Ernest A. Duff - Leader and Party in Latin America

Leader and Party in Latin America

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Tracing the development and decay of political parties in Latin America, Dr. Duff suggests that the sociological or environmental explanations of political parties are inadequate in explaining why institutionalized political parties develop in some societies and not in others. In a series of eight case studies of disparate Latin American nations in the 1920s and 1930s, Dr. Duff shows that the crucial factor in party institutionalism appears to be the emergence of political leaders who must rely on manipulation of institutions they create, rather than on personal charisma, for ultimate control of the political process. The successful institution builders-- Calles in Mexico, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and Betancourt in Venezuela--are contrasted with notable failures--Yrigoyen in Argentina, Arturo Alessandri in Chile, Grau San Martin in Cuba, General Martinez in El Salvador, and Haya de la Torre in Peru.

Ernest A. Duff is chairman of the Department of Politics at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is the author of Agrarian Reform in Colombia and coauthor (with John F. McCamant) of Violence and Repression in Latin America.

Ernest A. Duff

This book is dedicated to the memory of C. Alan Hutchinson.

First published 1985 by Westview Press, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Duff, Ernest A.
Leader and party in Latin America.
(A Westview special study on Latin America and the Caribbean)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Political parties--Latin America. 2. Political leadership--Latin America. I. Title.
JL969.A45D84 1985 324.2'2'098 84-25711
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00817-8 (hbk)

The author accepts full responsibility for the content of this book, but nevertheless wishes to recognize the important contributions made by others.

Three of my colleagues, Susan Lockhart, Charlotte Stern, and Philip Thayer, read all or part of the manuscript. I am sure that their suggestions have vastly improved the final product.

My wife, Barbara, served as both editor and typist, especially in the early stages of this work. Ruth Bryan did the word processing on the final draft and helped me meet my deadlines.

Ernest A. Duff

Our images of Latin America in the 1920s and 1930s are vague and contradictory. On the one hand there is the caudillo , that comic-opera bemedalled general immortalized in H. L. Mencken's famous essay, "Gore in the Caribee." The other image is of inept and perhaps venal politicians, being seduced by rapacious Northernerican bankers, as presented in J. Fred Rippy's The Capitalists and Colombia . Yet, the two decades preceding World War II were of immense importance to an adequate understanding of Latin America of today? for it was during this period that political institutions were either created or destroyed, with the resultant political stability or chaos we observe today.

This is a study of the political leaders who produced those different types of political institutions, and how these institutions either have worked for or against the development of cohesive societies. Futher, it is a study of the relationship between the largely unexplored variable of political leadership and the environmental variables which have received most of the attention in writings on political parties' origins and development. More specifically, this study is an inquiry into the relation between political leadership and the development of modern political parties, and of the effect these parties have had upon the political life of various nations. Latin America is the locale for this book primarily because it presents such divergent cases of political leadership and subsequent political history. A major theme of this book is that certain political leaders in certain countries created and/or developed political parties capable of at least partially resolving the subsequent political crises through which these nations have passed, with a minimum of governmental repression or anti-systemic violence. Implicit in this theme is the idea that political development is not something that results from short-run forces within or without the polity; rather, the development of a cohesive society is a process that