Book Description
Peru is the most interesting model of justice and development in Latin America today. To analyze the sociopolitical progress of this nation, David Chaplin has gathered together and edited this interdisciplinary collection of essays. Peru's development is unique for several reasons. First, it has shown that a military force that was trained largely by the United States can employ its professional expertise not to remain a well-behaved ally but to pull off a genuinely radical nationalist revolution even at the expense of various interests of its "benefactor." Second, Peru has proven that successful economic development need be neither capitalist nor Social-ist. Peruvian Nationalism contains major papers by leading Peruvianists on the 1960s and on the current revolutionary military regime. The temporal focus is on the current (post-1968) revolutionary military government, with background material covering the early 1960s. Contributors are all social scientists -- including American, Italian and Peruvian writers -- who have carried outfield research in Peru. The primary focus of this volume is the radical change being carried out by the current military structure. Relevant background topics include: Peru's sociopolitical structure during the 1960s, especially under the Belaunde regime, with particular attention to peasant movements and agrarian reform; a reassessment of the pre-1968 golpe (coup de'etat) behavior of former military governments; an analysis of the uniquely radical ideology and concrete reforms of the current military government. This social science reader on Peru is a scholarly as well as sympathetic treatment of Peru's national and local politics, social structure, agrarian and tax reform and peasant movements. The editor has provided an extensive introduction and index and has also included a thorough bibliography of publications on Peru since 1960.
