Tell 2013), La Rioja (Gómez and Macchi 2013) and Tucumán (Macías and Parolo 2013).

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change in 1820, when a military alliance of federal caudillos defeated the Buenos Aires army and converted the city into just one more province among many, for the first time since the creation of the Viceroyalty. The vacuum left by the fall of the central Buenos Aires government favored the concentration of power into the hands of local caudillos, as the only effective authorities remaining in their respective territories. The regions began to transform themselves into provinces, depending on their specific weight and the dynamics of local political competition. Some chose governments and drafted constitutions that did not always hold actual sway. The creation of provinces that were, on paper at least, equal in rights, did not however bring intra-elite tensions to an end. The government of Córdoba, for example, did not resign itself to relinquishing the control it had exercised over San Juan, Mendoza, San Luis, and La Rioja during the Viceroyalty. Moreover, in each of these provinces caudillos frequently entered into disputes with sectors of the elite over political and economic interests (F. Luna 1995, 86). The military defeat of Buenos Aires, and the fall of the central government, produced a paradoxical situation whereby the very fact of having lost its place as the seat of national government helped the city turn the abundant proceeds of customs income to its own ends. There followed years of political stability, prosperity, and urban and cultural development known as the “happy experience” ( feliz experiencia), during which time the asymmetry in levels of development between Buenos Aires and the other provinces grew. Most of the provinces of the interior and the coastal region were living through periods of enormous hardship, as a consequence of the definitive disruption of colonial-era productive and commercial circuits, and also due to the cessation of assistance from Buenos Aires. The pressure of the ensuing crises caused the provinces to begin the search for alternatives that would allow the establishment of a national government compatible with their notions of federalism. At the same time, positions hardened within Buenos Aires itself, opposed to any reunification proposal that would imply the subordination of the province to any government from the interior, or any federalization of income from the port (Ternavasio 2009). The lack of elite cohesion, plus the presence of popular sector mobilization, combined to provide the conditions for a period of considerable political instability in which none of the organized sectors proved able to impose its preferences on the others. Although caudillos, military leaders,

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and provincial governors and legislators self-identified as either “unionists (unitarios ) or federalists ( federales )”, in practice politics continued to be dominated by factionalism, with a prevalence of alliances that were as circumstantial as they were volatile. The period between 1835 and 1852 saw a considerable step forward in the construction of political institutions with a nationwide reach, as a result of the pact that some provincial caudillos signed at the instigation of Juan Manuel de Rosas, the main federalist leader of the province of Buenos Aires. Rosas, a powerful landowner with a long military and administrative career behind him, was also a charismatic caudillo, hugely popular among the lower classes in the province. The relative political stability over which he presided was the product of a twin process of imposition of discipline by Rosas: on the political and economic elites, and on the popular sectors mobilized by the revolution. Rosas built his power base on the controlled mobilization of the Buenos Aires masses, at the same time as depicting himself to the elites as the only man who could preserve a social order threatened by the subaltern classes. To this end he favored the dissemination of a “federal” political identity based on a nationwide network of personal loyalties, and constructed a feared repressive apparatus that sowed terror among his political adversaries. In the medium term both of these tools proved unequal to the task of constructing a political order capable of outlasting its creator, because in each example “the search for unanimity was privileged over the creation of consensus, thereby accentuating an exclusionary political logic” (Losada 2009, 77). Certain characteristics of Rosas’s politics repay particular attention since they reinforced the legacy of the political activation begun by popular sectors during the independence-era juncture. In Buenos Aires, the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1821 had entailed a considerable change in the dynamics of factional competition (Ternavasio 2002). Rosas efficiently channeled this form of political intervention by the lower classes via clientelism, repression, and the manipulation of electoral rules (Zimmermann 2009). In the Buenos Aires countryside, home to the majority of the population, Rosas obtained the support of the popular sectors and of small producers, who were given benefits in the form of donation of land. In the city he established strong clientelistic

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links with all segments of the popular sectors, something which scandalized and struck fear into the traditional elites.14 Some recent studies have compared the political regimes that were installed in Chile and in Argentina immediately after the wars of independence. As in the rest of Latin America’s young republics, the elites of Chile and Argentina had to confront, more or less simultaneously, the challenge of constructing a stable political order, overcoming the divisions generated by the revolutionary process, and re-establishing the hierarchical relationships that war and the heady promises of republican equality had erased. In this context, the different legacies produced by the independence-era junction can be seen in the regimes of Diego Portales and Juan Manuel Rosas. In the case of Chile, the studies underline the importance of factors such as “a less fractured intra-elite consensus, a less traumatic transition to the republican order […] and a plebe less restricted in its ability to avoid regimes of domination” to explain the relative success of a leadership class in imposing a stable order that served their interests (Pinto 2015, 59). The Rosas regime, by contrast, had to administer the consequences of a war of independence that had led “much deeper fissures between groups of the elite […] a more marked rupture from the colonial order [and] politically mobilized popular sectors” (Pinto 2015, 60). Faced with these restrictions, the Rosas regime turned popular sector mobilization into the basis of its political legitimacy and an instrument of control over its opponents. With these tools Rosas achieved absolute power in Buenos Aires. From this position, he used the economic and military resources of the province to concentrate into his own hands the functions and attributes proper to a national government. This did not, however, prevent the country being riven by a long and bloody civil war—involving unionist and federalist caudillos and forces from Uruguay, Brazil, France, and England—which culminated in Rosas’s fall from power. In sum, Rosas managed to map the outlines of a political order of national scope, relatively consolidated in the Buenos Aires province

14 Contemporaneous testimonies are an invaluable source for any study that seeks to

trace the roots of clientelism as a tool of political mobilization for popular sectors in Argentina. In 1883 Rosas impressed upon his wife the importance of keeping up this type of connection to the [plebe]: “you have seen the worth of the friendship of the poor and […] the importance of keeping it up so as to attract them and shape their will” (Di Meglio 2013, 235).

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but almost continually contested in the other provinces. In the process, he accentuated the legacy of elite division and popular sector political mobilization that had been inherited from the independence-era. As a result, the fall and exile of Rosas led the country to be divided into two autonomous states—the Argentine Confederation (Confederación Argentina) and the State of Buenos Aires (Estado de Buenos Aires)—for almost a decade (1853–1862). In this phase, the Confederation government did not have the resources necessary to prevail over Buenos Aires, nor to discipline the caudillos of supposedly friendly provinces. Buenos Aires was not, either, in a position to militarily subdue the rest of the provinces. As Natalio Botana argues, “an unstable stalemate (empate) prevailed in the relationship of the [provincial] peoples in arms” (Botana 1977, 26). In the economic sphere, the phase of territorial secession deepened still furthering the asymmetry between Buenos Aires and the other provinces. Buenos Aires’s control of customs income stimulated the development of infrastructure: the province’s rail network was extended, and a new customs house was built. By contrast, the Confederation government had to face an almost permanent fiscal deficit, and lacked the means to create effective fiscal authority. Rejection of the centralism of Buenos Aires, while a vital part of the origin story of the Confederation, did not prove a strong enough glue to overcome or prevent tensions among the provinces of which it was made up. The Confederation government was forced to resort to borrowing as its main source of finance. This contrasting fate helps us to understand why Buenos Aires was able to prevail by military might, leading to the reunification of the territory in 1862 (Bragoni and Míguez 2010). Between 1862 and 1880 the presidencies of Mitre (1862–1868), Sarmiento (1868–1874), and Avellaneda (1874–1880) sounded the final death knell for the Confederation as a political project, and laid the foundations for the definitive consolidation of a national state after 1880. The governments of this period kept themselves in place by constructing more or less stable alliances with different factions of provincial elites, and by intensively deploying state security forces. These latter were, for the first time, in a clear situation of superiority over local level regular and irregular forces. The contrasts between this phase and the political instability that preceded it are quite evident. The three presidents were named in accordance with the procedures set down in the constitution, and each

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completed his term. Nonetheless, political competition continued to be characterized by factional struggles and the political activation of the popular sectors by way of armed insurrection. The main difference from the politics of the preceding decades lay in the construction of more stable alliances between different sectors of provincial elites, and in the fact that most of the armed insurrections were resolved in favor of the central government forces. The advances the governments of the period managed to make in the construction of a center of political power of national reach, founded on both coercion and consensus, are evident in many areas. One of the most obvious was the policy of federal intervention in the provinces, which allowed for the snuffing out of revolts that threatened friendly governors, the defeat of hostile or undisciplined authorities by the central government, and the securing of favorable electoral results.15 Traditional historiography interpreted the federal interventions of this era as the most visible manifestation of the new hegemony of the Buenos Aires elites. More recent research has however demonstrated that this policy was the result of a complex dynamic of alliances between national governments and different segments of the provincial elites (Bragoni and Míguez 2010; Losada 2009). La Rioja province is a case in point: in this province, federal intervention was promoted and supported by one part of the economic elites. This part was made up of groups that did not have the capacity for political mobilization needed to achieve either the military or electoral defeat of the legendary Chacho Peñaloza, the district’s main caudillo. Federal intervention paved the way for these elite sectors to take control of the main institution of provincial government (the gobernación), at the same time as it allowed central government, presided over by Mitre, to eliminate one of the main focal points of pro-caudillo resistance in the interior. Coercion pure and simple also played a part in the repertoire of stratagems that allowed the central state to consolidate its power over the provinces, as of course did economic blackmail via the allocation of funds or the promise of investment in infrastructure. It was however rare for these kinds of direct and indirect intervention not to find support from some part of the local elite (Losada 2009, 106).16 15 Between 1862 and 1880 there were 26 federal interventions and 15 declarations of a state of siege (Estado de Sitio) (González Bernaldos 2014, 186). 16 For a detailed analysis of the dynamic of co-operation and conflict between local elites and national government in the period see Bragoni and Míguez (2010).

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Despite these advances, the political mobilization of the popular sectors continued to be an unresolved problem. The armed insurrections of the last great rural caudillos demanded the mobilization of all of the repressive power the national state could command. The state’s growing power was also made visible in the criminalization and judicialization of the insurrections, as evidenced by the exponential increase in the number of criminal cases for sedition and rebellion seen in the federal justice system in those years (Zimmermann 2010, 258).17 In this period, the relative normalization of political life, and the installation of elections as the principal access route to the presidency and national level legislative positions, contributed to consolidating the importance of the electoral mobilization of the popular sectors as a key resource in political competition. Restrictions on electoral participation by the country’s male population continued to be minimal,18 and though fraud and the absence of guarantees were the order of the day in the cycle of what were known as “elector-governments” (gobiernos electores ), the frequency of elections, the intensity of competition, and the various means of coordination between national and provincial factions generated incentives for intensifying electoral mobilization of the lowest social strata. Practices adopted by Rosas’s followers in Buenos Aires during the period 1835–1852, spread to the rest of the country. Control of national, provincial, and/or local state resources was the key for governments wanting to assure electoral advantage. Clientelism, patronage, and coercion formed part of the repertoire of resources deployed by the authorities during campaigns and elections (Sábato 2001; Zimmermann 2009). Despite the increasing relevance of electoral processes as a way to process political competition, citizen participation between 1860 and 1880 demonstrates two apparently contradictory tendencies. On the one hand there was a notable drop in electoral participation, measured as the percentage of the electorate eligible to vote, who actually did so (Zimmermann 2009, 18).19 On the other hand, all available evidence coincides in 17 Between 1864 and 1875 the number of criminal prosecutions for this type of crime

grew from 2 to 474 (Zimmermann 2010). 18 Universal male suffrage had been established in Buenos Aires in 1821, and the 1853 constitution had extended the principle to the rest of the provinces. 19 One estimate is that in the Buenos Aires elections of 1822 and 1836, 40% of eligible voters took part, whereas between 1869 and 1877 the figure swung between 10 and 20%. Most attempts to explain this tendency attribute it to acts of violence that had

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pointing to the importance of popular sector participation in elections. In other words, although electoral rules enshrined universal male suffrage very early on, the stage of relative political normalization that took place between 1862 and 1880 registered a considerable drop in electoral participation, accompanied however by very high levels of participation among the popular sectors (Zimmermann 2009, 15). Scholarship on the electoral processes of the period also allows us to identify some of the structural factors that underlie forms of economic elite political involvement. The political weight of these sectors and their level of involvement in party competition depended, inter alia, on the size of the workforce they employed and the level of command they enjoyed over the workers. The greater the number of dependent workers, the higher the chances of being able to mobilize them for elections. That was the situation in provinces such as Tucumán, Mendoza, or—as we have already seen—much of rural Chile, through to the second half of the C20th. By contrast, in the provinces whose principal economic activity was cattle—such as Buenos Aires and the other provinces of the coastal region—the chronic scarcity of labor imposed limits on the electoral manipulation of workers by landowners (Figueroa and Leiras 2014). The consolidation of state institutions that occurred between 1862 and 1880 favored the emergence of a professional political elite that operated at a national scale, coming to base its power more on the control of public resources than on its original support base. The Buenos Aires elites that organized around the figure of Bartolomé Mitre, first in the Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista) then in the Liberal Party (Partido Liberal), lost control of government when they were unable to reconcile the bolstering of the national state with the interests of more recalcitrant sectors of the faction that supported autonomy for Buenos Aires.20 The National Pro-Autonomy Party (Partido Autonomista Nacional, PAN) , a political organization that defeated Mitre’s supporters and consolidated the authority of the national state in the period 1880–1916, was an

taken place at and around polling stations (Zimmermann 2009, 18). As we will see below, this tendency began to be reversed during the years of the conservative republic (from 1880) and was definitively interrupted by the approval of the electoral laws of 1912. 20 Sectors that rejected the federalization of the city and took up arms in an effort to prevent it. The rebel forces headed by Carlos Tejedor were defeated by General Julio Roca in 1880.

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alliance of governors of provinces from the interior, who had previously been fervent defenders of provincial autonomy (Alonso 2010). Over the last quarter of the C19th and during the first decade of the C20th, the Argentine political system underwent a series of significant transformations. These included the consolidation of state institutions, and the definitive defeat of Buenos Aires as the last bastion of proautonomy resistance. The period also saw the conquest of the territories that had remained under indigenous control, the establishment of a single currency, the elimination of provincial militia, the universalization of basic education, and the creation of a central civic registry, the Registro Civil (Kurtz 2013; López-Alves 2000). As far as political competition is concerned, this was a period of hegemony for the PAN, which held the presidency between 1880 and 1916. Some have seen this regime as an expression of the political dominance of landowners of the pampa region, whose star was in the ascendant as the main beneficiary of the cycle of extraordinary economic growth that Argentina experienced in those decades (Cavarozzi 1978). Studying the links between economic and political elites however allows us to bring more nuance to that perception: in Buenos Aires province we can detect a marked division of roles between economic and political elites, entailing frequent conflicts. The existence of a professional and relatively autonomous political corps, whose power was based on a capacity for electoral mobilization via control of state resources, set the stage for clashes with members of the landowning elite. These gave rise to corporatist organizations, seeking to increase the political incidence of landowners (Hora 2005, 2009).21 Other studies, focused on the social composition of the legislative branch of the time, have interpreted the efforts of members of the landowning elite to turn their hand to politics as part of a strategy that sought to avoid the intermediation of professional politicians in the defense of sectorial interests. The restrictions that the rural upper classes faced in attempting to electorally manipulate their workers forced them

21 In 1892 members of the Argentine Rural Society promoted the creation of an

organization focused on the defense of its interests in the political arena. The press reacted to this innovation contrasting what they considered to be the “abstentionist attitude” (actitud abstencionista) of the great Argentine ranchers (estancieros ), with the “public vocation” (vocación pública) of the Chilean hacienda owners. The latter were held up as an example to be emulated (Hora 2009, 37).

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to seek alliances with actors who commanded the resources needed for the task at hand (Figueroa and Leiras 2014). At the same time, some provinces in the interior demonstrated a quite different pattern of relationships between economic and political elites. In Tucumán, these groups presented a united front from the second half of the C19th until the beginning of the C20th. The key to this phenomenon lies in the structure of production, which favored the creation of “networks of clientelism and patronage over laborers and independent sugar cane workers, built on a mix of duress and economic dependence”, permitting the electoral manipulation of broad sectors of the population (Losada 2009, 148). In this setting there was no separation of roles between economic and political elites. At most, there was a separation of roles between those members of the families who controlled the large sugar mills: these people monopolized the main provincial political posts during the second half of the C19th. As soon as it was deemed profitable, the cohesive Tucumán elite abandoned its position of defense of provincial autonomy to become part of the political alliance that led to the construction of the national state. In exchange, prominent members of the local elite were given access to important posts in national government. Even more importantly, the elite as a whole obtained tangible benefits including public investment in transport infrastructure, access to credit, and customs protectionism (Losada 2009, 148). In the light of these examples it can be argued that the governments of the 1880–1916 period were oligarchic, insofar as a relatively small group of individuals from the highest social sectors acquired a politically hegemonic position through control of resources that defined the result of political competence at national level (Botana 1977, 74). At the same time, analysis of the relationships between economic and political elites in different scenarios allows us to concur with approaches that have challenged descriptions of the regime as a system of “exclusive, exclusionary, iron control by an wealth-based oligarchy [which exercised power] presenting an almost united front” (Alonso 2010, 24). Looking beyond the social bases of the PAN, some scholars have indicated that the oligarchical nature of the regime proceeds from the existence of elector-governments. The interference of these governments in the naming of their own successors was however nothing new. The real innovation of the 1880 to 1916 period lies in the “efficiency with which [the PAN] implemented the system, more than in the system per se” (Losada 2009, 118) The coalition of provincial governors who elevated

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Roca to the presidency in 1880 became a hegemonic party that ruled for 36 years. The hegemony of the PAN did not, however, entail an “electorgovernment” in which presidential succession was absolutely controlled by the outgoing president. On the contrary, the designation of the official candidate was the result of a bidding process between the president and various leagues of provincial governors. This process spoke to the heterogeneity of provincial and factional interests that coexisted under the umbrella of the PAN, and the delicate balance underpinning the nomination of a candidate (Alonso 2010, 16). In sum, the hegemony of the PAN was not based on the construction of a nationwide political organization but on a network of provincial and national alliances that was in constant flux. This network managed the distribution of posts and resources among all the factions that competed beneath a single party label. This competition was expressed in conflicts and dissent occurring over the course of the whole period. Defeat however came when the regime attempted to reconcile this system of alliances with the elimination of the rules of the game that allowed them to retain control over popular sector votes.

4.4

Divided Elites, Popular Mobilization and Accelerated Democratization

The crisis of the conservative order, the reform of electoral laws in 1912, and the emergence of the Radical Civic Union party (Unión Cívica Radical, UCR), marked the juncture around democratization. In this stage there was a profound and accelerated change in the dynamic of political competition in Argentina, the results of which helped to define both the forms of economic elite political involvement that were to predominate throughout the whole of the C20th, and the development model adopted by the political regime. The dissolution of the conservative order triggered an accelerated decline of the parties that had allowed national level coordination among different segments of the political and economic elites. The catalyst was a political reform, approved in 1912, that established a polyarchic regime via the introduction of compulsory secret voting, representation of minorities, and the creation of a single, permanent electoral roll. The hegemonic coalition grouped around the PAN was defeated in the first genuinely competitive presidential election, putting an end to an unbroken 36-year run in government. The coalition went on to suffer

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the same fate in every subsequent election until the 1930 coup (Remmer 1984). Analysis of the democratization juncture calls for the identification of factors that can explain the reformist impulse, and the characteristics of the process that led to the collapse of the conservative order and the parties that supported it. Both phenomena can be explained by the interaction of the two principal factors previously identified: the lack of cohesion of economic elites, and the high level of political mobilization of the popular sectors. The electoral reform approved in 1912 was the result of a highly contingent process, subject to the vagaries of a political dynamic that was experiencing root and branch change in spite of the PAN’s efficiency in ensuring that its men continued to occupy the main posts in government. Beyond these successes, the characteristics of the governing alliance, plus the dynamics of intra-party competition produced by cycles of presidential succession, opened up almost continual opportunities for the emergence of factions coalescing around personal loyalties and distributive conflicts. These schisms and fractures, initiated by leaders who had lost out in internal contests, may not have gone so far as to keep PAN candidates from being victorious. They were nonetheless a constant feature of the conservative order over its three decades of existence. At the end of the C19th and in the early decades of the C20th, a series of incidental factors stimulated the rise of dissent in the heart of the governing coalition. This paved the way for the approval of political reforms, and the eventual electoral triumph of the UCR. Chief among those factors was the acute financial crisis that struck the country in 1890, and the deceleration of growth that was seen in the years leading up to the First World War. The golden years of the conservative order saw extraordinary economic growth, with Argentina’s economy galvanized by its full insertion into the international markets for meat, wool, and cereals. Public investment in transport infrastructure, sanitation, health services, and basic education grew at unprecedented levels, partly financed by a rapid growth of public debt (Hora 2010). At the end of the 1880s, the fall in export prices provoked an increase in the trade deficit and the withdrawal of credit facilities. Unable to meet its debt servicing obligations, the country fell into default. The effects of the resulting financial and fiscal crisis were felt through the whole of the subsequent decade (Hora 2010, 205). The crisis placed restrictions on public spending, negatively affecting one of the bases of the political alliance that shored up the hegemony

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of the PAN. The distributive tug of war between different sections of national and provincial elites became more intense, leading in turn to deeper factional contestation within the governing party. Personal differences of opinion over the management of public debt sparked a rift between the PAN’s two main leaders, Julio Roca, and former president Carlos Pellegrini. This in turn produced a break in the governing bloc over the need for political reform and party modernization. The difficulties provoked by the financial crisis also affected relationships between the landowning elites of the pampa, and Buenos Aires provincial governments. Dissatisfaction with the handling of the crisis saw the creation in 1892 of the Agrarian League, Liga Agraria. Formed by members of the existing Argentine Rural Society (Sociedad Rural Argentina, SRA), the League sought to “establish a new kind of tie between the state and the landowning class” (Hora 2009, 38). This initiative produced only modest results when measured against the expectations of its founders, but the League continued to be active until at least the first decade of the C20th, encompassing various attempts to convert itself into a landowners’ political party.22 In any event, electoral returns were meager, and most of these efforts were absorbed by anti-Roca factions within the PAN. Landowners’ dream of a party of their own was severely hampered by the weakness of their electoral base. Notwithstanding, PAN governments and their successors, especially in the province of Buenos Aires, suffered the consequences of opposition from the landowning sector of the elite. These consequences which included support from this sector for the 1912 electoral reform (Hora 2009, 151). No account of democratization would be complete without discussion of this intra-conservative party dissent, and of the conflicts between significant sectors of the elite and the governing party. We must also, however, consider the role played by the UCR. Studies of this period often present the UCR as the first truly mass party of Argentine politics, constructed on the basis of electoral political mobilization of the urban middle classes excluded by the conservative order (R. B. Collier and Collier 2002; Drake 2009; Rock 2006; Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). This image may well correspond quite closely to the reality of the UCR in 1916 and the ensuing three decades, but it certainly does not accurately represent the UCR’s origins. From its creation until at least 1905, the UCR’s strategy was 22 The Democratic Party, Partido Demócrata, in 1902 and Rural Defense (Defensa Rural) in 1912 (Hora 2009).

