>>> dhenwood at panix.com 12/02/05 10:38 AM >>>
joanna wrote:
>I was asking a knowledgeable friend about how to account for the
>Venezuelan army's swing to the left, when the military of so many
>other Latin American countries swung in the other direction, and he
>guessed that it had something to do with the fact that the officer
>corps in Venezuela is not drawn from the elites but from the
>aspiring lower classes of the countryside and the cities.
Richard Gott has some good stuff on this in his book on Chavez. He points out that the militaries in LatAm do have strong left, as well as right, traditions. In a stunning phrase, Gott describes a Venezuelan officer as being Harvard-trained and of Trotskyist leanings. Doug <<<<<>>>>
recall peruvian military of late 1960s, junior officers from 'lesser' social strata revolted against their role as agents of landed-elite used to repress rural indian insurgencies, they carried out successful revolt against gov't of balaunde terry (stereotypical liberal pol who made campaign promises he either could not nor intended to fulfill)...
under leadership of velasco alvarado, military gov't initiated significant reforms, beginning with expropriation of land *and* establishment of worker cooperatives on large estates, velasco gov't also began nationalizing 'commanding heights' of the economy (including u.s. oil. copper, sugar interests)...
gov't did not carry out comprehensive nationalization of private- owned industrial production, however, it required 'profit-sharing' and transfer of stock to workers until they controlled 50%, goal was to create worker/management 'co-determination'...
cultural changes occurred as well with recognition of indian peoples, adoption of bilingualism with declaration of quechua as official language alongside spanish, and selection of tupac amaru as national symbol...
above happened quite 'peacefully' until internal conflict among the officers resulted in ouster of velasco, subsequent gov't of morales bermudez moved towards 'center', reforms either stopped or were reversed, international 'lending' institutions were let in, foreign debt would skyrocket...
oh yeah, *political democracy* would eventually be restored (in fact, first civilian prez in 1980s was one belaunde terry), so story has happy ending... michael hoover
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