Abstract
The Peculiar Revolution: Rethinking the Peruvian Experiment under Military Rule, edited by Carlos Aguirre and Paolo Drinot. University of Texas Press, 2017.
Highlights
This new edited volume by Aguirre and Pinot, twenty-five years after the last debate about the Velasco years, is very welcome
The first part of four chapters is dedicated to significant cultural aspects: the sesquicentennial commemoration of Peru’s independence and liberation in 1971 as a reflection on the ‘second liberation’ by the Armed Forces; the reintroduction of Tupac Amaru II, as the precursor of the independence campaigns and as the revolutionary forerunner of the Velasco government (Walker); the significance of the massive attendance of Velasco’s funeral and its importance for the Velasquismo heirs; and the collective memories of the Velasco government through video uploads on YouTube, a lingering nostalgia for social justice and a sense of community that explains ‘why, almost half a century after the coup of 1968, many Peruvians remember Velasco fondly’(Drinot, p. 116)
The civilian rank-and-file was complemented with intelligence officers and police detectives. (As far as I know, a thorough analysis of the functioning of this multiple-functional apparatus in book-form does not exist.) Velasco extended the state bureaucracy with ‘task force’ cabinet members, leading to Philip’s analyzing remarks that O’Donnell’s ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism’ applies better to Peru under Velasco than to the Southern Cone dictatorships for which it was intended (p. 206)
Summary
This new edited volume by Aguirre and Pinot, twenty-five years after the last debate about the Velasco years, is very welcome. The position of the Peruvian Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, and especially the Velasco years, used to be a heavily discussed topic among social scientists and historians during conceptual and policy debates.
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