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one of permanent hostility to the ruling party. The UCR made accusations of fraud, and promoted armed insurrection by civilians, with the tacit complicity of sectors of state security forces (Horowitz 2015).23 In this sense, the UCR’s actions represented a return to a form of political activation of non-elite sectors that had actually been quite characteristic in the decades before the consolidation of the conservative order. This semiclandestine modus operandi, based on conspiracy and concerted actions by supporters in provoking armed uprisings in different areas of the country, contributed to the development of a hierarchically structured and disciplined party organization, with national reach, able to turn itself back into an effective electoral machine when the circumstances dictated. Moreover, as Ezequiel Gallo has pointed out, the scale of the political mobilization promoted by these radical armed insurrections should not be underestimated: the numbers taking part in revolts in Santa Fe and Buenos Aires in 1893 were similar in order of magnitude to voter numbers in 1894 elections in the same districts (Gallo 1993, 100). The conservative order had to contend, then, with the mobilization of politically excluded sectors via UCR insurrections, on the one hand, and new forms of political protest and mobilization, on the other. These latter were the preserve of the new urban proletariat in the regions of the fastest population growth (Remmer 1984). Large-scale immigration and accelerated change in the social structure generated violent but sporadic social conflicts from the end of the C19th onward. As the C20th dawned, the intensity and frequency of these conflicts caused alarm among broad swathes of the elite, not least because they were often led by immigrants of socialist or anarchist leanings. For opposition parties and factions, the regime’s lack of legitimacy explained its inability to manage these types of conflict. For traditional elites, strikes and worker mobilizations represented a threat to the social order and contributed to a political instability that was also fueled by radical insurrections. This instability would, it was feared, take the country back to a political dynamic the elites had believed successfully eradicated. Regime responses combined intensive use of the

23 The success of the 1890 insurrection, which forced the resignation of President Juárez Celman, redoubled confidence in this strategy, which the UCR was only to abandon after a series of catastrophic defeats. In any case the alternative of insurrection, at least as a threat, formed part of the repertoire of measures that the UCR deployed until shortly before the 1912 electoral reforms.

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state’s repressive apparatus24 with the beginnings of some advances in social legislation, without ever managing to rein in conflict. Between 1907 and 1916 there were almost 1,300 strikes in Buenos Aires, five of which were general strikes (Gallo 1993). Democratization occurred during a period of ever more acute confrontations within political and economic elites. The period saw internal crisis and ultimately division within the PAN, conflicts between segments of the traditional political and economic elites, and the irruption of an intransigent political opposition able to press for reforms by destabilizing the system. The regime’s reply to these threats opened the door to reforms to the rules of the game. The content of the new electoral laws severely restricted the potential for electoral fraud and manipulation. The sectors who finally threw their weight behind reform, led by President Roque Sáenz Peña, did so in the belief that reform did not represent a threat to the political order they had founded. On the contrary, they trusted that the reform project would allow them to eliminate the flashpoint of instability represented by UCR-led anti-system opposition, lending the government greater legitimacy to manage conflicts with the workers. Reformist officialdom also believed that the new rules would simultaneously favor the development of a more modern, ideologically coherent, conservative party, capable of purging or bringing under control the personalist factions that had grown up on the basis of fraud, clientelism, and secret pacts. As far as short-term objectives were concerned, Sáenz Peña and the rest of the political heirs of Carlos Pellegrini believed that the reform would allow them to definitively eliminate pro-Roca personalism. The electoral reform took the form of two laws, passed during the administration of Roque Sáenz Peña, which enshrined agreements the president had reached with the UCR. The laws created a single electoral roll, based on the military enlistment roll,25 compulsory voting for all men born in Argentina or naturalized, the secret ballot, and the introduction of minority party representation for the election of deputies and the selection of members of the electoral college responsible for choosing 24 The 1902, Ley de Residencia, authorized the government to expel immigrants considered to present a danger to internal security; and the 1903 Law of States of Siege, Ley de Estado de Sitio was frequently invoked to suppress worker mobilizations. 25 Thereby, it was supposed, increasing the chances of constructing a true, complete, and politically unbiased record of the entire adult male population.

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the president (Cavarozzi 2014, 236–237). The most immediate effect of the reform was an increase in electoral participation, a product of the new system of automatic registration and compulsory voting. Whereas just over 20% of eligible voters turned out for the 1910 elections, in 1912 participation jumped to 70% (Gallo 2013, 83). This democratization of the system facilitated the election of Hipólito Yrigoyen to the presidency, ushering in a run of triumphs for the UCR (who won again in 1922 and 1928). One of the keys to the UCR’s success was its capacity for constructing an electoral machine of national reach that was not based on control over state resources. This does not mean, of course, that electoral mobilization and the recruitment of activists dispensed altogether with clientelistic relationships. The main difference from the old conservative parties was marked by the origins of the resources used for clientelistic ends: these now came from the party’s own coffers, swelled by a dense network of party headquarters, located the length and breadth of the country, which functioned more or less continually (Losada 2009, 123). In terms of social origins, while most studies confirm that the early C20th UCR was a decidedly polyclass party (Lupu and Stokes 2009), its rhetoric reintroduced to Argentine politics “a type of ‘plebeian’ leadership […] at the precise moment at which elitist logic had reached its zenith” (Losada 2009, 123). Finally, democratization coincides with the electoral decline of the political inheritors of the PAN. The process was neither immediate nor evenly spread across all provinces, but between 1916 and 1928 there was a marked fall in electoral support for conservative parties nationwide (Borón 1972, 236) This fall responded to two factors. The first was the division of political organizations which aspired at both national and provincial level to capture the PAN’s votes. The most ambitious project was that of the Progressive Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata Progresista, PDP), which attempted to bring together all the conservative parties of the interior under a single identity and rally them around a single program: nationalist, statist, and protectionist. The initiative was however rejected by those Buenos Aires conservatives who were closest to the landowning elites, who attempted to create a political project of their own. In second place, the concentration of power in the presidency rendered the limited opposition at the provincial level only marginally relevant. President Yrigoyen maintained the policy of deploying federal intervention every time he considered it necessary to support an ally or displace an opponent. Moreover, on losing control of the presidency of

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the republic, the costs of coordination between the provincial conservative elites grew exponentially (Alonso 2010; Gallo 1993). Internal divisions, strong presidentialism, and Yrigoyen’s intransigent style rendered the strategy of taking refuge in the provincial powers ineffective. In the presidential elections of 1922, the UCR triumphed once more. This time their candidate was Marcelo Alvear, a member of the economic and social elite, and a man of more conservative ideas than Yrigoyen. His candidacy provoked the division of the UCR into two internal camps: the “personalists” (personalistas ), who supported Yrigoyen, and the “antipersonalists” (antipersonalistas), who were pro-Alvear. This division was seen by some of the groups who had been part of the PAN as an opportunity to regain power by forming an alliance with the pro-Alvear camp. Alvear’s consistently conservative rhetoric, plus his social origins—shared by many of the leaders around him—represented a significant shift away from the “plebeian” style of Yrigoyen. Conservative leaders expected Alvear to displace personalist governors by federal intervention, opening the door for conservatives to return to government. The strategy nonetheless failed, because Alvear did not take the measures they had hoped for. Provincial conservative parties meanwhile paid a high price for adopting this strategy. In the case of Buenos Aires, the conservatives had not put up any candidates in 1922. This provoked a profound structural crisis and a refoundational impulse. In 1930, when public opinion in Buenos Aires polarized over perceptions of the UCR government, conservatives attained 43% support. The experience of Buenos Aires conservatives confirmed the potential of conservative parties to gain electoral support from social sectors well beyond the confines of the landowning elite (Gibson 1996, 58; Lupu and Stokes 2009). Nonetheless, there was insufficient provincial support— and even less national support—for a patient strategy of construction and reconstruction of party organizations linked to economic elites. On the contrary, strategies of political opposition based on the availability of institutional resources had become devalued. Economic elites and their political allies began to consider other strategies for recovering the presidency (Gibson 1996, 57). Fear of the perpetuation of radical governments controlled by those factions of the UCR most distant from economic elites’ interests, the increase in the intensity of social mobilizations, and the uncertainty provoked by the 1929 crisis all stimulated the formation of a coalition of anti-government opposition sectors. This coalition had one novel feature: the incorporation of the Armed Forces.

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In sum, accelerated democratization led to the collapse of a regime that had managed to stabilize political competition and the institutions of the national state, but at the cost of a double exclusion. First, of those sectors of the elites that were not part of the governing oligarchy linked to the PAN: the stability of the regime, and the ever-present factional disputes within it, increased the number of those who were excluded from power. The forging of alliances, linkages, and pacts in smoke-filled rooms among those who were in the circle of power produced losers who joined the chorus of those questioning the legitimacy of the conservative order. This chorus was led by the UCR (Alonso 2010). The second exclusion was that of popular sectors, for whom electoral registration and voting entailed very high costs, for extremely small benefits. Electoral participation was a rational option for very politicized sectors and for the client groups of regime parties. When failures to maintain internal order in the face of opposition insurrection, and popular mobilization by the new working class, were added to the existing legitimacy deficit, democratization came to be seen as an increasingly acceptable alternative by broad sectors of opposition elites. Democratization provoked unexpected changes in the dynamics of political competition for some major actors. The scale and speed of expansion of electoral participation brought the old elites up short before a scenario for which they were unprepared. The outcome was a string of electoral defeats, and a loss of political relevance (Borón 1972). A political force such as the PAN could not survive in opposition: its hegemony had been the result of a delicate equilibrium of national and provincial alliances based on control and distribution of public resources. Factionalist struggles continued apace, while the centripetal force exercised by the presidency was no longer available to keep fragmentation within tolerable limits, assuring competitiveness. Where a certain distance and division of labor between economic and political elites already existed, such differentiation was accentuated. Where the two types of elites had more strongly overlapped, economic elites began a process of withdrawing from the party system and prioritizing other forms of defense of their interests.

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Economic Elites and the Strategy of Politics Without Parties

Internal and external stressors operating on the conservative order triggered a process of accelerated democratization, over which economic elites and their allies in the party system had little control. Rapid expansion of citizenship, the elimination or severe limitation of mechanisms for controlling electoral mobilization, the lack of cohesion within conservative regime parties, the anti-system opposition of the UCR, and the irruption of a new type of worker mobilization—inspired by socialism and anarchism—produced the collapse of the governing party and the alliance that supported it. The electoral machinery of the PAN did not stand up the test of the first competitive elections in Argentine history, coming after 36 years of uninterrupted government, characterized by almost complete control of the machinery of a state that was richer and more powerful than ever before. The succession of defeats that began in 1916 deprived the PAN of the presidency, and thereby of control over the resources that kept it united. This made it ever more difficult for it to return to power. A deteriorating domestic and external economic situation, and consolidation of UCR hegemony, pushed some social and political sectors to seek out extra-institutional channels of opposition.26 Between 1930 and 1943 Argentina was governed by a political coalition known as the Concordancec (Concordancia), made up of conservative parties, anti-Yrigoyen factions of radicalism, and military men. In essence, this regime sought to restore the political order that had been in place between 1880 and 1916. To this end, the government’s principal tools were demobilization of popular sectors, and “patriotic fraud” to assure the triumph of ruling party candidates. The alliance of social and political forces that built the Concordance also had control of state resources, as had been the case between 1880 and 1916. These were distributed in such a way as to ensure the loyalty of each sector. From this perspective, the period can be considered as having presented a second historic opportunity for Argentine economic elites to create an electorally relevant political party of their own. This did not occur, however, and in

26 The sectors who promoted the 1930 coup included nationalist right wing groups that had arisen as a reaction to the fascist inspired movements that were springing up in Europe. The right wing ideas made their way into broad sectors of Argentine society, including the Armed Forces.

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the medium term the political regime that came about as a result of the 1930 coup reproduced the existing disconnect between economic elites and the party system (Sidicaro 2002). Pro-coup sectors enjoyed monopoly control over state resources for over a decade, but were unable to create a competitive party with national reach. Instead, they created the National Democratic Party, Partido Demócrata Nacional, PDN. The PDN operated with the same logic as had the PAN before it. Instead of creating a nationwide organization fit for electoral competition, the PDN was little more than a space for coordination around two priorities: organizing the fraud that assured the electoral triumph of the incumbent government, and allocating public resources to segments of the economic elite and provincial political factions. The restorationist project also faced a reality quite different from that prevailing in 1880: the country had been transformed in the interim by both domestic and external factors. Concordance-era administrations had pursued import-substituting industrialization and extended state intervention in the economy, but had done little to attend to the political consequences of those transformations. On the contrary, they had relegated the industrial business class to a secondary political role, doubting their own capacity to capture the urban working class vote. Elites’ main concerns were the political demobilization of the popular sectors, and the striking of deals among the higher echelons about criteria for the allocation of public funds (Gibson 1996, 61). The inconsistencies of the restorationist project pursued between 1930 and 1943 eventually led to a new political crisis and a coup, launched by nationalist military men including Juan Domingo Perón (Torre and De Riz 1993). The emergence of Peronism onto the scene represented a major change in the party system and the dynamic of Argentine political competition. Between 1946 and 1955, years in which Peronism held electoral sway, the crisis of the national and regional parties that had prevailed in the earlier period became even more acute. Parties’ inability to manage the defense of upper-class interests led these sectors to seek out other strategies for political action, strategies that abandoned coordination between sectors in favor of the pursuit of short-term benefits. At the same time, the attitude of Peronism toward organizations of the economic elite swung between open hostility and attempts at co-optation. In 1946, the government intervened the Argentine Industrial Union (Unión Industrial Argentina, UIA), which went on to be declared illegal

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in 1953 after various failed attempts to bring it into line with the government’s position (Schneider 2004, 178). In the years that followed, Peronism promoted the creation of new industrial associations of a markedly pro-government bent, such as the Argentine Economic Confederation (Confederación Económica Argentina, CEA). These efforts are a testament to the continuing importance the government attached to this sector (Sidicaro 2002, 89). As Brennan argues, for early Peronism (Brennan 2002, 407). In sum, the situation of industry in this period was quite paradoxical. On the one hand, the sector was living through a golden age thanks to the official policy of import-substituting industrialization, which maintained and deepened the orientation that had begun in the earlier period. Industrialists aligned with the government and moreover enjoyed a position of privilege that allowed them access to additional economic benefits as well as privileged back channels into the spaces where important decisions were taken. On the other hand, industry also underwent a period of fragmentation and polarization whose effects would be felt for decades to come (Schneider 2004, 180). The relationship between rural elites and early Peronism was also fraught with contradiction. Although fiery official rhetoric identified the Argentine Rural Society with “the decrepit and dying oligarchical order” (Brennan 2002, 407), the government neither modified nor proposed to modify the structure of land ownership. It did, however, clash strongly with some of the main agricultural and livestock associations, over the government’s policy of regulation and export controls. The policy was oriented toward improving international prices, generating income that was to be transferred to the industrial sector and used for the development of state-owned businesses.27 In any case, most traditional rural associations took a pragmatic line in their relationships with Peronism, inhabiting the institutional spaces promoted by the government and offering a mixture of opposition, negotiation, and subordination.28 27 This policy took shape in the creation of the Argentine Institute for the Promotion of Exchange (Instituto Argentino de Promoción del Intercambio, IAPI), a state entity that had monopoly control over agricultural exports and set the prices offered to producers. Variations in the difference between international market price and the price that IAPI paid to local producers set the tone of the relationship between the government and large rural producer associations. 28 For example, the SRA supported Perón’s re-election in 1951, a position which led some of its affiliated members to resign (Sidicaro 2002, 73).

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Peronism’s most ambitious project of co-optation and control of businesspeople was its creation of the General Economic Confederation (Confederación General Económica, CGE), an owners’ organization that brought together traditional and newer associations such as the Argentine Rural Society, the Argentine Chamber of Commerce, the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, organizations formerly of the UIA, and new associations of industrialists and rural producers close to Peronism. Some associations who refused to affiliate to the CGE were closed down by the government, making it difficult to estimate what mixture of opportunism, genuine conviction, and fear motivated affiliations. In any case, during the final years of the first period of Peronism the CGE became established as an important interlocutor between businessmen and the government and a powerbase for pro-government industrial sectors, which obtained enormous benefits during the period (Schneider 2004, 80).29 The central place that Peronism afforded to direct relationships with business organizations, its strategies for co-opting voters and leaders of the old conservative parties, and the resurgence of the UCR all contributed toward deepening existing divisions within economic elites, radically altering forms of elite political involvement. With characteristic pragmatism, Peronism co-opted a large part of the conservative electorate and its mid-level leaders, securing for itself control of the electoral machinery that had sustained provincial parties. After all, Peronism had control of the allocation of the public resources that had been the principal glue keeping the Concordance together. The crisis of conservative parties had moreover deepened due to the inability of those sectors that were not co-opted, to challenge the UCR for the position of main opposition party at national or provincial level. This inability owed something to the fact that none of the parties that had been part of the Concordance had democratic credentials to question the legitimacy of Peronism. The inheritors of the old conservative parties and anti-Peronist sectors of the economic elites consequently had to deal with an extremely complex scenario. They were forced to compete with “two large parties 29 The CGE was outlawed in 1955, though it survived and is active through to the present day, describing itself as an organization for the representation of small and medium business interests. During the presidencies of the left-leaning Nestor Kirchner (2003– 2007) and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2007–2015) the CGE was allied to the government, but when right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri took over, in 2015, the CGE changed its president in favor of a figure linked to the UCR and hence closer to the new government (Clarín, 7 August 2016).

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with structures throughout the territory, [based on socially diverse alliances] that included some segments of the economic elites” (Gibson 1996, 63). Once more, the costs of coordinating an opposition political front able to effectively defend the interests of the principal sectors of the economic elites proved too high, because Peronism represented very different things for each of those sectors.30 This emphasis on the historical continuity of poor cohesion among Argentine economic elites does not seek to deny the importance of Peronism in reconfiguring alliances between different social sectors; still less, to downplay its political consequences (O’Donnell 1997). In any case, the argument put forward by this study allows us to see the effects of Peronism on levels of economic elite cohesion as the result of a juncture that deepened an existing longstanding tendency, on the basis of which political coordination between different segments of the economic elites became less probable. Faced with this scenario, economic elites disadvantaged by Peronism, and groups convinced that Peronism was electorally unbeatable, opted for the alternative of supporting a new military coup. This came about in 1955, ushering in a stage of particularly heightened political instability.31 Between 1955 and 1983, Argentina had only three civilian governments chosen by citizens.32 All three were overthrown by military coups before finishing their mandates,33 and only one of them had come about as a result of free and fair elections in which neither the banning of parties nor the disenfranchisement of some citizens had played a significant part. Across these years, economic elites sketched out a strategy for political involvement outside of the party system. This entailed direct access for 30 Pierre Ostiguy (2009) has argued that as a result of this process, Argentine politics

began to be organized around two binaries: to traditional left-right cleavage was added a new cross-cutting axis of anti-Peronists “above” (arriba) versus Peronists “below” (abajo). “Above” came to be associated with more institutionalist and elitist attitudes and language; “below”, with the personalist and popular. He also argues that the above/below cleavage is significant in Argentine politics “at least since 1945”. 31 Guillermo O’Donnell characterized efforts at democratic competition in the period

1955–1966 as “an impossible game” ( juego imposible) (O’Donnell 1973). 32 Four if we count the election that saw the Peronist candidate Héctor Cámpora installed in the presidency between May and July 1973, before resigning to allow new elections to take place with Perón himself as a candidate. 33 Arturo Frondizi in 1962, Arturo Illia in 1966, and Isabel Martínez de Perón in 1976.

