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Gender and Populism in Latin America: Passionate Politics

2012; Duke University Press; Volume: 92; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-1600425

1527-1900

María Teresa Fernández Aceves,

Religion and Society in Latin America

Writing from a gender perspective, ten authors with solidly grounded evidence (archival and life histories) show the nuances of classical neopopulist (1930s – 1960s) and radical populist (1970s – 2000s) governments in Latin America. The authors describe an impressive array of populist experiences in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela. Each one examines the historical context in which populist leaders arose, their distinct populist policies toward excluded citizens — workers, women, peasants, and indigenous people — and how they conceived their enemies (elites and feminists). Most of the authors not only discuss different theoretical definitions of populism (charismatic, paternalistic, and personal politics) but also present fine-grained historical and sociological analysis. They distinguish among different forms of populism by comparing populist leaders from the same country or by contrasting distinct countries. The authors assess populist leaders’ achievements and failures and the unintended consequences they provoked in both short and long terms.Six chapters (by Jocelyn Olcott, Ximena Sosa-Buchholz, Victoria González-Rivera, Joel Wolfe, Michael Conniff, and Karin Grammático) focus mainly on the classical populism that coexisted with the first wave of feminism. Populist leaders co-opted feminists in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Mexico through patron-client relationships and incorporated women into the public sphere as voters. Because of inward-looking industrial growth, classic populists had some income and jobs to offer to their supporters. Neopopulists could not as easily co-opt feminists of the second wave of feminism, which addressed a range of personal political issues (domestic violence, sexuality, and reproductive rights). In general, neopopulists and feminists have disagreed over the construction and implementation of gender policies. In an era of increasing poverty, political corruption, crushing debt, and neoliberal policies, some neopopulists have difficulties in incorporating women into their alliances because of the lack of jobs and material benefits. Finally, in the newest wave of populism, the radical populists — Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, among others — have abandoned neoliberalism.The main contributions of this book are the analysis of how populism is gendered and how it advocates distinct, even conflicting practices, and the construction of populism from below using women’s life histories, as illustrated by González-Rivera, Conniff, Kampwith, coauthors Gioconda Espina and Cathy A. Rakowski, and Sujatha Fernandes. By rescuing women’s experiences and narratives as followers and supporters of populist leaders, these scholars give readers an in-depth picture of how women engage critically in communal work, transform populist politics from below, and rethink gender relations in daily life in Argentina, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.The authors use new historical and sociological data and theoretical discussions of populism to explore populism as a political movement that develops in response to restricted citizenship rights and economic and political crises. Populism opens spaces for social and political changes, without reinforcing democracy. Therefore, “it also imposes constraints and sets traps” (p. ix). For example, it favors feminine instead of feminist demands. Populist leadership uses different constructions of masculinity (the father, the athlete, the military man, and the priest) and femininity (self-sacrificing mother and wife, feminist, women as the poorest of the poor).While some populist leaders tend to create gender polices from above (Alberto Fujimori in Peru) and others from below (Evo Morales in Bolivia), women, as volunteers, implement populist policies in relation to education, health care, and the provision of food. Jocelyn Olcott and Joel Wolfe each illustrate the paternal relationship established between the leader, seen as “the father” of the pueblo or the masses, and working-class or peasant women. Olcott argues that the debates about masculinity and femininity during the populist administration of Cárdenas and Echeverría provoked “anxieties about changes in the most intimate realms of daily life — sexuality, household labor, and family relations.” Other chapters (Conniff, González-Rivera) cast new light on the ways populism and gender politics intersected through the reconstruction of women’s political careers and life histories. In the case of Nicaragua, women were a central part in the Somoza dictatorship (1936 – 79), and somocistas and women created a patron-client relationship. Most of the studies on populism have looked at high-level politics; therefore, they have studied the strong presence of male leaders. With an innovative and highly persuasive hypothesis, Conniff contends that Brazilian populism from below included a great number of women who played key roles in campaigning in local and regional politics in favor of Vargas, such as his daughter Alzira and his great-niece Ivete Vargas. Sosa Buchholz, Kampwith, Espina and Rakowski, and Fernandes examine the passionate followers of José María Velasco Ibarra (1930s – 1970s) in Ecuador, Daniel Ortega (1990 – 2006), and Hugo Chávez (1999 – present). The cases of Ortega and Chávez exemplify the relationship between gender, feminism, populism, and revolution. Ortega favors protecting women to help them “carry out their traditional roles effectively” (Kampwith, p. 164), while Chávez calls for “righting the wrongs” of gender inequality (Espina and Rakowski, p. 193).This solid book contributes significantly to contemporary debates about power, politics, and populism in Latin America. It incorporates a gender perspective and emphasizes the role of women in the construction and implementation of gendered populist policies and resistance to them. Although this book analyzes the gendered politics of populism, the authors focus more on the relationship between male leaders and their female followers than on male followers. This book will be useful for historians, political scientists, and sociologists who work on comparative political mobilizations, power, and populism.