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elite leaders to state institutions being run by the Armed Forces. This agenda was strengthened by each process of democratization -however incomplete- that the country lived through in those decades. Every time elections were set up, whether Peronism was banned or not, efforts to create conservative parties able to compete at a nationwide level ended in failure. The UCR and Peronism—or candidates backed by Peronism— showed an extraordinary capacity to retain their place as the principal parties in the system. New divisions arose within economic elites during those years. On the one hand, some sectors linked to the old conservative parties from regions of the interior promoted state interventionism and import substitution without Peronism. They sought “strong” governments that could support industrialization for the internal market, without trade union mobilization. These sectors made sporadic but relatively successful efforts to create conservative parties at the provincial level. On the other hand, sectors from the Buenos Aires elite linked to agro-export groups, foreign trade, and finance, promoted economic liberalization and trade openness. They pursued this preference using a strategy based on lobbying and the influence of some technocrats on decision-makers in the military governments. The influence of these sectors was a constant feature throughout the whole period, and grew with time (Gibson 1996, 66–69; Morresi and Vommaro 2014, 322). The authoritarian regime installed by the 1976 coup collapsed between 1982 and 1983. Features of the transition to democracy included the disgrace into which the Armed Forces fell after their catastrophic attempt to recover the Malvinas by force, and public revelations about the grave human rights violations committed by the regime. Citizen repudiation of the military’s actions, and the resulting loss of institutional credibility, sealed off at least for a time any new iteration of the cycle of military coups that had begun in 1930. The party system returned to the center of political competition. At this point, some technocrats associated with agro-export elites, business, and finance created a new party, the Union of the Democratic Center (Unión del Centro Democrático, UCEDE). This markedly economically liberal (pro-free trade) party attracted some figures who had served in the later authoritarian governments. Between 1983 and 1987 it enjoyed relative electoral success, allowing to become established as the third political force of the nation. It did particularly well in the city of Buenos Aires. From that moment on, various factions of the UCR

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and of Peronism began to court the UCEDE, with a view to forming an alliance. Paradoxically, it was the Peronist administrations of Carlos Saúl Menem (1989–1999) that in the end incorporated some of the main UCEDE leadership. The rise and fall of Menem marked the trajectory of the UCEDE, which ended up being absorbed by the new, neoliberal right wing of Peronism (Morresi and Vommaro 2014). The space vacated by the UCEDE was briefly capitalized on by Domingo Cavallo, who served as Minister of the Economy under Carlos Menem and his successor Fernando de la Rúa. Cavallo was the author of a program of economic adjustment, known as the Convertibility Plan that brought inflation under control and kickstarted a cycle of economic growth over the 1990s. As with the UCEDE before it, the Action for the Republic Party that Cavallo founded (Acción por la República, AR) enjoyed a period of electoral growth that made it the third political force nationwide, with support particularly strong in the city of Buenos Aires. The AR was also co-opted, this time by the Alliance (Alianza) governing coalition, within which the UCR was the main player. The Alliance however had to abandon power in the throes of an economic collapse and serious social unrest. The catastrophic downfall of the Alliance government and the Convertibility Plan ended Cavallo’s political career and put an end to AR as a political force (Morresi and Vommaro 2014, 323). Interludes such as those that happened around the UCEDE do not signify that economic elites were more cohesive, or that all members of the elite renounced other means of pursuing political end. Lobbying and other forms of direct interaction at various levels of the provincial and national state authorities continued to be a central plank in the repertoire of resources used by the upper classes to defend their interests, from the democratic transition through to the present day.34 Beyond the failures and the persistence of strategies of political involvement outside of the party system, the experience of the UCEDE nonetheless “shows that given certain incentives, and available resources, the creation of a party that represents the interests of economic elites is viable” (Gibson 1996, 179). The 2001 crisis, which twenty years earlier would probably have triggered a military coup, produced incentives and

34 For a detailed analysis of these experiences during the 1980s see Ostiguy (1990).

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resources for the creation of the Republican Proposal, (Propuesta Republicana, PRO), the first Argentine political party to make it into government in free and competitive elections. The PRO’s core constituency was made up of some of the most important sectors of the economic elites.

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———. 2012. Historia de Las Clases Populares En La Argentina: Desde 1516 Hasta 1880. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. ———. 2013. La Participación Política Popular En La Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1820–1890. In Hacer Política: La Participación Popular En El Siglo XIX Rioplatense, Colección Historia argentina, ed. Raúl Fradkin and Gabriel Di Meglio, 273–304. Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros. Drake, Paul W. 2009. Between Tyranny and Anarchy: A History of Democracy in Latin America, 1800-2006. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Figueroa, Valentín, and Marcelo Leiras. 2014. Tierra, Clubes y Poder: La Influencia Política de Los Terratenientes En Las Repúblicas Oligárquicas. Evidencia de Argentina (1880–1912). Santiago de Chile. Fradkin, Raúl, ed. 2008. ¿Y El Pueblo Dónde Está? Contribuciones Para Una Historia Popular de La Revolución de Independencia En El Río de La Plata. Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros. Gallo, Ezequiel. 1993. Society and Politics, 1880–1916. In Argentina Since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell, 79–112. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/978051160 9480/type/book. December 8, 2022. ———. 2013. La República En Ciernes: Surgimiento de La Vida Política y Social Pampeana, 1850–1930. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Gelman, Jorge. 2014. Conquista y Colonia. In Historia Mínima de Argentina, Historia mínima, ed. Pablo Yankelevich, 67–141. Madrid: Turner. Gibson, Edward L. 1996. Class and Conservative Parties: Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gómez, Fernando, and Virginia Macchi. 2013. Milicias y Montoneras En La Rioja. La Participación Política de La Plebe y Los Gauchos En El Siglo XIX. In Hacer Política: La Participación Popular En El Siglo XIX Rioplatense, Colección Historia argentina, ed. Raúl Fradkin and Gabriel Di Meglio, 179– 204. Buenos: Prometeo Libros. González Bernaldos, Pilar. 2014. El Largo Siglo XIX. In Historia Mínima de Argentina, Historia mínima, ed. Pablo Yankelevich, 143–232. Madrid: Turner. Halperin Donghi, Tulio. 2011. Revolución y guerra: formación de una élite dirigente en la Argentina criolla. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Argentina. Hora, Roy. 2005. Los terratenientes de la pampa argentina: una historia social y política, 1860–1945. 1st ed. Argentina. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. ———. 2009. Los Estancieros Contra El Estado: La Liga Agraria y La Formación Del Ruralismo Político En La Argentina. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. ———. 2010. Historia Económica de La Argentina En El Siglo XIX. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.

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Horowitz, Joel. 2015. El Radicalismo y El Movimiento Popular (1916–1930). Buenos Aires: Edhasa. Johnson, Lyman L. 2013. Los Talleres de la revolución: la Buenos Aires plebeya y el mundo del Atlántico, 1776–1810. Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros. Kurtz, Marcus J. 2013. Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective: Social Foundations of Institutional Order. New York: Cambridge University Press. López-Alves, Fernando. 2000. State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900. Durham: Duke University Press. Losada, Leandro. 2009. Historia de Las Elites En La Argentina: Desde La Conquista Hasta El Surgimiento Del Peronismo. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. Luna, Félix. 1995. Breve Historia de Los Argentinos. Buenos Aires: Planeta. Lupu, Noam, and Susan Stokes. 2009. The Social Bases of Political Parties in Argentina. 1912–2003. Latin American Research Review 44 (1): 58–87. Lynch, John. 1969. Spanish Colonial Administration, 1782–1810: The Intendant System in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de La Plata. New York: Greenwood Press. ———. 1993. From Independence to National Organization. In Argentina Since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell, 1–46. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/978051160 9480/type/book. December 8, 2022. Macías, Flavia, and María Paula Parolo. 2013. Movilización, Participación y Resistencia. La Formas de Intervención de Los Sectores Populares En La Construcción Del Estado Provincial. Tucumán, 1810–1875. In Hacer Política: La Participación Popular En El Siglo XIX Rioplatense, Colección Historia argentina, ed. Raúl Fradkin and Gabriel Di Meglio, 151–178. Buenos: Prometeo Libros. Mata de López, Sara. 2013. Milicias y Montoneras. Salta En Las Primeras Décadas Del Siglo XIX. In Hacer Política: La Participación Popular En El Siglo XIX Rioplatense, Colección Historia argentina, ed. Raúl Fradkin and Gabriel Di Meglio, 71–92. Buenos: Prometeo Libros. Morresi, Sergio, and Gabriel Vommaro. 2014. Argentina: The Difficulties of the Partisan Right and the Case of Propuesta Republicana. In The Resilience of the Latin American Right, ed. Juan Pablo Luna and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, 319–345. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. O’Donnell, Guillermo A. 1973. Modernization and BureaucraticAuthoritarianism. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1997. Estado y Alianzas En La Argentina, 1956–1976. In Contrapuntos. Ensayos Escogidos Sobre Autoritarismo y Democratización, 31–68. Paidós. Ostiguy, Pierre. 1990. Los Capitanes de La Industria: Grandes Empresarios, Política y Economía En La Argentina de Los Años 80. Buenos Aires: Legasa.

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———. 2009. Argentina’s Double Political Spectrum: Party System, Political Identities, and Strategies, 1994–1997. Pinto, Julio. 2015. El Orden y La Plebe. La Construcción Social de Los Regímenes de Portales y Rosas.1829–1852. In El Orden y El Bajo Pueblo: Los Regímenes de Portales y Rosas Frente al Mundo Popular, 1829–1852, Historia, ed. Julio Pinto, Daniel Palma, Karen Donoso, and Roberto Pizarro, 15–60. Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones. Remmer, Karen L. 1984. Party Competition in Argentina and Chile: Political Recruitment and Public Policy, 1890–1930. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Rock, David. 2006. La Construcción Del Estado y Los Movimientos Políticos En La Argentina, 1860–1916. Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber, and John D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sábato, Hilda. 2001. The Many and the Few: Political Participation in Republican Buenos Aires. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2018. Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schneider, Ben Ross. 2004. Business Politics and the State in Twentieth-Century Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sidicaro, Ricardo. 2002. Los Tres Peronismos. Estado y Poder Económico 1946– 1955, 1973–1976, 1989–1999, 1st ed. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores Argentina. Tell, Sonia. 2013. Iniciativas y Resistencias. El Gobierno de Los Pueblos de Indios En Córdoba En La Década de 1810. In Rebeldes Con Causa: Conflicto y Movilización Popular En La Argentina Del Siglo XIX , Colección Historia argentina, ed. Daniel Santilli, Jorge Gelman, and Raúl Fradkin, 55–80. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Prometeo Libros. Ternavasio, Marcela. 2002. La Revolución Del Voto. Política y Elecciones En Buenos Aires, 1810–1852. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. ———. 2009. Historia de La Argentina, 1806–1852. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Torre, Juan Carlos, and Liliana De Riz. 1993. Argentina since 1946. In Aregntina since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell, 243–364. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zimmermann, Edward. 2009. Elections and the Origins of an Argentine Democratic Tradition, 1810–1880. ———. 2010. En Tiempos de Rebelión. La Justicia Federal Frente a Los Levantamientos Provinciales. In Un Nuevo Orden Político: Provincias y Estado Nacional, 1852–1880, ed. Beatriz Bragoni and Eduardo Míguez, 245–274. Buenos Aires: Biblos.

CHAPTER 5

Uruguay: Economic Elites Within Polyclass Parties

One of the defining characteristics of Uruguayan economic elites has been their inability to create a cohesive group able to exercise hegemonic leadership over society as a whole (Rama 1989, 120; Real de Azúa 1984, 90). The contrast between this relative elite weakness, and the robustness of a highly institutionalized party system explains the singular form that the political involvement of the upper classes has taken. During most periods, with only a few interruptions, economic elites have managed the defense of their interests via participation in polyclass parties over which they have had limited influence. Accordingly, these parties have reflected the preferences of economic elites to a partial, and frequently contradictory, degree. Although economic elites at times essayed other strategies of political involvement, they always reverted to the old parties. This continuity is the result of the interaction between cohesive but weak economic elites and a relatively high level of political mobilization of the popular sectors during the two main historical junctures identified in this book, namely the process of independence (1811– 1828) and the birth of democracy (1904–1918). The case study of Uruguay allows us to conclude that once democracy was established in 1918, Uruguayan elites maintained an almost permanent presence in the leadership circles of the country’s main political parties.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Monestier, Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena, Latin American Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1_5

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5.1

Colonial Roots of Elite Weakness

The Spanish dominion over the South American territories east of the Uruguay River and north of Río de la Plata traditionally known as Banda Oriental shared many stages and other characteristics with the colonizing process described in the previous chapter. Spanish colonial implantation in the Banda Oriental , and the social and economic structures to which it gave rise, were nonetheless also shaped by certain specific structural features. Those worthy of particular mention include the area’s triple identity as simultaneously prairie (pradera), frontier, and port (Reyes Abadie et al. 1965). The absence of precious metals and the scarcity of indigenous populations capable of becoming exploitable labor led these territories to be considered useless. This verdict was to prevail until at least the early decades of the C17th, at which time the first herds of cattle and horses were introduced. The quality of the natural grasslands, the abundance of natural water courses, and the benign climate all favored the rapid multiplication of herds. These became a valuable economic resource, attracting incomers from the Argentine coast, the south of Brazil, and the former Jesuit mission territories of Paraguay (Castellanos 1971; Sala de Touron and Alonso Eloy 1986). At the end of the C18th, the interest in the cattle stations and dairies of the Banda Oriental that was shown by the Portuguese crown, and colonists loyal to it, led to the founding of the Colonia del Sacramento settlement. Created in 1680, Colonia was located on the east coast of the Río de la Plata, opposite the city of Buenos Aires. Since then, military and diplomatic wrangling between Spain and Portugal over control of the territories continued for decades, leading the Spanish to found the city of Montevideo, in 1724, as well as other settlements and frontier military outposts (Sala de Touron et al. 1991). From an economic point of view, the territory of what later would become Uruguay was divided into two large spaces during the colonial period, separated by the Río Negro (Moraes 2016, 133). To the north, a livestock herding area developed. This formed part of the territory under Jesuit control. Herds were managed in a way that suited the work rhythm and communal property regime of the Paraguayan missions, giving rise to a model of self-sufficiency clustered around the pre-existing Guaraní peoples and settlements (Moraes 2008, 48). To the south of Río Negro, a smaller economic space, more subject to the influence of Buenos Aires and

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Montevideo, emerged. The exploitation of lands and herds was concentrated into the hands of a small group of Montevideo port traders, plus officials who were high up in the colonial administration (Pivel Devoto 1957). The sheer size of landed estates, the ready availability of herds, low population density, and the lack of effective political authority beyond the city limits of Montevideo each contributed to the emergence of various modes of economic exploitation, against a backdrop of indeterminacy and conflict over land title.1 Gauchos emerged onto the scene, alongside owners and non-titular occupants of land. The gauchos were a group made of up poor criollos and mestizos , without stable employment and no fixed abode. They survived thanks to the abundance of cattle and horse herds, establishing relationships of co-operation and conflict with ranch owners, Portuguese settlers, indigenous peoples, and the colonial authorities. Gauchos were the group from which caudillos drew most of their followers over the entire course of the C19th (Pivel Devoto 1957, 105; Sala de Touron et al. 1967b). The other main source of wealth during the colonial era was trade passing through the port of Montevideo. Over the course of the second half of the C18th, the city derived benefit from being designated as a naval base (Apostadero Naval) and as the headquarters of maritime communications (Correo Marítimo). It was also given monopoly control over the ingress of slaves for the entire Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. Ever-larger volumes of animal skins and—after 1780—of salted dried meat (beef or horse jerky) were exported via Montevideo, to Europe (Moraes 2015, 141; Sala de Touron et al. 1967a). On the basis of these activities, at the end of the colonial era it was possible to identify a small economic elite that tended to concentrate into its own hands land ownership, administrative and political office, trade, industry, and control of credit. At the same time, various factors restricted the ability of this group to consolidate a position of dominance over the rest of society. In first place, the activity of the port of Montevideo and the prosperity of its traders depended on the rules of the game that were set from Spain, as well as on Montevideo’s links with the rest of the territory of the Viceroyalty. In second place, the indeterminate nature of land 1 In the long term, these disputes over land title—considerably aggravated by the revolutionary cycle—would become key to understanding the weakness and volatility of Uruguayan economic elites (Real de Azúa 1969).

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ownership introduced an element of uncertainty that limited the development of credit and reduced the possibilities for the charging of tax. Thirdly, the demographic gap and the overabundance of cattle and horse stock meant colonial economic elites could no longer be assured of exercising more or less stable dominion over a human population of a certain minimum size. As we will see, these conditions were all significantly accentuated during the pro-independence period (Barrán and Nahum 1963; Ferreira 2022b; Real de Azúa 1969, 13; Sala de Touron et al. 1967a).

5.2

The Independence Process: Popular Mobilization and Volatile Elites

The political and military process that culminated in Uruguayan independence developed over the two decades from 1808 to 1828. Over the course of those years, the territory of the Banda Oriental was administered according to five constitutions, and was a component of various political units. These included the Spanish monarchy; the United Provinces (Provincias Unidas) led by Buenos Aires; the Federal League (Liga Federal) led by José Gervasio Artigas2 and comprising some of the provinces of the Argentine coast, the Portuguese empire, and Brazil (Frega 2016, 31). This journey was marked by long and intense armed confrontations that had devastating effects on the economy, provoking the ruin of a good proportion of the territory’s traders, rural producers, and owners of salting plants. Two characteristics of this process determined the forms that would be taken by the political involvement of economic elites throughout the whole period after independence: the 2 José Gervasio Artigas (1764) belonged to a family of hacienda owners that had been part of the group of founders of Montevideo. In his youth, he led bands of gauchos dedicated to smuggling animal skins, leaving him with an extraordinary knowledge of the rural medium and its population. In 1797, Artigas joined the security forces created by the Montevideo government to combat contraband and crimes against property during the campaign. His knowledge of the rural sector, plus his charisma, allowed him to move rapidly up the hierarchy and gain special recompense via some donations of land. As a member of the militia, he distinguished himself in resistance to the English incursions, something which enhanced his prestige in Montevideo and beyond. The political crisis unleashed by the Buenos Aires Governing Junta plus the rupture with the Montevideo government became a springboard for the enormous prestige in which Artigas was in the hands of gauchos, landowners, and indigenous people, which is why he became the main leader of the revolutionary army in this part of the Río del Plata (Frega 2016, 39–40; Pivel Devoto 1957, 267).

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existence of weak economic elites but without irreconcilable divisions over their material interests, coupled with the high intensity of popular sector political mobilization. As regards the weakness and lack of cohesion of economic elites, it is important to note that divisions within the upper classes did not result from the existence of groups with irreconcilable interests. Most of the larger traders and meat salters were also landowners. Divisions therefore resulted mainly from differences of vision as to what type of government, and what specific authorities, offered greater certainty in a highly volatile context. Uncertainty and disputes over land ownership, exacerbated by the revolution, introduced new motives for dispute into the heart of the upper classes (Alonso Eloy et al. 1970). On the other hand, the incorporation of rural caudillos to the cause of the revolution provoked the political mobilization of popular sectors in the countryside. The foot soldiers of the caudillo armies represented the first, and an early, form of political incorporation of these sectors, who played a very prominent role up until the early decades of the C20th. At that point, a series of reforms allowed popular participation to be channeled through suffrage (Ferreira 2022b). In the Banda Oriental the revolutionary cycle began in 1808 with the creation, in Montevideo, of South America’s first governing Junta (Junta de Gobierno). This measure was a replica of the movement that had originated in Spain after the capitulation of Fernando VII, but also sought to take advantage of the new international context to improve the conditions of competitiveness of the port of Montevideo, allowing it to break free of its subordination to Buenos Aires. The Montevideo Junta did not recognize the authorities of the Viceroyalty, and governed in pursuit of various objectives: maintaining the benefits of the commercial monopoly with Spain; expanding trade opportunities with other states; obtaining maximum autonomy from the Buenos Aires authority, and expanding the territory under their control to its greatest possible extent (Frega 2016, 37). Although the Montevideo Junta was short-lived, these objectives continued to guide the political options taken by the commercial elite of the Montevideo port over the course of the subsequent two decades.3

3 The Montevideo Junta was in operation for nine months between 1808 y 1809, until the Central Junta of Seville designated new authorities to the Viceroyalty (Pivel Devoto 1957, 219).

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In May 1810 the Buenos Aires cabildo refused to acknowledge the authorities of the Viceroyalty and replaced them by a Governing Junta (Junta Gubernativa). This was predominantly made up of criollos favorable to the construction of a political order that enjoyed enhanced autonomy with regard to the colonial center, and to reaffirmation of the place of Buenos Aires as the political center of the territory of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. The authorities and neighbors of Montevideo were divided over the Buenos Aires initiative swearing allegiance to Fernando VII and the Council of the Regency (Consejo de Regencia). Once the dissidence of the groups that had been prepared to recognize the Buenos Aires Junta had been overcome, Montevideo became one of the few nuclei of adhesion to the Spanish regime in the Río de la Plata area. By contrast, the cabildos of the small cities of the territory, such as Colonia, Soriano, and Maldonado, acknowledged the May Junta (Junta de Mayo). This illustrates the coexistence of groups with sometimes incompatible political objectives, under the weight of the tradition and of preceding administrative links (Pivel Devoto and Raineri de Pivel Devoto 1945). These differences came to a head, leading to open confrontation, when the Montevideo government attempted to impose its authority over the entire territory. The government sent troops to join the campaign and took a series of highly unpopular measures intended to strengthen city finances: the charging of new taxes for rural producers, and a policy of regularization of land ownership aimed at eliminating plots in use without any corresponding land title (Pivel Devoto 1957, 251–55). All these actions increased ill-feeling among most hacienda owners in the countryside. The need to form an army that would fight to reconquer the lands of the Viceroyalty for Spain led to the widespread use of forcible recruitment, particularly of gauchos and indigenous men living outside their communities. In this way, the pressure brought to bear by the Montevideo authorities on the rural population and the rest of the cities of the Banda Oriental contributed to the formation of a coalition of hacienda owners and rural popular sectors that made up the basis of the revolutionary army. José Artigas was the caudillo who proved capable of bringing together and organizing all these sectors (Ferreira 2022b; Sala de Touron et al. 1978). Between 1811 and his definitive defeat in 1820, Artigas combatted, in turn, forces loyal to Spain, the Buenos Aires Junta, and BrazilianPortuguese forces. He would also head the Federal League (Liga Federal),

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comprising the Banda Oriental , Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, and Misiones, brought together by their opposition to the unionist policy espoused by the Buenos Aires government. Artigas’s cause was taken up by the most dispossessed social sectors of the rural population, making this an experience very similar to those of other parts of Latin America in which war led to the militarization of society (Halperín Donghi 1988, 135). In the case of Uruguay, however, the movement acquired a reach and social radicalism that set it apart from other insurrectional movements of the same period (Ferreira 2022b). During 1815, Artigas finally managed to gain control over Montevideo and the rest of the territory. The measures he introduced included a policy of land allocation and redistribution that entailed expropriating land from Spanish and anti-revolutionary criollo estate owners, to the benefit of the popular sectors who made up the bulk of the rank and file of the revolutionary army. This measure provoked fear and outrage among the upper classes in Montevideo, who saw Artigas as an instigator of social disorder and “anarchy”. They were nonetheless forced to tolerate him, as they considered him the only figure capable of containing a popular revolution that seemed to become ever more radical (Di Meglio 2012, 224; Ferreira 2022a; Frega 2022). To appreciate the sway that Artigas had over his followers, and the degree of political mobilization that he created among the popular sectors, it may be illustrative to consider an episode that took place in the early years of the war. In 1811, the revolutionary forces led by Artigas controlled the entire campaign in the Banda Oriental . Joining forces with the army sent by Buenos Aires, they laid siege to Montevideo, the last remaining royalist bastion in Río de la Plata. When Portuguese troops invaded the territory in order to come to the aid of the authorities trapped in Montevideo, the government of Buenos Aires determined that it could not sustain the military offensive, and signed a ceasefire. The agreement was however rejected by Artigas, who led his troops in retreat toward Entre Ríos. A significant part of the rural population went with them: some sources speak of up to 4,500 people accompanying the army (Frega 2016, 44), while others mention an estimated 10,000 individuals on the move, counting soldiers and civilians together (Di Meglio 2012, 220). The figures are striking when we consider that the estimated population of the Banda Oriental at the end of the C18th was only 43,000 inhabitants (Duffau and Pollero 2016, 178). In other words, measured against the

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scale of a territory with a very low population density, Artigas’s movement represented an unprecedented mass phenomenon. The importance of the level of political mobilization that the revolution produced in popular sectors should also be measured according to the degree of radicalization in the scope of popular demands, and the ways in which mobilization contributed to consolidating the central role of military and civilian caudillos in politics. In 1812, large landowner Julián de Gregorio Espinosa approached the Buenos Aires Junta to warn them about the threat to the social order presented by Artigas and his supporters: according to Espinosa, the band displayed a “frenetic enthusiasm for liberty”; “popular radicalism”, and “a taste for pillage” (Caetano and Ribeiro 2015; De la Torre et al. 1967; Frega 2008, 152). Nicolás Herrera was a well-known member of the Montevidean economic and cultural elite, and one of the most politically influential personalities of the day. In 1815, Herrera made representations to the Portuguese crown seeking armed intervention in the Banda Oriental . The objective was to defeat Artigas, who was portrayed as a threat to social peace in the whole region, including the remaining Portuguese dominions. Artigas’s actions had resulted, in Herrera’s words, in “egalitarian dogma agitating the multitudes against all government, starting a war between rich and poor […] he who [gives] orders, and he who obeys”.4 In 1816 the Banda Oriental was invaded by the Portuguese army. The action enjoyed the support of broad sectors of the Montevideo elite and was met with inaction on the part of the Buenos Aires government, which continued locked in conflict with the pro-Artigas forces. Forced to fight on two military fronts simultaneously, Artigas refused to reach an accord with Buenos Aires in order to concentrate on the fight against the Portuguese. This refusal forced him to break with some of his former allies in the Argentine coastal provinces, contributing to his eventual definitive defeat in 1820 (Alonso Eloy et al. 1970). From that moment on, and until 1825, the Banda Oriental would continue to be controlled by Portuguese-Brazilian forces. In 1821 Portuguese-Brazilian authorities called a congress. Dominated by prooccupation sectors of the elite, the congress approved the incorporation of the territories to the Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarve. This solution, however, met enormous resistance from the caudillos and some 4 Letter by Nicolás Herrera to Juan VI of Portugal, dated 19 July 1815. Reproduced in Archivo Artigas, Vol. XXX, pág. 10–16.

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commanders of the Artigas army. Meanwhile relations between Buenos Aires and the provinces that had made up the Federal League were re-established, and Brazil’s 1822 declaration of independence created tensions among the occupying forces. All of this favored the emergence of an armed movement seeking to reincorporate the territories into the United Provinces of Río de la Plata (Alonso Eloy et al. 1970; Frega 2016, 58). In 1825 an alliance of former Artigas-allied commanders—Juan Antonio Lavalleja, Manuel Oribe, and Fructuoso Rivera—went to war with Brazil, with support from Buenos Aires. Contrary to expectations, the conflict went on for three years. It provoked a political and financial crisis for the Buenos Aires government; destruction of the Banda Oriental cattle stock, and the disruption of the trade routes that had helped the port of Montevideo recover prosperity between 1820 and 1825. The Brazilian empire and the United Provinces of Río de la Plata signed a peace accord in 1828, under the mediation of the British. The Preliminary Peace Convention, Convención Preliminar de Paz, included a clause stipulating the formation of an independent state on the territory of the Banda Oriental . Two decades of almost continuous conflict had rendered acceptable an alternative that most members of the political and economic elite had previously rejected (Castellanos 1974). A retrospective look at the main stages of the pro-independence era, and the political positions taken by economic elites over the course of those two decades, allows us to identify certain central features. First, despite the fact that the upper classes did not contain segments with irreconcilable interests, they were divided over certain specific alternatives that presented themselves over the course of the period. During the initial stage of the revolution, a large proportion of the meat salters and those estate owners who actually lived in the countryside supported José Artigas (Caetano and Ribeiro 2015). The educated upper classes meanwhile rapidly abandoned the caudillo, preferring to align themselves with the political position of the Buenos Aires Junta. For this sector, the process that had begun in 1810 should not have been transformed into a revolution, but instead should have led to the “transfer of Spanish power to the [existing] leadership nucleus among the citizenry”—which, of course, they considered themselves to represent (Real de Azúa 1961, 68). Over the course of the entire period, and the best part of the century that followed, different generations of lawyers, journalists, and urban men

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of letters were faced with the same problem: the existence and constant presence of rural caudillos who held military or electoral sway over large segments of the popular sectors, and therefore exercised real power over the territory.5 Montevideo’s merchant class, strongly linked to usury and of mainly Spanish origin, resisted Artigas’s forces right from the beginning. The group stayed loyal to Spain until 1814, betting on the benefits that might accrue to its members should there be a restorationist victory that would, for good measure, punish Buenos Aires. Once this project seemed unviable, and Artigas took control of Montevideo, the city’s merchants switched to favoring a Portuguese invasion. For them, Artigas was a bringer of “anarchy” and “economic ruin” (Pivel Devoto 1957). The revolution had brought something more than simply war and economic disruption to the Banda Oriental , making it a byword for all that the traders wanted to avoid: “immediate disorder, physical irruption of the countryside into the city, agrarian policy, presence of the dispossessed, calls for egalitarianism” (Real de Azúa 1961, 71). This rejection did not, however, translate into a coherent alternative project that economic elites could get behind collectively. Uruguay therefore embarked upon independence with a political system dominated by the caudillos who had previously led the revolutionary armies. These were the only powers capable of asserting authority across the territory, and their power base consisted of bands of followers made up largely of individuals from the popular sectors. Nonetheless, they could also count on the support of different segments of the economic elite. Uruguay’s situation differentiated itself from the one that prevailed in Argentina at the end of the pro-independence era, inasmuch as the Uruguayan economic elites were not set against one another by irreconcilable economic interests. However, and unlike Chile’s elite, they were not, either, a homogeneous and highly politically cohesive group. In Uruguay, the weakness and contingent nature of the pro-independence process encouraged elites that had absolutely compatible interests to pursue distinct political projects and align themselves with caudillos who juggled elite demands alongside the complaints and requests of their 5 The internationalization of the conflicts that different sectors within the country experienced over the course of the C19th was in large measure a response by the urban upper classes to their inability to mobilize forces sufficient to take on the power of the caudillos.

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popular sector followers. The outcomes of this delicate balancing act would determine the form that political involvement by economic elites was to take until the first decades of the C20th.

5.3

Economic Elites and the Birth of a Stable Party System

Most historiography coincides in considering the moment of creation of the Uruguayan state as one of few moments during which national economic elites adopted a common political position. This consensus was built on two fundamental principles, the first of which presupposed the relinquishing of all pretensions to annexation or otherwise integrating into Brazil or Argentina (Real de Azúa 1961, 77). The second, which would be enshrined in the constitutional text of 1830, was the desire to put an end to caudillo politics in favor of a period during which economic elites and the educated classes would finally take the reins of power (Pivel Devoto 1956, 39; de los Santos 2019). This consensus also implied the need to demobilize the popular sectors and limit their political participation, by introducing institutions that would establish a restrictive notion of citizenship. As far as political involvement by caudillos was concerned, the 1830 constitution forbade military men from becoming senators or deputies. This measure met with resistance from those leaders who had served in the revolutionary army and had, alone among their peers in positions of political leadership, enjoyed genuine popular support at the time of independence. The two most notable figures in this group were Fructuoso Rivera and Juan Antonio Lavalleja. They sought to have the proposed clause eliminated on the grounds that it was “impractical” and “perhaps pernicious” (“funesta”), but the drafters of the constitution ignored their plea (Pivel Devoto 1956, 43). The Constitution also established the suspension of the citizenship rights of paid servants, day laborers, rank and file soldiers, vagabonds, those who owed money to the State, anyone who had been made the object of criminal charges, and the illiterate (this last with a ten-year grace period, i.e., applying to potential new voters from 1840 onwards). It also imposed ownership of capital and property as a prerequisite for occupying high office in any of the three branches of state (Frega 2016, 68–69).

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Caudillos nonetheless continued to exercise undeniable influence, and the political mobilization of rural popular sectors remained a fundamental part of political competition. Despite what was set down in the Constitution, the forms of political involvement that had been developed during the pro-independence period remained basically intact. In fact, the rules of the game that the 1830 Constitution set down contributed in part to this very continuity. Electoral rules established a majoritarian system for the election of deputies and senators representing each of the nine “departments” (departamentos ) into which the territory had been divided.6 Deputies were to be chosen via direct vote; senators, via an electoral college. The President of the Republic was to be chosen by the legislature (Asamblea General). These dispositions, added to the absence of the secret ballot and the almost unlimited power political authorities wielded over the electoral process, handed an enormous advantage to the government of the day while making life extremely difficult for the opposition. The absence of electoral guarantees and mechanisms for minority representation favored the development of exclusionary forms of political competition, based on fraud and the use of government resources to manipulate poll outcomes. The most common responses from groups who considered themselves illegitimately excluded from government were abstention and armed insurrection.7 A total of thirteen insurrections against central government took place in Uruguay between 1830 and 1904, with each government of the time facing an armed uprising every five or six years, on average (Somma 2011b, 137). The most reliable estimates suggest that most of these uprisings managed to recruit over 5% of the male population aged between 15 and 50 (Somma 2011b, 122). It would be a mistake, however, to see post-independence political competition as nothing more than a succession of insurrections 6 The national territory was divided up into nine demarcated administrative areas, denominated “departamentos ”. Over the course of the remainder of the C19th further subdivisions took place, giving rise by 1885 to the total of 19 departamentos that still prevails in the present day. 7 Electoral rules established a majority system for the election of deputies—via direct

vote—and senators, via an electoral college. The president of the republic was chosen by the legislative assembly. These measures, combined with the lack of a secret ballot and the almost unlimited power that political authorities exercised over the conduct of the electoral process, gave an enormous margin of advantage to incumbents, and made it extremely difficult for the opposition to achieve representation.

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and civil wars. The 1830 constitution set procedures for renewal of officeholders that entailed a considerable number of elections: members of the Electoral College were to be selected every six years; deputies and economic-administrative juntas every three years, and departmental mayors, annually. Somma estimates that over 60 rounds of voting were to take place over a 30-year period (Somma 2011a, 16). Lack of electoral guarantees and restricted citizenship notwithstanding, this intense electoral enterprise at least made the elites, and part of the population, familiar with new forms of political participation (Castellanos and Pérez 1981; Frega 2016; de los Santos 2019). The persistence of caudillo leadership and the intensity of competition favored the development of the political identities that gave rise to the two parties that were to form the nucleus of the Uruguayan party system for the ensuing 180 years: the Blanco, or National, Party, and the Colorado Party. The precarious nature of state institutions in this period has led some to affirm that a large part of the population felt a stronger and more intense sense of affinity and belonging to their party, than even to their national identity (L. E. González 1993, 27). These identities arose from the link established between the principal caudillos and their followers during the pro-independence period. After 1830, however, the single factor that best explains the power enjoyed by caudillos is the weakness of the state. Faced with a dearth of state institutions able to effectively carry out their functions, caudillos maintained their legitimacy and sway on the strength of a policy of give and protect, applied to the popular sectors, hacienda owners, and upper-class Montevideans alike. Their personal success was largely reliant on their adeptness in playing the part of intermediary between popular sectors in the countryside, and economic elites (Real de Azúa 1961, 86). One of the main recurrent bones of contention, aside from the strictly political, was the lack of definition of rights to land ownership. As has already been mentioned, this problem had roots in the colonial period and had been exacerbated during the war of independence. After 1830, disputes and complaints multiplied between agents whose titles had been awarded in different eras and by different authorities. In the face of a perception of threat to land ownership, affected individuals and groups petitioned for protection by the caudillos. This practice consolidated links of loyalty and subordination of the greater part of the landowning elite, who returned the favor by providing economic and human resources for insurrection (De la Torreet al. 1972, 135–36; Pivel Devoto 1957,

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17). Counter to the expectations that prevailed at the end of the proindependence process, Montevideo’s economic elites were also forced to take sides, lining up with one of the main caudillos and getting involved in party politics. High-level import–export businesses, meat processing interests, and financiers all appreciated that a weak state left them unprotected in the face of changing political fortunes and that the security of their businesses therefore depended on the protection offered by caudillos. The somewhat nominal nature of state power, the state’s inability to stamp its authority on the territory as a whole, and the exclusionary character of political competition all fed instability, which was exacerbated by repeated political intervention from Brazil and Argentina. At the end of the 1830s these tensions culminated in the conflict that became known as the Great War, Guerra Grande (1839–1851). Rivalry between leading Colorado caudillo Fructuoso Rivera and Blanco Party leader Manuel Oribe spilled over into an armed confrontation that took on an international hue when first Argentine federalists and unionists, and then France, England, and Brazil, all saw fit to join in. Montevideo was under siege for almost nine years (1843–1851), during which time the city was under the control of the Colorado Party, but the rest of the country was ruled by the Blanco Party. During this time Montevideo was indelibly transformed by the presence of exiled unionists from Argentina, and above all by a large European contingent (from France, England, and Italy). This transformation helped turn the Colorados into a primarily liberal and urban-based party. Meanwhile, the Blancos gained ground in the rural areas, particularly among groups who benefited from access to land title. The party began to acquire a certain nationalist and anti-European profile (Barrán 1974, 26–34). The conflict came to an end when the Colorado Party won out, largely thanks to its alliances with Brazil and with Argentine forces opposed to the government of Juan Manuel Rosas. The peace agreement however proclaimed that there would be no winners or losers: the war had had such devastating impact that national recovery would require every effort to attempt to close wounds. From an economic perspective, the war had left the country plunged into deep crisis. Public debt, owed to both private and state lenders, had spiraled to a level virtually impossible to repay. The ranching and salted meat industries had been ruined: between 1843 and 1852 beef herds had fallen from almost 7 million head of cattle, to just 2 million (Nahum 2006, 107). Sheep farming was in similarly dire straits, and 20 of the

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24 meat salting plants in operation when the war began had gone out of operation (Barrán 1974, 48–49; Nahum 2006, 107). All of this led to a reduction in population, an increase in poverty in rural areas, and a process of significant replacement among rural and urban economic elites. Many rural producers were driven into insolvency and the price of land fell, stimulating increased foreign ownership of rural property. Brazilian producers came to control up to a third of the national territory, and a substantial proportion of the land on the northwest coast was bought up by purchasers of German, French, English, and Spanish origin (Barrán 1974, 49; Moraes 2008). The war also led to important changes in Montevideo’s economic elites: the presence of immigrants in commerce, industry, and finance, already considerable before the war, was increased even further (Barrán 1974, 51). Unlike the descendants of the colonial founding fathers, these new rural and urban economic elites of European origin kept their distance from party-political quarreling, seeing it as a potential threat to their investments. Instead, they pursued their interests principally by bringing pressure to bear via the diplomatic missions of their respective countries of origin. In the political arena, the urban elite descendants of the colonial founding fathers blamed caudillos and the parties they represented, for the disasters the war had inflicted. For them, the parties had no reason to exist and were the main cause of the country’s political instability and dire economic straits. They launched a political offensive based around this narrative, aiming to unseat the caudillos in favor of a competitive oligarchical order. To that end, they undertook a program of “fusion” aimed at eliminating traditional parties. The parties however proved extremely resilient, with deep roots among the urban and rural popular classes. The weakness of the State and the persistence of exclusionary political institutions prolonged the cycle of instability and armed confrontation. “Pro-fusion” governments were installed, and fell, on the basis of precarious alliances struck sometimes with caudillos, sometimes with urban elites. While all of this was going on, the process of transformation of economic elites that had begun in the aftermath of the Great War became consolidated. By the mid-1860s, two distinct types of landowners could be identified. On the northern coast and in the south of the country,

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European immigrants were in the majority. Most were modern agricultural businesspeople, in the cattle or sheep ranching trade, who saw land as an investment and tried to increase its profitability by adapting techniques modelled on the production and consumption patterns of advanced capitalist economies. These actors largely abstained from party politics, seeing political instability and armed insurrection as perils to be avoided at all costs. In the north and east, on the other hand—and particularly in the environs of the frontier with Brazil—traditional estate owners continued to keep cattle herds. Owners were closely linked to caudillos by tacit arrangements of reciprocal protection and support. For them, land was a source of wealth, but it was also a means for securing continued prestige and political power (Finch 2005, 19–20). The process of economic elite renewal also took hold in Montevideo. Commerce and finance passed into the hands of a new bourgeoisie, of immigrant stock. This group generally kept its distance from party politics despite being the principal source of credit for the governments of the day. For this particular economic group, the color of the government, like the type of political regime over which it presided, was of relatively little importance as long as it could service its debts, ensure political stability, and maintain a restrictive monetary policy (Real de Azúa 1961, 118). These expectations were however doomed to disappointment under the pro-fusion administrations: only five of the 13 administrations that governed the country between 1852 and 1875 managed to complete their constitutionally mandated term, with each lasting an average of less than two years. The national political landscape, populated as it was by the descendants of the old urban colonial class and rural caudillos, proved unequal to the task of living up to the demands of emerging economic elites. Tensions between political figures emerging from the educated urban elite (often referred to as “doctores ”) and caudillos were overlaid onto existing tensions between Blancos and Colorados, with no adequate institutional channels to facilitate resolution. Faced with this scenario, new economic elites began to take a more active political role. Without fully abandoning, at least initially, their previous refusal to get involved in party politics, they sought to influence the direction of public policy by forming pressure groups. The National Chamber of Commerce (Cámara Nacional de Comercio) was founded in 1867 by the country’s major commercial and financial interests, and the Rural Association of Uruguay (Asociación Rural del Uruguay) followed in

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1871. Economic elites used these organizations to promote the installation of an authoritarian political order headed by the Armed Forces. This was the beginning of a militarized period that was to last from 1876 to 1886. During this phase, and particularly during the government of Lorenzo Latorre (1876–1880), Uruguay made advances in modernizing its state apparatus and economic structure. The governments of the day managed to consolidate a suite of institutions that underpinned state power and provided economic elites—landowners in particular—with the conditions they needed for further development. Conflicts over land title were definitively resolved thanks to the approval of a specific legal code—the Código Rural—and the provision of incentives for formal delimitation via the installation of fencing (Duffau 2022, 89–130; Moraes 2016, 165). The coercive power of the State was reinforced by the creation of a rural police force, professionalization of the Armed Forces, and improvements in the equipment with which they were supplied. The increasing availability of the telegraph system and the railroad also helped. Although caudillo-led insurrections were to persist through till the first years of the C20th, militarization established an irreversible superiority of firepower and training that operated in favor of State security forces over the irregular armies that were occasionally got up to try to confront them (Nahum 2006, 196). Despite the fact that these positive results assured the military of the support of emerging economic elites, military government ran its course in a relatively short space of time, for various reasons. Firstly, the military regime became strongly personalized during the government of General Máximo Santos (1882–1886). This plus increasing administrative disarray and signs of possible corruption weakened support among one sector of the elites. Although the military men who held the presidency over the period proclaimed their affiliation to the Colorado party, one wing of the party’s civilian members consistently and vociferously repudiated the regime and demanded a return to institutional normality. Finally, traditional landowners, most of whom identified with the National Party, resisted advances in regulation and increases in the coercive power of the state, not least because these things were being done by governments led by Colorado-affiliated figureheads (Finch 2005, 21). The return of civilian government entailed a restoration of competition between parties. The party system emerged from the decade of military rule partly intact, but partly transformed: despite efforts to sideline the traditional parties, they continued to be the only political identities that

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meant anything to the great majority of the population. The parties also managed to move on from the old confrontations between doctores and caudillos. Specifically, the more enlightened party elites on both sides finally came to understand the value of the caudillos, who would from this time on come to be “acknowledged as an established fact, celebrated as a glorious tradition, [and] invoked as an instrument of political suggestion” (Pivel Devoto 1942, 288). Rural and urban economic elites meanwhile continued to be divided along political lines, with the more dynamic sectors of agriculture, trade, and finance staying aloof from the party system and preferring to “do politics”, when necessary, via pressure groups. The cumulative effect of all of these factors reinforced the relative autonomy of the Uruguayan political system from its economic system. If governments did not appear to threaten what Barrán and Nahum refer to as “certain established premises of social and economic order”, conservative sectors and overseas interests “could leave Uruguay’s rulers to enjoy their aspirations to independence” (Barrán and Nahum 1979, 266). The democratization process was to throw this tacit pact into disarray, forcing economic elites to once again turn to political parties as a form of action.

5.4 The Period of Incorporation, Democracy, and Social Reformism Over the course of the first two decades of the C20th, Uruguay was to navigate a period that would give rise to the construction of one of Latin America’s most stable democratic regimes. The process took place during a period noted for the leadership exercised by José Batlle y Ordóñez,8 spanning four consecutive periods of Colorado Party presidencies.9 8 José Batlle y Ordóñez was the son of General Lorenzo Batlle (1810–1887), who had himself held the presidency between 1868 and 1872. Over the C19th, the fortunes of the Batlle family had followed a trajectory relatively common among members of the Uruguayan upper classes: a grandfather who amassed a considerable fortune, with the next generation entering politics while the family’s economic fortunes began to decline (Caetano 2016, 49). 9 Batlle y Ordóñez held the presidency on two separate occasions: 1903–1907 and 1911–1915). His two presidencies were punctuated by that of Claudio Williman (1907– 1911), and his second was followed by the presidency of Feliciano Viera (1915–1919). Both Williman and Viera were of the same political persuasion as Batlle y Ordóñez himself, leading historians to refer to this whole period as the first period of “Batllism”. In the

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Batlle had been pushing since the mid-1880s for renewal of Coloradismo from within: promoting the development of a broad network of neighborhood political clubs and the creation of a newspaper aimed at middle- and working-class residents of Montevideo. He then used these structures as a support base to challenge traditional elites for the party leadership. Toward the end of the century, he managed to get himself elected first to the chamber of deputies, then to the Senate, serving as caretaker president for a time. By the early C20th he was one of the Colorado Party’s most prominent members. Batlle was elected president in 1903 by a majority vote in the General Assembly, after a complex and protracted process of negotiations. His accession to government had caused concern in various social and political sectors. The new president had shown sympathy for the incipient trade union movement and was known to be militantly anticlerical. What caused most concern among the opposition and the upper classes, however, was his unwillingness to share power with the Blanco Party: something that was perceived as a risk to peace. Batlle sought in effect to consolidate the authority of the central state, limited by political accords that had brought to an end the last two largescale insurrections of the C19th: the Blanco uprising of 1872 and 1897. As a result of the accords, the country contained two centers of political power that were virtually separate from one another, and lived in permanent tension. The Colorado Party controlled the presidency, but the Blanco party governed six of the country’s departamentos. In practice, then, the accords had institutionalized the existence of a “state within the state” (Barrán and Nahum 1972, 53). In 1904, tensions between the Batlle government and Blanco caudillo Aparicio Saravia gave rise to a new armed insurrection. The resulting conflict, lasting for nine months, ended with the death of Saravia and military triumph for the government forces.10 This outcome produced a series of important changes. First, the long period of insurrections

mid-1940s, Batlle y Ordóñez’s nephew, Luis Batlle Berres, would go on to lead a new reformist initiative that came to be dubbed “neo-Batllism” (D’Elía 1986). 10 The revolutionary army mobilized around 7% of the male population between 15 and 50 years of age (Somma 2011b, 123). The war also caused severe economic damage. Some authors estimates that 8% of cattle stock, 4% of sheep, and a third of horse herds were lost. Fencing was destroyed, herd improvement was delayed, and the price of agriculture products fell (Nahum 2006, 25).

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that had characterized C19th Uruguay came to an end. Other than the occasional sporadic outburst, none of which amounted to much, the Uruguayan state would not be seriously challenged by armed movements again until the mid-1960s. Second, the imposition of the Batlle government by military force opened the door to a new cycle of Colorado exclusion of Blancos. Although the peace accord had included a promise of constitutional reform by which the Blanco Party hoped to achieve the introduction of the secret ballot and proportional representation, the process of actually introducing change to the existing 1830 Constitution proved long and complex. In the meantime, the Batlle government approved new electoral legislation that bolstered the ruling party’s majority (Nahum 2006, 24). The defeat suffered in 1904 plunged the Blanco Party into an extremely complex situation. Political reform to introduce proportional representation and the secret ballot was only a promise, whose fulfilment could not be relied upon. Victory for the ruling party was meanwhile inevitable, with only the size of the margin remaining as a question mark, dependent on levels of fraud and direct intervention by the executive. Armed insurrection, previously a mainstay of Blanco action, had become more politically costly in terms of its effect on public support, while the chances of actually defeating the state’s repressive apparatus became ever more remote. The 1904 revolution had moreover polarized opinion among rural dwellers, with most members of the landowning elites blaming the Blanco party for the catastrophic economic consequences of the conflict. Against this backdrop the Blanco party separated into two factions: the “radicals”, radicales, who promoted abstentionism and armed struggle on the one hand, and on the other, the “gradualists” (evolucionistas ) or “conservatives” (conservadores ), who preferred the strategy of electoral participation and gave up on the path of revolution. The split was to last from 1904 until 1912, when the conservative faction won out (Barrán and Nahum 1985, 420). In the Colorado Party, meanwhile, military victory served to confirm the leadership credentials of Batlle y Ordóñez, who took advantage of the situation in order to impose the selection of his preferred successor, Claudio Williman. This allowed him, to plan his own return to power four years later. Sure enough, in 1911 Batlle was elected president for the second time. Once in government he pressed ahead with a set of

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economic, social, and political reforms that would radically alter the dynamics of political competition (Vanger 1983). Elite attitudes to Batlle’s second election to the presidency were notably different from those the same actors would assume four years later. Although nervous of Batlle’s supposedly pro-worker, pro-state, and anticlerical tendencies, the upper classes were not sufficiently concerned or alarmed so as to undertake any collective action to resist his return to power. Contrary to the expectations of Blanco Party leaders and some representatives of overseas commercial interests, most of the economic elite maintained the same distance as they had during the closing years of the C19th. As far as the economic elites were concerned, although Batlle y Ordóñez was a man of dangerous opinions, the Colorado Party was the party of the state and of order. Fear of insurrection outweighed even the evident ideological affinity between elites and the majority of the Blanco Party. Despite the doubts aroused by Batllista reformism, the Colorado Party continued to stand for internal order. The Blancos, on the other hand, still presented a threat despite greater ideological overlap. Around this time, one of the Blanco Party’s main leaders could be heard lamenting the “incurable timidity” of most of the landowning elite, in continuing to stay away from party politics when they could— in his view—have been a significant force for electoral mobilization. The country had 20,000 estate owners (hacendados ) who refused to vote. If they could be persuaded to abandon their abstentionism, their votes could swing the election “despite [electoral] fraud and police abuses” (Barrán 1985, 133). This electoral potential was multiplied when one considered the political influence landowners could wield over their workers: “every rancher or farmer [could] take two, three, five, ten independent citizens with him to the ballot box, who live and thrive alongside him and so would go with him willingly” (Barrán 1985, 133). Political coordination between economic elites and the Blanco Party would not take place for a further four years, during which time Batllist reformism grew more radical and the Blanco Party abandoned its insurrectional tactics for good (Barrán and Nahum 1986, 424). During his second period in the presidency Batlle y Ordóñez set in train a set of initiatives aimed at stimulating the modernization of the country. In the economic sphere he promoted nationalization, state control, and industrial protectionism. In social affairs he supported workers’ demands and implemented protection for the poorest sectors. In the countryside, he sought to gradually eliminate the large ranches, diversify

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production, and increase productivity through adoption of technology. His fiscal policy was one of fiery rhetoric about radical redistribution of income, although its practical effects were few (Rilla 1985). In the moral arena he led an anticlerical crusade, expanded access to education, and promoted women’s rights. Finally, in regard to political institutions he promoted the expansion of citizenship, the substitution of the presidency of the republic by a collegiate body, and the introduction of mechanisms of direct democracy (Caetano 2016, 54). The passage of these reforms transformed the dynamic of political competition, which became more polarized and more programmatic without any accompanying change in the format and principal components of the party system. The traditional parties did, however, become mass parties, opening up to the incorporation of popular sectors hitherto marginalized from political competition. Popular participation was channeled into membership as well as into voting. The pride of place afforded by Batllism to the “social question” broadened the Colorado Party’s electoral base and provided the means for political incorporation of new social sectors over a very short period of time. Between 1911 and 1916 mass political meetings, and citizen participation in neighborhood clubs, state workers’ committees, and internal elections, became a routine part of political competition. On the whole, in the decade from 1910 the Colorados managed, without losing their polyclass identity, to transform themselves into a mass party with a strong electoral base among voters of working-class origin (Barrán and Nahum 1986, 133–34). The Blanco Party was pushed into undertaking shifts that represented a mirror image of this same transformation. For them, the initial triumph of the “conservative” faction that had rejected violent insurrection and embraced electoral competition gave way to the ascendancy of a “democratic” faction under the leadership of Luis Alberto de Herrera. This new line maintained the old demands of secret voting and proportional representation, and implemented mass electoral registration plus greater popular participation “via the nationalist clubs, [which operated as] bastions of indoctrination and electoral organization” (Zubillaga 1976, 177). By way of the clubs, the Blanco Party expanded its urban electorate, to complement the large landowners and successful businessmen and financiers who already featured in the inner circle of the party leadership. The party established itself as a “popular conservative” party with a

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polyclass base, staying faithful to its traditional pursuit of political democracy and approaching social matters from a mainly conservative, albeit paternalistic and philanthropic, perspective (Barrán 1986, 61). In this way, Batllist reformism triggered the transformation of the traditional parties into organizations that “commanded multitudes for the purposes of everyday democratic political actions, not just, as […] previously, for the purposes of civil war” (Barrán and Nahum 1986, 133). In consequence, the popular sector political incorporation that had begun in the C19th at the hands of followers of the caudillo tradition came to fruition in the early C20th through the actions of the two traditional parties, a dynamic that set Uruguay apart from what had happened across the rest of Latin America. Against a backdrop of economic crisis and deep political polarization, upper-class landowners finally abandoned their “timidity” and took on the government, creating new pressure groups, joining parties, and taking part in elections in significant numbers for the first time. Batllist reformism was therefore the factor that triggered a change in the forms of connection between Uruguayan economic elites and the party system (Real de Azúa 1964). In 1913 Batllismo had presented a controversial proposal for constitutional reform.11 The project’s most novel and controversial feature was the suggestion that the presidency should be replaced by a nine-member collegiate body, whose members would be individually returned in annual elections. For the Batllistas, the proposal had the merits of eliminating the possibility of personalist dictatorship while providing continuity for governmental programs of action. For the opposition the project would have made it almost impossible for the parties to alternate in power, as any party would have needed to achieve five consecutive victories in order to obtain a majority in the collegiate body.

11 The need for constitutional reform had been acknowledged in the treaty that brought the 1904 civil war to an end. The process of reform began in 1907, following the complex process set out in the 1830 text. The legislature set out in 1908, 1910, and 1912 the procedures that were to be followed for the drafting and approval of a new constitution. According to the agreement, the executive branch was to call an election to define the makeup of a new National Constitutional Convention, Convención Nacional Constituyente. This meant that these debates, over different aspects of constitutional reform, coincided with the discussions aroused by the social and economic reform agendas associated with Batllismo (Barrán and Nahum 1983, 168).

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The proposal to replace the presidency catalyzed a formal split in the Colorado Party. A group of party leaders that contained both moderate Batllist supporters and independent Colorado members saw their chance to challenge Batlle y Ordóñez’s leadership and act as a brake on reform. This group of dissidents included 11 of the 13 Colorado senators then sitting, who announced that they were willing to block legislative discussion of the reformist proposals (Barrán 1985, 153). The pressure groups and press that were aligned with economic elites greeted the process of Colorado fragmentation with delight. The dissident wing of Batllismo once again adopted the conservative principles that had guided Colorado political action until the end of the C19th. The group that had split off adopted a new name: the General Fructuoso Rivera Colorado Party.12 Its main achievements were twofold: it allowed the Colorado sectors of the economic elite to keep their party identity and it became a powerful instrument for vetoing reformism (Barrán 1985, 154). The definitive split in the governing party was both great news and a source of threat for the Blanco Party. Great news, because it created an effective veto power able to block most Batllista proposals. A threat, because the new Colorado fraction represented competition for the Blancos in their struggle to obtain the vote of those who considered themselves part of the “conservative classes”, and who had now begun to get involved in the political arena. As well as its proposals for political reform, the Batlle government radicalized its reformist pressures and increased fiscal pressure on landowners. These measures produced a step change in the relationship between the government and rural producers, who interpreted the actions as a declaration of outright war (Barrán 1986, 89). From that moment on, the tirades that some government party legislators directed against private land ownership ceased to be seen as impractical eccentricities or simple rhetorical excess and demagoguery. Landowners modified their forms of political activity, guided by the conviction that they were faced with an unprecedented threat. The outcome was the creation of a new pressure group, increased levels of coordination with other sectors of the economic elite, and above all, the adoption of a new repertoire of relationships with the parties.

12 Which came to be known as “riverism”, riverismo (M. González 2022).

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The process of creation of the Rural Federation, Federación Rural, clearly demonstrates the change of attitude of upper-class landowners toward party politics. From the time of the first Batlle y Ordóñez government, existing pressure group the Rural Association, Asociación Rural, had been criticized for alleged inaction, with the critiques eventually paving the way for a new grouping of rural producers. The criticism centered on the Association’s position of neutrality and lack of involvement in party politics, a position formulated in the aftermath of the military period. Its only relevant political interventions since the mid1880s had come in response to the civil war, with its day-to-day activities otherwise focused largely on improvements to production, requiring support from state institutions.13 The importance Association members placed on these activities, and on their links with the state, led one section of its rural leadership to regard any intervention in party politics as dangerous. Moreover, as the membership included Colorado party activists, forcing explicit collective statements about current events would pose a risk to unity. The radicalization of Batllismo nonetheless changed the correlation of forces within the sector, creating the necessary incentives to successful coordination (Caetano 1993). The Rural Federation was created in December 1915 as an institution independent from the Rural Association, although the two groups did maintain an efficient strategy for division of labor between them. The Association would continue providing services for modernizing the ranching business, and would begin to exercise “a more measured form of pressure”, making sure to keep open “channels of dialog with power” (Barrán 1986, 125). The Federation, for its part, would “politically mobilize […] the countryside when governments were debating issues related to the established order that were too important to […] respect appearances” (Barrán 1986, 125). According to Federation statutes, its political activities aimed to “disseminate Federation ideas and views among members of the various parties, exhorting them to privilege the nomination of candidate lists which best represent Federation ideas, and name to public posts those persons best suited to carrying them out”, and “repudiate and combat” policies that were not, in the Federation’s view, favorable to rural development (Asociación Rural del Uruguay 1971, 125). 13 For example, the state had delegated control of the archives of animal breeding records animal to the Rural Association.

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As historian José Pedro Barrán observed, given the political polarization the country was living through in 1915, Federation statutes made it clear that the new organization sought to contest the government’s “moral influence” via political action and via leadership by estate owners, who were to be entrusted with the responsibility of “directing the civic education of their subordinates” (Barrán 1986, 129). To this end, their first duty was to vote, but they were also to “induce others to vote [and] have an honest influence over voting” (Barrán 1986, 133). In other words, they were to abandon their former distance from politics in favor of electoral mobilization of rural workers and of all other social groups susceptible to the power of estate owners. José Irureta Goyena, one of the key figures of the period, was a leader of the process that led to the creation of the Rural Federation. He was a prominent member of the economic elites, as a rural property owner and lawyer for overseas businesses, and also due to his role in bringing together political and economic elites who were in opposition to Batllism (Caetano 2021, 205–38). Few of the protagonists of the Federation’s formation saw as clearly as Irureta the sequence of moves and objectives that would be needed in order to bring the rural upper classes into party politics. First of all, it would be necessary to break the habit of electoral non-participation that many landowners had acquired since the end of the C19th. To this end, Irureta Goyena adopted the slogan, directed at other landowners: “let us do politics, sirs, as the country is in need of it, and the parties also” (Barrán 1986, 132). Second, he understood that in the short term at least, political influence would have to be exercised through the existing traditional parties, rather than in competition with them. As he affirmed in 1916: “the Federation […] is not a political party, it is an axis of political and economic action [that] is not intended […] to place barriers in their way [nor] to compete with them electorally at the ballot box or in parliament” (Caetano 1992a, 27). For the leaders of the Blanco Party and the anti-Batlle faction of the Colorados, the incorporation of economic elites, particularly landowners, to party politics, was excellent news as long as it was to be channeled through traditional parties. The leaders of these two groups accordingly played an active part in creating the Federation. They presented themselves to the landowners as the best choice for opposing reformism, countering any move toward creation of a new party under the exclusive control of economic elites. Between 1914 and 1916 Luis Alberto de Herrera continually called for the political activation of economic elites.

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In 1915, for example, he exhorted cattle ranchers to “wake up, yes, wake up! And join the active parties” (Barrán 1986, 151). Just as Herrera wished, the radicalization of reformism and the calls of the opposition produced an awakening among other sections of the economic elites. Somewhat later than the landowners, high commercial interests and industrialists also began to demonstrate changes to their traditional ways of doing politics. The year 1915 saw the founding of the “Commercial Defense League”, Liga de Defensa Comercial, and of the “British Chamber of Commerce”, Cámara de Comercio Británica (Barrán 1986, 135). The League defined itself as part of the defense of the “productive and conservative classes against the […] advances that sought to impose State socialism” (Barrán 1986, 137). According to the League’s own press source, businessmen should vote, and should exercise influence over the “not inconsiderable army of staff and people who live with them and depend on their help and protection” (Barrán 1986, 138). Industrialists adopted a more equivocal attitude since they depended on government subsidies and customs protection. At the same time, however, they were increasingly concerned about government actions such as the introduction of a draft bill to establish an eight-hour working day, tolerance of workers’ protests, and the bringing of industries under state control. Overall, industrialists also came to believe that the moment had come to “awaken […] class consciousness in order to defend the rights of the members of their class” (Barrán 1986, 140). The political activation of economic elites, and the deepening of their links with those parties and party fractions that were opposed to Batllism, reached their height in mid-1916, with elections to the National Constitutional Convention due to take place on 30 July. After a long process of negotiations, Uruguayan voters were asked to select representatives to draft a new constitution. In practice, the election became a milestone in the process of democratization and represented a clash between two models of the country’s future. Batllism stood for social, moral, and economic reform at the same time as espousing political reforms that seemed designed to reinforce its own hegemony while definitively excluding opposition forces from power. The social and political opposition consisted of a genuine coalition formed by the Blanco Party, anti-Batllist Colorados, and new business sector pressure groups. This coalition promoted the defense of the established order against reformist threats, at the same time as pressing for the introduction of political democracy (Barrán and Nahum 1987, 7).

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The results of the vote completely altered the existing balance of forces in the political system. Batllism received a 40.5% vote share, i.e., an unexpected defeat. The sum total of votes received by parties, and fractions of parties, who opposed the collegiate presidency proposal (Blancos, anti-Batllist Colorados, and others) amounted to 58.1% This election has been hailed as a key moment in the birth of political democracy in Uruguay, for various reasons. First because these were the first elections ever celebrated in the country’s history that had featured universal male suffrage, secret voting, and proportional representation. Most of the restrictions on the exercise of citizenship that had been imposed by the 1830 constitution had been eliminated. This fact, combined with an intense electoral campaign and the introduction of secret voting, explains the growth in participation: 54,728 citizens had voted in elections to the lower chamber in 1913, whereas in July 1916 a total of 146,632 citizens took part—a turnout of 63% of those on the electoral register. While major limitations still existed—not least, the continued prohibition of votes for women14 —the election marked a tipping point in electoral participation and guarantees surrounding the vote. Second, because the party then in government lost the vote and recognized its defeat, leading to immediate, deep changes in the country’s political history (Barrán and Nahum 1987, 8). Feliciano Viera was president at the time of the defeat, having been selected as president in January 1915 by the General Assembly. Viera, who enjoyed the confidence of Batlle y Ordóñez, had a long career in public service behind him and was also a longstanding Colorado Party stalwart. Until the 1916 defeat he had fallen strictly in line with the governing party’s reform agenda, but just a few days after the result he announced a halt to reforms, in an attempt to eliminate sources of division within the Colorado Party (Caetano 1992a, 41). Speaking to the Colorado Party Convention, Viera claimed that the electoral defeat proved that reformism, and “advanced social and economic laws […] have alarmed many of our fellow party members […] so much that they have denied us their support”. It was accordingly necessary, he argued, to “call a halt in our work”, seeking to reconcile capital and worker (Barrán and Nahum 1987, 94). The “halt” was further consolidated a few months later with the naming of a ministerial cabinet that handed strategic

14 Women would get the vote for the first time in 1938.

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posts to renowned Blanco Party figures and some Colorado conservatives, including men who had held relevant posts in the Rural Association and Rural Federation.15 At the same time, the final stage of the complex process of constitutional reform begun in 1907 took place during 1917. The results of the July 1916 election, and of the elections to the chamber of deputies that took place in January 1917, created a situation of stalemate between proponents and opponents of the collegiate scheme to replace the presidency. The pro-faction controlled parliament, but the antis controlled the Constituent Assembly. The outcome of this balance of forces was a consensual reform project, drawn up on the basis of mutual concessions. The compromise between the pro- and anti- groups led to the approval of a constitution that contemplated a bicephalous executive branch, made up of a President of the Republic plus a nine-member National Administrative Council, Consejo Nacional de Administración.16 Despite this peculiar makeup of the executive branch, the main novel element in the new Constitution was not this, but rather the set of guarantees offered around the voting process. These definitively marked a shift to a polyarchic regime. The adoption of proportional representation for the chamber of deputies, and of secret, equal, universal voting satisfied the demands that the Blanco Party had been making since the last quarter of the C19th. More importantly, the foundations of political democracy in Uruguay had been laid (Buquet and Chasquetti 2004, 226). The triumph of the opposition in the July 1916 election had other important consequences. One part of the economic elites interpreted the 15 The distance that opened up between Viera and Batlle y Ordóñez grew ever greater until it reached a point of definitive rupture, giving rise to a new conservative Colorado fraction, the Radical Colorado Party, Partido Colorado Radical. The political line represented by the party was often referred to in popular parlance as “vierismo”, after Viera. 16 The president of the Republic was to be elected to four-year terms, by direct, simple majority voting. Immediate re-election was prohibited. The President’s functions included to act as representative of the state; internal and external security, and control of certain key ministries: Foreign Affairs, Interior, and War and the Navy. The Administrative Council was in charge of the ministries of Public Instruction, Public Works, Labor, Industry and Finance, and Assistance and Public Hygiene. Its nine members were to be directly chosen by popular vote, for six-year terms. A third of the membership was to be replaced every two years. At each election, two of the three posts up for renewal were to go to the most voted list of the majority party, with the third going to the most voted list of the party with the second highest vote share (Chasquetti 2003, 69).

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defeat of the ruling party as a sign of their own electoral importance. Acting on this assumption, the issue of the potential usefulness of traditional parties once again came to the fore. The sectors of the upper classes that had been most reticent to join the ranks of the Blanco Party or the pro-Rivera faction of the Colorados began to believe that it was time for them to have a party of their own. The Democratic Union, Unión Democrática, founded in 1919, was the result. Paradoxically, this Conservative Party controlled by members of the economic elite was born precisely at the point at which most members of this group had abandoned the stance of distance from party politics that had been their hallmark over the last three decades of the C19th and the first decade of the C20th. Those sectors of the upper classes that had preferred to integrate into the traditional parties saw the risks presented by the formation of the Democratic Union for what they were. As far as they were concerned, the new organization threatened the party system by rendering explicit the political character of class struggle. An editorial in Blanco newspaper El País assured readers that “a dozen large property owners will be confronted by thousands of elements with no fortune at all. The rich will be confronted by the poor. The economic struggle […] will be a thousand times more violent than any clash between the current parties. This is the case of the patient who was infected with pneumonia in order to cure a cold” (Caetano 1992a, 148). Luis Alberto de Herrera, principal Blanco Party leader and architect of the party and pressure group coalition that had defeated Batllism in 1917, was caustic in his criticism: “make your little parties if that amuses you […] Since some respectable businessmen have now grown tired of their civic bachelorhood and decided to set up political house, let them do it, why not, collecting up the neutral, the indifferent, the fifty-something men about town who have yet to choose an intended […] The truth is that they are either late risers, or are too busy quibbling over the cost of their invoices” (Caetano 1982). Despite receiving such criticism, the Democratic Union managed to attract a good number of the holders of the country’s principal private fortunes. One big surprise was that prominent economic elite figure José Irureta Goyena agreed to head the new party’s list of candidates for election to the chamber of deputies. This was, after all, the selfsame Irureta Goyena who had in 1915 spearheaded the creation of the Rural Federation and coordination with the conservative fractions of the traditional parties.

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The Democratic Union’s election results were however disastrous, despite the large quantity of resources poured into their campaign. The party did not obtain a single seat in the legislature, and thus toward the end of this period, the death knell finally sounded for the idea of creating a Conservative Party controlled by economic elites. As José Pedro Barrán has observed, the electoral failure demonstrated that most members of the upper classes considered themselves well served by the traditional parties, even though this approach came at the cost of being obliged to “mix with the rabble” (Barrán 2004, 122). In sum, during the democratization Uruguay implemented three crucial political processes. First, the country completed modernization of its state by constructing political institutions capable of imposing their authority on a national scale. Second, it completed the political incorporation of the popular sectors that had begun under caudillos and the traditional parties over the course of the C19th. More specifically, in the first two decades of the C20th the traditional parties incorporated urban popular sectors to politics and channeled their participation via suffrage. Third, this period saw the incorporation into party politics of the economic elites that had grown up over the second half of the C19th, and who had generally preferred to keep their distance from traditional parties. This incorporation came through the creation of new pressure groups, and then via involvement in electoral politics through the selfsame traditional parties that elites had previously rejected (Panizza 1997). Discussing the conditions that explain the elevation of Batlle y Ordóñez to the presidency, Barrán y Nahum conclude that this was made possible because in 1903 “the political system only represented itself” (Barrán and Nahum 1979, 215). At the end of the C19th and beginning of the C20th, political functions were mostly exercised by a professionalized group of political leaders. The group was predominantly made up of descendants of the big commercial and landowning families who had controlled the Uruguayan economy until the mid-C19th, but who had relatively little contact with the new, mostly immigrant, economic elites who had emerged after 1860. This had helped to create a political system that was notably autonomous from economic power. The situation was to change considerably between 1913 and 1916. By the end of the period, more than half (53.5%) of all Blanco Party candidates, and 30% of anti-collegiate Colorado party leaders, were ranchers, industrialists, traders, bankers, or lawyers for overseas companies (Barrán

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and Nahum 1986, 78). Moreover, almost a quarter (23%) of the membership of the boards of business pressure groups were also leaders of one or other political party (Barrán 1986, 155). The circumstances that surrounded the incorporation of the economic elites into party politics created lasting consequences for the forms of political involvement adopted by elites, and thereby, in the last analysis, for the future of democracy in Uruguay. The integration of economic elites into a coalition made up of polyclass parties and party fractions brought the elites into a contest that defended the established social order and opposed Batllist reformism, on the one hand, and pursued political democracy, on the other. It was a paradoxical position for a sector of society that had historically shown itself to be more interested in stability and the securing of its own interests, than in the legitimacy of the political regime: economic elites had previously displayed “visceral mistrust in the tyranny of numbers and of […] the ‘mob’” (Barrán 2004, 114). Without a doubt, the triumph of economic elites in putting the brakes on reformism entailed the consolidation of traditional parties, now transformed into mass parties, and also led to the resurgence of political democracy. In the long term both these phenomena would operate as a substantial outer limit to the power of the economic elites, eternally destined to strike pacts with other social sectors and with professional politicians from the traditional parties in defense of their own interests.

5.5

Economic Elites, Polyclass Parties, and Democracy

The rules of the game set down in the new Constitution changed the dynamics of political competition, with the parties forced to adjust their old practices to grapple with the entirely novel reality of a genuinely competitive system. Electoral participation grew very fast: the electorate grew almost threefold between 1913 and 1916, with electoral participation increasing by almost 70% between 1916 and 1922. At the same time, the extremely high frequency with which some kind of election was called17 helped legitimate suffrage as the only acceptable mechanism 17 A third of the membership of the National Administrative Council and of the Senate was up for renewal every two years; every three years the entire Chamber of Deputies was replaced, and presidents were elected on a four-year cycle. In total, eleven elections were held between 1919 and 1932 (Buquet and Chasquetti 2004, 234).

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for settling political differences. This extreme “electoralization” however also introduced severe distortions into the functioning of the system, by stimulating polarization and decision-making based on the calculus of short-term electoral gain (Caetano 1985a). Conflicts between the president and the National Administrative Council, like the attrition created by almost continual electoral campaigning, were tolerable as long as the country was not in serious economic trouble. The 1929 crisis however changed the panorama, increasing polarization. Many actors began to press for change to this institutional design. In the aftermath of 1929, a pact between Batllism and the anti-Herrera wing of the Blanco Party established new rules for co-participation. These rules assured them of significant advantages in access to public posts, and promoted policies that returned to the statist and worker protection orientations of the first era of Batllism. Even more alarmingly for the conservative sectors and pressure groups, Batllism and its allies achieved a series of electoral triumphs that assured them of a parliamentary majority. Against this backdrop President Gabriel Terra—a moderate Batllist— broke with the tradition from which he had come, joining forces with Herrera supporters in an attempt to have the National Administrative Council suppressed (Caetano and Jacob 1990). The Council’s members and most parliamentarians rejected this attempt, deepening tensions still further and favoring the creation of a pro-coup coalition made up of Terra himself, non-Batllist sectors of the Colorado Party, the Herrerasupporting fraction of the Blanco Party, and pro-business pressure groups. The coup, set in motion on 31 March 1933, met largely with indifference from public opinion (Caetano and Jacob 1991). The process that led to the institutional fracture of the coup was notable for political mobilization by the business sector, led, once again, by the Rural Federation. At the beginning of 1929, the pro-rural guild had proposed the creation of an organization of all business corporations, with the aim of combating “the socialist policies [of the government], the unrelenting and inexplicable punishment of capital, the accentuated electoral demagoguery of the parties, [and] the proliferation of bureaucracy” (Caetano 1985b, 189). The Federation’s proposal led to the creation of the National Committee for Economic Vigilance (Comité Nacional de Vigilancia Económica) which went on to play a prominent role as a space for political coordination for the economic elites in the run-up to the coup. The Committee demanded tax exemptions and opposed all

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efforts to move ahead with social and pro-labor legislation, or indeed any other measure that would have tended to expand the state’s role in the economy. It also supported a constitutional reform that would have eliminated the National Administrative Council and reduced the frequency of elections.18 The debates around the creation of the Committee reflected the lessons that the elites had learned during the democratization period. On the one hand, their denunciations could be heard lamenting “the rotten, outdated prejudice that [vetoed] the classes that represent production [from intervening] in politics”. On the other, there was recognition that the new organization “was not a political party, nor did it aspire to be one”, meaning that electoral intervention was to continue to be channeled through established parties (Caetano 1985b, 190). The agenda that had been drawn up during efforts to face down the first reformist impulse remained intact: collective action through pressure groups, and involvement in parties via the conservative fractions of traditional parties. The results included an increase in the number of businessmen who featured on the candidate lists of conservative fractions of the parties (Caetano and Jacob 1989, 223–33). Once the coup had taken place, relations between Gabriel Terra’s government and the economic elites took a turn that exposed the limitations of the kind of political involvement proposed by the Committee. The National Committee for Economic Vigilance dissolved itself in 1933, announcing that its goals had been achieved. Those demands of business pressure groups that coincided with what Conservative Party fractions wanted were achieved quite quickly: a constitutional reform to eliminate the collegiate body and reduce the frequency of elections was approved. The depth and longevity of the crisis however pushed the government toward taking a series of measures that were very far from meeting with the approval of the economic elites. Political action by pressure groups had shown itself more effective for vetoing proposals than for actually imposing elite preferences. At the end of the authoritarian regime, the coordination among economic elites that had been so intense in the years before the coup had virtually ceased to exist. However, in a repeat of 18 It is interesting to note that the initiative and leadership behind the creation of the National Committee for Economic Vigilance came from José Irureta Goyena, reprising the almost identical role he had played in the creation of the Rural Federation. It had also been Irureta who had headed up the failed attempt to create a class-based party.

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what had happened in 1916, the presence of leaders of business pressure groups in the party system grew (Da Cunha 1994; Jacob 1991, 2000). Despite the growing overlap between political and business circles, however, politics remained relatively autonomous from economic power (Caetano 1992b, 30). The authoritarian regime sought to legitimate itself by submitting a new constitutional text to plebiscite and by keeping up the regular cycle of elections, but Batllist Colorados and non-Herrera-supporting Blancos stuck to their intransigent opposition and called for abstention. Between 1938 and 1942 the government agreed terms with the opposition for a transition to democracy that was to include a new constitutional reform.19 The democratic regime established in 1942 lasted until 1973. A sustained process of expansion of citizenship was visible right from the beginning, due in large part to the extension of suffrage to women in 1938. The three decades between 1942 and 1972 can be separated, for the purposes of analysis, into two major political and economic cycles. The first, running from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, coincided with an expansive economic cycle, stimulated by an international situation that increased both prices and the volume demand for agricultural produce. Politically, those same years saw a new cycle of dominance for Batllism, this time under the leadership of Luis Batlle Berres. The second cycle, from the mid-1950s to the 1973 coup, saw economic stagnation and the carrying out of various experiments tending to change the country’s development model toward import-substituting industrialization. This led to a sharp increase in social conflict and political polarization. Between 1946 and 1958, the governments of what was called the “neo-Batllist” era pursued industrial development, state intervention in the economy, and increased coverage for social protection measures. This development model prized industrialization above almost all else. In the words of Luis Batlle Berres, “it is hand in hand with industry that the middle class is created […] decent working class salaries […] capital […] well-paid administrative organization […] all of this sets in motion the creation of wealth that is shared out among the workers” (D’Elía 1986, 43). Consequently, neo-Batllist governments sought to promote industrial activity via the creation of a structure of subsidized pricing based 19 The changes introduced in the new constitution included proportional representation for elections to the Senate, and the elimination of co-participation in the Ministries (Frega et al. 1987, 124–25).

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on the transfer of profits originating in the agro-export sector. All of this increased wages and expanded the internal market. In practice, the policy relied on an informal alliance that brought together the industrial sector, the urban petty bourgeoisie, and the workers, all under the political leadership of Batllism (D’Elía 1986, 38; Rama 1987, 136). As part of this strategy neo-Battlism broadened and institutionalized the participation of business corporations—especially industrial concerns—in a range of state and quasi-state enterprises. This gave rise to a mode of incorporation that came to be referred to as “corporate co-participation” (Lanzaro 1986, 1992). One paradigmatic example is the creation of the Wage Councils (Consejos de Salarios), a forum for wage negotiations in which workers, business owners, and the state all took part. The idea institutionalized a culture of compromise and coparticipation among party actors, and between them and public and private agents (Caetano 1992b). One notable feature of this period is the impact that it had on the degree of cohesion among economic elites, particularly between the industrial sector and the agro-export sector, for example. In fact, this period betrays a hitherto unprecedented level of division within the positions and preferences of landowner and industrialist elites, division that had a clear political correlate. One response of rural producers to neo-Batllist policies was to create the Federal League for Pro-Rural Action, Liga Federal de Acción Ruralista. This populist version of the Rural Federation, generally referred to simply as “The Ruralismo”, was a social, political, and guild movement that mobilized a very large and heterogeneous contingent of rural producers, ranging from large proprietors to small and medium producers who rented land.20 With this support base, the “Ruralismo” promoted an economic policy of commercial opening, reduction of taxation on agriculture, privatization, and limits on state intervention in all spheres of activity. Politically, it sought to offer an alternative to traditional twoparty politics by developing a policy of alliances with conservative sectors of both the main parties (Colorados and Blancos). Efforts to create a new party however foundered on the fact that the group’s allies were

20 Between 1953 and 1954 the League carried out 206 local assemblies and six largescale town meetings, known as “Cabildos Abiertos”, in which around 150,000 people took part (Jacob 1981, 86).

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very strongly identified with one or other of the traditional parties (Jacob 1981, 106–108). In the 1958 elections, Ruralismo joined the Blanco Party through an agreement struck with the Blanco fraction led by Luis Alberto de Herrera. The arrival of Ruralismo contributed to victory for the Blanco Party, which came to government for the first time since the establishment of democracy in 1918, bringing the long period of Colorado dominance to an end.21 The political change was a reflection of the economic deterioration that had first become visible in the mid-1950s. The era-altering changes wrought by the Second World War and the Korean War posed an evergreater threat to the sustainability of neo-Batllism. The ever more limited resources available for financing industry, employment, real wages, and social protection led to the fracturing of a tacit alliance between Batllism, industrialists, and urban workers. The government attempted to salvage the situation by multiplying levels of public debt, but it could not manage either to reverse stagnation or to stem the growth of inflation, fall in salaries, and loss of jobs (Finch 2005, 243–50; Nahum 2006, 216–28). It was against this backdrop that the coalition formed by Herrera supporters and Ruralismo won the election. Once in government, these groups initiated a change in the development model consisting of the reorientation of agro-export revenue to the primary product sector, the installation of a single, free rate of exchange, and gradual import liberalization, in accordance with the commitments made in the country’s first-ever letter of intent signed with the International Monetary Fund, IMF (Finch 2005, 253–61). This new orientation did not, however, fully take hold: the intensification of social conflict that it produced led to various corrections and attenuations of the reforms initially proposed. The changes owed much to the apprehensions of party fractions about the likely electoral costs of policy proposals that had been roundly rejected by middle sectors and urban workers. Even sectors that were ideologically closer to the positions that had inspired the new proposed model grew less enthusiastic, or simply fell into self-contradiction, once they began to feel some of its effects for themselves (Caetano 1992b). At the beginning of the 1960s, the economy continued to be stagnant, inflation continued

21 The Colorado party had won the elections in 1942, 1946, 1950 and 1954.

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to grow, but the government had reimposed exchange rate controls and had halted the transfer of revenue to the rural sector (Rama 1987, 143). The efforts at economic reorientation that took place from 1958 were carried out by a governing group that contained an ever-growing proportion of politicians with direct links to business. Between 1951 and 1958, 26.3% of the membership of the executive branch (from president down to vice-ministerial level) had had direct links with business activity. Between 1959 and 1966, the proportion grew to 49.3% (Stolovich and Rodríguez 1987, 167).22 Professional politicians lost ground to individuals who combined party activism and business activity, without any change in the ability of parties to channel the incorporation of members of the economic elite into the political system. Beyond these changes in the makeup of the cast of political actors, the economic situation continued to deteriorate in subsequent years. It proved impossible to construct a successful consensus around a coherent and viable political proposal to resolve the crisis. The absence of consistent responses from the party system aggravated a vicious cycle of social conflict and adjustment programs, the implementation of which required ever larger doses of repression. By the mid-1960s all economic reorientation projects were still being blocked, and the intensification of social mobilization and state repression was further exacerbated by the irruption of the left-wing guerrilla movement known as the “Tupamaros” (the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement, Movimiento de Liberación Nacional—Tupamaros). The displacement of the traditional parties from their formerly central place reached new heights during the Colorado government of Jorge Pacheco Areco (1967–1972), which implemented a radical program of economic stabilization. The support base was a cabinet of ministers in which professional politicians had been partially replaced by big businessmen with close links to the financial, industrial, and landowning sectors (Real de Azúa 1988, 46–65). On this point Stolovich and Rodríguez have observed that a change in levels of participation by individuals linked to business was not the main novel feature of the period: indeed, the data they present suggests that this issue had remained relatively stable between 1951 and 1958. Ministerial cabinets in the period 1967–1972 did, on the other hand, differ from their predecessors in 22 The definition counts connections via family, professional activity, or personal activity as businesspeople engaged in agriculture, industry, or estate ownership.

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recruiting businessmen who were the actual heads of their respective enterprises—directors of the Chambers of Industry and Commerce, and of the Rural Association and Rural Federation—and, above all, who had no history of party-political activism (Stolovich and Rodríguez 1987, 171). The deepening of the crisis also stimulated successive efforts to unite the parties of the left. In 1962 and again in 1966, these efforts foundered due to irreconcilable differences between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. Finally, for the 1971 elections the sector managed to create the Broad Front (Frente Amplio), a political coalition that brought together all parties of the left “without exception”, as well as some fractions who had split from the traditional parties, plus some independent citizens. The results of the 1971 election revealed significant changes to the party system. Although the candidate of the governing Colorado party did win, the Frente Amplio obtained 18% of the vote. This notable irruption represented a break with the two-party logic that had dominated the system from its inception. An unprecedented situation ensued whereby the party in government was left without a legislative majority in either chamber (Buquet and Chasquetti 2004, 238). To the historical fractionalization of the traditional parties was added the fragmentation of the system itself, increasing the difficulties involved in attempting to build coalitions capable of implementing any of the possible ways out of the crisis that was being proposed. Political stalemate fed into further polarization and increasing political violence. The regional trend was already one of proliferation of bureaucraticauthoritarian regimes, and on 27 June 1973 President Bordaberry initiated a coup, with the support of the Armed Forces (O’Donnell 1973). The economic elites maintained an attitude of generic support for the economic liberalization that the authoritarian regime imposed between 1974 and 1980 (Caetano and Rilla 1987, 150). Business chambers did not, however, play a significant role in defining the basic direction of regime public policy. Instead, those who occupied the leading posts in the area of political economy tended to be techno-bureaucrats “strong proponents of neoliberalism, with solid links to transnational capital, […] who looked to avoid making any demanding or long-lasting undertakings to the various [national] business sectors” (Caetano 1992b, 36). The insertion of economic elites into the authoritarian regime was also

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retarded by their “traditionally weak” linkages to the Armed Forces officers who were now running the country (Stolovich and Rodríguez 1987, 171). Finally, the authoritarian regime dismantled a large proportion of the institutional spaces that had previously served to link corporations and the state: spaces that pressure groups had historically used to promote and defend their interests. The absence of alternative channels deprived these sectors” of one of the main planks of their strategy for political involvement. The weakness of their links with the regime made it easier for business pressure groups to keep their distance and to take a critical stance, especially from 1982, when a period of severe recession helped trigger increased social and political opposition that would eventually speed the process of democratic transition (Caetano and Rilla 1987, 84). Two years of negotiations and mobilizations finally led the political parties and the Armed Forces to agree terms for a transition back to democratic rule. The ensuing elections, held in 1984, returned the Colorado Party to government and helped restore a party system remarkably similar to the one that had existed back in 1971. From that time onward, at least until 2005, political competition was structured around two clearly defined competing blocs, with different fractions of the Colorado and Blanco parties exercising office (alternately, and/or in coalition) and the Frente Amplio in the role of main opposition party. The crafting of coalitions became the predominant mode of governing over this period, and although with differences in emphasis, Blanco-Colorado coalitions promoted sets of reforms that aimed at greater economic liberalization (J. P. Luna 2004; Rosenblatt 2018). The reformist agenda was applied in a setting of relative economic stability, controlled inflation, moderate levels of growth, and improvements in some social indicators. Nonetheless, resistance to change was intense and had important political consequences. In the four nationwide elections held between 1984 and 1999, the total vote share going to the two traditional parties went into systematic decline (76.3% in 1984, 69.2% in 1989, 63.6% in 1994, and 55.1% in 1999). Conversely, electoral support for the Frente Amplio and other, smaller, center-left parties grew steadily (21.2% in 1984, 30.2% in 1989, 35.8% in 1994, and 44.7% in 1999) (Lanzaro 2004, 51). From 1999 the economy began to deteriorate, against a highly unstable regional backdrop. Three years later the situation had become sufficiently serious to plunge the country into one of the worst economic crises in its history. This had affected, inter alia, GDP (which suffered a

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fall of 17% between 1998 and 2002), and wages (which declined by 24% between 1998 and 2003). Debt relative to production meanwhile grew (by 114% in 2004), as did unemployment (which reached 16% in 2003); poverty (which affected 40% of the population by 2004); and extreme poverty (destitution), levels of which doubled between 2002 (3%) and 2004 (6%). The long process of transformation of the party system that had begun in 1971 culminated with the triumph of the Frente Amplio in the 2004 presidential election. The interaction of both structural and contingent factors explains a result that had already seemed eminently possible four years previously (L. E. González and Queirolo 2000).23 Just as the Frente’s 2004 election win represented the end of the cycle of party transformations begun in 1971, the victories it obtained in the next two elections (2009 and 2014), plus a reduction in volatility, make it possible to assert that the party system had entered a period of stability (Buquet and Piñeiro 2014, 12). Beneath these changes, the Uruguayan political system does still exhibit some strong continuities. First there is the central role afforded to a party system that is highly institutionalized, capable of managing deep transformations without sacrificing its principal components. This makes it less surprising than might otherwise have been the case, that the cycle of system change followed by system rebalancing has not produced a substantial change to the relationship between economic elites and political parties. The cabinet lineups of those post-transitional governments led by the traditional parties generally betray a significant preference for leaders with long histories of previous party activism, but so too do the cabinets of the three Frente Amplio administrations of the period to date. The existence of a professional political class at the beginning of the C20th was one of the main factors favoring the relative autonomy of Uruguay’s political system. This could have given way to a new type of political leadership, more closely linked to business interests. Instead, the party system has continued to be a fundamental space for managing the defense of economic elite interests, a state of affairs that does much to reinforce the legitimacy of the democratic regime.

23 The structural factors included economic and demographic ones, the contingent factors, and strategies of political competition.

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Pivel Devoto, Juan E., and Alcira Raineri de Pivel Devoto. 1945. Historia de La República Oriental Del Uruguay. Montevideo: Medina. Rama, Germán. 1987. La Democracia En Uruguay. Montevideo: Arca. ———. 1989. La Democracia Uruguaya. Montevideo: Arca. Real de Azúa, Carlos. 1961. El Patriciado Uruguayo. Montevideo: Asir. ———. 1964. El impulso y su freno: tres décadas de Batllismo y las raíces de la crisis uruguaya. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. ———. 1969. La Clase Dirigente. Montevideo: Nuestra Tierra. ———. 1984. Uruguay, ¿una Sociedad Amortiguadora? Montevideo: Ediciones Banda Oriental. ———. 1988. Partidos, Política y Poder En El Uruguay (1971. Coyuntura y Pronóstico). Montevideo: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias. Reyes Abadie, Washington, Oscar Bruschera, and Tabaré Melogno. 1965. La Banda Oriental. Pradera, Frontera, Puerto. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Rilla, José. 1985. La Politica Impositiva. Asedio y Bloqueo Del Batllismo. In El Primer Batllismo. Cinco Enfoques Plémicos, 75–103. Montevideo, Uruguay: CLAEH/Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Rosenblatt, Fernando. 2018. Party Vibrancy and Democracy in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press. Sala de Touron, Lucía, and Alonso Eloy. 1986. El Uruguay Comercial, Pastoril y Caudillesco. Vol. 1: Economía. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Sala de Touron, Lucía, Nelson De la Torre, and Julio Rodríguez. 1967a. Estructura Económico-Social de La Colonia. Montevideo: Ediciones Pueblos Unidos. Sala de Touron, Lucía, Nelson De la Torre, and Julio C. Rodríguez. 1978. Artigas y Su Revolución Agraria 1811–1820. México D.F.: Siglo XXI. Sala de Touron, Lucía, Julio C. Rodríguez, and Rosa Alonso Eloy. 1991. El Uruguay Comercial, Pastoril y Caudillesco. Vol. 2: Sociedad, Política e Ideología. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental. Sala de Touron, Lucía, Julio Rodríguez, and Nelson De la Torre. 1967b. Evolución Económica de La Banda Oriental. Montevideo: Ediciones Pueblos Unidos. Somma, Nicolás. 2011a. Elections and the Origins of Democracy in NineteenthCentury Uruguay. ———. 2011b. When Powerful Rebel. Armed Insurgency in NineteenthCentury Latin America. Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame. Stolovich, Luis, and Juan Manuel Rodríguez. 1987. Gobierno y Empresarios: Sus Vínculos Personales. In ¿Hacia Dónde va El Estado Uruguayo? Concentración de Poder y Democracia, ed. Gerónimo De Sierra, 163–205. Montevideo: Fundación de Cultura Universitaria.

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Vanger, Milton. 1983. El País Modelo. José Batlle y Ordóñez. 1907–1915. Montevideo: Arca. Zubillaga, Carlos. 1976. Herrera, La Encrucijada Nacionalista. Montevideo: Arca.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusions

The relationship between economic elites and political power is a central issue of social research. Beyond the debates, different analytical frameworks coincide in recognizing classes’ potential or effective capacity to influence political decision-making processes. Numerous studies have addressed questions related to this central issue. Part of them has concentrated on describing and explaining the concrete ways that economic elites use to influence political decisions and thus protect their material interests. On this basis, a wide field of research has been developed on the effects of the strategies that economic elites prioritize to intervene in politics. This work has identified three patterns of interaction between economic elites and party systems. In one of them, the upper classes maintain indirect links with the party system, defending their interests principally via a varied repertoire of strategies that include the organization of pressure groups, lobbying activity, insertion into the structure of the state, and intervention by the Armed Forces, among others. In the other two formats, the economic elites are directly involved in the party system and electoral competition as part of their strategies to protect their privileges. In one of these formats, the economic elites are the core constituency of the parties. This implies that although the electorate is multiclass, the economic elites provide the party’s primary resources, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Monestier, Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena, Latin American Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1_6

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define its programmatic orientations, and provide part of its candidates and leadership positions. The typical indicator of this kind of link is the existence of one or more stable and relevant conservative parties. However, the direct involvement of the economic elites in the parties can take another format. In this case, the upper classes join parties that, in addition to having a polyclass electoral base, have a polyclass core constituency. This means that within the party’s core constituency, the economic elites coexist, competing and cooperating to control the party, its programmatic agenda, and its leadership positions, with non-elite individuals and groups and, therefore, potentially divergent. Theoretically, it is reasonable to expect that the different formats of interaction between economic elites and parties will have different effects on the ability of the upper classes to transform their power resources into effective influence. Furthermore, since these formats are not mutually exclusive, it is plausible to expect that different combinations of formats produce political results more or less close to the preferences of economic elites. For example, in countries with institutionalized and relevant conservative parties, it is expected that the economic elites will have a greater capacity for political influence thanks to their direct and permanent participation in government control. On the other hand, when economic elites join parties with polyclass core constituencies, their capacity for political influence will be mediated by their interactions with non-elite individuals and groups. The type of links that economic elites establish with political parties depends on structural factors and the preferences and resources of the actors in certain contexts. Decisions that lead to prioritizing one type of linkage over others or simultaneously developing different types of linkages are affected by the calculations of costs and benefits made by the actors, considering, among other factors, the availability of resources and the expected returns. However, these decisions may produce unexpected results, for example, because they were made based on incomplete information. In this book, the three patterns of relationship between economic elites and parties that have been identified result from the interaction between two principal factors operating during two historical moments. The first factor is the level of cohesion of economic elites, where cohesion is understood as the level of integration and complementarity of the material base of the wealth of the upper class. The second factor is the level of political mobilization of popular sectors, understood as the level of involvement of the non-elite population in social and political issues. How these factors

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combined during the independence period and the first democratization explain the type of interaction that predominates in the long term between upper classes and political parties in each of the three countries considered in this study. The main components of the argument advanced in the previous chapters can be most clearly observed by cross-country and across-time comparisons. The independence era displayed different characteristics in each one of our three cases. In Chile, the cohesiveness of the landowning class and the management of a war fought mainly between professional armies limited the degree of political activation of the popular sectors and facilitated the imposition of a relatively stable post-independence political order. In Argentina, distributive conflicts between various segments of the economic elite, plus early political activation of rural and Buenos Aires popular sectors, created the conditions for fragmentation of political power and made it impossible to construct a political center with nationwide appeal. In Uruguay, the economic elites were not divided by their material interests. However, their weakness led them to divide their support among political options that offered some possibility of internal order and security for doing business. This factor combined with early political activation of popular sectors as followers of caudillos. In this context, part of the economic elites allied with the caudillos, reinforcing the latter’s power and the polyclassist character of the political entities they led. The trajectories followed by each country after the independence era demonstrate significant variations, signaling a major distinction between Chile, on the one hand, and Argentina and Uruguay, on the other. At the end of its war of independence, Chile began a highly accelerated process of constructing state institutions capable of stamping their authority on the territory. Beyond one or two incidents proceeding from regional resentments, Chile did not experience any severe setbacks in the construction of an oligarchic order. This order was notably stable, despite intense competition between two elite parties, Conservative and Liberal. The contrast with Argentina and Uruguay in this same period is notorious. In the latter two countries, the immediate post-independence era was one of political instability. The division or weakness of economic elites and mobilization of the popular sectors militated against the formation of state institutions capable of imposing their authority on the territory. In Argentina, the lack of elite cohesiveness was caused by a severe dispute over distribution, impeding any more or less stable coordination.

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The intensity of the intra-elite distributive dispute and the high degree of popular sector mobilization led to an exclusionary political regime on two levels. Above, segments of the propertied classes were excluded. Below, suffrage was restricted. These factors stimulated an agenda for political competition, which featured the coming together of precarious alliances around ‘unionist’ and ‘federal’ identities that did not give rise to organizations of national reach. In Uruguay, the political division of economic elites was the product of their weakness rather than the existence of irreconcilable material interests. After two decades of almost uninterrupted war, the upper classes of independent Uruguay could not coordinate to counterbalance the power of the caudillos supported by the popular sectors. The state’s weakness gave caudillos an even more central role as the only effective authority. Meanwhile, members of the upper classes aligned themselves with the leading caudillo figures, in a process marked by the same alliances and rivalries that had first surfaced during the independence era. These alignments accentuated political divisions within the elite and the concentration of power in the hands of the leaders of the armed bands who fought over political power. The charisma demonstrated by these figures, the resources they could command, and repeated episodes of armed conflict occasionally interspersed with elections, forged the political identities that gave rise to the Colorado Party and the Blanco Party. On the eve of the final quarter of the C19th, the Uruguayan state was a chimera that existed in tangible form, if at all, only in Montevideo. The idea of Uruguayan nationhood was only beginning to emerge. The parties that had emerged from confrontations between caudillos had however become the main actors in political competition. All three countries saw modernization and transformation of their social structures as a result of becoming fully integrated into the world capitalist system. This phenomenon provoked processes of renovation within economic elites and growth of the size of the middle classes and the proletariat. Mobilizations of these sectors, in search of better working conditions, provoked a range of responses from the political system. The exact answer in each case was largely conditioned by the previous trajectory. In the case of Chile, the irruption of the trade union movement, particularly notable in the mining sector, met with two kinds of response. The state favored a repressive reaction, whereas the party system—including, but also beyond, the embryonic parties of the left—sensed electoral

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opportunities if they could incorporate workers and the middle class. Elite parties, particularly the Conservative Party, with its rural principal electoral base, operated as veto players, regulating the timing of the expansion of citizenship and the guaranteeing of voting rights. Although available scholarship contains extensive debate on the point,1 it seems undeniable that Chile’s democratization began earlier than those of either Argentina or Uruguay but was a significantly slower process that was completed much later (not until the end of the 1950s). The rhythm of the citizenship expansion and democratization process was determined in Chile by the factors already mentioned: a high level of economic elite cohesion, and a relatively low level of popular sector mobilization. In the cases of Argentina and Uruguay, the democratization process reinforced the parting of the ways that had begun during the independence period. In Argentina, when pro-democratization pressures emerged simultaneously in elites excluded from state control, and among the middle classes and proletariat, the oligarchical order gave way to a democratic one in fairly short order. The electoral defeat of the PAN at the hands of the Radical Civic Union (Unión Cívica Radical, UCR) laid bare the fragility of the regime party. Once out of government and without the command of the resources that had made coordination easier, the PAN fragmented and lost electoral strength at a precipitous rate. The party system and the electoral arena proved themselves quite ineffectual as methods for safeguarding the interests of diverse segments of the elite. Once some sectors of the upper classes decided that the new situation was imposing unacceptably high costs, they politically coordinated intervention by the Armed Forces to annul the democratic experiment. Between 1930 and 1983, this was to become a recurrent cycle. In Uruguay, the democratization process superimposed itself onto the tail end of the process of state consolidation. Both tasks were undertaken by the traditional parties that had come about in the early decades of the C19th. The process of political incorporation of the middle classes and the incipient urban proletariat coincided with the incorporation into politics of new economic elites, formed in the last decades of the C19th. These new elites, unlike the property-owning classes of the late C18th and the first half of the C19th, had created pressure groups but steered clear

1 For an overview of the different positions involved, see Colomer 2004; Rueschemeyer et al. 1992; J. S. Valenzuela 1985, 2001.

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of electoral competition and disputes between parties. The change of attitude was provoked by a sense of threat when a radical liberal faction of the Colorado party made it into government. The rise of this faction, known as “Batllismo” after its founder, José Batlle y Ordóñez, galvanized opposition sectors, and parties, plus the economic elites, pushing them into collaboration. In this way, paradoxically, political democracy in Uruguay was born out of the successful coming together of a range of forces to defeat Batllist reformism. Lastly, we will consider how the democratization period determined the C20th trajectories of the democratic regimes in each of our three countries. In Chile, the same factors that determined the rhythm of the process of democratization explain the almost permanent existence of conservative parties, in whatever form. These parties, while only infrequently directly in government, retained an enormous capacity for veto over the process of public policy formation. They exercised this capacity via pressure group action at various levels of state structures, as well as via their influence on parliamentary politics. This capacity for safeguarding elite interests via the institutions of government and electoral competition is one of the keys to understanding the relative stability of Chilean democracy. In the case of Argentina, the fact that economic elites abandoned electoral politics and the party system led to a recurrent cycle of military interventions triggered every time elite sectors considered the dynamic of political competition to be presenting a severe threat to their interests. Paradoxically, it was during one of the episodes of this cycle that Peronism emerged. This movement, which characteristically co-opted and mobilized popular sectors, adopted a policy of industrialization and the promotion of a state with strong corporatist participation. This in turn further accentuated the fragmentation of economic elites, deepening confrontations between sectors of the upper classes—typically, between industrialists and landowners. Coordination via political parties accordingly became more difficult. In Uruguay, as democratization came to completion, the traditional parties had incorporated popular rural and urban sectors into political citizenship and reincorporated economic elites into the electoral arena. This success contributed to the consolidation of a stable political system characterized by the centrality of a two-party system which was to become the main arena for interaction among key players. The stability of the

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system was strengthened by an institutional design that discouraged fragmentation and tolerated the creation of fractions, favoring intra-party competition that did not harm the party’s chances in inter-party contests. This dynamic further perpetuated the polyclass nature of the principal parties in the system, limiting the opportunities for class-based parties to emerge. It was to take a full two decades of sustained economic decline accompanied by a gradual loss of relevance by political parties, before the system would come to be reconfigured via the incorporation of relevant new party actors. Once democratization processes had taken place, the economic elites of Uruguay and Chile channeled the defense of their interests via participation in electorally relevant political parties. In Chile, this took place via parties with economic elites as their core constituencies, whatever the variation in their histories and names (Conservative Party, Partido Conservador; Liberal Party, Partido Liberal; National Party, Partido Nacional; Independent Democratic Union, Unión Demócrata Independiente; or National Renovation; Renovación Nacional). In Uruguay, after a failed attempt to create their party, the economic elites integrated but did not monopolize the core constituencies of the Blanco and Colorado Parties. In Argentina, on the other hand, democratization marked the beginning of a cycle of separation between economic elites and political parties that would continue until at least the beginning of the C21st. Beyond these differences, the three countries bear out theoretical predictions in regard to the effects of the participation of economic elites in the party system: democracy has been considerably less stable in Argentina than in Uruguay or Chile. From the perspective of the Argentine upper classes, the cost of tolerating democracy has frequently been higher than the cost of opting for authoritarianism (R. Dahl 1971, 24). The divorce between Argentine economic elites and the party system accordingly limited the upper classes’ ability to control the results of political competition, increasing toleration costs and reducing suppression costs. In Chile and Uruguay, by contrast, the participation of economic elites in the party system contributed to keeping the costs of toleration in check, while increasing the costs of suppression. The observable differences between the political regimes of Chile and Uruguay over the course of the C20th, however, suggest that the type of link established between the upper classes and the party system can have effects that reach beyond democratic stability alone.

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In Chile, the early consolidation of a party system controlled by the economic elite favored the development of the two characteristics of that system that were most salient between the mid-C19th and the midC20th, namely, high competitiveness combined with low participation. The cohesion of the upper classes and the demobilization of the popular sectors facilitated the creation of a powerful consensus around a set of electoral rules that regulated competition, reduced the costs of defeat, and generated incentives that led losers to acknowledge defeat while continuing to participate. These same factors explain the capacity of the principal parties in the system to keep popular sector political participation in check, with a gradual expansion after 1920. Although Uruguay also saw a rapid development of party identities, the weakness of its elites and the fact that caudillos controlled popular sector mobilization gave Uruguayan parties a polyclass identity that was to prove long-lasting. Despite the best efforts of economic elites, the parties were unable to agree on rules that would allow them to channel political competition electorally. In the last quarter of the C19th, the costs of civil wars and pressure from the upper classes led the parties to develop informal mechanisms of co-participation that facilitated some periods of relative peace. This study has developed an explanation for the observed variations in the types of linkage that Chilean, Argentine, and Uruguayan economic elites established with their respective party systems. Fruitful lines of inquiry for future research would include testing the validity of this theory for other countries in Latin America and beyond. Broadening the focus could help to identify the forms that the political involvement of economic elites takes in cases that present low levels of cohesiveness of the upper classes alongside low levels of popular sector mobilization. Working with a wider scope might also allow the identification of other possible forms of linkage between the upper classes and party systems. This study has also presented a theory, an argument, and a body of evidence-based on secondary sources, drawing on numerous and varied works of scholarship from history and the social sciences. One consequence of working with such sources is a certain difficulty when measuring variation in phenomena such as levels of elite cohesion, degrees of popular sector mobilization, or the extent of economic elites’ involvement in political parties over time and between cases. The construction of databases to allow improved observation and measurement of the variation of these dimensions is a challenge that remains to be met. The task

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is not simple: it is no easy matter to obtain detailed and reliable information about events whose junctures stretch back somewhere between one and two centuries. Nonetheless, sources such as legislative databases, biographies of political elites, etc. offer potential ways forward for creating quantifiable measures of some of the phenomena at issue. In a similar vein, much could be achieved by studying the presentday links between economic elites and party systems in Latin America. Network analysis techniques are used to study forms of political participation of the economic elites. They could also help refine the definition and application of some of the book’s central concepts—such as core constituencies on conservative and polyclass parties—and identify patterns of upper-class political that are not considered here. Improvements in the quality of available data would undoubtedly contribute to robust testing of other theories and hypotheses regarding the links between parties and economic elites. For instance, systematic analysis of communications, minutes, and other paper trails produced by pro-business pressure groups would enable scholars to evaluate the degree of complementarity between the different strategies the upper classes use to defend their material interests. This study opens up a potentially fruitful avenue of research for scholars who deploy forms of political involvement of economic elites as an explanatory variable in analyzing phenomena such as the quality of democratic regimes, models of development, or types of welfare. Patterns of linkage between economic elites and party systems, as well as affecting democratic stability, affect the containment strategies deployed by the upper classes in defense of their interests. In countries in which economic elites have been able to draw on electorally relevant, institutionalized conservative parties, democratic stability may be associated with regimes that, while competitive, place strict limits on popular sector political participation. From this perspective, scholarly understanding of some of the differences in political regimes, models of development, or types of welfare that have often been noted in comparisons of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay could be enriched via the adoption of approaches that consider forms of political involvement of economic elites on the electoral arena as an explanatory variable. In the period of almost three decades that preceded the military coups of 1973, both Uruguay and Chile constructed two of Latin America’s most stable democracies. During the same period, Argentina lived through a political cycle of sustained instability. Levels of political

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participation, toleration of trade union activity, and guarantees for party competition varied significantly between the three countries, but in all three cases, the type of link between the upper classes and the party system determined the strategies of containment that elites resorted to when faced with a range of types of threat. The impact of these strategies can be seen, inter alia, in the interactions between the state, parties, pro-business pressure groups, and trade unions. They can also be detected, in the final analysis, in the specific form of each nation’s development model. Likewise, appreciation of the forms that economic elite political involvement took in the phase immediately preceding the installation of bureaucraticauthoritarian regimes can allow us to better understand the significance of the reforms implemented by these regimes, and identify elements of change and continuity at and after the beginning of democratic transition. At the time of writing, political developments in Argentina show that for the first time in almost a century, some segments of the country’s economic elites have built an electorally relevant political party named Propuesta Republicana (PRO), capable of leading a nationwide coalition that has allowed them to win power—or survive defeat—through free and competitive elections. For the present, the PRO has demonstrated a surprising capacity for mobilizing its electorate and to develop a viable coalition to make inroads in segments of the electorate beyond solely those sectors traditionally identified with Peronism. In the dispute for the control of public space, the coalition has shown itself to have an unprecedented capacity to respond. In addition, business sectors have successfully diversified their bets in the electoral arena through support for Javier Milei and his electoral vehicle (J. P. Luna et al. 2020). Both experiencies suggest that collapse of the party system that followed the crisis of 2001, and the blockage of the conventional authoritarian exit strategies have favored a change in the agenda of political involvement by Argentine economic elites that had prevailed since 1930 (Vommaro 2023). In Chile, meanwhile, the party system is facing its greatest crisis of legitimacy since the restoration of democracy. Among the key features of citizen dissatisfaction, there appears to be a widespread conviction that the party system is unevenly linked to different social sectors. The perception is of a gulf between parties and public opinion, accompanied by an unhealthily close relationship between parties and economic elites. The connivance and co-optation involved further exacerbates citizen discontent, adding overwhelming evidence of political inequality to the existing

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sense of unsustainable levels of economic inequality. The crisis of the party system can in one sense be interpreted as the unintended consequence of the success of the containment strategy adopted by economic elites: elites extended their influence far beyond the limits of right-wing parties, establishing a technocratic hegemony that blurred the boundaries between the major components of the party system (J. P. Luna 2021). In Uruguay, the electoral dominance of the Frente Amplio and the consolidation of a new party system leads us to reconsider the status of the type of linkage that economic elites and parties established at the beginning of the C20th. The end of the traditional two-party system reconfigured the dynamic of party competition, which came to be clearly structured around a left–right axis (Buquet and Piñeiro 2014). From this perspective one might expect a stronger link between the upper classes and the traditional parties, as the latter came to coalesce, in time, around a right-wing and center-right identity. However, relations between the Frente Amplio and some sectors of the higher social strata seem to have become closer even before the left came into government. At the same time, more or less open tensions are in evidence between the government and economic pressure groups. In 2016, the main pro-business pressure groups created the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce (Confederación de Cámaras Empresariales). The founding document of the Confederation, while it stopped well short of direct confrontation, made it clear that its members had an interest in political involvement, faced with a government that in the Confederation’s view had “not taken business people’s view into consideration” in strategic areas including trade policy and labor regulation.2 The type of links that are eventually established between economic elites and Uruguay’s new party system will be crucial for the future trajectory of the country’s political system.

References Buquet, Daniel, and Rafael Piñeiro. 2014. La Consolidación de Un Nuevo Sistema de Partidos En Uruguay. Debates 8 (1): 127–148. Colomer, Josep. 2004. Taming the Tiger: Voting Rights and Political Instability in Latin America. Latin American Politics and Society 46 (2): 29–58.

2 See https://ladiaria.com.uy/articulo/2016/8/todos-menos-tu/ (Last accessed, June 30, 2023).

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Dahl, Robert. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Luna, Juan Pablo. 2021. La Chusma Incosciente: La Crisis de Un País Atendido Por Sus Propios Dueños. Santiago de Chile: Catalonia. Luna, Juan Pablo, Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez, Fernando Rosenblatt, and Gabriel Vommaro. 2020. Political Parties, Diminished Subtypes, and Democracy. Party Politics. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber, and John D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Valenzuela, J. Samuel. 1985. Democratización Vía Reforma: La Expansión Del Sufragio En Chile. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Ildes. Valenzuela, J. Samuel. 2001. Class Relations and Democratization: A Reassesment of Barrington Moore’s Model. In The Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America, ed. Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando López-Alves, 240–286. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vommaro, Gabriel. 2023. Conservatives against the Tide: The Rise of the Argentine PRO in Comparative Perspective. 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/978 1009418256/type/element. June 9, 2023.

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Index

A Action for the Republic. See Cavallo, Domingo afuerinos Chile, 46 Alessandri, Arturo, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62 Alessandri, Jorge, 61–64 Allende, Salvador, 62, 63 Alonso Eloy, Rosa, 116, 119, 122, 123 Alonso, Paula, 93–95, 101, 102 Alto Perú, 74, 75, 84 Alvear, Carlos María de, 79 Alvear, Marcelo, 101 Anwandter family, 47 Argentina, 8–11, 13, 24, 27, 28, 71 colonial period, 72 Argentine Economic Confederation (CEA), 105 Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), 104, 106 Argentine Institute for the Promotion of Exchange (IAPI), 105

Argentine Rural Society (SRA), 93, 97, 105, 106 Artigas, José Gervasio, 84, 118, 120–124 Asociación Rural del Uruguay, 139 Avellaneda, Nicolás, 89

B Banda Oriental Uruguay, 116, 118–124 Barbier, Jacques, 38 Barrán, José Pedro, 118, 128, 129, 132–142, 145, 146 Barros Borgoño, Luis, 55, 56 Basque-Castilian aristocracy Chile, 38 Batlle Berres, Luis, 133, 149 Batlle, Lorenzo, 132 Batlle y Ordóñez, José, 132–135, 138, 139, 142, 143, 145, 168 Batllismo, 133, 135, 137–142, 144, 146, 147, 149–151, 168

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Monestier, Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena, Latin American Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1

191

192

INDEX

Bauer, Arnold, 35–38, 41, 46, 47 Bengoa, José, 37, 39, 46, 47 Blakemore, Harold, 50 Blanco party, 127, 128, 130, 133–136, 138, 140–145, 147, 149–151, 154, 166 Bolivia, 50, 72, 76, 85 Borón, Atilio, 47, 71, 100, 102 Botana, Natalio, 89, 94 Bragoni, Beatriz, 85, 89, 90 Brazil, 88, 116, 118, 122, 123, 125, 128, 130 Brennan, James, 105 Broad Front Uruguay, 153 Bro, Naim, 47 Brown, Jonathan, 75 Bruschera, Oscar, 116 Buenos Aires, 121–123, 165 Buquet, Daniel, 143, 146, 153, 155, 173 Burton, Michael, 4

C cabildo, 74, 75, 120, 150 Caetano, Gerardo, 122, 123, 132, 136, 139, 140, 142, 144, 147–151, 153, 154 Carrera, José Miguel, 42, 45 Carrera, Juan José, 42 Carrera, Luis, 42 Castellanos, Alfredo, 116, 123, 127 Catholic Church Chile, 39 caudillos Chile, 39 Cavallo, Domingo, 109 Cavarozzi, Marcelo, 93, 100 Central Valley Chile, 37, 38 Chasquetti, Daniel, 143, 146, 153

Chiaramonte, Juan Carlos, 76 Chicago Boys, 63–65 Chile, 31 Basque-Castilian aristocracy, 38 colonial period, 33 Chilean Workers’ Federation (FOCH), 53 Christian Democrat Party PDC Chile, 62 clientelism, 37, 71, 87, 88, 91, 94, 99, 100 collegiate executive, 136, 137, 142, 143, 145, 148 Collier, David, 4, 20, 21, 97 Collier, Ruth, 4, 20, 21, 97 Collier, Simon, 34, 35, 41, 42, 62 Colomer, Josep, 47, 49, 167 Colorado party, 127, 128, 130–136, 138–145, 147, 149–154, 166, 168 Communist Party Chile, 54, 57, 61 Communist Party PCU Uruguay, 153 Concepción Chile, 45 Conservative Party Chile, 31, 32, 48, 49, 56, 59, 169 concept, 5 Convertibility Plan, 109 Copiapó Chile, 45 Córdoba, 73, 74, 77, 78, 85, 86 Corporation for the Promotion of Production (CORFO), 60 Correa Sutil, Sofía, 47, 60, 62 Corrientes, 73, 74, 78, 80, 121 Cousiño family, 47 criollos , 23, 33, 35, 36, 74, 80, 117, 120, 121 Cuyo, 73–76, 85

INDEX

D Da Cunha, Nelly, 149 Dahl, Robert, 3, 4, 24, 169 Délano family, 47 de la Rúa, Fernando, 109 De la Torre, Nelson, 117, 118, 120, 122, 127 D’Elía, Germán, 133, 149, 150 de los Santos, Clarel, 125, 127 Democratic Party Chile, 53, 54 democratization juncture, 2, 4, 7–9, 13, 17, 23, 25–28, 49, 54, 55, 58, 59, 95–97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 108, 125, 132, 141, 145, 148, 165, 167–169 DiCaprio, Alisa, 3 Di Meglio, Gabriel, 74, 80–84, 88, 121 Di Tella, Torcuato, 4 doctores , 130, 132 Dorrego, Manuel, 79 Drake, Paul, 23, 39, 60, 97 Duffau, Nicolás, 121, 131

E Echenique family, 38 economic elites cohesion, 173 concept, 2 Edwards, Alberto, 42 Edwards family, 47 encomiendas , 33–35, 38, 73, 80 England, 88, 128 Entre Ríos, 78, 80, 121 Errázuriz familiy, 38 estancia Chile, 38 Eyzaguirre family, 38

193

F federalism Argentina, 78, 84, 86–88, 128 Fernandez de Kirchner, Cristina, 106 Fernando VII, 119, 120 Ferreira, Pablo, 118–121 Ffrench-Davis, Ricardo, 65 Figueroa, Valentín, 92, 94 Finch, Henry, 130, 131, 151 Fradkin, Raúl, 83 France, 88, 128 Frega, Ana, 118, 119, 121–123, 125, 127, 149 Freire, Ramón, 44 Frente Amplio. See Broad Front Frondizi, Arturo, 107

G Gallo, Ezequiel, 98–101 Garretón, Manuel, 31, 59, 63, 64 gauchos , 46, 117, 118, 120 Gay, Claudio, 36 Gelman, Jorge, 74, 75 General Economic Confederation (CGE), 106 Gibson, Edward, 27, 31, 48, 71, 101, 104, 107–109 Gil, Federico, 31, 32 Góngora, Mario, 34, 36, 38 González, Luis Eduardo, 127, 155 Great War. See Guerra Grande gremialismo Chile, 64, 65 Grez Toso, Sergio, 44 Grove, Marmaduke, 58 Güemes, Martín Miguel de, 79, 84, 85 Guerra Grande, 128 Guzmán, Jaime, 64, 65

194

INDEX

H hacienda Chile, 45, 46 Halperín Donghi, Tulio, 22, 23, 34, 39, 40, 77, 121 Handlin, Samuel, 20, 21 Herrera, Luis Alberto de, 136, 140, 141, 144, 147, 149, 151 Herrera, Nicolás, 122 Higley, John, 4, 18 Hora, Roy, 93, 96, 97 Horowitz, Joel, 98 Huber, Evelyne, vii, 4, 7, 21, 49, 71, 97, 167 Huneeus, carlos, 32 I Ibáñez del Campo, Carlos, 58, 61, 62 Illia, Arturo, 107 independence juncture, 9, 23, 25–27, 38 Argentina, 77, 84 Chile, 39, 43 Independent Democratic Union (UDI) Chile, 32, 65, 66, 169 inquilinos Chile, 36–39, 45–47, 53, 103, 104, 106 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 151 Irureta Goyena, José, 140, 144, 148 J Jacob, Raúl, 147–151 Jobet, Julio César, 38 Jocelyn-Holt, Alfredo, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45 Johnson, Lyman, 80 Juárez Celman, Miguel, 98 Jujuy, 73, 74, 80, 84

juntista movement, 43, 77, 80 Chile, 43

K Kahneman, Daniel, 4 Kirchner, Néstor, 106 Korean War, 151 Kurtz, Marcus, 21, 93

L Lanzaro, Jorge, 150, 154 La Rioja, 73, 85, 86, 90 latifundios Chile, 46, 47 Latorre, Lorenzo Gral, 131 Lavalleja, Juan Antonio, 123, 125 León, Leonardo, 43, 44 Ley Maldita Chile, 61 Liberal Party Argentina, 92 Chile, 32, 48, 55, 58, 59, 169 Lira, Elizabeth, 45 López-Alves, Fernando, 93 López, Estanislao, 79 Losada, Leandro, 75, 76, 78, 79, 85, 87, 90, 94, 100 Loveman, Brian, 45 Luna, Félix, 75, 86 Luna, Juan Pablo, 66, 154, 173 Lupu, Noam, 100, 101 Lynch, John, 73, 75, 76 Lyon family, 47

M Macías, Flavia, 85 Macri, Mauricio, 106 Mahoney, James, 9, 10 Maronna, Mónica, 149 Mata de López, Sara, 85

INDEX

Meller, Patricio, 49–52 Melogno, Tabaré, 116 Mendoza, 73, 74, 86, 92 Menem, Carlos Saúl, 109 mestizos , 35, 36, 74, 80, 117 Michels, Robert, 3 Middlebrook, Kevin, 4–6 Míguez, Eduardo, 89, 90 Miliband, Ralph, 3, 18 Mills, Charles, 3, 18 Misiones, 121 mita, 34 Mitre, Bartolomé, 89, 90, 92 Montero, Esteban, 58 Montes, Esteban, 62 Montevideo, 116, 117, 119–121, 123 siege, 121, 124, 128 Moraes, María Inés, 116, 117, 129, 131 Morresi, Sergio, 71, 108, 109 Mosca, Gaetano, 3 Moulian, Tomás, 32, 48, 58–63

N Nahum, Benjamín, 118, 128, 129, 131–137, 141, 142, 145, 146, 151 National Agricultural Society (SNA) Chile, 60 National Autonomist Party (PAN), 71, 92–97, 99–104 National Chamber of Commerce Uruguay, 130 National Committee for Economic Vigilance Uruguay, 147, 148 National Democratic Party Argentina. See PDN National Party Chile, 32, 63, 64, 131 National Renewal (RN)

195

Chile, 32, 65, 66 Negretto, Gabriel, viii, 39 neo-Batllism, 133, 149, 151 O O’Donnell, Guillermo, 107, 153 O’Higgins, Bernardo, 41, 42, 45 oligarchic regimes, 7, 26–28, 44, 48, 49, 52–54, 56, 59, 71, 94, 105, 129, 165, 167 Oribe, Manuel, 123, 128 Ortega, Eugenio, 62 Ostiguy, Pierre, vii, 107, 109 P Pacheco Areco, Jorge, 152 Panizza, Francisco, 145 Paraguay, 76, 85, 116 Pareto, Vilfredo, 3 Parolo, María Paula, 85 patriotic fraud, 103 PDN Argentina, 104 Pellegrini, Carlos, 97, 99 Peñaloza, Chacho, 90 Pereira, Teresa, 63 Peronism, 104–109, 168, 172 Perón, Juan Domingo, 104, 105, 107 Peru, 35, 36, 50, 73 Piñeiro, Rafael, 173 Pinochet, Augusto, 32, 63–65 Pinto, Julio, 43, 44, 88 Pinto Santa Cruz, Aníbal, 33, 49–52 pipiolos Chile, 44 Pivel Devoto, Juan, 117–120, 124, 125, 127, 132 Popular Front Chile, 59–61, 63 Popular Unity (UP) Chile, 62–64

196

INDEX

Portales, Diego, 43–45 Potosí, 35, 72, 74 Preliminary Peace Convention, 123 Przeworski, Adam, 4, 6, 18

Uruguay, 139, 140, 143, 144, 147, 148, 150, 153 Ruralismo Uruguay, 150, 151

Q Quiroga, Facundo, 79

S Sábato, Hilda, 39, 85, 91 Sáenz Peña, Roque, 99 Sagredo Baeza, Rafael, 34, 41 Sala de Touron, Lucía, 116–118, 120, 122, 127 Salazar, Gabriel, 44 Salta, 73, 74, 76, 77, 80, 84 San Juan, 73, 74, 86 San Luis, 73, 86 San Martín, Gral. José, 1, 41, 79 Santiago del Estero, 73, 74 Santos, Gral. Máximo, 131 Saravia, Aparicio, 133 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 89 Sartori, Giovani, 2 Sater, William, 33–35, 41, 42, 62 Schattschneider, Elmer, 3 Schneider, Ben Ross, 60, 105, 106 Schumpeter, Joseph, 18 Scully, Timothy, 21, 31, 32, 45, 48, 49, 54, 56–58, 60, 63 secret vote, 63, 95, 99, 126, 134, 136, 142, 143 Siavelis, peter, 66 Sidicaro, Ricardo, 104, 105 Silva, Eduardo, 22, 32, 64, 65 Skocpol, Theda, 11 slaves, 74, 85, 117 Smith, Peter, 23 Socialist Party PS Uruguay, 153 Socialist Worker Party (POS) Chile, 54, 56 social question, 21, 136 Soifer, Hillel, 23

R Radical Civic Union. See UCR Radical Party Chile, 48, 57, 60 Rama, Germán, 115, 150, 152 Ramírez, Francisco, 79 Real de Azúa, Carlos, 115, 117, 118, 123–125, 127, 130, 137, 152 Remmer, Karen, 57, 96, 98 Reyes Abadie, Washington, 116 Ribeiro, Ana, 122, 123 Rilla, José, 136, 153, 154 Rivera, Fructuoso, 123, 125, 128, 138, 144 riverismo, 138 Roca, Julio Argentino, 92, 95, 97, 99 Rock, David, 97 Rodríguez, Julio, 43, 79, 116–118, 120, 122, 127, 152–154 Rodríguez, Manuel, 42 Rojas Flores, Jorge, 58 Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 79, 87–89, 91, 128 Rosenblatt, Fernando, 66, 154 Rossi, Federico, 22 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, 4, 7, 10, 21, 49, 71, 97, 167 Rueschemeyer, Huber, and Stephens, 21, 49 Rural Association of Uruguay (ARU), 130 Rural Federation (FR)

INDEX

Somma, Nicolás, 45, 126, 127, 133 Stabili, María Rosa, 1, 38, 46, 47, 62 Stephens, John D., 4, 7, 71, 97, 167 Stolovich, Luis, 152–154

T Tell, Sonia, 85 Ternavasio, Marcela, 81, 86 Terra, Gabriel, 147, 148 Thelen, Kathleen, 9 Torre, Juan Carlos, 104 Torres Dujisin, Isabel, 32, 57, 60, 63 Trochón, Yvette, 149 Tucumán, 73, 74, 77, 85, 92, 94 Tupamaros MLN, 152 Tversky, Amos, 4

U UCR, 95–103, 106, 108, 109, 167 Unión Cívica Radical. See UCR Unión Democrática Uruguay, 144, 145 Union of the Democratic Center (UCEDE), 108, 109 unitarios Argentina, 78, 87, 88, 121, 128, 166 universal male suffrage, 87, 92, 142 Urmeneta family, 47 Uruguay, 25–27, 40, 42, 85, 88 1830 Constitution, 125 elite weakness, 116

197

popular mobilization, 118 V Valdivia, Verónica, 32, 43, 44, 63, 65 Valenzuela, Arturo, 48, 49, 53 Valenzuela, J.S., 39, 48, 49, 167 Vanger Milton, 135 Viceroyalty of Peru, 73 Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, 75–79, 81, 83, 86, 117, 119, 120 Vicuña family, 38 Viera, Feliciano, 132, 142, 143 Vommaro, Gabriel, viii, 71, 108, 109, 172 W Wage Councils Uruguay, 150 wanderers, 21 War of the Pacific, 50, 53 Williman, Claudio, 132, 134 Y Yrigoyen, Hipólito, 100, 101, 103 Z zambos , 74 Zeitlin, Maurice, 38, 48 Ziblatt, Daniel, 4–6 Zimmermann, Edward, 87, 91, 92 Zubillaga, Carlos, 136